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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



from your efforts, as the springing corn and waving 

 grain were the consequence of your timely indus- 

 try in the spring. Turn to the article on winter 

 schools, or more properly, Schools at Home, at 

 page 120, of the monthly, and in the weekly 

 Farmer of the 7th of February last, and read once 

 more the suggestions offered there. Nearly four 

 months are before you now in which you may find 

 opportunity to turn the current of your thoughts 

 into new and delightful channels, elevate your 

 minds, purify your affections, and prepare your- 

 selves to shed untold blessings ever after upon the 

 world around you. The gain of gold is not all — 

 for what profiteth it a man if he have ample fields, 

 teeming orchards, and bursting barns, with the 

 refinements and elegancies of life, if he have not 

 contentment therewith ! 



"Honor and shame from no condition rise — 

 Act ivell your part ; there all the honor lies." 



A beneficent Providence has so arranged things 

 that there are duties demanding our attention at 

 all seasons, and among them at this time an im- 

 portant one is to prepare a proper 



Shelter for Stock. — We shall barely call at- 

 tention to this subject now, with the purpose of 

 soon noticing it more particularly. Cold acts as 

 a stimulant to the system, and that is probably 

 why we require animal diet in the winter more 

 than in the summer ; flesh supplying the waste 

 occasioned by the cold more readily than vegeta- 

 bles. If, then, the animal is cold, it requires more 

 food, and of a more nutritious nature, to keep up 

 the natural temperature of the body, than when 

 comfortably sheltered. It will, therefore, be found 

 cheaper to protect the animal from the cold than 

 to supply an extra amount of food. 



Carrots for Horses. — The stable keepers are 

 beginning to find that these vegetables form a cheap 

 and nutritious food to mix with grain for their hors- 

 es. It is better to give a working horse a peck of 

 carrots and four quarts of oats or corn meal a day 

 than to give him six quarts of meal. 



Feeding Stock. — Owing to the excessive drought 

 last summer, there is a great scarcity of hay and 

 fodder, so that it becomes important that not only 

 shall nothing be wasted, but that the utmost 

 economy shall be practised in feeding out what we 

 have. We therefore recommend the cutting of 

 all coarse fodder, (hay, straw, corn-stalks and 

 shucks,) and mixing with it a little meal of some 

 kind, corn, oat, barley or oat-meal, or shorts, now, 

 at the opening of winter, and thus commence with 

 feeding out less hay than would otherwise be re- 

 quired . Secure to the cattle warmth , clean and loose 

 skins by the frequent use of the card, and you will 

 be able to take each animal through the winter in 

 good condition, with some ten or fifteen hundred 

 pounds less hay than they have been accustomed 

 to consume. Where wood is cheap great ad- 

 vantage may be derived from cooking most of the 



food fed out. Hay steamed with the grain, would 

 undoubtedly answer the desired purpose with a 

 considerable less quantity than if fed in an un- 

 cooked state. All kinds of feed given the store 

 swine should be cooked. 



Young animals must receive careful attention. 

 If stinted in food and exposed to the elements, 

 they will scarcely ever assume those full, plump, 

 and handsome proportions so desirable, do what 

 you will for them afterwards. 



Poultry and Eggs. — Fowls like the warm south- 

 ern aspect, where they can huddle together in the 

 sun during the middle of the day. Provide them 

 such a place, and plenty of food, such as corn, 

 barley, wheat, cob-meal, mixed with scalding water 

 or hot potatoes, with occasional feeds of the flesh 

 of young calves, plucks of sheep, and constant ac- 

 cess to pure water, gravel, old mortar, oyster or 

 clam shells and bones, all broken finely, and they 

 will yield eggs in abundance through the cold 

 weather. 



Preserving Winter Apples. — Keep them in a 

 moist cellar and at a temperature above the freez- 

 ing point, but as near it as possible. These are 

 some of the suggestions and duties appropriate to 

 December, and close our remarks of this character 

 for the year. 



If you have followed us, kind reader, in this 

 "Mirror of the Months," which wo have present- 

 ed, — a dim mirror though it may be, — and have 

 found as much pleasure and profit in reading as 

 we have in the writing, we shall feel that our la- 

 bor has not been in vain. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 WHY BEES DIE IN WINTER. 



Mr. Editor : — As a correspondent writing some 

 months since in the Farmer, over the signature of 

 "A Subscriber," desires to know the cause "why 

 swarms of bees so frequently die in winter, and 

 sometimes in other seasons of the year, without 

 any apparent cause," and as I have had fifteen 

 years experience in keeping bees, I am thinking it 

 may not be amiss to give my views on the subject. 

 From experiments and observation, I am satisfied 

 that cold is the cause of swarms of bees dying, 

 where plenty of honey remains in the hive. Evi- 

 dence of this is found in the fact that it is more 

 frequently the case, that small swarms (those of 

 few in number) die in winter, than large swarms ; 

 the consequence of there not being sufficient ani- 

 mal heat produced in the hive to keep out the frost, 

 or the honey sufficiently warm. And as the ani- 

 mal heat produced, (sometimes called the breath 

 of bees) ascends to the top of the hive, making 

 that part of the hive warmest, the bees also ascend 

 or cluster close in the top ; but after they have 

 eaten all the honey in that part of the hive which 

 they occupy, they make a move for more, which 

 is generally once a day, and by the latter part of 

 winter they must descend to near the bottom of 

 the hive for honey ; after which they ascend to the 

 top again which is warmest ; but as the weather 



