58 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
'Rough on Rogues.” 
LOOKOUT 
ALMANAC 
LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. 
JANUARY, 
Look out for the English “ farm 
pupil” frauds. In spite of the 
1 9 * terrible exposures of the Birchall 
case, the “ farm agents ” are said to be pre¬ 
paring to bring over a large invoice of sim¬ 
ple young Englishmen. The plan is well 
known to our readers. A sharper goes to 
some fond English parent and arranges, for 
a money consideration, to take the son and 
establish him in farming in America. As 
a preparation for starting in business for 
himself, he is to be placed with a kind, 
skillful, wealthy and refined American or 
Canadian farmer to learn the special fea¬ 
tures of agriculture on this side of the 
Atlantic. He is to have every chance to 
advance and work himself into a profitable 
business. The money is paid and the boy 
starts. When he gets to Canada he is put 
at work doing chores, often with some 
coarse, ignorant, poor farmer, and he is 
worked so hard that he is glad to “ resign” 
or run away. This action, of course, in the 
eyes of the agent is a “ breach of contract,” 
and he therefore claims all the money that 
has been paid out. In some cases, as in 
that of Birchall, the boys are killed and 
forged letters are written the parents call¬ 
ing for more money. 
* 
* * 
Tuesday ^at silver-plating fraud in 
3 Zanesville, Ohio, is out with an- 
20* other advertisement in which 
some confederate claims to have made 
$119.85 in three weeks by using a $3 plater ! 
Great business that. It looks like another 
dodge of chicken fraud Bain. * * * Look 
out for frauds who pretend to be Farmers’ 
Alliance agents. Of course, there are men 
mean enough to take advantage of any 
movement of this sort. They learn the 
grips and passwords and thus gain the con¬ 
fidence of members of the Alliance. Then 
they quote prices on goods which are won¬ 
derfully cheap. They demand a small pay¬ 
ment in advance, and then start off to 
“ order the goods.” They never come back 
because they have no store to represent or 
goods to sell. Of course the cash they have 
taken goes and stays with them. 
Wednesday ^ oo ^ ; ou ^ f° r a man at the 
J South who offers to sell pecan 
2 1 * nuts for planting. Here is a 
note from a man who lives in the same 
town : “ I would warn The Rural New- 
Yorker not to publish anything in regard 
to pecan culture from W. R. S. All the 
pecans he sells to the public as of his own 
raising, he buys around here for a small 
sum and sells again to gulls at $1,50 per 
pound, claiming that the seedlings will 
produce the same or as good fruit. I planted 
choice pecans (50 to the pound) and took 
good care of my trees : some bore last year 
and more this year, but not one of the nuts 
is even nearly as good as the nut planted. 
My trees will be seven years old next spring. 
I have raised over 1,000 trees for the party 
referred to, and sold him, two years ago, 
half a barrel of very large pecans, which 
he sold as his own crop. On his whole 
place he has only one tree which yields 
large pecans.” 
* 
* * 
Thursday kook out > y° u y° un s writers, 
3 that you get in the habit of 
22, being brief and to the point. 
The following note from the Druggist’s 
Bulletin is interesting: ‘ The following 
is said to be the shortest sentence in the 
English language, containing all the letters 
of the alphabet: ‘ John P. Brady gave me 
a black walnut box of quite small size.’ 
The entire sentence contains less than 
twice the number of letters in the alphabet. 
The sentence, ‘Pack my box with five 
dozen liquor jugs,’ contains fewer letters, 
and yet omits no letter in the alphabet. 
It will be seen that the latter sentence con¬ 
tains 15 fewer than the former, and has but 
six superfluous letters.” You now have a 
chance to win fame by composing a shorter 
sentence than either of these. * * * Some 
rascals on the Pacific coast are doing a 
booming land fraud business. They adver¬ 
tise that those who have never taken up 
timber claims can learn something to their 
advantage by calling at a certain office. 
