1880] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



119 



the fish, .ind for selecting such as are needed 

 for other purposes. 



It is a prime necessity tliat tliere be no pre- 

 daccous fish in the same pond witli carp. Of 

 course, tlie larger fish will be measurably se- 

 cure against the attacks of carnivorous spe- 

 cies of al)0ut tlie same size, but the cgps and 

 young will become a prey to the rapacity of 

 sucli associates. As a general rule the fish 

 will thrive best when they arc^ the sole occu- 

 pants of particular watcu's, although the asso- 

 ciation of suckers and chulis would be lesss 

 objectionable than that of siudish, perch, or 

 black bass. 



The carp spawn in the spring, in May and 

 .lune, and, indeed, under some circumstances, 

 throughout the entire summer. The Fisli 

 Coramtssion have young lisli that spawned 

 from May to Septemb(u\ They are very pro- 

 lific, yielding from 400,000 to 500,000' eggs, 

 according to size. The eggs adhere tenac- 

 iously to whatever they touch, and for that 

 reason it is very important that a new pond 

 should be provided with floating weeds for 

 such attachments. The eggs hatch out in a 

 few days, and the young grow very rapidly. 

 They feed voraciously upon the so-called frog 

 spittle, the green alga scum so common in 

 frog ponds. Consequently such waters are 

 especially adapted to carp. 



Whenever the water becomes chilled down 

 to perhaps 40°, and especially when frozen 

 over at the top, the fish bury themselves in 

 the mud, aggregating in lots of from fifty to 

 one hundred, frequently with their tails pro- 

 jecting, and constituting what is called in 

 Germany, kettles or roses. It is very im 

 portant that they should not be disturbed 

 under such circumstances. Of course, while 

 hibernating in this way they are not feeding, 

 although tliey are said not to loose apprecia- 

 bly in weight. In the more southern regions, 

 where the waters do not freeze, tliey will 

 probably feed throughout the year and make 

 a more raiiid growth. 



So far. Prof. Baird says, no waters have 

 proved too warm for carp ; indeed, they are 

 said to thrive especially well in reservoirs, re- 

 ceiving the condensed waters of low-pressure 

 steam engines, in Germany, of over 100 de- 

 grees temperature. 



As regards the best' plants for a carp pond. 

 Prof. Baird mentions the ordinary pond 

 weeds {Pontederia and SariitUiria), splatter 

 dock, or pond lily, and, indeed, any of the 

 kinds that grow in the water, with leaves 

 floating upon the surface, duckweed among 

 the number. Those which produce seed, like 

 the wild rice, are especially desirable, as the 

 fish feed voraciously upon them. 



The great merit of the carji for cultivation, 

 next to its excellent table quality, lies in its 

 adaptation to shallow and warm ]ionds nn- 

 snited for ordinary fish. The country is full 

 of such waters; now useless, which might be 

 made exceedingly productive ; and there are 

 thousands of swamps in every State, which 

 might easily be flooded and stocked at small 

 cost in money or trouble. In Germany many 

 villages maintain at common cost for the 

 l)ublic benefit carp ponds of a hundred acres 

 or more. — Scifntijic American. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF GAME FOOD. 

 So long as America continued in the occu- 

 pation of the aboris:ines, the order of nature 

 was apparently but little disturbed. The 

 buftalo and deer, the wild fowl and turkeys, 

 furnished abundant food to the savages with- 

 out serious encroachment upon the fertility 

 of nature. In savage life there appears to be 

 no wanton or unnecessary destruction of the 

 natural means of support. It was reserved 

 for the civilized white man to carry on a 

 wanton war against the bounty of nature, 

 and to kill and destroy, without thought or 

 study of those imperative laws under which 

 nature holds in trust the food supply of man. 

 From the first settlement of the country, the 

 process of eradicating and annihilating the 

 useful animals, birds and fishes natural to the 

 country has been carried on with an energy 

 and success but too characteristic of the Saxoii 



race. Ivarge tracts of land have been entirely 

 depoi)ulate(l of their animals and useful birds. 

