5-4 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Febuaky, 
Dealing in Fancy Poultry— Poultry Clubs. 
Iu common business transactions, the buyer is 
generally expected to decide for himself whether 
quality and price in the thing he buys arcsuch 
as to make the purchase desirable — and the 
practice of "beating down," is as old as the 
time of Solomon, who wrote, '"It is naught; 
it is naught,' saith the buyer — and when he is 
gone then he boasteth." But when a man or- 
ders by mail, and sends the money in advance 
for a good article which he expects to receive 
by express, he throws himself entirely on the 
honor of the seller. This is the usual way of 
buying the different kinds of fancy poultry of 
professional breeders. No one would think of 
buying a horse in this way, except of a tried 
friend, or of a dealer of proved honor, or of 
such a reputation that his interest would tally 
with his integrity, and we are sorry to be obliged 
to rank poultry dealers and horse dealers in the 
same class, with a few honorable exceptions. 
Many people buy fancy poultry, who do so for 
the sake of gaining by experience a knowledge 
of the breeds aud their qualities. Iu their or- 
ders they exhibit their ignorance, and the deal- 
ers take advantage of this, demand pay in ad- 
vance, and send fowls utterly worthless as breed- 
ers. Some of these breeders of fancy poultry 
are so ignorant as actually not to know how to 
select the best birds of their own flocks, and 
will actually breed from accidental crosses to 
keep up their breeding stock. This is true of a 
Jersey breeder who sells many fowls in N. Y. 
City by auction, and otherwise advertises ex- 
tensively. Birds bought of such an one will only 
by accident give satisfaction. "We saw at the 
N. Y. State Fair some fine Black Spanish fowls, 
aud a friend ordered some on the strength of 
our statement of the excellence of the parent 
stock. They came and were worthless for breed- 
ing purposes, fit only for the pot or for layers. 
There are several places in New York City, 
where fancy poultry are kept caged for days 
and weeks. People who buy fowls or turkeys 
from these pens, or dens, will be almost sure to 
cany vermin and disease (roup) to their yards. 
In a dealer in fancy poultry, ignorance of 
what constitutes a pure-bred fowj, or a healthy 
fowl, or a well shaped fowl, is a crime. It causes 
fraudulent dealing. He kuows that he inevi- 
tably, in his ordinary course of dealing, must 
cheat his customers, and besides send disease 
and death among their fowls at home. 
Fowls bred from the best stock will not al- 
ways he equal to their parents, and iu many 
cases those a little inferior may not communi- 
cate their bad points to their offspring ; these 
therefore, have a value above common "dung- 
hills." The nearer birds approach the ideal of 
perfection, the higher should the price rise. 
The breeder who would set any price for the 
very best, and selling, continue to breed from 
his own inferior stock, should be tabooed. 
Know what you want, aud see before you buy, 
or before you pay for what you order ; if you 
oa-der by mail and receive by express, is the best 
advice we can give. Breeders who know they 
send a good article will not object to this prac- 
tice. They sometimes suggest it. "We have 
known of some who requested purchasers, if 
not pleased, to replenish the food and water 
stores, clean out the coop, aud return the birds. 
The remedy for much of this cheating is the 
association of poultry fanciers,iu correspondence, 
and in visiting each other's yards,in poultry clubs, 
find iu other ways. "We are now too much 
every man for himself. The Grey Dorkings 
have often proved failures in this country for 
want of the ability of breeders, by exchange 
or otherwise, to get fresh blood. They do not 
bear in-and-in breeding, and the same is true of 
much other poultry. We recommend, therefore, 
the formation of Poultry Clubs, or other asso- 
ciations of amateur poultry breeders. 
Impurities of Cross-bred Drones. 
BY BIDWELL BROS., ST. PAUL, MINN. 
The best Apiarians, both in this country and 
Europe, consider that a pure Italian queen, in 
mating with a less pure or black drone, though 
producing cross-bred queens and workers, will 
nevertheless produce pure Italian drones. In 
our experience we have not found it so. 
The great multiplication of Italian bees in 
Europe as well as America, is by what is termed 
Italianizing, that is, removing a black queen and 
substituting an Italian in her place. Her prog- 
eny in time replace the black bees. Queens for 
the remaining hives of the apiary are reared by 
removing the Italian queen and compelling the 
queenless bees to rear one or more "forced 
queens" from her worker eggs or larva?. After 
hatching, these fly out to meet the drones, which 
at that time are for the greater part black 
drones, the progeny of the previous black 
queens, or belonging to neighboring hives. The 
drones of these " hybrid queens," so-calied — 
(Italian queens which mate black drones), are 
claimed to be pure Italians, and are allowed the 
second season to mate with queens subsequent- 
ly reared from eggs of the original pure queen, 
thereby affecting, we claim, in a degree, the 
greater part of the apiary. 
