July 22, 1880. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
83 
black, but have the quill feathers and the head white. They are 
called Nonnains-Maurins.” 
We have found Nuns extremely prolific and excellent nurses. 
They are active birds and attractive in flight, and to be thoroughly 
appreciated should have their liberty. We have noticed a pecu¬ 
liarity mentioned by the author of the “ Dovecote and Aviary,” 
that when newly hatched the young of the black-headed variety 
have feet and bills quite dark. From our observations on the 
difficulty of breeding very perfect specimens it may easily be 
conjectured that a genuinely nearly perfect Nun is a valuable 
bird, while from their great prolificacy faulty ones are almost 
valueless. A young fancier need hardly be warned that birds 
which at a show seem nearly faultless are not always in reality 
so, and that unless their exhibitor is well known should not hastily 
be purchased. We wish some enthusiastic amateurs would take 
up the breed and improve it in accuracy of markings, as it 
certainly might be improved by careful selection. The various 
peristeronic societies, too, in some of which the members bind 
themselves to show only bona fide untrimmed birds, might well 
give more encouragement to it.—C. 
VARIETIES. 
Mr. 0. E. Cresswell requests us to inform the members of the 
Poultry Club that he has returned from Sicily to Morney Cross, near 
Hereford, and can again attend to the business of the Club. 
- Poultry Shows. —We receive almost daily schedules of more 
summer shows to be held shortly. The Neath Show of Flowers, Fruit, 
Dogs, Poultry, and Pigeons is fixed for August 5th. The Poultry 
and Pigeon classes of the Swansea Show to be held on August 25th 
and 26th are good. The proportions of the Show of the “ Royal 
Manchester, Liverpool, and North Lancashire Agricultural Society,” 
to be held at Crewe on September 2nd to 6th, are very large. 
- Food of Swans.—“ H. F.” tells us their favourite food is the 
American Pondweed and insects. There is little doubt but that they 
eat the ova of fish, but they will not eat fish, excepting it might be 
as soon as the ova hatches, certainly not when larger. 
- British Bee-Keepers’ Association.—T he following are the 
arrangements made for the South Kensington Show :—Tuesday, July 
27th, four o’clock P.M., quarterly Committee Meeting, at which the 
representatives of affiliated associations are entitled to attend. 
Special subject for consideration—“ Suggested rules and regulations 
for county associations affiliated with the central Society.” Six 
o’clock P.M., Conversazione. Subject for discussion—“ The relations 
of bees to flowering plants,” to be introduced by Frank R. Cheshire, 
Esq., of Avenue House, Acton. Wednesday, July 28th—General 
Meeting of the members of the Association at 5.30 P.M. ; chair to be 
taken by the President, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Thursday, 
July 29th—Distribution of prizes by the Lady Aberdare at 5.30 P.M. 
All the above meetings will take place in the large conservatory 
adjoining the Show. On Tuesday, July 27th, the Show will open at 
twelve o’clock noon ; on other days at 10 a.m. The Show will remain 
open on Friday and Saturday, July 30th and 31st, and on Bank 
Holiday, Monday, August 2nd. Members attending the Show will be 
required to bring their tickets of membership, which have been 
forwarded to all those who have paid their subscriptions for the 
current year, otherwise they will have to pay for admission to the 
gardens. 
- Feeding Milch Cows. —An American dairyman answers 
the question “ How shall we get the mo3t milk from a cow with the 
least expense ? ” by stating:—Give the cows good pasturage and 
plenty of good water, with food compos :d of two parts of shorts and 
one part of corn meal given morning and evening, two quarts each 
time. Treat the cows gently, and then if they do not give good 
supplies of milk reject them and get cows that will. Too many 
cows are kept by milk-producers that do not pay for keeping. Let 
such be turned off for beef, and fill their places with such as have 
good milk-producing qualities. Good cows and good feed, with care 
and kind treatment, will lead to the answer of the above question. 
- Uses of the Potato. —In France the farina is largely used 
for culinary purposes. The famous gravies, sauces, and soups of 
France are largely indebted for their excellence to that source, and 
the bread and pastry equally so, while a deal of the so-called cognac 
imported into England from France is distilled from the Potato. 
