186 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[December, 



New York banker, and was not visited by the 

 latter till nearly a year after it became his 

 property. ISince that time contiguous lands 

 have been purchased by Mr. Smith, until his 

 farm may now contain something over .365 

 acres, nearly all of which is under the high- 

 est condition of cultivation, and through 

 which runs a never-failing stream of water. 

 It was not at first Mr. Smith's purpose to es- 

 tablish an extensive stock farm, but owning 

 the celebrated Goldsmith Maid and other 

 fine-blooded horses, he bought the farm on 

 which to keep and breed them. Becoming 

 more and more infatuated with stock raising 

 and breeding, Mr. Smith has increased his 

 stables and improved the establishment until 

 they now represent a moneyed value of about 

 S500,000, his horses alone being valued at 

 8300,000. With the single exception of lloljert 

 Bonner, Mr. Smith haa probably spent more 

 money for horses than any man in the United 

 States. 



With a view of laying before our readers a 

 description of this interesting stock-farm, a 

 reporter of the State Gazette recently made a 

 visit thereto. The first thing to which the 

 reporter's attention was directed was the 

 speeding of Ebony, a handsome Knox colt, 

 and Dutch Girl, on the mile track. Then the 

 large square building used for oflSces, liarness 

 and carriage-rooms, etc., adjoining the grand 

 stand, was visited. On the ground floor, 

 facing the track, is the reception-room, whose 

 fineness of finish almost beggars description. 



Its ceiling is very high, and the whole is 

 finished in oak. The walls are covered with 

 heavy English leather paper. The elaborate 

 mantel is of oak, with unique tiling, and the 

 furniture is rich, heavy and antique, and upon 

 the floor is a gorgeous AVilton carpet. Just 

 back of the reception-room is the office and 

 harness-room finished in oiled pine and hand- 

 somely furnished. In the rear of this room 

 is the large carriage repository, also finished 

 in oiled pine. The second story contains a 

 large hall, which will be fitted up for a billiard- 

 room, and ten bedrooms elegantly furnished 

 for the accommodation of invited guests. On 

 this floor is also the room for the veterinary 

 surgeon. In the cupola of thi^ building is a 

 tank, made of boiler iron, with a capacity of 

 3,500 gallons, which is kept filled by a steam 

 pump in the basement, which has a capacity 

 of 150 gallons per minute. The water is ob- 

 tained from a well twenty-one feet deep and 

 nine feet in diameter, and liolding 6,000 gal- 

 lons. To further guard against fire, five fire- 

 plugs are contiguous to the stables and are 

 supplied with 400 feet of iiose. In addition 

 to this tie Trenton fire department could be 

 summoned by telephone. 



In the cellar of the carriage-house, besides 

 the force pump, is a steam engine and boiler, 

 which heats the building and cooks the food 

 for the horses. Besides this structure there 

 are the following: Main barn, with twenty 

 box and forty single stalls; the colt barn, 

 with twenty-four box stalls, capable of hold- 

 ing forty-eight colts; the training stable, with 

 fifty box stalls; the grand 'stand barn, with 

 seventeen box stalls, for brood mares and colts; 

 the stallion stable, with five box and six single 

 stalls; the grain barn, recently built by Cub- 

 berly & Kafer, and probably the largest barn 

 in this section; the cow barn; a barn for the 



farm work horsis and mules; a barn for farm- 

 ing implements; the blacksmith shop; grand 

 stand with seating capacity of 2,000; Mr. 

 Smith's residence near the race track, which 

 he occupies about three months each year; 

 General Manager Riddle's residence near the 

 entrance, and four other residences for em- 

 ployes. Inside of the large square formed by 

 the stock barn are large and substantial pad- 

 docks in which to exercise the horses in win- 

 ter. Inside of the square formed by tlie pad- 

 docks is a manure pit six feet deep and 150 

 feet square, with a cement bottom. Into this 

 pit all the manure is deposited daily. 



The proprietor of this grand establishmeut, 

 II. N. Smith, as we said before, is a promi- 

 nent New York banker, and except in the 

 summer, resides at Fifth avenue and Forty- 

 fifth .street, in the city named. He is in the 

 prime of life, and his wealth is estimated at 

 $1,000,000. . He is a thorough lover of horses, 

 and while he spends hundreds of thousands of 

 dollars in developing superior stock, he is in 

 no sense a gambler or jockey. Thus far his 

 stables are believed not to be self-sustaining, 

 but they are now rapidly becoming so. Among 

 the horses, many of which have a world-wide 

 reputation, are four service stallions, twenty- 

 one yearling colts and fillies, sixteen two-year 

 olds, thirteen three-year olds and thirty-five 

 brood mares altogether, with a number of 

 boarders, making 150 head of blooded stock. 

