454 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER. 
July  0 
Odds  and  Ends. 
“  I’d  rather  lightning-  would  strike  a 
barn  than  the  average  lightning-  rod 
peddler  would  strike  me;  it  would  be 
cheaper,”  says  a  victim. — Farm,  Stock  and 
Home. 
Our  esteemed  contemporary  or  the  vic¬ 
tim  who  is  responsible  for  the  above,  is 
about  right.  In  the  eastern  part  of  the 
United  States  the  lightning-rod  man  has 
almost  disappeared  and  thousands  of 
buildings  in  town  and  country  are  now 
annually  built,  upon  which  no  lightning 
rod  is  ever  seen. 
Owing  to  recent  improvements  in  know¬ 
ledge  of  fish  culture,  it  is  stated  than  an 
acre  of  w-ater  can  be  made  to  produce  as 
much  food  as  10  acres  of  land. — Farmers’ 
Home  Weekly 
The  party  who  promulgated  such  an 
absurd  statement  must  be  anxious  to 
rival  Ananias  of  old,  or  else  he  must  have 
seen  some  mighty  poor  farming.  What 
are  the  recent  improvements  in  fish 
culture  ? 
The  Fighting  Mole. — A  writer  in  the 
Zoologist  gives  us  a  new  idea  of  the  char¬ 
acteristics  of  the  mole  : 
People  ordinarily  look  upon  the  mole 
as  a  sluggish  and  harmless  creature, 
spending  its  life  in  groping  blindly  under 
ground.  As  usual,  the  popular  idea  is  a 
mistaken  one.  The  mole  is  in  reality  the 
most  ferocious  and  most  active  of  animals. 
Imagine  it  magnified  to  the  size  of  a 
tiger  and  you  would  have  a  more  terrible 
beast  than  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
Though  with  defective  powers  of  vision 
and  therefore  incapable  of  following  its 
prey  by  sight,  it  would  be  agile  beyond 
conception,  springing  this  way  and  that 
as  it  went  along,  leaping  with  lightning 
quickness  upon  any  creature  which  it 
met,  rending  it  to  pieces  in  a  moment, 
devouring  the  yet  warm  and  bleeding 
flesh  and  instantly  seeking,  with  hunger 
insatiable,  for  a  fresh  victim. 
Alluding  to  the  anti-option  bill,  the 
Philadelphia  Ledger  says  : 
If  such  a  bill  become  a  law  it  would 
revolutionize  the  grain  and  cotton  trades 
and  send  them  back  where  they  were  be¬ 
fore  the  great  sytsem  of  option  trading 
was  invented. 
Our  esteemed  contemporary  has  fur¬ 
nished  an  argument  in  favor  of  the  bill, 
before  the  option  system  was  invented, 
men  sold  only  when  they  had  something 
to  sell  and  only  bought  when  they  wanted 
the  goods.  To-day  the  option  men  simply 
bet  on  the  rise  or  fall  of  the  commodities 
they  are  supposed  to  deal  in.  They  are 
gamblers,  pure  and  simple,  in  no  whit 
more  moral  than  those  who  tempt  for¬ 
tune  at  the  faro  table  or  through  the 
Louisiana  lottery. 
Sulphured  Eggs. — Fortunes  have  been 
made  by  frauds  that  offered  to  sell  “  egg 
preservatives.”  After  getting  $2  in  cash 
they  sent  a  few  pounds  of  common  salt 
which  surely  will  preserve  eggs.  A  new 
scheme  is  presented  by  a  California  doc¬ 
tor  who  proposes  to  preserve  eggs  for 
setting  so  that  they  will  hatch  after 
waiting  12  or  18  months.  A  writer  in 
the  Fanciers’  Journal  tells  about  him  : 
The  “doctor”  is  a  retired  dentist,  and 
also  a  fruit  grower,  and  it  was  while  sul¬ 
phuring  fruit  before  drying,  that  he 
made  the  wonderful  discovery  that  he 
is  willing  to  part  with  in  county  install¬ 
ments  for  a  good  big  sum.  According  to 
the  doctor’s  statement,  the  eggs  are 
placed  on  ordinary  fruit  trays  and  into 
the  sulphur  box  where  they  are  treated 
to  the  fumes  of  sulphur  and  six  other 
substances  that  may  not  be  detected  by 
sight,  smell  or  taste,  but  are  necessary 
to  complete  the  process.  The  eggs  are 
left  in  the  box  the  usual  time  for  sul¬ 
phuring  fruit,  viz.,  40  minutes  to  an 
hour,  but  a  longer  time  will  not  harm 
them.  This  process  not  only  preserves 
the  eggs  so  that  they  look  and  taste  like 
fresh  ones  after  a  lapse  of  18  months,  but 
the  most  wonderful  part  of  it  is  that 
they  will  also  hatch. 