In bee-breeding these facts are established, 
viz. : Queens that have never met the drones 
will lay fertile eggs which will all hatch into 
drones. Queens never meet the male but once, 
and after this they are called " fecundated 
queens." Their eggs are directly influenced by 
the fecundative principle, or not, at volition. 
Those eggs which are thus fecundated produce 
workers or queens; those which are not fecun- 
dated, as is the case with the eggs of the non- 
fecundated queens, produce drones. From these 
premises, and from the fact that an Italian queen 
crossed with a black drone produces drones 
more or less closely resembling pure Italians, 
apiarians argue that the drone progeny must 
be of the original purity of the virgin queen, 
and advise the use of such drones in apiaries. 
Now, we claim that a pure Italian queen, in 
mating with a less pure drone, or with a black 
drone, is tainted, aud remains a cross-bred ever 
after. Certain it is that the seed of the drone 
forms a part of her system, requiring the blood 
or fluids of her bod}' to circulate into it and 
back into her for its nutrition and development. 
An Italian queen having mated an Italian 
drone, produces handsomer, and hence purer 
drones than similar and sister queens having 
mated black drones ; this we have observed in 
many different apiaries. Our experience on this 
point is as follows: In raising Italian queens 
in the summer of '65, the first queen that mated 
with a black drone produced drones of an infe- 
rior color, and apparently less pure than those 
of sister queens mating with Italian drones. 
"We were compelled to remove her from our 
apiary. "We repeated the experiment afterwards 
with similar results. To prove that this queen 
must have mated with a black drone, we offer, 
that, 1st, its mother was the only Italian queen 
within 20 miles, and the nearest cross-bred 
queens were 18 miles ; 2d, black drones were in 
an adjoining apiary; 3d, the queen was one of 
5 sisters reared from the aforesaid queen, all 
hatching on the same day, and reared from eggs 
laid on the same day, and their brothers (the 
drones) were hatched 6 days before them ; 4th, 
4 of the sisters, after impregnation, all produced 
progeny similar to their mother, and this one 
different. Fertile Italian workers, aud unfecun- 
dated queens, have better drones than queens, 
reared from similar eggs, and mated with a black 
drone. Another marked characteristic of such 
cross-breeding is, that the bees are more irrita- 
ble and unmanagable. Continued cross-breed- 
ing with only occasional additions of strains of 
black blood, together with the imperfections of 
forced queens and drones, will rapidly reduce 
the standard of purity of Italians. The evi- 
dences of this degeneration are unfortunately 
too apparent in very many apiaries. 
Bringing up Worn-out Land. 
It is ever and anon asserted that the only sys- 
tematic aud intelligent way to bring up land 
that has been run down, is to have the soil care- 
fully analysed by a professional agricultural 
chemist, to ascertain the lacking mineral ingre- 
dients, and then to purchase and apply the same. 
Theoretically, this is all very well. But let 
us remember two or three things. It will be 
necessary to analyse nearly every field of a farm, 
if not different portions of the same field, be- 
cause the soils will be more or less unlike. Then, 
too, these analyses are expensive. And lastly, 
they are very liable to fatal errors. — Prof. 
S. "W. Johnson writes: "I do not doubt 
that in many cases a careful investigation of a 
soil — chemical, physical, and historical — by a 
genuine scientific farmer, one familiar with sci- 
ence and practice, would afford safe and nearly 
accurate data for its proper treatment. But this 
would be always expensive, and in nine cases 
out of ten, would not pay. Soil analysis, at the 
best, is a chance game ; and where one wins, a 
hundred may lose." 
Instead, then, of looking abroad for some 
special process of reconstruction, let the farmer 
turn to the farm itself and his own brains, aud 
see what they can do. It' our farm is exhausted, 
it is because it has been abused, and to restore it, 
it must receive kind treatment. Let us see. 
Some parts of it may need draining. Other 
parts will need deeper plowing, and all will 
doubtless need more manure and cleaner tillage. 
The owners of such farms generally complain 
that they have not manure enough on their 
premises, and can not afford to buy more. Then 
let them try plowing under green manure, such 
as peas, buckwheat, and, best of all, clover. 
Marvelous results have been achieved in this 
way. And muck has done and will yet do as 
great wonders. Many a farm has a bed of this, 
and whoever has it, has a mine of wealth. Get 
it out every leisure da}', aud after it has drained, 
stack it up with alternate layers of lime or 
ashes. Iu a few months, it will be nearly as 
efficacious as so much barn-yard dung. Dr. 
Dana classes it with cow-manure in value. Now, 
these two sources of fertility are enough, with 
deeper plowing and cleaner culture, to set any 
" worn-out " farm on a career of improvement. 
But, as " every little helps," the farmer should 
save the droppings of his poultry-house, the 
slops and waste from kitchen and chamber, the 
contents of the privy, all bones and chips and 
