66 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[February, 
get out of patience with your scholars, just stop and 
think how it is with real scholars, and ask yourself if 
you havn’t done in the real school these things which now 
vex you, and then may-be you will wonder how the 
real teacher was so kind and mild with all these 
things to vex her, and perhaps when you next go 
to school you will recollect how annoying these 
things must be, and try not to do them. There 
are some plays that children in all parts of the 
world seem to like, and in almost every country 
children have dolls of some kind, make sand or 
mud-pies, and play at keeping school. This 
pretty little picture shows that the play-school is 
much like the real school; there are the quiet 
scholars, who come to school to study; there is 
that girl who never can keep still, her hand is 
np, showing that she wants something—that un¬ 
easy girl is in every school. Then there is the .'A- 
boy wearing the long ears for punishment, and no 
doubt deserves it; and that other girl, who is al¬ 
ways whispering on the sly—and always gets caught at it; 
but the learned teacher is just now too busy to see her. 
placed where they will naturally go through it. The wire 
used is fine brass or copper; a piece about 18 inches long 
has a loop made in one end, by twisting, and through 
Snaring' ©r Mares. 
One of our Canada boys writes, that rabbits arc plenti¬ 
ful and troublesome, and he would like to know how to 
catch them with wire snares. We might answer that 
there was no way by which this could be done in Canada 
—or the United States either—for the simple reason that 
there are no rabbits in either country. The fact is, that 
all the wild animals wo call rabbits are really hares : one 
ef the differences between the two is that rabbits burrow, 
while the hares do not, and though our hares may hide in 
any hole they may happen to find, they do not dig bur¬ 
rows like the European rabbit. As our animals are gen¬ 
erally called rabbits, it is not likely that people will soon 
learn to call them hares, but it is well that boys should 
know the difference. There are good reasons why rab¬ 
bits—as we will for the present call them, because every 
— one will then know 
gi* 
HI 
Fiff. 1.—SNARE IN FENCE. 
what we mean—should 
be caught. In the first 
place, they do a great 
deal of damage to trees, 
especially young trees, 
and various kinds of 
shrubs; if not prevent¬ 
ed, they will Sometimes 
ruin a young orchard by 
eating off the bark of 
the trees. Last winter 
we found some dwarf 
pear trees with their 
lower branches very 
neatly trimmed; we 
could not recollect 
that we had told 
any one to trim them, and upon inquiring, found that 
“nobody did it”; it was a rather puzzling case, but 
when the snow had quite melted away, the rabbit drop¬ 
pings told the story; the rabbits, hard pressed for food, 
had cut off the ends of the young twigs very neatly, and 
either eaten them up or carried them oft’, for not a trace 
of the prunings was left. The damage they do is a suf¬ 
ficient reason for trapping or otherwise stopping them, 
but there is another good reason : young rabbits are very 
good eating, and in parts of the country where fresh meat 
can only be had now and then, a rabbit pie or stew makes 
a very nice dinner. So, while we do not approve of al¬ 
lowing boys to catch or 
kill everything that rifus 
or flies, we think tlvat 
rabbits are fair game. 
Probably every country 
boy knows how to make 
the box-trap, the top 
and one end of which 
lifts, and is held by a 
string fastened to a peg, 
which is baited with a 
bit of apple, or other 
bait; these traps are 
pretty certain, and are 
in most general use. 
Catching the animals 
with wire, as our young 
Canadian wishes to do, 
can only be done where 
the rabbi ts have a regular run. They have a way of going 
in the same paths, especially in the snow, and they will al¬ 
ways follow an old track rather than make a new one. 
If they are in the habit of visiting a garden, or an orchard, 
it will be found that they usually come in at the same 
place, which may be found, and the wire snare set there, 
or their tracks may be followed, and a place found in a 
brushy pasture where they have made a run. To use the 
wire snare, the run must be found and the snare must be 
Fig. 2.— SNARE IN BRUSH. 
