186 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[December, 



ten on the killed and wounded, birds left on 

 the ground during the night's foray. 



At intervals of many years the pigeons 

 change their roosting place, but never locat- 

 ing far away from the old roost. A week ago 

 they made a change of base, taking new 

 quarters a few miles distant from the former 

 roost. This change was made in the night. 

 The Scott county pigeon roost has been a 

 famous resort for more than eiijhty years. 

 Near this roost the most noted Indian mas- 

 sacre that ever occurred in this part of the 

 State took place in Sejitember, 1812. A party 

 of marauding Pnltawatomies, out on the war 

 path, attacked the i)igeon roost settlement, 

 at that time the most remote in this direction 

 from the falls of the Ohio, and murdered all 

 the settlers but five — tAVO members of the 

 family of .John Collin.s, and Mrs. Beadle and 

 her two small children, Mrs. Beadle flying with 

 the children in her arms; and secreting her- 

 self aud them in a sink hole till the Indians 

 had gone, when she took the little ones in her 

 arms and ran to the nearest settlement, six 

 miles away and gave the alarm. It was but 

 a little distance from this historic spot that 

 the late Democratic candidate for Vice Pres- 

 ident. Hon. William H. English, passed from 

 infancy into manliood. 



DO WE EAT TOO MUCH? 



Nothing consumes the general worth of the 

 world like the feeding of its populations, and it 

 is by no means yet completely settled that the 

 majority of men, once above the imperative 

 restrictions of poverty, do not eat a good deal 

 too much. An idea has been very generally 

 spread that it is healthy to eat often, till cer- 

 tain classes, more especially servants, eat five 

 times a day; and the end of the medical 

 aphorism, tliat those who eat often should eat 

 little, is very often forgotten. The Lancet of 

 September 4, in a curiously cautious article, 

 hints that the modern world eats too much in 

 positive bulk of food— a statement certainly 

 true of great bread eaters, a distinct and well- 

 marked type— and thinks the modern regular- 

 ity of meals has induced us to regard appetite 

 as the guide rather than hunger, which is the 

 true one. Regularity of meals develops appe- 

 tite, not hunger. We rather question the 

 previous proposition, as a very liungry man 

 is apt to eat too much, but we believe that 

 the extension of wealth and the extreme pub- 

 lic ignorance upon the subject tend to foster a 

 habit of taking too nwny meals. Men and 

 women eat three in lOHiours— breakfa.st at 

 10 a. m., lunch at 1:30 p. m. and dinner at 

 7:30 p. m.— a division of the twenty- four hours 

 of the day which can hardly be healthy. It 

 leaves thirteen hours and a half without food, 

 while in the remaining ten and a half there 

 are three meals. It would be better, we im- 

 agine, for sedentary men to reduce theirs to 

 two, taken at considerable intervals; or if 

 that is too worrying, to confine the intercal- 

 ary meal to the merest moutliful, taken with- 

 out sitting aud with no provision to tempt 

 the appetite. Lunch for those who work 

 with the brain is the destruction of laborious- 

 ness, and for those who work with the hands 

 is the least useful of the meals. It is veiy 

 doubtful whether the powerfully built race's 

 of Upper India, who eat only twice a day — at 

 10 a. m. and 10 p. m.— are not in the right, 

 exactly equalizing, as they do, the periods of 

 abstinence, though it is difficult to decide 

 from the exomple of hereditary tetotal vege- 

 tarians, the bulk of whose food is out of all 

 proportion to its nourishment. The great 

 evil to be removed is, however, not so much 

 the mid-day meal as the profound ignorance, 

 even of educated men, as to the quantity 

 of food indispensible to health, and 

 the quantity most beneficial to it. On the 

 first subject most men know nothing, or at 

 Vicst only the amount of a convict's' ration, 

 which is fixed at the standard foiuid most 

 conducive to severe labor in confinement, and 

 is no rule for ordinary mankind. Cannot the 

 doctors tell us some handy rule of thumb 

 about this? They have told us that the ben- 

 eficial quantity of alcohol is the equivalent of 



a pint of ordinary claret a day, but what is 

 the beneficial quantity of food. It must differ 

 according to diet, physique and occupation, 

 but still there must be some formula which 

 will convey in intelligible fashion the average 

 maxium reijuired by men of different weights. 

