AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
117 
ON BEES- 
and adds—beyond what its bulk would sug¬ 
gest—to the amount of nourishment which 
his simple meal supplies.— Professor John¬ 
ston's Chemistry of Common Life. 
GOLDEN-SPANGLED HAMEURGS. 
I am a lover and a breeder of the Golden- 
Spangled Hamburgs, and have observed with 
some interest the various opinions that have 
been expressed in your pages upon this val¬ 
uable class of birds. The hen-tailed cocks 
and the sickle-tailed have each their admir¬ 
ers. I can not say that I admire the square- 
tail, but we must have well-spangled cocks. 
The question is, can not we have cocks hen- 
feathered, with the exception of the tail 1 I 
answer, certainly. It has been my fortune 
to breed and to have seen many such. And 
these birds produce chickens infinitely su¬ 
perior to cock-feathered birds. I have tried 
both. Neither have I ever been disappointed 
by barrenness in any of these cocks. The 
thing to aim at then seems to me to be a 
cock well-spangled all over him, with a nice 
flowing tail. There As another point to 
which I would refer. A good deal has been 
said by some of your correspondents about 
this class of birds not being winter layers. 
There must be bad management somewhere 
when this is the case. During the whole of 
this winter, and previous winters, I have al¬ 
ways had a good supply of eggs from my 
favorites. I will not yield even to Shang¬ 
hais in this respect. My next door neighbor 
keeps the latter sort, and I have had to supply 
him with eggs constantly from my yard. 
Hamburg pullets hatched in March or April 
begin to lay in October, and continue laying 
until the moulting season. The older birds 
when well kept will commence laying very 
soon after moulting, and continue until 
moulting again ; and you would be surprised 
at the number of fine large eggs which I get, 
even this very severe weather. I am afraid 
I have trespassed to long upon your time 
already. I will conclude by recommending 
to the notice of your correspondent “T. W.” 
a little handbook published by Orr & Co., 
price one shilling, “ On the Cow',” by the 
late lamented M. M. Milburn, Esq. I am, 
Sir, yours gratefully, W. R. H. 
Poultry Chronicle. 
EXEMPLARY MOTHERS. 
I beg to send a description of the most ex¬ 
emplary mothers I ever met with in a poul¬ 
try yard. As mine consists of Spanish, I 
require a few hens which will incubate fre¬ 
quently, and remain long with their chickens. 
First, I tried Dorkings, but they were not to 
be depended on, as they sometimes contin¬ 
ued laying till the summer. Cochins came 
next, but they are often clumsy in hatching, 
and desert their chickens too soon. My ne 
plus ultra is between Cochin and Spanish , 
they are ugly, excellent creatures, lay nearly 
as well as the Cochins during winter, sit al¬ 
most as frequently, are more active, and I 
think more sensible, with much of the placid 
disposition of the Cochin, and remain double 
the length of time with their chickens. One 
of these hens hatched a brood in April, and 
in two months exactly began to lay, when 
they parted by mutual consent. Her sister 
reared her brood in June—eleven, from 
twelve eggs—remained with them precisely 
the same time, and seemed to leave them 
with regret. There was no cross peck to 
give notice of a dissolution of partnership, 
a hint which the ci-devant darlings of a 
Cochin hen sometimes receive to their ex¬ 
cessive astonishment.—A. in Poultry Chron¬ 
icle. 
Take good care of the young chickens if 
you want to make money. 
The proportion of wax contained in honey 
or sugar being small, it will be evident that 
a considerable quantity of these substances 
is requisite to enable the bees to construct 
combs. In order to ascertain whether the 
saccharine principle was the source of wax, 
Huber confined three swarms in glass hives, 
and fed them respectively with honey, re¬ 
fined sugar, and dark brown sugar ; the re¬ 
sult of the experiment proved that honey 
produced the least wax. A pound of refined 
sugar produced ten drachms fifty-two grains 
of wax, while an equal weight of dark sugar 
produced twenty-two drachms, or nearly 
one sixth of the weight. Honey was also 
analyzed for the same purpose by Liebig, 
who found that one pound of honey yields 
one-twentieth of its weight of wax, and that 
one ounce of wax builds the number of 
cells required to contain one pound of honey. 
From these experiments the proportion of 
wax can not be definitely stated, as it appears 
to vary according to the quality of the honey 
or sugar, but they are sufficient for the pur¬ 
pose of impressing upon my readers that a 
very large drain on the supplies takes place 
when the combs have to be formed ; such a 
drain as in no case can be made during the 
early part of the season, when the collectors 
are few, and all the honey which is gathered 
for sometime, is required for the sustenance 
of the daily augmenting brood, over which 
a considerable number of workers too must 
cluster in order to maintain a hatching tem¬ 
perature, and consequently can not be spared 
to construct comb. Bees can not exist in a 
hive destitute of comb, for they would be 
deprived of all their resources, the ware¬ 
houses of the honey and pollen, and the cells 
for rearing the young. Hence experienced 
bee-keepers seldom take second swarms, and 
never retain a hive as a winter stock which 
is not well furnished with combs. I have 
heard of aparian novices, who, in ignorance 
of the habits of bees, have proposed placing 
a family in an empty hive early in spring, 
imagining they might prosper in such a situ¬ 
ation. Little do they know the trouble and 
attention such an attempt would entail. I 
speak from experience, having once raised a 
houseless family (and it was a desperate 
case, caused by accident), in the beginning 
of March, to a state of great prosperity. At 
this season, however, my motto is, Nil des- 
perandum (never despair); I would make the 
best of everything, with a resolution to sur¬ 
mount all obstacles. 