This  man  will  probably  make  more 
money  at  sulphuring  eggs  than  he  ever 
did  at  dentistry. 
Cows  Eating  Fish. — A  correspondent 
of  the  English  Land  and  Water  tells  this 
story  : 
He  had  landed  his  maiden  salmon,  and 
having  hidden  it  with  the  greatest  care 
among  some  rushes,  proceeded  to  fish 
down  the  river,  intending  to  pick  it  up 
on  his  return  in  the  evening.  What  was 
his  disgust  when  he  found  an  old  High¬ 
land  cow  making  a  meal  of  his  precious 
capture,  little  but  the  head  being  left. 
In  his  exasperation  he  seized  a  trout 
which  chanced  to  be  in  the  basket,  and 
hurled  it  violently  at  the  head  of  the  .un¬ 
conscious  animal,  striking  her  full  in  the 
face  ;  but  the  old  cow,  not  in  the  least 
disconcerted,  quietly  picked  up  the  trout 
and  swallowed  that  also,  thus  remaining 
absolute  victress  on  the  battlefield. 
There  is  a  man  in  Connecticut  who 
regularly  feeds  his  cows  on  salt  herrings 
which  take  the  place  of  grain.  We  do 
not  care  to  buy  milk  of  him. 
A  “Sore  Eyes”  Bill. — A  bill  to 
which  this  name  has  been  applied  re¬ 
cently  passed  the  Rhode  Island  Legisla¬ 
ture.  It  is  similar  to  a  New  York  law. 
The  important  paragraph  is  this  : 
Should  any  midwife  or  nurse,  or  per¬ 
son  acting  as  nurse,  having  charge  of  an 
infant  in  this  State,  notice  that  one  or 
both  eyes  of  such  infant  are  inflamed  or 
reddened  at  any  time  within  two  weeks 
after  its  birth,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of 
such  midwife  or  nurse,  or  person  acting 
as  nurse,  so  having  charge  of  such  infant, 
to  report  the  fact  in  writing  within  six 
hours  to  the  health  officer,  or  some  quali¬ 
fied  practitioner  of  medicine,  of  the  city 
or  town  in  which  the  parents  of  the  in¬ 
fant  reside. 
It  is  called  “  An  Act  for  the  Preven¬ 
tion  of  Blindness.”  Doctors  say  that 
the  sore  eyes  in  infants  cause  10  per 
cent  of  all  cases  of  blindness — the  lar¬ 
gest  single  factor. 
Keeping  an  Elephant — It  costs 
enough  to  keep  a  mule  or  horse  or  any 
beast  of  burden  that  we  use  in  this  coun¬ 
try  ;  but  we  ought  to  be  satisfied  when 
we  learn  what  an  elephant  eats.  A 
writer  in  Harper’s  tells  us  this  concern¬ 
ing  the  elephants  that  are  used  as  bag¬ 
gage  and  artillery  animals  in  the  Indian 
army. 
Their  keep  is  rather  expensive,  being 
about  30  rupees,  or  S 17,  a  day.  including, 
of  course,  the  wages  of  their  mahout  and 
grass-cutter.  They  are  fed  principally 
on  unliusked  rice  and  grass  ;  of  the  for¬ 
mer  they  get  about  250  pounds  and  of 
the  latter  about  400  pounds  per  diem. 