 The most noted animal on the Fashion Stud 

 Farm is Goldsmith Maid, who was foaled in 

 1857, and has a record of 2:14.— Trenton State 

 Gazette. 



FLECKS, OR "WHITE CAES," IN 

 CREAM. 



Flecks are generally supposed to be pieces 

 of dried cream, and possibly sonjetimes they 

 may be, but usually they are not, for occa- 

 sionally they exist in milk before any cream 

 rises, and sometimes are mingled with butter 

 made by processes of cold-setting in which 

 the cream remains soft, no part of it being 

 dried at iill. They seldom appear, however, 

 in butter made by cold-setting ; they are 

 mostly found in butter made in dairies where 

 the milk is set without any other cooling than 

 that of the air in the room where the milk 

 stands. For the most p.art they are developed 

 in milk after it comes from the cow. By 

 quickly cooling milk to a low degree, change 

 is so much arrested that they cannot develop. 

 They can only form within certain limits of 

 temperature, and when they do, are likely to 

 appear as plentifully in the milk as in the 

 cream, and often more so, which is evidence 

 adverse to their being originated from dried 

 cream. In milk which is in a perfectly nor- 

 mal condition they never appear. They al- 

 ways occur in milk which is more or less 

 faulty. They are very apt to accompany an 

 inflamed state of the udder, and seldom or 

 never appear without it. When milk is all 

 right, the surface of the cream may be ex- 

 posed to currents of dry air until it becomes 

 quite dry and hard, without showing any indi- 

 cation of "white caps'' as they are sometimes 

 called. The dried cream, wlien mixed with 

 the rest and well stirred up, soon becomes 

 soft, and churns the same as the rest. But when 

 milk wliicli is a little feverish, or in some 

 other way faulty, is thus exposed to the air 



without being first well cooled, flecks will be 

 pretty sure to show themselves in numbers 

 proportioned to the exposure. Whenever 

 flecks are liable to be developed, there can, 

 with the aid of a microscope, be seen in the 

 milk small specks of solid matter with frag- 

 mentary shapes which form the nucleus of 

 the flecks. When such milk is set in a glass 

 vessel and kept without much cooling, these 

 specks can be seen to enlarge by the coagula- 

 tion and adhesion of the milk in contact with 

 them. Sooner or later they swell from gas 

 forming within them, and, becoming lighter 

 than the milk, rise toward the surface and 

 more or less of them become imbedded in the 

 soft cream. When they form in the milk they 

 are almost wholly composed of curd, but when 

 formed in the cream they are rich in cream, 

 having as much, and perhaps, more cream in 

 their composition as curd.— L. B. Arnold, in 

 American Agriculturist for JSfovember. 



BARBED WIRE FOR FENCING. 

 ■ Experience has demonstrated the practical 

 value of the following suggestions for con- 

 structing barbed-wire fence: Set substantial 

 posts one rod apart; the post at the starting 

 point should be braced by cutting a notch in 

 it two and a half feet from the ground, and 

 running a strong pole from the notch to the 

 foot of the second post, where it is fitted to 

 rest firmly, and is supported about three 

 inches above the ground by means of a short 

 block driven down behind the fence post. 

 This method of bracing should he repeated 

 once in forty rods. A faulty construction 

 would be to cut the notch in the starting 

 post four feet from the ground, make the 

 brace shorter, and allow the lower end to rest 

 upon the ground; for the moment the wire is 

 tightened upon the fence, the short brace acts 

 as a fulcrum to lift the initial post. When 

 the posts are set a wire is wrapped firmly 

 around the first post, four feet and two inches 

 from the ground ; then the coil is unrolled 

 forty rods and the wire drawn tight by means 

 of a set of small pulleys with grapples. After 

 this wire has been securely stapled, a second 

 is similarly fastened one foot below it, and a 

 third and fourth below this, leaving .a foot 

 space between the respective wires ; the 

 ground space is fourteen inches. Four wires 

 thus arianged make a perfect cattle fence. 

 For horses the lower wire should be with- 

 out barbs to prevent cutting the knee, and a 

 fifth wire should be placed upon the posts 

 five feet from the ground.— Pro/. .S. A. 

 Knaxip, in American Agriculturist for No- 

 ')ember. 



NEW YORK WOOL MARKET. 



At the last London auction but two hun- 

 dred bales in all of Colonial wool was bought 

 for America. At the next sale, to commence 

 November 22, but very little choice wool— 

 and that only from the new clip— will be 

 available. 



We know that but a very small amount of 

 foreign clothing remains on hand in this 

 country, in all some few thousand bales. W* 

 also know that, at present, next to nothing is 

 on the way hither from foreign parts. A tel- 

 egram from London says, "All sorts of cloth- 

 ing wool firmer." Which means that there 

 is nothing there for America, even if we want- 



