THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



27 



As ;i curiosity tliis animal lias now been put 

 .n the background by a fish, several examples 

 of which liave been dreilgcil, at deptlis vary- 

 iuf? from oIK) to '2000 fathoms, otV the coast of 

 Massachusetts, by the vessel of the United 

 Stales Fish Commission. This fish, as de- 

 scribed before the Philadelphia Academy of 

 Natural Sciences by Mr. J. A. Hyder, has 

 jaws about seven times the length of the 

 head, which is half an inch long and of about 

 equal width. The upper jaw is suspended 

 from the anterior portion of the body by an 

 extensible membrane, while from the lower 

 portion hangs a capacious pouch. A lateral 

 extension of two inches is permitted by tlie 

 articulation of tiie jaws. Thus the mouth, 

 wlicn wide open, forms a capacious funnel, of 

 which the rest of the body stems an insignifi- 

 cant continuation. This funeral serves for 

 tlie collection and storage of food, and proba- 

 bly some of the stages of digestion are carried 

 on within it. 



Tlie gills are placed a long distance behind 

 the head, the bones of the operculum or gill- 

 cover arc entirely absent, and the gill open- 

 ings are reduced to mere pores. The tail is a 

 long, slender, flexible continuation of the 

 body, and near its tip is a fine composed of 

 membrane only, without the bony or car- 

 tilaginous rays present in most fishes. In this 

 respect this llsli is like an embryo fish. Tlie 

 eggs from the ovary into the alimentary 

 canal, as in the eels, to which this fish is more 

 nearly allied than it is to other tribes of 

 fishes, though still in some respects well re- 

 moved from them, having characters some of 

 which show high specialization, while others 

 are embryonic. The inside of the mouth and 

 throat, as well as the outer skin, is jet black. 

 Many drop-.sea animals are deprived of sight, 

 but in this species the eyes are functional 



Dr. Gill has proposed for this strange fish 

 the name of Oastrostonins bairdii, which, 

 translated into the vernacular, means Baird's 

 belly-mouth. 



INDIAN CORN— ITS VALUE IN THE 

 RATION. 



Corn i'S so rich in oil that we may say corn 

 bread is ready buttered ; it is, however, very 

 digestible, and in cold weather this oilliness 

 is a most valuable factor, as it serves to keep 

 up the heat of the body more directly than 

 starch and similar substances. With oats 

 and barley it may form one third of the grain 

 ration of hard-worked draft horses, and will 

 keep their coats glossy and be in every way a 

 benefit, certainly worth more than its weight 

 in oats. Fed alone or m larger proportion, 

 it has a tendency to make horses sweat easily, 

 and, it is said to become quickly exhausted. 

 It is not safe to feed it as freely as oats or 

 barley, as there is danger ol impaction and— 

 just as there would be if wheat were so fed. 

 Xo doubt it is best fed ground with oats, and 

 the proportions already indicated are proba- 

 bly the most satisfactory, the meal being fed 

 upon cut hay. 



For Cows in milk, corn meal may form with 

 bran the exclusive grain ration, and may be 

 fed at the rate of one pint of corn meal to 

 each hundred pounds of the cow's live weight. 

 No doubt it will be found just as good in 

 Great Britain as here. It gives quality and 

 richness to the milk, color to the butter and 



abundance to the flow if the cow is a good 

 one ; but if she is inclined to lay on fat, such 

 feeding will cause her to fatten, even though 

 in full milk, and if she gets too fat she will 

 go dry. 



For shc('p, corn is excellent, but should be 

 fed whole and a little at a time. For swine, 

 the universal experieiu* from Maine to 

 Oregon, and from Canada to Mexico, is that 

 it will make more and better pork than any 

 other food. For poultry, it is in this country 

 the universal grain, but is not always the 

 best. It is admirable for its fattening proper- 

 ties, but for laying hens, and growing fowls, 

 it is not well to use too much. " Corn fed" 

 fowls, ducks and goesc are firm fleshed and 

 yet tender. They bear transportation alive 

 with little shrinkage. True yellow corn 

 makes yellow butter and yellow fat in fowls. 

 English and French taste demands white 

 fleshed poultry with pale, lardy fat, and so 

 they fatten poultry on rice, and their fancy 

 market fowls have about as much flavor as 

 boiled rice. The American market demands 

 yellow-fleshed fowls, with fat as yellow as 

 June butter, and corn is the food to produce 

 this in all poultry. 



SPREADING MANURE. 



Thorough pulverization and even spreading 

 of manure are necessary to secure its full ef- 

 fects. Not only is this necessary for top- 

 dressing, but when it is to be ploughed in. 