The scheme is to get men to work as agents 
for the ‘‘Minnesota and Oregon Land and 
Lumber Company.” These agents are to 
go out to a certain place, “ take up ” a 
timber claim, live on it 90 days, and then 
buy it at $1.25 per acre, and sell it to the 
“ company ” for $10 per acre. The ‘‘agent” 
must first pay $75 in cash to pay for the 
trouble and expense of showing the land. 
It is needless to say that those who pay the 
$75 never see their money again, and de¬ 
serve little sympathy for their loss. They 
engaged in a mean attempt to deceive the 
government and block the honest wishes 
of others who might really want to take up 
the land legitimately—all for the supposed 
benefit of a wealthy swindling syndicate. 
Out upon such rascals I It almost goes 
against the grain to caution any of their 
class with regard to the nature of the 
fraud. 
♦ 
* * 
Friday Look out that this note from a 
J Michigan woman does not hit you: 
2 3* “Why is it that we never hear 
from the women who make butter ? It is 
almost invariably the farmer himself who 
tells his methods and experience, while I’ll 
venture to say nine times out of ten he 
knows very little about it practically. 
Let’s hear from the real butter-maker— 
from her who has the care of the work and 
who on the average farm does it also. She 
should by no means be,as so many farmers’ 
wives are, a silent partner. ‘ I never wrote 
to the papers,’ did you say ? Why, bless 
your heart 1 you can do as well as that 
husband of yours can any day, if only you 
have a mind to think so. Just try it, and 
see how pleased you will be to see your 
thoughts in print.” Why not, Indeed ? 
Many men seem to think that they are the 
natural spokesmen for their families. They 
are perfectly willing to let the rest do the 
work while they do the talking. Is that 
right ? 
CofUrdaV Look out, you fellows who have 
3 been in the habit of watering 
3 7 * your milk and then selling it by 
the pound to creameries or cheese factories. 
Dairy Commissioner Thom, of Wisconsin, 
has been getting after some of your ilk in 
that State. Some of them were caught and 
made to pay $33 each, nearly the cost of a 
cow. It served them right and we are glad 
of it. Milk-watering is a crime, and we 
regret to say that it Is a very prevalent one. 
Commissioner Thom says : “ One maker 
Informed me that he was just 3,000 pounds 
of cheese behind this season. Robbery ? I 
should say. The meanest kind, too. It 
takes courage to hold up a man after dark, 
but any sneak can pump water into a can 
after his wife has gone to bed. Another 
factory man told me that before the prose¬ 
cutions it took 11)4 pounds of milk to make 
a pound of cheese; the week after it took 
but 8 )4 pounds. A few more prosecutions 
in different parts of the State and It will 
require a little more nerve on the part of 
those fellows when they begin to realize 
that a chemist can tell whether milk has 
been skimmed or watered or tinkered with 
in any way.” Yes, sir I You milk thieves 
will find the chemists too smart for you. 
Better be honest, so that you need not fear 
their presence. They can help an honest 
man just as they can “ catch ” a dishonest 
milkman. 
Poultry Yard. 
HENS CAN TALK. 
A few weeks ago we said that hens have 
the power of holding conversations with 
one another. Column's Rural World con¬ 
tributes the following in this line. 
“Fowls have undoubtedly a larger vocab¬ 
ulary than any of the other domestic 
animals; yet in half a day you will prob¬ 
ably hear from them all the sounds that 
they use in ordinary life. But anything 
out of the ordinary is instantly expressed 
in unusual sounds. I always know what is 
disturbing the flock, whether dog, cat, 
hawk, or a stranger. The cry for a hawk 
near at hand and a hawk far off seems to 
be the same word but with a different 
emphas^ and In a different key. Wood¬ 
chucks get the same greeting as cats, but 
louder and more emphatic. One day I was 
startled by sounds from the yard which I 
had never heard before, and, rushing to the 
rescue, I found a tame red fox dragging a 
broken chain, trying to get through the 
fence. The new sentence consisted of 
several words not complimentary to foxes. 
