1878.] 
AMERICAN AGrRICULTTTRIST. 
345 
assorted, it is well to place coarse and badly soiled 
articles by themselves in warm suds, to soak until 
you are ready for them. Then take the colored 
clothes, wash, rinse, and starch, and hang them out 
to dry ; flannels, also, should be disposed of in the 
early part of the day. These done, proceed to the 
white clothes. A little soaking in as warm suds as 
can be conveniently managed, is undoubtedly a 
help, and with that and the washing through two 
good suds, kept as clean by removing as your sup¬ 
ply of water will admit of, brings them ready for 
scalding (not boiling.) One should never have less 
than three tubs to use in a family washing, and 
four are better. Into the deepest tub you have, 
throw the garments as they are washed from the 
second suds, shaking them loosely, and rubbing a 
little soap when there is any indication of its being 
needed. When the tub is nearly full, or you have 
all the clothing of that class in, pour over it boiling 
water in which a little soap has been dissolved, 
until they are well covered with the water; then 
cover the tub w'ith a blauket, or whatever will hold 
the steam, until you can bear the hand in to wash 
the clothestout of this water. As this is the last of 
the washing, every part should be carefully exam¬ 
ined and have whatever rubbing may be necessary; 
wring lightly, as the suds helps the bleaching, and 
spread on the grass, where the sun will fall on them 
the rest of the day, and keep them wet by an occa¬ 
sional sprinkling from a garden watering pot. This 
scalding has to be repeated if you have more than 
one tubful of clothes. With the coarsest and most 
soiled articles, there is no objection to boiling for a 
few moments, but I would advise taking from the 
boiling water into fresh, clean suds, before putting 
out on the grass. This part of the washing can be 
accomplished, and everything cleared up, by one 
or two o’clock, where there is a good, large wash. 
As the clothes should be left out to bleach all the 
afternoon, this part of the day can be utilized, if 
you are hiring by the day, in having the calicoes 
ironed. As late as you can conveniently do so, 
have the clothes taken from the grass, still keeping 
the coarse and fine ones separated, and put to soak 
in a liberal supply of clear water. The next morn¬ 
ing, have them rinsed from this water, or one 
slightly blued after it. If dried under favorable cir¬ 
cumstances, they will look so white and smell so 
delightfully pure and fresh, it will be a pleasure to 
wear them, and you will have the comfort of know¬ 
ing your clothes wear out, instead of washing 
out—a much slower but more satisfactory process. 
Household Notes and Queries. 
“Parker House Rolls.” —These very light, de¬ 
licious rolls, which are generally obtained in per¬ 
fection from the bread-bakers only, we recently 
found home-made, equal to the best, at Mrs. L. J. 
Post’s “Maplewood Mansion,” Ellenville, N. T. 
The recipe was solicited and tried at home with 
good success. Here it is : Sift 4 quarts of good 
flour; take 1 quart warm milk, and melt in it 1 tea¬ 
cupful of butter, and add 2 tablespoonfuls of white 
sugar, a teaspoonful of salt, i teacupful of baker’s 
yeast, or its equivalent yeast cake. With these and 
part of the flour make a soft sponge at night if 
wanted for breakfast, or in the morning if for tea. 
When the sponge is light, early in the morning, or 
in the afternoon, add the rest of the flour, and 
knead as for bread. Roll out as for tea biscuit, 
and cut out in round forms about 3i inches in di¬ 
ameter. Grease about half the surface with butter, 
and lop it over, not quite half way. Let them rise 
in a warm place half to three-fourths of an hour, 
and bake quickly. 
The Queen of Puddings Again. —This time the 
recipe comes from New Zealand, for which we re¬ 
turn thanks. We suggest to our friends that we 
are so well supplied with this recipe, that they 
need not be at the trouble of sending any more. 
Liquid Stove Polishes. —Some, at least, of these 
need to be used with caution, as they contain naph¬ 
tha, a highly inflammable fluid, which it is dan¬ 
gerous to have about. A case is reported in the 
New York daily papers, of a death which resulted 
from the “ explosion ” of “ Boynton’s Liquid Stove 
Polish.” The explosion was probably of a mixture 
of the vapor of the naphtha with the air. Selling 
this liquid in any form, should be restricted by law. 
Employing it in an article to be used in families is 
simply wicked. Avoid all such stove polishes. 
Making Pickles. —The accumulation of inquiries 
from new readers make it necessary to repeat cer¬ 
tain points in pickle making, each season. The in¬ 
quiry generally is : “ How can I make pickles like 
those sold in glass jars ? ”—To answer this and 
others in brief,—really good pickles can not be made 
by putting cucumbers, etc., directly into vinegar. 
Salting removes natural juices, and allows the vine¬ 
gar to penetrate the cucumber throughout. Some 
pickles may be made from cooked vegetables with¬ 
out salting; and ripe peaches and other fruits are 
pickled without salting, using boiling vinegar. Pick 
the cucumbers daily, always with the stems on. 
Wash, if needed, and place in a barrel, sprinkling- 
salt among them ; half a bushel of best salt is re¬ 
quired for a barrel of pickles. Place a cover 
weighted with stones on the pickles, and add water 
to reach the cover. If few cucumbers are gathered 
daily, it may be more convenient to put them into 
a jar or keg of brine made strong enough to float a 
potato, using a weighted cover to keep them down. 
About four weeks are required to thoroughly salt 
them, and they may be kept as much longer as de¬ 
sired, by care in replenishing the brine if need be. 