 The bufl'alo on his mitive plains has bcconie 

 an object of rare curiosity. Deer are limitckl 

 to the remoter mountain ranges or extensive 

 tracts of barren woods. The wild fowl, 

 which swarmed in New England during the 

 first settlement of the country, and for a long 

 time afterwards, have almost disapjieared. 

 The last wild turkey was killed in Massachu- 

 setts nearly half a century ago. There is 

 probably no s])orfsnian living wlio has killed 

 a grouso on Martha's Vineyard, the last re- 

 fuge in the northeast of that most valuable 

 bird. Plover still migrate, though in dimin- 

 ished numbers, from their breeding places in 

 the far North to their winter home in the 

 South, but they carefully avoid the north- 

 eastern coasts. No one in this generation 

 has seen a wild swan alighting on the waters 

 of Massachusetts. They once abounded there. 

 Even the wild gee.se find no resting place 

 here, but are expelled as if they were tramps 

 and vagabonds. 



Man Destroys, Nature Economizes. 

 Mr. Marsh, in his most interesting and in- 

 structive book, "Man and Nature," shows 

 how spendthrift man has, by his ignorance 

 and neglect of the l.iws of nature, ruined for 

 the purposes of habitation large jiortions of 

 his fair inheritance on the surface of the earth. 

 The shores of the Mediterranean exhibit to- 

 day, in many places, desolation not due to 

 political or national decay, but to man's reck- 

 less abuse and wanton destructiveness. Al- 

 though this may be excused to some extent 

 by the ignorance of former days— for study of 

 the relations of nature to man is of very re- 

 cent date — there can be no excuse, in our 

 more enlightened time, when knowledge of 

 all kinds is so accessible, for not only abusing 

 inanimate nature, but for expelling' from the 

 earth so many of our living fellow inhabi- 

 tants. We are not only forwarned by our 

 present knowledge, but we have reason to be- 

 lieve that earnest study would in a few years 

 reveal to us many of the now secret and hid- 

 den operations of nature. We know, for ex- 

 ample, little of the mysterious arrangements 

 by which nature disposes, after their brief 

 life, of the countless birds and animals born 

 into the world. Many millions are bom an- 

 nually ; as many millions must annually die. 

 We see the smaller birds occasionally seized 

 and devoured by the birds of prey ; we know 

 that the fox, the weasel, the wildcat, and the 

 mink live largely on birds ; but this does not 

 account for their mortality. ITow rarely we 

 come across dead birds or animals in our 

 walks through the woods and fields ! Nature 

 is the most decorous of sextons. She lays her 

 countless dead to rest in the bosom of the 

 earth noiselessly, and with no trace to offend 

 our senses or our feeling.s. Perpetual birth, 

 youth and renovation are her monuments in 

 her everlasting cemetery. Man lives sur- 

 rounded by her living forms; she gives him 

 little or no hint of the mortality of her chil- 

 dren. It is from his own lot and imi)crfect 

 dealings with his own decay that man derives 

 his sad lessons and painful associations with 

 mortality. 



As we rarely know individuals in animal or 

 bird life, these races seem in nature's arrange- 

 ment immortal. The spring brings them to 

 us with the certainty and freshness of new 

 leaves and flowers. We see the leaves and 

 flowers decay ; but, as a general rule, we have 

 little consciousness and scarcely any know- 

 ledge of the death and decay of animated 

 nature. Conld we know this, we could greatly 

 enlarge our power of dealing with an animal 

 race, with every probability of increasing 

 their number and the average duration of 

 their lives. — William Minot , in Internntional 

 Revieiofor August, 1880. 



FLOUR MANUFACTURE. 