 Many inert substances used in stables and 

 manure heaps act only as dividers of the 

 manure, facilitating its wide spreading. 

 Sand is often used for bedding in stables, 

 and can have little value otherwise. Sawdust 

 and tan bark when dry act also as absorbents 

 of the liquids that would otherwise run to 

 waste. Dry muck, fine charcoal and wood dust 

 act chemically as absorbents as well as physic- 

 ally. They also, in addition to their own 

 value as a mulch and as manure, extend the 

 quantity of the manure, and thus favor its 

 even distribution. The dropping of manure 

 in small heaps to be afterwards spread is often 

 Justified by the greater ease and perfection 

 with which it can be spread after the action 

 of frost. The scrapings of the hog-pen or 

 barnyard are often puddled like mortar by 

 the treading of animals, and would spread 

 like jiutty ; after freezing it is thoroughly dis- 

 integrated and crumbles to powder. 



I do not know of any agricultural operation 

 that is more often slighted than this of spread- 

 ing manure. Spread it evenly and for top 

 die.ssing follow with a Thomas smoothing 

 harrow or a sharp fine bush. 



The claims of the Kemp Manure spreader 

 to double the value of the manure over that 

 as ordinarily spread by hand ([ quote from 

 memory) do not seem to me unre;isonable. A 

 year's trial has proved very satisfactoiy. It 

 has spread everything that we have tried — 

 straw, horse manure, barnyard, mud and 

 fresh cow manure, come out all right. We 

 have yet to try long rye straw in the horse 

 manure with no fermentation, and long corn- 

 stalks in the stable and yard manure. The 

 disadvantages in its use are its weight, if 

 manure is to be drawn far, its small loads 

 and the difticulty of getting about in the barn- 

 yards for the manure, as compared with a 

 common ox cart. Neither can it spread 



frozen manure. Draw the manure to the 

 fi(dd and place it in large heaps. It is bene- 

 fited by the turning and mixing, and after re- 

 loading the spreading is nothing except to the 

 team. I have spread, perhaps, half my ma- 

 nure with it for the past year, and with some 

 changes in my arrangements, shall use it 

 more in the future.— T. S. Gold in N. E. 

 Homestead. 



A BEETLE PARASITIC ON THE 

 BEAVER. 



At a recent meeting of the I'liiladelpliia 

 Academy of Natural Sciences Dr. Horn ex- 

 hibited specimens of a curious beetle taken 

 from the bodies of beavers living at the mouth 

 of the Rhone. The first example of this beetl, 

 and the one from which the species was de- 

 .scribed, came from an American beaver 

 kept at Amsterdam. The species had there- 

 fore been credited to America, yet strangely 

 eneough, does not appear to have ever been 

 collected there. The attendant at the Zoo- 

 logical Gardens, this city, had stated that 

 when a beaver which had been kept there died 

 he saw a number of black objects escape from 

 the skin, but he had caught none of them. 



The beaver of Europe and that of America 

 are now considered the same species, and it is 

 probable that their beetle parasi^ has also 

 continued with little or no change. 



DISTRIBUTION OF THE OCCIDENT 

 ANT. 

 The Occident ant, a large species, which was 

 first discovered in the far West, and the 

 habits of which have been investigated, has 

 been ascertained to extend eastward as far as 

 the Missouri in Dakota, but does not appear 

 to pass that river. In Missouri the same state 

 of things occurs, and it is absent in Eastern, 

 though abundant in Western, Nebraska. In 

 Kansas it does not occur further east than 

 Brookville. Among the debris collected from 

 the nest of this harvesting species were some 

 unripe pods of the leguminous plant, Paka 

 alopecroides, which is abundant in the region. 

 These were the refuse of the harvest, thrown 

 out among the rubbish after the ripe pods 

 were eaten. 



PARASITIC i^EMIES OF SPIDERS 

 AND SPIDERS' EGGS. 



Rev. Dr. H. C. McCook, whose observa- 

 tions upon spiders and ants have added so 

 much to our knowledge of the physiology of 

 these creatures, as well as of the conditions 

 which surround them, stated at a recent meet- 

 ing of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural 

 Sciences that he had noted upon the cocoon 

 of the large gayly colored orb-weaving spider, 

 known as, Aryiope riparia, a number of per- 

 forations, through which he at first supposed 

 the young might have escaped. 



On examination it was found that the upper 

 portion of the spider sac was filled with living 

 young, but that the lower portion was infested 

 by the cocoons of an ichneumon fly, known as 

 Pczomachns gracilas. These smaller cocoons 

 were in their turn infested by a still smaller 

 insect, belonging to the family chalcididse, 

 small four-winged flies, parasitic on the eggs 

 and cocoons of other insects. 



Still more remarkable was the state of 