The  very  large  female  eats,  after  the 
first  day  or  two,  about  750  pounds  of 
green  fodder  in  18  hours ;  this  is  ex¬ 
ceeded  often  by  large  tuskers,  so  that 
800  pounds  is  about  the  right  amount  to 
be  placed  before  a  full-grown  elephant, 
with  a  margin  to  allow  for  waste.  As  a 
good  load  for  an  elephant  is  about  800 
pounds,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  amount 
he  will  eat  per  day  will  be  as  much  as  he 
can  carry,  and  this  will  also  be  the  right 
proportion  for  the  smaller  ones. 
No  wonder  the  man  who  drew  the 
“  white  elephant”  got  sick  of  his  bar¬ 
gain. 
Familiar  “Evolution.” — Some  of  the 
most  familiar  things  about  us  are  really 
the  most  wonderful  when  we  come  to 
think  about  them.  For  example,  Prof. 
St.  George  Mivart  says  in  the  Cosmo¬ 
politan  : 
The  most  obvious  and  familiar  instance 
of  the  evolution  of  a  new  individual  ani¬ 
mal  is  the  hatching  of  a  hen's  egg.  A 
new-laid  egg  contains  nothing  but  an 
apparently  lifeless  mass  of  two  semi¬ 
fluid  substances — the  white  and  the  yolk; 
nor  will  the  highest  powers  of  the  micro¬ 
scope  reveal  more  therein  than  certain 
minute,  rounded  bodies  technically  called 
••  cells.”  Yet  it  needs  nothing  but  a  per¬ 
sistent  supply  of  moderate  warmth  to 
make  that  seemingly  inert,  semi-fluid 
matter  become  a  definite  organic  being 
possessing  the  most  surprising  powers. 
These  little  cells  will  arrange  themselves 
in  three  superficial  layers ;  the  layers 
will  fold  themselves  in  complex  ways, 
thickening  here  and  there  and  growing 
in  various  directions.  Soon  the  brain 
that  is  to  be  is  sketched  out;  a  tube  arises 
beneath,  folds  itself,  and  becomes  a  pul¬ 
sating  heart,  and  blood  is  formed  and 
begins  to  circulate.  Gradually  the  body 
distinct^  shows  itself  and  incipient 
limbs  bud  forth  till  the  different  parts, 
with  all  their  organs,  become  defined, 
and  ultimately  a  living  bird,  clothed  with 
downy  feathers,  chips  the  shell,  comes 
forth  and  walks  about  this  new  world 
with  widely  open  eyes  and  quickly  shows 
the  sharpness  of  its  senses  by  pecking  at 
grains  and  even  catching  an  insect  on 
the  wing  !  The  really  wonderful  nature 
of  this  growth  is  generally  unthought  of 
by  us  on  account  of  our  very  familiarity 
with  it.  But  the  more  we  ponder  over 
it  the  more  really  marvelous  it  will  appear 
THE  SELF-BASTING  ROASTER  AND  BAKING  PAN. 
This  is  the  pan  that  Mrs.  L.  wrote  about  in  The  R.  N.-Y.  of  April  30.  page  291, 
recounting  an  experience  in  the  household  of  the  publisher.  Some  four  months’ 
daily  use  has  made  this  an  indispensable  kitchen  requisite  in  that  house.  It  is 
scientifically  constructed  for  roast¬ 
ing  meats,  game,  poultry,  fish  :  for 
baking  bread,  cake,  biscuit,  beans, 
etc.  It  makes  tough  meats  and  poul¬ 
try  tender,  and  saves  the  nutriment 
of  the  food  generally  lost  through 
steam  and  evaporation.  Things  baked 
or  roasted  in  the  pan  are  more  health¬ 
ful  and  digestible,  as  they  retain  all 
their  sweetness,  flavor  and  nourish¬ 
ment.  No  attention  need  be  given 
to  basting  or  turning.  A  poor  cook 
cannot  spoil  the  food.  If  it  is  allowed 
to  remain  in  the  oven  longer  than  the  usual  time,  the  steam  keeps  the  food  moist, 
sweet  and  fresh.  Directions  accompany  the  pan.  Dimensions  of  No.  2  are, 
14x10x8%  inches,  to  hold  a  10-pound  turkey.  Price,  $1.25;  writh  a  year’s  subscrip¬ 
tion  for  $2.25  ;  given  for  three  new  subscriptions  to  January,  1893,  and  $2.25.  The 
No  3  size  is  17x12x9  inches,  to  hold  a  10-pound  turkey.  Price,  $1. 50  ;  with  a  sub¬ 
scription  for  $2.50  ;  given  for  three  new  subscriptions  to  January,  1893,  and  $2.50. 