All bright green pickles are made so by copper, in¬ 
directly used by preparing them in copper caul¬ 
drons, or directly, by the intentional use of verdi¬ 
gris. The attractive appearance of the pickles 
“ sold in glass jars,” is due 1st to this greening, and 
2d to the use of colorless vinegar. That sold as 
“White Wine Vinegar,” is made from whiskey or 
other form of alcohol; it is just as wholesome as 
any other, but is merely sour, without the pleasant 
fragrance of pure cider vinegar. Those who regard 
quality rather than appearance, will use cider vine¬ 
gar only for their pickles. Green tomatoes, string- 
beans, etc., are treated the same as cucumbers. 
ibbys <k 
The Young Microscopist’s CIiil>. 
“What, more insects? ” some of yon perhaps will say. 
How can I help it? I propose to answer the questions 
as well as I can, sent by the members of the Club; and 
if nine out of ten of the inquiries are upon insects, the 
replies must be somewhat in proportion.. .A box came 
a few days ago, which, when opened, appeared at first 
sight to contain some leaves nicely packed in cotton, 
hut as the cotton began to move and soon became 
rather lively, I saw that it was a specimen of 
The Woolly Aphis, or Woolly Plant Louse, 
which is in some parts of the country unfortunately too 
common. If you see, especially upon young fruit trees 
what look like patches of white mould, or if you find a 
twig that appears as if some one had wound it loosely 
with cotton or wool, as in fig. 1, you will do well to take 
a specimen home and examine it with your Microscope. 
While the surface, of the mass is of white threads, you 
Fig. 1.— WOOLLY APHIS OR “AMERICAN BLIGHT.” 
will find by looking below the surface, a very lively lot 
of small insects, little blackish plant-lice, about one- 
tenth of an inch long; one of them is shown of the nat¬ 
ural size in the upper part of figure 2. But the threads— 
almost as white, but coarser than cotton fibres and most 
wool—where do they come from?—That is the curious 
part of it. They come from the body of the insect, 
which seems to have the power of producing them as 
needed. The lower part of figure 2 shows one magni¬ 
fied, with the tuft of threads. You may ask 
“ What this Wool is for ? ” 
It is said that it allows the insect to be carried for long 
distances by the winds, and one of its uses may be to 
scatter it abroad, but I think its chief use is to conceal 
this plant louse from its enemies; i t must be a sharp-eye i 
little bird that can see anything 
like food in this mass of wool. 
It is curious to see how their in¬ 
stinct leads them to huddle to¬ 
gether in masses ; a single insect 
does not seem to have wool 
enough to hide him, and they 
seem to know that by getting to¬ 
gether in large numbers, they can 
help one another, and make a more 
complete hiding place. So the 
little fellows stick their bills into 
the tender bark of our young 
trees, and suck away for a living, 
while they are well concealed 
from their enemies. “ But do 
they not injure the trees?”—In¬ 
deed they do; on this account 
they are called, in England, where they are very plenty, 
“The American Blight,” 
which is hardly fair to this country, as the insect came 
to us from the Old World. They are sometimes in such 
numbers, so rapidly do they increase, as to destroy 
young orchards. They are easily killed by the use of 
soft-soap, brine, or whitewash, put on with a brush. 
The scientific name of the Woolly Aphis is Eriosoma 
lamgera. The first name is from the Greek for “ woolly- 
body,” and the other is the Latin for wool-bearing_ 
Another insect common in greenhouses, and sometimes 
found on house-plants, hides itself in a similar manner 
to the one just described, viz., the well known 
Mealy-Bug 
of the gardeners. This is often found alone in forks of 
the stems of greenhouse plants or on the veins of the 
leaves. It is not a plant-louse, but belongs to another 
family,—the Scale insects. This is able to cover itself 
with wool, which rather than hiding it makes it the more 
easily seen on the green surface of the plant. Like 
other scale insects, it 
fixes itself to the plant 
while very young, and 
doesnotmove afterwards. 
The insect without the 
“meal,” or wool, is, ac¬ 
cording to Doct. Packard, 
that shown much en¬ 
larged in fig. 3. When 
covered it is a shapeless 
tuft of down. When 
there are not many they 
may be picked from a 
plant with a small sharp- 
pointed stick, or may be 
touched by a small brush 
flipped in alcohol.... 
Here is an inquiry not 
about insects. “ T. G.” 
wishes to know if our 
Microscope will show all 
the parts of ferns, and Fig. 3.—mealy bug. 
how, in collecting, to tell 
a fern from a moss. No, it would take a very costly 
instrument to “ show all the parts of ferns,” but it will 
allow him to see all the parts that are used in studying 
ferns, to tell one kind of fern from another. As to tell¬ 
ing a fern from a moss, it will be better for me in the 
first place to briefly answer the question, 
“What is a Fern ? ” 
as this has also been asked by several others. Our 
ferns generally have their stems below-ground, from 
which arise the leaves (often called fronds ), and these in 
the majority of kinds are roll¬ 
ed up in the bud in a grace¬ 
ful shape, as if the rolling 
had begun at the end, so that 
the leaf as it is coming out 
is in the shape of a bishop's 
crosier, as in figure 4, which 
shows two buds. On the 
veins, on the underside of 
the leaf, or along its margin 
in some, you will find a 
great number of dots, some 
round, and others long, 
which are called fruit-dots, 
and these serve mainly to 
distinguish ferns from other plants. I should have stated 
in the first place that ferns belong to the great series of 
Flowerless Plants; 
they have no proper flowers and produce no proper seeds, 
like the common plants we are familiar with, and though 
these spots on the back of the leaves are called “ fruit- 
dots,” it only means that they answer the same purpose 
that fruit does in other plants—that is, that they are con¬ 
cerned in producing new plants. Figure 5 shows a bit of a 
Fig. 2. —aphis. 