The spring work of the bee-keeper is now 
close at hand, although while I write, a frost 
holds the earth in an iron grasp, more rigid 
than has often been experienced in England; 
with the uncertainty of the length of its du¬ 
ration, and with the difference of tempera¬ 
ture in various counties, the aparian must 
rather be guided by circumstances, than reg¬ 
ulated by time in his proceedings. As long 
as the frost and snow continues the hives 
should be left in perfect repose, protected 
well by outer coverings ; they will consume 
little food ; though in hives in which breed¬ 
ing have commenced, I fear some bees must 
die, yet to assist them by feeding, would 
only tend to increase the evil. I make a rule, 
not to interfere until I see pollen carried, 
and always find a few warm days the begin¬ 
ning of March, when this occurs. Then on 
a calm morning, with the thermometer at 
about 50° in the shade, I gently break up the 
hives from their adhesion to the floor-boards, 
and turning them up, make a thorough ex¬ 
amination of their condition. The bees will 
be found very peaceable, and an idea may 
be formed of their numbers, by gently pass¬ 
ing a feather through the clusters. The 
quantity of honey will be judged of by the 
weight. Young bees may also be observed. 
The floor-board should be thoroughly 
cleaned, and rubbed with a dry cloth, as also 
the inner edges of the hive, where the larvae 
and spinnings of a small moth will general¬ 
ly be found located. Those hives which are 
low in provisions should at once be fed, giv¬ 
ing the syrup warm, and in small quantities 
for a few days, and then bestowing it liber¬ 
ally ; for as Mr. Golding judiciously observes, 
feeding by driblets is never to be recom¬ 
mended. However, I give all my hives, 
rich as well as poor, a taste ; it stimulates 
the queens, and renews our friendship. 
At this;time, especial observation ought 
to be made of any peculiarity in the hive, 
such as— 
The appearance of drones ; 
The condition of the queens ; 
And of the brood. 
Such statements will be gladly received as 
an aid in forming a course of observation. I, 
for one, hope to gather useful information 
from the communications which will appear 
in the Poultry Chronicle during the ap¬ 
proaching season.—A. in Poultry Chronicle. 
Fish as Food. —There is much nourish¬ 
ment in fish, little less than in butcher’s meat, 
weight for weight; and in effect it may be 
more nourishing, considering how, from its 
softer fiber, fish is more easily digested. 
Moreover, there is, I find, in fish—in sea-fish 
—a substance which does not exist in the 
flesh of land-animals, viz., iodine—a sub¬ 
stance which may have a beneficial effect on 
the health, and tend to prevent the produc¬ 
tion of scrofulous and tubercular diseases, 
the latter in the form of pulmonary con¬ 
sumption, one of the most cruel and fatal 
with which civilized society, and the highly 
educated and refined, are afflicted. Com¬ 
parative trials prove that in the majority of 
fish the proportion of solid matter—that is, 
the matter which remains after perfect de¬ 
siccation, or the expulsion of the aqueous 
part—is little inferior to that of the several 
kinds of butcher’s meat, game or poultry. 
And, if we give our attention to classes of 
people—classed as to quality of food they 
principally subsist on—we find that the ich 
thyophagous class are especially strong, 
healthy and prolific. In no class than that 
of fishers do we see larger families, hand¬ 
somer women, or more robust and active 
men, or a greater exemption from the mala¬ 
dies just alluded to.— Dr. Davy's Angler and 
his Friend. 
Cultivation of Shallots. —The usual 
method of cultivating these is to plant the 
roots in drills, and to earth them up as 
the plants advance in height; but the late 
Mr. Knight suggested a mode of surface¬ 
planting by which he states he succeeded 
in growing veiy fine bulbs. It is thus de¬ 
scribed : He placed a rich soil beneath the 
bulbs, and raised the mold on each side, to 
support them till they became firmly rooted. 
This mold is then removed by the hoe, and 
watered from the rose of a watering-pot; and 
the bulbs in consequence were placed wholly 
out of the ground. “ The growth of these 
plants,” he added, “ now so closely resembled 
that of the common onion as not to be readi¬ 
ly distinguished from it till the irregularity 
of form resulting from the numerous germs 
within each bulb became conspicuous. The 
forms of the bulbs, however, remained per¬ 
manently different from any ever seen of the 
same species, being much more broad and 
less long, and the crop was so much better 
in quality, as well as much more abundant, 
that the mode of culture adopted is confident¬ 
ly recommended to every cultivator.— Gar¬ 
dener's Chronicle. 
You must think, as well as work, to prosper. 