Sent  by  express,  not  prepaid. 
One  Year’s  Subscription,  $2.00  /  Together  for  only 
One  Fine  Pocket  Knife,  $1.00'  S2,25‘ 
price 
$1  oo. 
So  many  knives  are  called  for  by  subscribers 
that  we  have  made  a  careful  search 
and  believe  that  we  have  found  as 
good  a  farmer’s  knife  as  there 
is  made.  It  is  so  good 
that  we  have  named  it 
the  “  Rural  New- 
Yorker”  knife 
It  is  brass- 
lined,  with 
German 
silver  bol¬ 
ster,  han¬ 
dle  buck- 
horn,  made 
of  fine  ra¬ 
zor  steel.  Price  of  knife  alone,  prepaid,  $1.  With  one  year’s  subscription  to  The 
Rural  New-Yorker  only  $2.25.  If  your  subscription  is  already  paid  for  1892,  the 
paper  may  be  sent  to  a  new  name.  Given  as  a  premium  for  three  new  sub¬ 
scriptions  from  receipt  to  January,  1893,  and  $2.50. 
3  YEARS’  SUBSCRIPTION  FREE.  3 
i.  A  Three  Years’  Subscription  and  a  Serviceable  Fruit  Drier  for  the  price  of  the  latter. 
The  U.  S.  Cook  Stove  Fruit  Drier  or  Evaporator. 
Thoroughly  Tested  and  Approved.  Latest,  Cheap¬ 
est,  Best.  A  Veritable  Little  Bread-Winner. 
Weight,  25  pounds.  Metal  Base.  Can  be  used  on 
any  kind  of  Stove.  Dimensions :  Base,  22x16 
inches;  Height,  26  inches.  Eight  Galvanized  Wire- 
Cloth  Trays,  containing  12  square  feet  of  tray 
surface.  No  Extra  Fire.  Always  ready  for  use. 
Its  capacity  ample  for  domestic  use,  up  to  two 
bushels  of  fresh  fruit  per  day.  Price  of  the  Drier 
alone,  $7.  Special  price  to  our  subscribers  only 
$5;  or,  better  still,  together  with  a  three  years’ 
subscription,  $7.  This  will  pay  your  own  sub¬ 
scription  for  three  years  from  the  date  of  expira¬ 
tion  of  time  already  paid  for.  New  subscriptions 
may  be  substituted  if  preferred. 
TME  IDEAL  CHAIR. 
What  is  home  or  life  without  ideal  comfort  ?  A  chair  that  is  entirely  automatic 
and  self-adjusting,  while  taking  any  position  from  upright  to  horizontal,  is  indeed 
an  ideal  chair.  It  folds  up  for  shipping  or  storage.  No  rattling  or  loose 
joints.  For  Camp,  Veranda,  Study,  Lawn  or  Sickroom.  Frame  and  stand  all  steel. 
No  warping  in  wet  weather.  Will  last  a  lifetime.  Price,  $7.  Special  price  to  our 
subscribers  only  $5.  With  a  3  years’  subscription  to  The  R.  N.-Y.,  $7.  With  an 
order  from  a  present  subscriber,  for  3  now  subscriptions  to  date  from  receipt 
to  January,  1893,  only  $6. 
THE  RURAL  PUBLISHES  COMPANY,  Tinet  Building,  Now  York. 
