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WINDFALLS. 



cream gravy, furnish a delightful accompaniment to 

 baked fowl or meats, and add greatly to both the ap- 

 psarance and substance of a family dinner. 



Considerable care and patience are required to pro- 

 duce this beautiful dish in perfection, and the fruit 

 mast be of the best quality; then the results will be 

 most agreeable. — Selecicd. 



Cory Corn. — O. L. Barler, writing of Cory corn, 

 (Dec. p. 754) says ; " This item may save western 

 planters some dollars." Who are western planters? 

 I live near Indian Territory, several hundred miles 

 west of the Missouri line, and yet I can raise Cory corn 

 very successfully, so far as earing and filling are con- 

 cerned. The worms are our greatest pest ; it is almost 

 impossible to get a perfect ear of early corn. Again, he 

 wishes to know whether the hygroscopic capacity of our 

 soil has anything to do with the lessening of our crops. 

 If he were speaking about this part of Kansas I should 

 say no. I think the need of the flowers of this section 

 is more thorough pollination ; else why such an abund- 

 ance of flowers and so little fruit ? This is especially 

 true of beans, peas, tomatoes, and some fruits. I think 

 I am safe in saying that we do not get one-tenth the 

 fruit that the same amount of blossoms east or north 

 of us would produce, and I know that pollen-bearing 

 insects are scarce. — Thomas Bassler, Siimucr Co., Kan. 



Mimicry of Insects. — In Henry Drummond's book, 

 "Tropical Africa," he tells us in one chapter what cun- 

 ning rogues the insects are in taking different forms of 

 natural objects so as to deceive their enemies. Once 

 he picked off from his arm what he thought was a wisp 

 of straw, and to his astonishment the thing had legs 

 underneath, and could use them with great readiness in 

 getting out of sight. Another time he was lying on a 

 rock under a tree. The branches were a favorite rest- 

 ing place for the birds, and he used to study their hab- 

 its for hours. The rock was covered with the bird 

 droppings, and one day he saw one move. He couldn't 

 believe his eyes, watched for a long time, and was 

 assured that what he thought was a bird dropping was 

 alive. He picked it up, and sure enough, he found tiny 

 legs underneath, that could serve the creature well 

 enough when it wanted to get out of the way. He 

 found insects that could imitate twigs, sticks, and the 

 smaller branches of shrubs. Some of them represented 

 the bark of a tree, and even the mould spots were ex- 

 actly reproduced. Insects have many enemies in tropi- 

 cal Africa, and to save themselves from being extermi- 

 nated they resort to these most interesting deceptions. — 

 Sister Gracious, 



Common Souvenirs. — A very dainty gift may be 

 made by filling a tiny basket with partly burst milk 

 weed pods with the rough pod and stem gilded. The 

 contrast of white and gold furnished by the down and 

 gilding is extremely delicate. A number of other com- 

 mon things can with a little ingenuity be transformed 

 into pretty ornaments ; a few stalks of gilded wheat, 

 oats and rye tied with white ribbon form a pretty wall 

 decoration, while nothing could be prettier than a pho- 



tograph frame covered with white plush and embellished 

 with gilded oats. — Flora. 



Destruction of Thrips on Orchids. — We recom- 

 mend the following for the destruction of thrips, red 

 spider, and other insects that are injurious to orchids. 



Water 2 qts. 



Tobacco 8 oz. 



Soap 2 oz. 



Flour of sulphur 3 5 oz. 



Mix, and boil several minutes, then add six quarts of 

 water. When cold, apply with a syringe. It is claimed 

 that the mixture will not injure the foliage. — Le Journal 

 des Orchidh's. 



Pleasant Surprises. — A persevering plant lover is 

 sure to learn patience if nothing else. Some ferns 

 require eighteen months to germinate ; cactus plants 

 are cases in point. A friend of mine cared for one 

 three years, and looked for buds in vain. One sum- 

 mer, before she went away, she threw it out in an 

 obscure corner of the fence, and was gone four months. 

 On going there late in the fall, she thought of her plant, 

 and went to find it, expecting to see a dead stalk, but, 

 lo ! and behold, it was all in bud ! A little forgetting, 

 and allowing it to care for itself, was a good thing. An 

 amaryllis on my shelf has been three years making up 

 its mind to blossom, and just when patience is just 

 exhausted, a bud shows. One pleasant surprise is to 

 find the glass hyacinth vase, that has been neglected all 

 summer with its one forlorn bulb in the top, filled with 

 roots, and to see how soon the sun brings out the flowers, 

 on bringing the glass to the window. In fact there are 

 pleasant surprises all the time to a plant lover An- 

 other is to hang a bunch of geraniums in the cellar to 

 the rafters, top down. On going to them in February 

 you may find the poor things trying to send out feeble 

 sprouts, and looking appealingly for more moisture and 

 light. — Sister Gracious. 



Fertilizing a Young Orchard. — When I set out my 

 orchard the land was in clover. The piece had been 

 cropped for a number of years until the fertility was 

 considerably impaired, and a year or two before I pur- 

 chased the lot the owner had seeded it to clover to help 

 build it up. I plowed the clover under, and desiring to 

 manure the land made this my vegetable patch for the 

 first three years. The first year I used commercial 

 fertilizers, and planted potatoes, sunflowers, cucum- 

 bers, melons, and such crops as are usually grown in a 

 truck patch, using the fertilizer in the hill. I did this 

 because I did not have enough manure to apply broad- 

 cast. The next winter I manured liberally, and in the 

 spring planted potatoes, sweet corn, sunflowers, beets, 

 parsnips, and carrots in long rows one way between 

 the rows of trees, and about eight feet from them. 

 Between the trees, in rows running parallel to the others, 

 I planted cucumbers, melons, squashes, and pumpkins. 

 In cultivating the other crops the work of keeping the 

 vines clean was very much reduced, but some hoeing 

 was of course necessary. But all the ground was occu- 

 pied, which was better than if the vines had not been 



