FOREIGN' AGR.CULTURAL NEWS 
163 
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS, 
By the steam-packets Great Western and Caledonia 
we have our European journals to the 5th April. 
Markets. — Ashes were rather more inquired for, 
though slow of sale. Cotton has fallen the past month 
about the amount of duties recently taken off by the 
British Government, and thus the importer netts nearly 
the same prices as per our last. Flour dull. Beef has 
advanced. Pork remained without change. Lard the 
same. Cheese firm, with considerable sales. Butter in 
fair request. Tallow had fallen. Transactions in other 
things unimportant. 
Money continues easy. 
American Stocks. —Transactions in these suspended, 
in consequence of the tone assumed by the President 
in his late inaugural on the Oregon question. This, 
however, will prove a mere temporary feeling. 
Business Generally not quite so brisk as per last advices. 
The Weather was still cold and the spring backward. 
Orange, and many other trees and shrubs in the south 
of Europe, had sustained considerable injury from the 
unusually intense cold the past winter. 
New Patent for Purifying Sugar. —The plan proposed 
by the patentee is to have a bath of solution of chloride 
of lime ; this boils at 240 degrees Fahrenheit. The 
syrup, by a peculiarly formed treddle, is agitated so as 
to present a thin sheet of heated syrup to the air, and 
evaporation is carried on, according to the patentee, at 
a rate equal if not superior to that afforded by Mr. 
Howards’ patent. 
Great Consumption of Guano in England. —There is 
nothing in the history of farming so extraordinary as 
the consumption of guano, which is steadily and 
rapidly increasing in spite of all the frauds and tricks 
that tended to bring it into disrepute. The great 
houses of Gibbs, Myers, and Bright, have actually 
sold 18,000 tons of Peruvian guano within the last 
few weeks; and there will be in this country, ready 
for delivery, in the course of a few weeks, 200,000 tons 
of Peruvian and African guano. 
Chinese Quinces. —In the very interesting translation 
of Father Hi pa’s account of China by Mr. Prandi, just 
f iublished by Murray, he observes the quinces are 
arger than ours, and of exquisite flavor; the apples 
and pears also are so wholesome that they are given 
uncooked to sick persons. They eonsist almost en¬ 
tirely of juice, so that when dried in the sun, as is 
done in Europe, nothing but the rind remains. 
To prevent Hares and Rabbits from Injuring Fruit 
Trees. —Take slips of rags 9 inches by 6, and dip them 
into melted sulphur; then fix them into cleft sticks 
about 2 feet in length, and plant them in the earth so 
as to stand 18 inches out of the ground round the 
quarters of apple trees, about 3 yards apart, and rab¬ 
bits or hares will not come near them. 
Horticultural Expedition to California.—The Horticul¬ 
tural Society of England is about to send Mr. Hart- 
weg to California and the northwest coast on an ex¬ 
ploring expedition. The discoveries in that region by 
Mr. Douglas seem to have given the society an incli¬ 
nation to learn still more of the beautiful vegetation 
of California. 
Poultry and Eggs. —The Zoological Society of Lon¬ 
don is making arrangement for a superb exhibition of 
poultry at the gardens in Regent’s Park. It is said 
that upward of 250,000 000 of eggs were imported 
into England from the continent in 1841, 2 and 3, and 
that the duty alone on imported .dead poultry was 
£600,000 ($3,000,000) the past two years in Great 
Britain! 
Profits of Poultry. —Mr. Arthur Young states that 
the women and children of the laborers on the farm 
of Mr. Boys attend to the poultry, and that the profits 
ire usually £20, about $100 a year. 
An Aged Pony. —A grey pony recently died near 
Manchester, in the 50th year of his age. This won 
derful little animal was in active service up to the 
evening preceding his death, and once performed the 
extraordinary task of going from Manchester to Liver¬ 
pool and back in harness, a distance of 72 miles, in 
six consecutive hours. 
Destruction of Cattle by the Murrain. —In Monrovia 
alone upward of 30,000 head of cattle have been de¬ 
stroyed by this plague. 
Horticultural Expedition to China. —Mr. Fortune, who 
was sent to China by the Horticultural Society, writes 
from Hong Kong, in December last, that he was busily 
engaged in packing for shipment to England, many 
rare plants, fruits, and flowers which he had been 
successful in obtaining. 
Value of Oatmeal as Human Food. —It will be recol¬ 
lected by our readers, that we adverted to this, page 89 
of our current volume, and we are glad to find our re¬ 
marks no less strongly than jocosely seconded by the 
high authority of Blackwood’s Magazine : “ You won’t 
pity us Scotch oatmeal-eaters any more, Mr. Cockney, 
we guess. Experience and science are both on our 
side. What makes your race-horses the best in the 
world may be expected to make your peasantry the 
best too. We offer you, therefore, a fair bet. You 
shall take ten English plowmen, and feed them upon 
two pounds and a half of wheaten flour a day, and we 
shall take as many Scotch plowmen, and feed them 
upon the same weight of oatmeal a day—if they can 
eat so much, for that is doubtful—and we shall back 
our men against yours for any sum you like. They 
shall walk, run, work—or fight you, if you like it, and 
they shall thrash you to your hearts’ content. We 
should like to convince you that Scotch porridge has 
some real solid metal in it. We back the oatcake and 
the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the 
world. We defy your home-made bread, your baker’s 
bread, your household bread, your leaven bread, and 
your brown Georgies—your fancy bread and your 
raisin bread—your baps, rolls, scones, muffins, crum¬ 
pets, and cookies—your bricks, biscuits, bakes, and 
rusks—your Bath-bhns, and your Sally Luns—your 
tea-cakes, and saffron-cakes, and slim-cakes, and plank 
cakes, and pan-cakes, and soda-cakes, and currant- 
cakes, and sponge cakes, and seed-cakes, and girdle- 
cakes, and singing-hinnies—your short-bread and your 
currant buns—and if there be any other names oy 
which you designate your wheaten abominations, we 
defy and detest them all. We swear by the oatcake 
and the porridge, the substantial bannock and the brose 
—long may Scotland produce them, and Scotchmen 
live and fight upon them !” 
The following articles we condense from the New 
Farmers’ Journal: 
Tb Make Cream Cheese. —Take one quart of very rich 
cream, a little soured, put in a linen cloth, and tie it as 
close to the cream as you can. Then hang it up to 
drain for two days ; take it down, and carefully turn it 
into a clean cloth, and hang it up for two or more 
days ; then take it down, and having put a piece of 
linen on a deep soup plate, turn your cheese upon it. 
Cover it over with your linen ; keep turning it every 
day on a clean plate and clean cloth until it is ripe, 
which will be in about ten days or a fortnight, c r it may 
be longer, as it depends on the heat of the weather. 
Sprinkle a little salt on the outside, when you turn it. 
If it is wanted to ripen quick, keep it covered with 
mint, or nettle leaves. The size made from a. quart 
of cream is most convenient, but if wished larger, 
they can be made so. 
To Preserve Butter Fresh. —The Arabs melt their 
butter over a slow fire, which expels all the watery 
particles It will then keep without salt; and the 
Irish have adopted with success a similar mode for 
exportation to the East Indies. 
