POULTRY— FRUIT TREES. 359 



lost any by disease. The Black Spanish are the best layers. 

 The Brahmas make the heaviest birds, but all things considered 

 I prefer the common dung-hill fowls, and these may be very 

 much improved by judicious management, as well as may all 

 other live stock. 



Give the chickens clean quarters, plenty of grain, and wood 

 ashes or sand to roll in. Coal, gravel, burned bones, and plenty 

 of fresh, cool, clean water, with a grass run are necessary to 

 health. Select the first laid and largest eggs for hatching, and 

 sprinkle a teaspoonful of sulphur over the eggs when put in 

 the nest to hatch. Feed the chicks when ten hours old, dry, 

 coarse Indian meal. When one week old and afterwards, feed 

 them in addition to the meal, thick sour milk. 



FRUIT TREES. 



My method of raising fruit trees is as follows : I prefer 

 low heads, trimmed into shape when small, and never much 

 afterwards. Wash the trees twice a year with soap, reduced to 

 the consistency of paint with water, and three pounds of sul- 

 phur stirred into four gallons of the liquid. Follow this for 

 ten years. Cultivate, but do not crop the ground : when the 

 trees first blossom, manure the ground and seed it down to 

 grass. 



R. L. GILBERT, 



CHESTER, JEFFERSON COUNTY. 



Delaware Reserve — StocTc — Care and Feed of Sheep — Fruit. 



The eastern part of Jefferson county, Kan., is rough and 

 broken. A quarter section, one hundred and sixty acres, that 

 can all be broken and cultivated, is rare. But there are from thirty 

 to fifty acres in nearly every eighty, that is good farming land. 

 We can grow good crops of wheat and corn. Wheat yields 