Fig. 3.— TRAP WITH SALTED STRING. 
this loop the other end of the wire is passed—just as yon 
would make a slip-noose in a string. To set this, the 
hole in the fence, or the run-way in the brush, must be 
made so narrow that the rabbit can only get along by 
passing through (he noose ; the hole in the fence may be 
closed by boards, or the brush-run be narrowed by set¬ 
ting in pieces of cut brush, as shown in figures 1 and 2, 
so that the rabbit can easily pass its head through, but 
will be caught when its shoulders touch the wire. Of 
course the loose end of the wire must be made fast by 
twisting it around a piece of brush, or in some other 
manner that will hold it. We have given the Canadian 
friend the best information we have on this manner of 
trapping, but wo never used this kind of snare ; this de¬ 
scription was sent by an esteemed correspondent a long 
while ago, who at the same time gave ns another way of 
trapping rabbits ; he says that rabbits are very fond ofsalt, 
and may be caught by means of a salted string in the box- 
trap, shown in figure 3. A string is dipped in salt and 
water and dried; the doors are held open by means of 
this string, fastened to a peg in the floor of the trap; 
another salted string is carried from the peg and stretched 
across the run. The rabbits, finding this salted string, 
will eat away at it, until they come to the trap, and 
when they cut that part fastened to the peg, the door 
will fall, and a hinged leg, bent under the handle in the 
engraving, will fall into place and prevent the door from 
being opened. We hope that our friend qt the north will 
not only save the trees, but have many a good dinner. 
r l'8tc Doctor’s Tallies—AlfossS Aarl“ 
«us Matters. 
Last month I intended to say, but somehow forgot it, 
a word to our new Boys and Girls. By “new,” I of 
course mean those who read the paper for the first time. 
Every year a great many fathers and big brothers take 
the American Agriculturist who never did so before, and 
of course this enlarges the circle of young folks. So 
don't be bashful, you new comers; the way to join our 
family is to come right in ;■ we are not full, and never 
expect to be, so sit down at the table, (that's the paper), 
partake of just such food, (pictures and reading), as the 
rest have, and be one of us. Our family,.while one, is 
rather extended, and “runneth the wide world round,” 
as the poet wrote of the sea, but wherever they are, we 
try to show no partiality, and all are equal in our regard; 
still, if we do make any difference, we like the far off 
ones just a little the best, as we pity the poor youngsters 
for being away at the “ ends of the earth,” (don’t let 
some smart youngster tell me that the world is round, 
and can have no ends!) and are so very long in getting 
the paper. ' 
“ATTENTION THE UNIVERSE!” 
said a celebrated man some years ago, in speaking to a 
mass-meeting so large that it seemed to him as if all the 
world had gathered there. So when we say, 
ATTENTION YOUNGSTERS ! 
it is not very much unlike speaking to a good share of 
the “ universe,” as it is a call that causes bright eyes to 
be on the look out from up towards the Arctic region to 
the Gulf of Mexico ; the call runs over to Central Amer¬ 
ica, and down through South America ; it takes -a step 
over to New Zealand and Australia ; it is heard in other 
Pacific Islands, and wakes up little ones in China and 
Japan ; then somehow it is heard by quite a big lot of 
you in parts of Africa, and so the word runs up along the 
coast spreading into various countries on the continent 
of Europe, especially Germany and Hungary; is heard in 
the British Isles, and so finally makes a complete cir¬ 
cuit around the whole globe. This is no fancy idea, for 
were you to go into our mailing rooms you would see 
the American Agriculturist sent to all these places, an 
astonishing number to some of them, and that the very 
things that any one of you reads are read by other 
children in all these far off lands, and each one of you 
has something in common with all the rest. What 
I want to say to all of you, new and old, and wherever 
you maybe, that your letters to “The Doctor” are al¬ 
ways welcome. If you know anything that pleases or 
iuterests you, you should let all the rest know it; or 
what is the next best thing if you 
WANT TO KNOW ABOUT SOMETHING 
you must write to “ The Doctor,” and if I can’t tell you, 
I will find some one who can. In this way all the mem¬ 
bers of this big family can help one another... .1 have a 
pretty good budget of letters this month, but it is not 