 We believe most men would be surprised to 

 find how very low it is and how very much 

 they exceed it, especially in the consumption 

 of meat. Vegetarianism, which some among 

 us exalt as a panacea, has been tried for thous- 

 ands of years, by millions of people, and has, 

 on the whole, failed, the flesheating people 

 out-fighting, out-working, and out-thinking 

 the eaters of vegetables only; but between 

 vegetarianism and the flesh-eating habits ' of 

 well-to-do Englishmen there is a wide dis- 

 tance. Mr. Bantiusr, too, wrote wild exag- 

 gerations, but the way in which Englishmen 

 of reasonable intellecl:ual capacities will swal- 

 low crumb of bread, often not half-baked, by 

 the pound at a time, would account even for 

 severer melancholy than that under which 

 they labor. We want an intelligent rule, to 

 be obeyed or disobeyed, but to be remem- 

 bered. — London Spectator. 



CHAMPAGNE. 



Doni Porignon, Prior of the Abbey of Haut- 

 villers, discovered a means of making white 

 wine from the dusky grapes, and he invented 

 the thin flute-like glass which held the foam- 

 ing liquor. It was known as '• Vin Perignon," 

 aud later, in the days of Regent, as "■' Van 

 d'Av," and Voltaire, the cynic and free- 

 thinker tells this in his letters that he consoled 

 himself during his stay at Ferney with the 

 wine which had been invented by the monk. 



Connoissenrs declare that it is impossible to 

 make good champagne without blending 

 different wines together, and the finest brands 

 are made of black and white grapes, with 

 Verzenay to give vigor and body, Benzy to 

 contribute the bouquet, Ay to tone down the 

 mixture, and Cremant to give it those spark- 

 ling, creaming qualities which are so much 

 appreciated. Like the good people of Cognac, 

 who buy raw spirit in England and then send 

 it back again to London as "Fine Cham- 

 pagne," the tradesmen of Rheims are accused 

 of importing large quantities of effervescing 

 wines from Touraine ; and there is a shrewd 

 suspicion that some of the cheaper vintages 

 are grown on the hillsides at Saumur, and 

 simply champaguisee at Rheims. 



The time chosen for bottling is the month 

 of May, when every house in the trade is busy 

 filling up the vacancies left in the bins 

 by the numerous demands which have been 

 made by the consumer. Stout wire masks are 

 used for visiting the cellars at this season of 

 the year, for, although accidents are exces- 

 sively rare, bottles have now and then burst 

 with the force of the gas, and fragments of 

 glass have been burled right and left, more 

 than one man bearing the marks of cuts, clean 

 HS if done with a sabre, on his neck and fore- 

 liead. Each person is armed witli a candle 

 such as is used in the docks in Londmi, and 

 then the vaults are explored. They are cut 

 deep in the chalky soil, and some say they 

 were made by the Romans in days gone by, 

 but no one can tell for certain what purpose 

 Ihey were intended to serve before they were 

 used for stoiing up the wine. There are the 

 bottles, tier upon tier, sugar-candied, brandied 

 and flavored, staled and capsuled uji, labelled 

 with the name of the firm ; and reiflly to be 

 packed in those wooden cases, which are being 

 made in the carpenter's shop with far more 

 care and attention than a pauper's coflln. 

