September 16 ,1880. ] JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 273 
come to market wholesale in New York in barrels containing seventy 
dozen, priced at 15 cents per dozen. They have been preserved for 
several months in refrigerators, and are delivered from Toledo jin 
Ohio. One dealer cleared £3000 by a rise in prices in 1878. He bought 
at 6 cents a dozen, and sold at from 22 to 25 cents. Between June 
and October they are packed in Oats, which in New York are worth 
the cost price to the packer in the west. The farmer is said to make 
more by eggs than by any other produce. They come over 1500 miles 
from Omaha on the Missouri. The supply after the abolition of 
slavery became more abundant, as the free blacks in the south are 
poultry keepers. In 1874 eggs were sold in New York in January at 
40 cents the dozen, before the month was out they fell to 12 to 15 cents. 
The home consumption in New York has materially increased. 
- Top-dressing Experiments upon Grass Land. —The fol¬ 
lowing experiments have been conducted upon the Rotherfield estate 
in Hampshire, and as they show conclusively the value of cheap 
natural fertilisers, the result cannot fail to be interesting and useful 
at a period when money is by no means plentiful. The soil was a 
porous self-drained clay, contained little or no lime, and the dressings 
were sown on March 17th, and the plots cut and weighed on August 
lGtb, 1879. Plots one-tenth of an acre. No. 1, 150 bushels of cut 
straw per acre; 2, nothing, do.; 3, 5 cwt. of salt, do.; 4, 5 cwt. of 
gypsum, do.; 5, 5 cwt. of kainit, do. The costs per acre of the above 
dressings were as follows :—No. 1 (about) 10s.; No. 3, 0s. 8 d .; No. 4, 
6s. 3 d. ; No. 5, 8s. to 10s. The amount of grass attributable to the 
various dressings was as follows :—No. 1, straw, 255 tbs. in excess of 
plot unmanured ; No. 3, salt. 205 tbs. do.; No. 4, gypsum, 043 lbs., do.; 
No. 4, kainit, 548 lbs., do. Taking No. 4, then, we find for an outlay 
of 6s. 3 d. we obtain 0430 lbs., or nearly 3 tons of grass—a most extra¬ 
ordinary result. Referring to some top-dressing experiments con¬ 
ducted on the same estate in 1875, the results of which were duly 
published in the Agricultural Gazette , we find that Peruvian guano, 
at a cost of £3 per acre, gave a return in grass of 7 cwt. per plot, or 
3 b tons per acre. Compare this result with the quantity derived from 
an outlay of 0s. 3d., and the value of the experiment is at once ap¬ 
parent. The dressing, also, being especially adapted to the require¬ 
ments of the finer grasses and Clovers, gives an indirect value by no 
means to be overlooked. The above plots were weighed again on 
August 2nd, 1880, with the following results :—No. 1, straw, 78 lbs. in 
excess of plot unmanured; No. 3, salt, 49 lbs. less than plot, do. ; 
No. 4, gypsum, 111 lbs. in excess, do.; No. 5, kainit, 157 lbs. in excess, 
do. The result shows the effect of the dressings seventeen months 
after application.—C. E. Curtis (in the Agricultural Gazette). 
- Healthy and Profitable Fowls.—D r. A. S. Heath, in a 
paper read before the Parmers’ Club, New York city, said:—“The 
reason why eight or ten fowls about the house of the mechanic, the 
gardener, or the labourer are more profitable is because of better 
feeding and less crowding, better sanitary conditions of yard and 
roost. Extent of grassy range for fowls is more important than 
provided food, for here they obtain not only air food but also insect 
food, which is the essential nitrogenous element necessary for egg- 
production. Equally important to extensive grass range are clean 
and airy roosting houses or sheds. The houses should have doors on 
the ground, to be left open in the summer, and at least two side slat 
ventilators should be provided. Running water is a most desirable 
and easy means of water supply. With this water supply without 
care or labour the food supply may be equally convenient and labour- 
saving. Drive four stakes into the ground so as to leave them 2 feet 
above the surface and 6 inches apart, and upon these nail two boards 
so as to make a table large enough to permit the fowls a footing 
around a nail keg in the centre, covered by a wide board and weighted 
by a large flat stone. This keg may be filled with corn or cracked 
corn, and having three or four augur holes near the bottom it is self¬ 
feeding. What runs out is lodged upon the table. It is kept clean 
and dry, and secure from rats and other vermin. This is a cheap, 
simple, and labour-saving manner of keeping fowls, and it will be 
found a most profitable plan. This grass range may be a small pas¬ 
ture or a large cow-yard. Fowls should never be allowed in stables 
or carriage houses. Their houses should be fumigated by burning 
half a pound of sulphur every spring and fall, while the fowls are 
shut out for the day, and be well aired before roosting time. Not 
more than twenty or thirty fowls should be allowed to roost in one 
house, but two or more of these houses may be erected in the pasture 
or range, provided it is large enough. In this case the feeding place 
may be the same, only a barrel may be used instead of a keg to save 
trouble. The largest liberty and the most generous feeding, with an 
observance of cleanliness, will secure the best yield of eggs and the 
largest number of healthy fowls. This is the way to secure the 
largest profits of the poultry-yard.” 