Throughout Germany the same uses are common. In Poland the 
manufacture of spirits from the Potato is a most extensive trade. 
“ Stettin brandy,” well known in commerce, is largely imported into 
England, and is sent from thence to many parts of our foreign posses¬ 
sions as the produce of the Grape, and is placed on many a table of 
England as the same ; while the fair ladies of America perfume them¬ 
selves with the spirit of Potato under the designation of eau de 
Cologne. But there are other uses which this esculent is turned to 
abroad. After extracting the farina, the pulp is manufactured into 
ornamental articles, such as picture frames, snuff boxes, and several 
descriptions of toys, and the water that runs from it in the process of 
manufacture is a most valuable scourer. 
- Bee-keeping in Paris. —It is not generally known that 
among the industries of Paris the keeping of bees is one that is much 
practised, and frequent complaints have been made to the police 
about the nuisance this occasioned. One inhabitant alone in the 
19th Arrondissement keeps from eight to nine hundred hives, and 
there are a great number to be found in the 13th Arrondissement, 
near the goods station at Ivry. Valuable as is the possession of bees 
to the owners, there is no question but that they do a great deal of 
damage in various directions. At the Say sugar refinery, for instance, 
it is calculated that the damage amounts to 25,000f. a year, for a 
whole jarful of syrup will be completely emptied in less than a couple 
of hours, and two or three bushels of bees are taken or destroyed 
within the day. The workmen, who are obliged to follow their occu¬ 
pation bare to the waist, suffer terribly from these little pests, and 
frequently get badly stung .—(Leeds Mercury.) 
PREVENTING- EXCESSIVE SWARMING. 
Since 1 last wrote I am happy to say that my method of 
management so as to prevent excessive swarming, as described in 
the Journal of July 1st, has answered fully up to my hopes. In 
the particular case detailed at page 20 the “ one swarm ” men¬ 
tioned, a natural one, swarmed again on the 29th of June. This 
was no second swarm, or “cast,” in the ordinary course of things, 
because I had then destroyed all the royal brood. The bees had 
simply renewed their preparations for swarming by constructing 
a fresh number of royal cells which were tenanted in the usual 
way. I had no hive full of brood to give this swarm as before, 
because I wanted its brood box to help another stock (see below), 
so I hived them in a large box with glass windows, putting them 
in the old place, and setting over it the two supers in which they 
had been working up to the time the swarm issued. It was so 
huge a swarm that it filled all three boxes from top to bottom. 
Before returning the supers I extracted about 10 lb?, of beautiful 
honeycomb from the larger super and 4 lbs. from the smaller, so 
as to give them more room for work. The bees began at once to 
work in all three simultaneously, and honeycomb is now sealing 
fast. I may mention that the original stock out of which the 
same queen swarmed on the 15th June has not swarmed again 
as I half feared at the time. It is now quite full of sealed honey¬ 
comb, and the bees are working in a sectional super. 
Only two other stocks have attempted to swarm in my apiary. 
One was a sixteen-bar framer, not however fully worked or filled 
with brood. The bees were found accidentally en masse on an 
espalier on the 26th of June. Not knowing at the time out of 
which hive they had issued, they were established separately and 
put in a large box hive in my bee house, otherwise I should have 
put them in place of the parent hive and so prevented it from 
further swarming. As it was, the swarm not being a very large 
one, I had to strengthen it by setting under it the “ brood box ” 
above mentioned, taken from the bees which swarmed on the 
29th. In the interval the bees had constructed several combs, 
which they have largely extended since ; in fact, as I write, owing 
to the rapid and continued increase in the population, the large 
box in which they were hived (now a huge super) is nearly full 
of comb, while breeding has never ceased for a day since the 
swarm was established. Weather permitting I hope to have a 
great harvest from this swarm, which indeed may virtually be 
considered a non-swarmed stock. 
To return to the parent hive. As the bees attempted to swarm 
again on the 5th July I thought it prudent in view of my absence 
from home to divide its sixteen-bar frames, making two stocks of it. 
These are now doing well, one of them actually working in a super. 
The only other hive in my apiary from which up to the present 
time (July 15th) a swarm has come is an Abbott-Woodbury. It 
