446 Transactions of the American Institute. 



The Chairman. — If tliere is no one to respond to this important 

 inquiry, I will venture to reply to him, by advising him to get Todd's 

 Country Homes, a book of over 400 pages, which contains 40,000 

 things, more or less, and among them, as I remember well, a chapter 

 devoted especially to making concrete houses. He will get all the 

 details requisite in that treatise. 



Plums. 



Mr. C. K. Landis, of Yineland, IS". J., sent a box of plums entirely 

 free from curculio stings, as the Yinelanders have bound themselves 

 with an oath of determination to rid their town of the ravages of this 

 little " Turk." Dr. Trimble said the battle was fought by all the 

 people acting simultaneously all over the town. 



HiNKLEY KNi-rriNG Machine. 



Mr. H. E. Towle, of ]S"o. 176 Broadway, presented a knitting 

 machine to the Club, and appeared on the stand to show its operation 

 while knitting any style of garment, from undershirts to stockings. 

 The machine is operated by turning a crank or with the foot, and its 

 operations were highly approbated as a valuable labor-saving house- 

 hold device. 



Early Queen Potato. 



Mr. T. E. Burtis, of Queens, Long Island, sent a package of a new 

 seedling potato, which he calls the " Early Queen," which were dis- 

 tributed and received as a superior variety. 



Crossing Ctallinacious Fowls. 

 A letter was received from a southerner asking for some eggs simi- 

 lar to that one exhibited a few weeks since by John Sarell, of Brook- 

 lyn, to which he replied : " I have no eggs to sell. If those persons 

 desire to improve the breed of poultry, the same law regulating the 

 breed of sheep is also applicable to these birds. In order to get tirst- 

 class layers and first-class chickens for the table, you must breed from 

 pure breeds. The Indian fowl is best (the game fowl will answer), 

 cn^ssed with the Dorking; will produce stock unequaled. They are 

 strong and vigorous as chickens ; their flesh is white, firm, and of a 

 tine flavor. The flabbiness of the Dorking is counteracted by the 

 hard, grizzled flesh of the Indian fowl. I should feel a pleasure in 

 forwarding stock to any one, if I had it to spare, but having only a 

 city lot twenty-live by one hundred feet, there is no room to raise 

 many." 