so large as I am sure it will be, when the new comers 
learn that I expect to hear from them... .A large share 
of the letters, this time, are about matters that need 
too long an answer to be given here, and I must try to 
take care of them in another way Here is one from a 
LITTLE VIRGINIA GARDENER, 
and a girl too. That boy Wat. smiles at the idea of a 
girl having a garden, but if all the boys were like him, 
there would not be any gardening done, unless the girls 
did it. Miss Emma thinks a great deal of her Virginia 
home ; her father has given her a quarter of an acre of 
land to cultivate for herself. She tells what she has 
raised in it, but she is like many older gardeners, great¬ 
ly troubled with weeds. A grass that she calls “ Wire 
grass,” which is kept down in the fields by the plow, but 
in her garden, though she tried hard to kill it, it is too 
much for her. Thinking that “ The Doctor” must know 
everything, she writes for me to help her out of her 
trouble. There are some things that I know, and some 
that I do not know. One of those I do not know is, 
what she means by “ Wire grass,” as it is a name given 
to different plants ; one of them was pictured ln-t month 
on page 20, but it cannot, I think, be that. If she can 
find a piece, with the flower-head or seed, and send it to 
me, I can then know what she is talking about. Emma 
is troubled by this grass, but there is a greater trouble 
that she does not mention—she has too much land. If 
she can get her father to take back two-thirds or 
three fourths of the land, she will then have all that a 
girl of eleven can take proper care of, and on a smalL 
piece (with proper care) she will get as much and not 
work so hard as on the larger one, Emma, let us all hear 
more about that garden .. .Here is a “ Farmer’s Boy ” in 
New York state who inquires about the 
TWINING OF HOP-VINES. 
He knows that with him hop-vines twine “ with the sun,” 
and he asks if the hops were planted south of the Equa¬ 
tor “ will climb in the same way around a pole ; if tliey. 
will, why? If not, why?” — I do not think that the 
geographical locality can make any difference, but when 
you ask me “ why ? ” there comes the rub. When our 
“ Farmer's Boy ” gets older, he will find that there are a 
great many things the “ why ” of which cannot be ex¬ 
plained. We can no more tell why a hop-vine climbs 
in one direction, and a bean vine climbs in another, than 
we can tell why they climb at all. We cannot see any 
good reason why the hop should not have a strong stem 
and stand without help, like the tree, which we use as a 
pole for it to climb upon. We know that all created 
things are made as they are, and endowed with certain 
faculties for a good purpose by One who looked upon 
his work “ and saw that it was good,” and though we 
can find out many things, and are continually learning- 
more and more, yet in every case we come to a point 
where we must stop and say “God made it so.” 
CLIMBING PLANTS 
of all kinds are most interesting, things to study, and. 
young persons who keep their eyes open can see many 
beautiful and curious things about them ; they will find 
that all do not twine around the pole, like the hop, but 
that some climb by the help of their leaf-stalks, others 
by the aid of tendrils, those ivire-like stems that you 
must have noticed in the grape-vine, the encumber, and 
many other plants; and some climb by tiny roots that 
come out all along their stems and cling to the bark of 
trees or the rough surface of a wall. There are so many 
■wonderful things about these plants that I will try and 
tell you about them when the growing season comes, 
and you can see them yourselves.I get a great 
many letters from our youngsters, that would not interest 
the whole family, and such I answer by mail, and say 
nothing about them, but here is one from two of my 
boys away oft' in Honduras, who ask about 
VISITING THE CENTENNIAL EXHIBITION. 
If it were mero/y a question if it would pay them to 
come, could they do so as well as not, I could say yes at, 
once, but the case is not so simple as that. They ask 
how they can put a certain sum of money to the best. use,, 
whether by coming to the Centennial, or by staying at 
home, and using it in improving their education there. 
It is a very difficult matter to give advice in this case, 
for it has two important sides. I’ll think on ih. 
-«-«—-—™> e --- -- 
A Doll Sliow! 
Only think of a Doll Show 1 That is what the English' 
children have had to amuse them lately. It was held at 
Alexandra Palace, in London, which is a great show 
place, something like the Crystal Palace. There were all! 
