GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



egg. Can our readers tell us more about 

 tliis? I feel pretty sure that too much of 

 a certain diet of many things will cut down 

 the egg yield, and it is also true that a 

 change in diet will often add to the egg 

 yield. Plenty of sprouted oats, or even 

 green oats a foot high, will often do it. 



SrUES ON MALE FOWLS; HOW TO REMOVE. 



I will tell you my way of taking spurs off, and you 

 can do it in a few minutes. Put on the fire, in a 

 pan of water, two potatoes about the size of a nice 

 iipple. Boil till nearly cooked, and then push each 

 potato on a spur and keep it there for a minute or 

 two, when the spur will come clean off. 



James' Smith. 



Kirkrnahoe, Dumfries, Scotland, Nov. 9. 



HEALTH NOTES 



COTTAGE CHEESE OR " DUTCH CHEESE/^ AND 

 HOV^ TO MAKE IT. 



Mr. A. I. Root:- — In your Home department, you 

 occasionally make mention of " cottage " cheese as 

 a very wholesome article of diet. I wish you would, 

 in an early number of this magazine, describe the 

 process of making this kind of cheese. From what 

 you have said about it from time to time, the writ- 

 er's mouth waters for it, and he is anxious to try 

 his hand at making it. 



Halls, Tenn., Jan. 15. J. C. Sawyer. 



My good friend, I supposed evei-y house- 

 wife in the land knew how to make cottage 

 cheese, or what is called in many places 

 " Dutch cheese." Mrs. Root says, set sour 

 milk on the stove until it is about as hot as 

 you can bear your finger in. Then pour it 

 into a cloth bag, strain out the whey, and 

 season to taste. 



CURING BEESTINGS, POISON IVY_, ETC. 



More than forty years ago, when I first 

 made the acquaintance of the honeybee, 

 beestings were very painful, and swelled on 

 me, and I listened with very much interest 

 to everybody who had a remedy for bee- 

 stings. The juice of different plants, a 

 piece of onion, potato, a little bit of mud, 

 etc., were carefully tested ; but I soon decid- 

 ed that it was only a notion or the effect of 

 the imagination. Then somebody advertised 

 something in a bottle. In fact, a beesting 

 cure had been advertised in the bee-journals 

 more or less; and as good a man as Dr. A. 

 B. Mason, of Toledo, declared that the es- 

 sence of peppermint or some other essence, 

 I cannot remember Avhat, was a sure cure. 

 I said first, last, and always, "Pull out the 

 sting. Do not rub the place, nor meddle 

 with it so as to diffuse the poison, but get 

 busy, and get your mind off from it, and 

 the pain and swelling will soon go away;" 

 and my impression is that the beekeepers of 

 our land gradually came to the same conclu- 

 sion I did. Get out the sting, and get it 

 out with a knife or a pair of tweezers so 

 as not to squeeze the contents of the poison- 

 bag into the wound. 



Well, of late our agricultural papers 

 nave been giving cures for ivy poison, and 

 I have all the time felt confident that a 

 careful experiment would prove about the 



same as with the beesting. The matter was 

 brought to mind by a clipping, but I cannot 

 tell just now what periodical it came from. 

 The closing words, which I have put in 

 italics, are what caused me to give it a place 

 here : 



CUBES FOR IVY POISONING. 



The AmeHcan Botanist publishes a letter from a 

 Brookline, Mass., correspondent stating that fisher- 

 men along parts of the Massachusetts coast find a 

 prompt cure for the effects of poison ivy and poison 

 sumac in the fireweed (Eri ditites hieracifolia) ■ The 

 poisoned parts are rubbed with the leaves of this 

 plant, which must be fresh each time, bruised and 

 crushed so that the sap moistens the skin freely. 

 An editorial note mentions the fact that a large 

 number of other plants have been recommended for 

 ivy poisoning — notably touch-me-not and burdock — 

 but that " it seems doubtful whether any of these 

 herbs can do more than take the attention of the 

 patient from his troubles and cure him by mental 

 suggestion." 



Let me call attention to one point in all 

 these remedies. If it were true that the 

 juice of fireweed is an antidote for poison 

 ivy, hoAv did anybody happen to discover 

 it? Edison has been called the greatest in- 

 ventor of the age; and here comes the 

 point — how does he accomplish his inven- 

 tions or make his great discoveries? Why, 

 he did it by making thousands of tests, on 

 storage batteries, for instance. T think T 

 have seen it stated how many combinations 

 he made with chemicals before he brought 

 out his present storage battery. Now if 

 catnip, tansy, and a great lot of weeds have 

 power to cure diseases, the only way to 

 settle it would be to get a hospital full of 

 patients suffering from one particular ail- 

 ment. Then bring on your herbs — a hun- 

 dred, or, better, a thousand. Squeeze out 

 the juice or make some tea and give to the 

 patients, and notice the effect. If catnip 

 lea gives relief to thirty or forty, and the 

 other patients are not helped, then we may 

 be pretty safe in saying that catnip pos- 

 sesses medical qualities for certain diseases. 

 Has such an experiment ever been made? 

 Not that T knoAv of. Of course our grand- 

 mothers gave catnip tea to the children that 

 were ailing, and they got better, forgetting 

 that nine times out of ten they get better 

 without catnip tea, and so on. 