HONEY HARVEST OF 1880. 
The accounts which are coming in from various parts of the 
country giving reports of the honey harvest are various. In some 
counties hardly any honey seems to have been taken. The mid¬ 
land counties seem to have suffered worst in every way, owing 
to the deluges of rain following upon the constantly recurring 
thunderstorms of June and July. Of course this weather must 
have been as disastrous to bees as to the farmer in respect of his 
corn and hay crops. 
Here in the south-west of England I am thankful to say we 
have a very different tale to tell. Our dairy farmers are once 
more in good heart, and there is every prospect of a very good 
crop of every kind of produce save only of Apples. Our honey 
harvest this year in Somerset, Wilts, and Devon, so far as it has 
come under our observation, has been exceptionally good. My 
own apiary has done extremely well considering the difficulties 
our bees have to contend with in a very open and exposed country 
with no great floral pabulum to depend upon. On the whole 
there has been a fairly continuous supply of honey, dating from 
the middle of May. We have not to chronicle a period of starva¬ 
tion followed by an unusual glut of honey, as was the case in 
1878, and in a less degree in the majority of fairly good years 
before that date. Indeed I must go back to 1861 for anything 
like the honey harvest we have had this year. The honey, too, 
throughout has been remarkably rich and glutinous. I have 
seen none of that watery honey which we usually have in large 
quantity towards the end of July and at the beginning of August, 
which alone can be fairly called “ crude ” honey. It is indeed so 
thick that the combs will not sling well, in consequence of which 
we have had to return combs to the hives containing a good deal 
of splendid honey. 
To the absence of glut in the inflow of honey I attribute the 
fact that so little perfectly pure honeycomb has been harvested 
here. There has been much breeding going on and too much 
pollen stored even in supers twice storified ; but the run honey, 
which has been so much the greater in quantity, is worth twice as 
much as in ordinary years. Being still in the midst of the har¬ 
vesting process, I cannot exactly tell the nett total of serviceable 
honey and honeycomb, but I do not think it will be much short 
of 250 lbs. The demand for it being great I am able to sell a 
good deal, and consider that the value of it to me fully reaches 
£13, our selling price being Is. 2d. per lb. for honeycomb, and 1.?. 
per lb. for run honey. This I consider the nett profit of the year, 
as the swarms I sold in June will more than pay for the outlay 
incurred last autumn and during the following spring in feeding 
the eleven colonies which survived the winter. Exclusive of 
about 10 lbs. of honey furnished by swarms of the year the harvest 
of honey given above has been supplied by eight stocks, no hive 
yielding over 50 lbs.; of course there has been no brimstoning, 
and the apiary throughout is in good health and strength with 
plenty of food in most of them. In about a fortnight I shall 
commence gentle and continuous feeding for a month, so as to 
induce breeding during the last harvest of the year which comes 
with the Ivy blossom. 
The result of the year’s bee-keeping above given surely teaches 
the lesson Nil despcrandvm, and should encourage all to take the 
utmost pains and to spare no expense in feeding up their stocks 
of bees in good time during the warm days and nights of mid¬ 
autumn. Instead of all dying during the winter, as they certainly 
would have done, and left me in beggary as an apiarian, my 
stocks of bees now number twelve all in good health and fall of 
promise, worth at least 30,?. apiece, in all £18, and the profit of 
the year 13 lbs. additional, so that I am fully £31 better off than 
I should have been if I had despaired or neglected my bees as did 
so many of my hapless neighbours.—B. & W. 
DIAGRAMS OF BEES AT SOUTH KENSINGTON. 
In your impression of the 12th ult., page 154, allusion is made 
to an award of a bronze medal to Abbott Brothers for exhibiting 
a set of diagrams, said to be “ now perfectly well known, and in 
