Vol. XXIII. No. ii.] 



POPULAR SCIENCE N"EWS. 



165 



^onje, Barnj, aijcl Gardeij. 



THE AMERICAN HOME. 



Nothing strikes an observing American 

 upon his first visit to Europe with greater 

 force than the lack of those comforts and con- 

 veniences in the dwellings of even the wealth- 

 iest classes, which in his own country are 

 considered indispensable necessities. We are 

 quick to seize upon the latest discoveries in 

 science and the arts, which can in any way 

 render our homes more attractive, or the 

 cares of housekeeping less burdensome, while 

 the more conservative Europeans are content 

 to live as their fathers did before them, and 

 would consider it a sacrilegious extravagance 

 to tear up the floois or walls of their dwell- 

 ings for the purpose of introducing steam or 

 water pipes. 



The climate of England is damp and cold, 

 but the almost universal way of warming is 

 by open fire-places of soft coal, which usually 

 develop much more smoke than heat. Hot- 

 air or steam furnaces are practically unknown, 

 and the onlv means of heating railway car- 

 riages is by cans of hot water placed upon 

 the floor. Under favorable circumstances, 

 these will sometimes prevent the soles of 

 one's feet from freezing, but their influence 

 rarely extends any further. 



Only the very wealthiest persons abroad 

 allow themselves the luxury of a private bath- 

 room, and the idea of a set bowl with hot and 

 cold water faucets in a sleeping-chamber is a 

 refinement of efteminancy and extravagance 

 at which even a monarch would hesitate. 

 The houses of London are provided with a 

 tank, into which the water is allowed to flow 

 for a certain length of time every day, after 

 which it is turned oft", and there is no more 

 to be had until the visit of the water com- 

 pany's ofiicial the next daj'. The " bedroom 

 candle," to which such constant allusion is 

 made in foreign novels, is no figure of speech, 

 but a very disagreeable reality, for gas is 

 rarely or never introduced into sleeping-rcnims. 

 In a somewhat extended journey through 

 Europe, we cannot recall half a dozen in- 

 stances where any other means of illumination 

 was supplied than a wretched candle, which 

 sometimes gave light enough to enable one to 

 see how dark it really was. What would be 

 thought of a first-class American hotel which 

 advertised as a special attraction to travellers 

 the existence of a bath-room inside its walls.' 

 and yet this is a common practice with Euro- 

 pean hotels to this day. 



A modern American house, with all the 

 recent improvements, is a most wonderful 

 afiliir, and an inspection while being con- 

 structed gives one a good idea of the extent 

 to which the arts and sciences are applied to 

 minister to our comfort. The space between 

 the walls is crowded with tubes and pipes of 

 every description. Steam, gas, hot and cold 



water are carried to all parts of the building, 

 speaking tubes and ventilating shafts are con- 

 nected with every room, while great cables of 

 insulated wire as large as a ship's hawser, illus- 

 trate the manifold uses to which electricity 

 may be put. Call bells, automatic gas-light- 

 ing, and incandescent lamps, are only a few 

 of these applications, and the day is not far 

 distant when some simple form of electric 

 motor, to run the sewing machine and furnish 

 a supply of power for many other purposes, 

 will be found in every first-class dwelling. 

 As regards sanitary and drainage arrange- 

 ments, their construction has become a 

 science in itself. 



Take it altogether, the American house- 

 holder has no cause to regret his lot. A 

 recent writer has said that in some things we 

 are measurably behind the Europeans, but 

 in manv things we are immeasurably ahead 

 of them, and in no respect is this more true 

 than in our domestic arrangements. 



It may be safely said that there is not a 

 royal palace in all Great Britain or Europe, 

 which is as luxurious, or even comfortable, 

 as the house of the average American of 

 moderate means, and in no country in the 

 world is the greatest blessing of life — a happy 

 and comfortable home — so readily within the 

 reach of all as in our own land. 



BEES. 



