GLEANINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 8

GLEANINGS.

— There are 5,000,000 colonies of bees in the United States, which annually yield 120,000,000 pounds of honey.

— A German paper states that eggs may be kept perfectly fresh for a year by rubbing them with vaseline, which has been melted with threetenths per cent, of salicylic acid. The application should be made twice at an interval of a month.

— Heif ters intended for the dairy should not be fed on fattening food. Plenty of coarse provonder is better. It enlarges and strengthens the digestive organs, and when they come in profit, the tendency will be to milk and not to fat.

— The best cure for colic in horses is the palm of your hand full of turpentine rubbed against the upper gums and the inside of the upper lip of the horse and his breast bathed with the same. If not relieved in one hour repeat the dose.

— The hens of Kansas, hardly ever thought of in agricultural returns, yielded in 1879 six times as much as the orchards, eight times as much as the market gardens, and 15 times as much as the potato fields of the great State.

— Chicken roosts should all be of the same height, then there is no crowding among the fowls for the highest perch, and consequently no tumbling down. The latter results in eggs being broken inside the fowl, and very often causes death, especially if the roosts are 'high.

— If animals are not fed at regular hours they are in alternate conditions of hunger and surfeit, and no animal can thrive in that way. Moreover, if tho feeding is long delayed, there is a worry that causes more waste from the system than would result from actual hunger.

— What difference is there between a farmer who pays a rent of 300dol a year and one who pays interest on a mortgage of 5000dol ? asks the New York Times. The landlord -is the lighter incubus to carry, and has more mercy than a mortgagee, who sells out the hapless debtor and loads him up with more debt. '

— Vitality of Maize. — Corn that is thoroughly ripened on the stalks in the field, well dried in the sun, traced up and placed in a room, possesses remarkable vitality. Some seed corn was disposed of at an auction sale in Vermont in the spring of 1883, said to be thirty years old, but it sprouted readily and produced a large crop.

— The Chicago stock-yards, which were constructed about twenty years ago, are the largest in the world. They are capable of accommodating 20,000 cattle, 150,000 hogs, 10,000 sheep and 1500 horses. Seventeen different railroads centre in the yards. It is estimated the number of carloads received and shipped last year would make about 9000 trains of 31 cars each. If placed in one train they would reach a distance of about 2146 miles.

—John K. Wolfley, of Morro, San Luis Obispo, gives his remedy for exterminating sorrel. He says: You can get rid of it by smothering it out -with hay or straw. You cannot kill by cultivation, for it must be smothered by letting the straw remain until it rots, and when the straw rots something else will appear instead of sorrel. I have seen it tried in Pennsylvania and also in this State, and it never failed. In no case put dirt on top of the straw.

— One fruitful cause of disease with pigs is exposure to a cold wind when just out of a hot nest, where, perhaps, they have been piled upon each other. The sudden change of temperature may be as great as- twenty or more degrees, enough, anyway, to cause colds, which may assume the form of pleurisy, quinsy, inflammation of the lungs or bowels. Sleeping under the straw stack and feeding on the open ground in a raking wind lay the foundation for many diseases.

— Fingers and toes on potatoes—super-tuber-ing — seem to be produced or emitted much at the expense of the main tuber from which they grow, apparently from its own general expansion having been checked by drought. The main tuber becomes hard and woody, like one that has entered upon making second growth, losing much of its starch. The secondary tubers in both cases are apt to be unripe and unwholesome. Some rub the branch tubers off to arrest the transfer of matter, which will go on after the potatoes have been dug.

— When potatoes are fed to cows the tubers should be boiled, by which any irritation to the bowels from indigested starch granules is avoided. Raw potatoes will affect the flavour of milk, and of course that of the butter, but boiled potatoes, fed cold, are easily digested, and if mixed with a little bran and lightly salted are very palatable and nutritious. Potatoes contain 20 per cent, of starch ; corn contains 60 per cent. ; then if corn is worth 50 cents a bushel, potatoes are worth about 17 cents a bushel to feed. But they are worth 10 cents a bushel more for their wholesomeness and the aid they give to the digestion of hay and corn meal,-— American paper,