Until recently, says the editor of the science 

 department in the Califnrniaii, it was believed 

 that the only thing to be sought for in the 

 production of a good article of flour was a 



more less fine disintegration of the kernels of 

 wheat. As long as millers held to the theory 

 that "grinding" was all that was required, a 

 large percentage of the flour had its nutritive 

 powers greatly reduced by being ground to an 

 impalpable dust. Science, by aid of the 

 microscope, has shown that no really good 

 bread can be made from flour in which any 

 large iiortiou of the starch globules have been 

 thus broken down. The rising of bread is due 

 to the starch globules which remain whole, 

 while the dust from the disintegrated ones, 

 by souring, impairs thri lightness and sweet- 

 ne.ss of the loaf. It is but recently that these 

 facts have been made known to millers, and 

 since that time they have been discarding 

 their old theories and machinery and devising 

 improvements with the view to separating 

 the starch globules rather than pulverizing 

 them. Another inijiortant advance in this 

 industry consists in an improvement in belt- 

 ing machines. Until recently the bran was 

 separated from the flour by a powerful air- 

 blast, which blows oft the light particles of 

 bran. Considerable power is reqninid for 

 this process, and, although it is carried on in 

 a closed room, there is not only a great waste 

 of the finer particles of flour, but the im)>alp- 

 able dust penetrates every part of the mill, 

 and often gives rise to destructive explosions. 

 By a recent invention electricity is made to 

 take the place of the air-blast. Just over the 

 wire bolting cloth, which has a rapid recipro- 

 cal motion, a number of hard-rubber cylinders 

 are kept slowly revolving and rubbing against 

 strips of sheepskin, by which a large amount 

 of frictional electricity is evolved. Then, as 

 the middlings are sieved by the reciprocal 

 motion, the lighter bran comes to the top, 

 whence, instead of being blown away by an 

 air-blast, it is attracted to the electrically- 

 charged cylinders, as light substances are at- 

 tracted to a piece of paper or a stick of seal- 

 ing wax, wliicli has been smartly rubbed. 

 The removal of the bran from the rollers and 

 its depo.sit on one side are readily effected, 

 while the flour is carried in another direction. 

 The separation is thus made complete, with 

 very little loss or dust. Still another device 

 has also been introduced to remove from the 

 wheat, before being ground, small pieces of 

 iron which, desi)ite the utmost care, will find 

 its way into the grain, working great injury 

 to mill machinery. This trouble is now reme- 

 died by the use of a series of magnets, direct- 

 ly under which all the grain is made to pass. 

 These magnets readily capture all the stray 

 I)ieces of iron from the wire bands used in 

 binding ; and they have also revealed the sin- 

 gular fact, that, of the scraps of iron and 

 steel which find their way into the grain, fully 

 one-third are something beside the binding 

 wire. They are of larger i)roportions, of 

 varying character, and much more hurtful to 

 the machinery than the wire. Thus it is that 

 science is constantly coming to our aid in all 

 our varied industries, lightening the labor of 

 the workman, decreaing the cost of products, 

 and in every way improving all the various 

 processes which are involved in the imjiroved 

 and constantly advancing civilization of the 

 age. 



BE CAREFUL WITH CARBOLIC ACID. 



Poison by wholesale is being supplied to 

 eveiybody who will purchase it, in the form 

 of a strong solution of the poisonous sidv 

 stahce knowTi as carbolic acid. Two cases of 

 poisoning from this .nolution have occurred in 

 Philadelphia — the first, that of a lady, who 

 was usincr it for the purpose of destroying in- 

 sects. Being unaware of any danger, she 

 had a cloth in her hand .some time, which 

 was saturated with the carbolic acid, and a 

 suflicient quantity of the poison was absorbed 

 through the pores of her hands, and by that 

 means entered the circulation, to produce a 

 dangerous and alarming effect, from which 

 she fortunately recoverod. The second case 

 is a sad one, which caused the death of a lit- 

 tle boy three years old. The father had pur- 

 chased a half-pint bottle of this preparation 

 for the purpose of preventing moths from 