 Each of the 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 of bottles 

 piled up have passed through the hands of 

 about 130 persons. Rheims is full of cham- 

 pagne manufacturers ; it is the lieadquarters 

 of the Widow Cliquot, of the Roederers, of 

 Mumni, Moet, and Chandon, Montebello, and 

 Perier, while the palace of the Moets at Eper- 

 nay vies in imjiortance with that of Madame 

 Pommery at Rheims. Some prefer one wine, 

 others another ; but few persons who have not 

 visited the country can credit that the glorious 

 vintage is not exactly what it pretends to be ; 



that the creamy effervescence so highly prized 

 is not the work of nature, but of art, and that 

 the pure, unsophisticated vintage which glad- 

 dened the heart and toned down the asperities 

 of Wence.slas, of Poland, was a still wine, as 

 different from what is generally called cham- 

 pagne as chalk is from cheese. 



PROPAGATING GERMAN CARP. 



Less than four years ago the first successful 

 attempt to introduce the German carp into 

 this coinitry was made under the auspices of 

 the United States Fisli Commission, by Dr. 

 E. R. Hessel. About 130 of the fish were 

 living when the consignment reached this 

 country, and all the German carp now in the 

 United States are the progeny of this small 

 number. Within a year Professor Baird has 

 distributed throughout the country about 30,- 

 000 of these valuable food fishes. The water 

 in the carp ponds in Washington has been 

 drawn off this week, and it is found that 

 about 100,000 fish can now be distributed. 

 One thousand have lately been sent to the 

 stock ponds in Tennessee, and 5,000 were 

 shipped to Kentucky for the same purpose. 



A great many of the fish sent to different 

 parts of the country have been shipped to in- 

 dividuals who have ponds and desire to stock 

 them. About one-half of those recently sent 

 to Tennessee were to supply the demands of 

 individuals. As evidence of the general de- 

 mand for carp is the fact that there are now 

 on file in the office of the Fish Commi.ssionsome 

 3,000 applications. It is understood that 

 hereafter when carp are to be sent to a State 

 where there is a State Fish Commission, it 

 will be expected that that commission will 

 receive them at Washington and transport 

 them to the places where they are to be placed 

 for the purposes of breeding. The States 

 which have thus far been supplied with carp, 

 either fully or in part, are New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota, 

 Wisconsin, Michigan, Connecticut, Tennessee, 

 Georgia, Texas and Mississippi. 



The carp do not breed until three or four 

 years of age, but like all other fish their fe- 

 cundity is very great, and after they arrive at 

 the breeding ages the 130,000 which will have 

 been distributed throughout the country be- 

 fore the end of this year will multiply in such 

 a ratio as soon to add materially to the food 

 supply of the people. Prof. Baird estimates 

 that one pair of breeding carp is sufficient to 

 stock an acre of water, and that the spawn 

 from a single fish will produce from 5,000 to 

 10,000 young fish. These make a very rapid 

 growth during the first three or four years, 

 frequently reaching a weight of ten to fifteen 

 pounds in that time. 



As a matter of practical interest to those 

 who desire to start carp ponds, it may be 

 mentioned that all applications to the Fish 

 Commission should show the date, name of 

 the applicant, postoffice address, situation of 

 the pond nearest the railroad station, name 

 of railroad, area of pond, character of bottom, 

 and what other fish, if any, the pond contains. 

 The area of the breeding ponds in Washing- 

 ton vvill be extended next spring by eight 



acres. 



^ 



FOR THE FARMER. 



The general rule in feeding cows is that 

 twenty-.seven iiounds of dry food daily are re- 

 quired for 1,000 pounds of live weight and that 

 three-fourths or two-thirds of this should be 

 bulky food, such as hay. This is a rule which 

 admits of many exceptions. Very much de- 

 pends upon the form of the cow. Some cows 

 weighing 800 pounds consume more food than 

 others weighing 1,000 pounds. 



Milking qualities in swine are as surely 

 transmissible to progeny as in cattle. Thus it 

 is as true of swine as of cattle that this trait 

 may be greatly improved by retaining only 

 good milkers for breeders, as well as by feed- 

 ing them when young with a view to their 

 development as milk-producers rather than as 

 fat-producers. For this reason spring and 

 early summer litters as usually the best from 

 which to select young brood sows. 