The apiarian who has several hives must have 

 noticed a difference in their work. Some stocks 

 seem always busy, crowded with bees, rapidly filling 

 their supers, while others seem always deficient in 

 population, work short hours, and scarcely produce 

 sufficient honey to afford a winter supply. Again, 

 some stocks are singularly good tempered, allowing 

 themselves to be manipulated without showing any 

 disposition to resent the liberty, while others dart 

 out on the innocent passers by, and chase them to 

 the boundary of what they seem to consider their 

 realm. All their peculiarities seem to depend upon 

 the queen, or mother of the hive. If she is young 

 and prolific, the population is kept up; if she is of 

 good working strain, the- stock is industrious; if she 

 is good tempered, the stock is tractable. It often 

 happens that a hive which has for some time past 

 been but poorly productive, sends off a large and 

 healthy swarm. The bee-keeper naturally supposes 

 that the new swarm will be more productive than 

 the hive it has left, and is astonished to find the 

 reverse is the case; the new swarm does very little, 

 and perhaps dies out in the winter, while the origi- 

 nal hive commences with renewed energy and 

 becomes unusually productive. The explanation is 

 very simple. The queen was old and had ceased to 

 be prolific. New queen cells had been formed and 

 a swarm sent off. The old queen went with the 

 swarm which had little chance of prospering. The 

 original hive had a young queen, newly hatched, 

 and could hardly fail to be prolific. The bee-keeper, 

 therefore, who would have all his stocks prosperous, 

 must see that each hive has a young and healthy 

 queen at its head; and this opens up the question 

 whose successful answer has done sp much to 

 develop our industry^that of queen rearing. 



To rear queens for the market is a "big thing," 

 and requires great care and experience; but any 

 person who has managed a few frame hives with 



fair success may keep himself provided with young 

 queens, and even raise for himself a "strain" of 

 bees, having any peculiarity of habit, color, or 

 temper, he may desire. Before attempting to deal 

 with this important subject, it is absolutely necessary 

 that the reader should have tolerably clear notions 

 as to the manner in which the different kinds of 

 bees are developed. 



Every hive has in it three kinds of bees : the 

 workers, the drones, and the queen. The drones 

 are males; they cannot sting, neither can they 

 gather honey. The queen is a fully developed 

 female. She has a sting, which she seldom uses, 

 cannot gather honey, and devotes her whole time to 

 laying eggs, which she can produce at the rate of 

 from 2,000 to 3,000 a day. The workers are unde- 

 veloped females. They can, and in queenless hives 

 sometimes do, lay eggs, but these eggs become 

 drones. The queen, before impregnation, lays only 

 drone eggs. Afterwards, she can lay drone or 

 worker eggs at her pleasure, but the drone eggs are 

 unimpregnated. The drone has no father. On this 

 fact depends the power of selection in queen rearing. 

 When, either from queenlessness, or vvitii a view of 

 swarming, the working bees desire to raise a queen, 

 they tonstruct a large cell, shaped like an acorn, in 

 which is placed an egg, or maggot, like those from 

 which the workers spring. Had the cell been of 

 the usual small size (twenty-five to the square inch) 

 the development of its inmate would have been 

 checked, and it would have hatched into an ordinary 

 working bee. As, however, it has now ample room, 

 and a large supply of specially stimulating food, 

 it acquires the size, form, and powers of a queen. 

 On its attaining maturity, the old queen and most of 

 the full-grown workers leave the hive as a swarm. 

 The new queen takes a flight, during which she is 

 impregnated by some drone of another hive, and 

 she then assumes her place as queen and literally 

 "mother of thousands." 



A very simple form of queen rearing has for its 

 object nothing more than the securing of young 

 queens in all the hives. In the spring, as soon as 

 there is plenty of brood hatching out, he visits the 

 hives known to have queens of two years' growth, 

 and simply removes them. The bees, on discover- 

 ing their loss, proceed to raise a new queen, and his 

 object is accomplished. 



Where a hive is discovered to have a queen cell, it 

 can be utilized by placing it mouth downwards, 

 between the frames of a hive which has no queen, 

 when the workers will readily hatch it. 



It is evident that when we require queen cells, we 

 can always secure them by removing the queen 

 (temporarily or permanently) from a breeding hive, 

 but, to work systematically, we must endeavour to 

 make the bees build their queen cells in a particular 

 position, to arrange for the hatching of the queens 

 in separate hives, and to secure her mating with a 

 suitable drone. — Horticultural Times. 



PROTECTION FROM CLOTHES-MOTHS. 



Reaumur, more than 150 years ago, made quite 

 extensive researches on clothes-moths ; and, observ- 

 ing that they never attacked the wool and hair on 

 living animals, he inferred that the natural odor of 

 the wool, or of the oily matter in it, was distasteful 

 to them. He therefore rubbed various garments 

 with the wool of fresh pelts, and also wet other gar- 

 ments with the water in which wool had been 

 washed, and found that they were never attacked by 

 moths. He also experimented with tobacco smoke 

 and the odors of spirits of turpentine, and found 

 that both of these were destructive to the moths ■_ 

 but it was necessary to close the rooms very tightly, 

 and keep the fumes very dense in them for twentj'- 

 four hours, to obtain satisfactory results. Mr. C. 



