332 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[ September, 
a man will but make and use it, Along the 
sea-board the old pastures need nothing better 
than creek-mud, and the weeds thrown upon the 
shore. Too often these are allowed to rot on the 
sand for want of labor to gather them. Irriga- 
tion is available in other cases, and where the 
waters of a brook can be turned over a pasture 
nothing more will be needed to keep it in good 
condition. Changing soils oftentimes has a 
wonderful influence. Sometimes on the same 
field of twenty acres there will be sandy or 
gravelly knolls nearly bare of vegetation, and 
bard clay or muck in swales. A top-dressing 
of the sand would pay on the swales, and noth- 
ing could be better for the knolls than the muck 
or clay. Our old pastures to be kept profitable 
must have something done for them. It will 
not pay to devote ten acres to a single cow. 
Fig. 1. — FOWL-HOUSE OF JOHN SALISBURY, JR. 
Cheap, Convenient Fowl-houses. 
We have repeatedly in former numbers given 
descriptions of fowl-houses, both for keeping a 
single breed, or for common fowls, and for keep- 
ing several breeds distinct. The principle of 
gin 
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45* to other en &. 
Fig. 2. — GROUND PLAN OF HOUSE. 
building poultry-houses as cheap as possible is 
bardly a correct on; to follow, but necessity 
knows no law with uj, as with many of our 
readers, no doubt, and scmetimes we are very 
glad to combine cheapness with convenience 
and a moderate degree of exct 'ence. In visit- 
ing lately the poultry yards of M.. John Salis- 
bury, Jr., of Nyack, we were struci with the 
compactness and convenience of a new bouse 
he has lately put up for small slocks ot fancy 
fowls, and have baa engravings made to show it. 
The length of the building is 45 feet, and its 
width, 10 feet. It is divided into nine apartments, 
each. 5 feet wide. The house is entered at one 
end, as shown in figure 1, and a passage-way 
2 feet wide extends through it on the north side 
(see figure 2). 
The interior 
partitions, in- 
cluding the 
long one, are 
of l'ls x 1-inch 
pine strips ; 
the outside en- 
tirely of one- 
inch hemlock 
boards batten- Fig. 3.— section of house. 
ed. The roof is pine flooring, tongued and 
grooved, and for each apartment a 3'| 3 x 6 feet 
hot-bed sash is set in the roof. The posts which 
support the ridge of the roof are 8 feet long, 
the front wall or side being only 2'| 2 feet to the 
plate. The yards are much longer than it was 
possible to show in such a small 
picture as fig. 1, and 5 or 10 
feet wide. The paling surround- 
ing them is also of l'js x 1-inch 
strips. A brook runs through 
the yards, affording an abund- 
ance of fresh water, which is 
a great source of health, and of 
success in raising fowls. The 
floor of the house is a dry grav- 
el bed, covered with sand. 
The roosts are low, as repre- 
sented in fig. 3. They are made 
UH ? of round sticks, about two inch- 
es in diameter, and, beneath 
them, troughs of two boards 
nailed together catch all the 
droppings. The nests and feed- 
ing boxes stand upon the sand, 
and are frequently moved to 
prevent feed getting under them, or the ground 
becoming moist, and affording a harbor for 
insect*. Ventilation is secured by openings in 
the short pitch of the roof. No rafters are need- 
ed, as the roof is sufficiently stiffened by the 
cross-partitions. The doors by which the dif- 
ferent apartments are entered are two feet wide, 
made also of strips, and all are furnished with 
locks ; so that when the owner is absent, the 
feed boxes (and water vessels, if the fowls are 
shut out of the yards) may be filled from the 
passage-way, and no one can interfere with 
either the fowls or their eggs. A lock on the 
outer door makes all secure at night. The stock, 
which had been for several months closely con- 
fined, appeared healthy, and continued laying. 
The slant of the paling forming that part of the 
yard fence against the house is given to it in 
order that it shall not cut off the sunlight from 
the windows. As the house is arranged for 
nine varieties, where fewer are kept two or 
more apartments may be thrown together, and 
thus larger flocks accommodated. We could 
not have wished for better quarters than this 
cheap house affords for our old favorites, the 
Houdans, La Fleche, and other breeds, the origi- 
nal stock, imported last year for our premiums. 
Plowing wtth a Single Line.— We have 
received scores of letters on this subject, which 
it is of course impossible for us to publish. 
Here is one, sent from Washington Territory, 
which has the merit of being short. The writer 
says : " As Walks and Talks has given me 
some good hints, I will tell him how to train a 
horse to go with a single line without losing an 
hour's time. Supposing he is plowing out corn 
or potatoes, and drives his horse with two lines. 
Let hiin tie a knot in the lines, so that the left 
line is about three inches shorter than the other- 
and then, when he wants his horse to go to 
the left, give a steady pull and he will ' come/ 
When he wants him to go to the right, a few 
quick jerks, with the word gee, will do it. If 
it does not, at first, he has the two lines to 
work with. But always give the steady pull 
for haio, and the light jerk for gee, before touch- 
ing the right line, and I will warrant that after 
three days teaching he can take off the double 
line and put on the single one, and can drive 
him wherever he wants him to go." 
A Check to Egg-eating Hens. 
Could hens find their own nests, and occupy 
them unmolested, it would be a rare occurrence 
to find eggs broken in the nests, or hens that 
would eat their eggs. Hens are often so closely 
confined that several use one nest, They quar- 
rel over possession, break eggs occasional!)', and 
in arranging the eggs beneath them, they taste 
the delicious morsel. Thus a habit is fre- 
quently formed, and all broken eggs are at once 
eaten. Hens learn frequently to break eggs, 
and to consume every one as soon as it is laid. 
Even when there is no quarreling, eggs are 
sometimes broken by clumsy hens, and by the 
porcelain or glass nest-eggs so conrmonly used. 
An egg shell is proverbially a frail vessel, and 
though glass eggs are very pretty to look at, 
and by a very stupid pullet might be mistaken 
for real eggs, yet they are so heavy and so hard 
that the only wonder is that any eggs survive 
being rattled about in the nest with them. Nev- 
ertheless eggs will sustain heavy pressure evenly 
applied, and quite hard blows from moderately 
soft substances, as for instance from wood, or 
from other eggs even, for there is a considera- 
ble amount of yielding elasticity in the surface 
of an egg. From whatever cause it occurs, 
eggs are apt to be broken and eaten. We no- 
ticed in use at Mr. Salisbury's, a contrivance of 
Mr. Cornelius Smith's, for the immediate re- 
moval of the egg as soon as laid. A section is 
shown in the accompanying figure. It is a 
MR. SMITH S NEST BOX. 
common nest box with a bottom slanting 
gently from front and rear towards the center. 
The board forming the slope from the front pass- 
ing quite through to the rear of the box, while 
that sloping from the rear stops short of the 
middle far enough to allow an egg to roll under 
it down the other slanting board. At the back 
of the nest-box, outside is a receptacle for the 
eggs, lined with hay, and closed with a tight-fit- 
ting cover. We tried the experiment to see if 
eggs would roll down and break if they struck 
the back of the receptacle, or if they hit other 
eggs, and they did not, even when started quite 
fast. A nest-egg is made fast to the slanting 
bottom of the nest ; and for this purpose the 
turned wooden nest-eggs they bring nowadays 
are excellent, for they may be screwed on from 
below, as shown. We were rather surprised to 
find that no imitation of a nest was required, 
the hens laying upon the bare boards, so far as 