I have never heard anything like them 
since. Very tame hens often show a desire 
to talk to you, and it is usually possible to 
understand their meaning. Once a Cochin, 
whose years and breeding entitled her to a 
separate perch, came and stood in front of 
me, looked me full in the face, and com¬ 
plained loudly of something, I could not 
translate further. Patient investigation 
revealed that one end of her perch had 
slipped down, and Mrs. Buff had no idea 
of sleeping on an inclined plane. Another 
time a nervous little Leghorn met me at 
the hen-house door fairly screaming and 
jumping with excitement. I understood, 
from the cackle which finished each sen¬ 
tence, that she had been disturbed on her 
nest. I did not wonder at her new powers 
of speech when I found the nest occupied 
by my cat and three small kittens. When 
the chickens first begin to move in the egg, 
just before hatching, the mother hen sings 
to them a low, crooning song, very sweet, 
and never heard at any other time. A 
friend tells me that her canary startled her 
one day by an entirely new call. It was so 
plainly, “Come here, quick!” that she 
hurried to the cage to find an enormous 
cat, with face pressed against the window- 
pane, staring in at poor Ned—a danger 
sufficiently great to account for the new 
call. There are but two ways by which 
one can hear animals converse. ODe is by 
listening to them when they are not aware 
of your presence, always a difficult feat; 
the other is by winning their entire love 
and confidence.” 
ABOUT HENS. 
At the Quaker Street (N. Y.) Institute, 
Mr. Chapman talked about poultry. This 
report is from a local paper. 
He said poultry was an annex to the dairy 
because in no way can the waste products 
of the farm be so profitably disposed of as 
by feeding hens. Six hundred hens, last 
year produced for him $450 in eggs alone. 
He told how to build a poultry house and 
how to feed and rear poultry, and the best 
way to dispose of the product. First prop¬ 
erly construct a hennery, then put a ditch 
on each side of the building, 12 or 15 inches 
deep, filled with small stones to keep out 
rats. Keep the hens on the ground. Use 
land plaster for an absorbent; keep the hens 
confined unless jou want to use them as 
stripers of machinery by roosting on it. He 
gave the ration for eggs--green food in 
summer, clover hay cut into half inch 
lengths and steamed or boiled. But too 
much clover hay decreases the egg produc¬ 
tion. Separate the roosters from the pul¬ 
lets as soon as you can distinguish them. 
Feed corn to the former and wheat to the 
latter; one produces fat, the other growth. 
The best type of hen for layers is the short¬ 
legged, small-headed, plump fowl. He 
prefers the Brown Leghorn. The cost of 
keepis $1 a hen per year, the profit is what 
one gets above that: it all depends upon the 
man. With this business it requires an 
intelligent knowledge, and love for the 
work. Fresh eggs are always in demand. 
His eggs are sold under contract for a year 
at 35 cents per dozen; at that price there is 
profit in the business for him. 
Is there any mistake about Mr. Chap¬ 
man’s plan of separating the roosters and 
pullets and feeding them separate rations ? 
It seems to us that this is an excellent idea 
—one that will pay the farmer to work out. 
We want fat on the rooster but not on the 
hen. We would not follow this course with 
a rooster intended for breeding, however; 
we should feed him egg fbod. 
Recent sales of Canadian eggs shipped 
from Montreal to England netted 21 cents 
per dozen. English dealers like the Cana¬ 
dian packages, as they are more conven¬ 
ient than the bulky cases from the Conti¬ 
nent, the only objection being the extra cost. 
TAN. 17 
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275 ACRE FARM. 
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u 
rEARLY IN FEBRUARY, 
The New Potato Culture.” 
By ELBERT 
tUe rural 
S. CARMAN, Editor 
NEW-YORKER. This book 
will give the results of the author’s investi¬ 
gations and experiments during the Dast 
fifteen years. Its object will be to show all 
who raise potatoes, whether for home use 
solely or for market as w 11, that the yield may be Increased threefold without a corresponding increase in the cost: to show that the lirtl*- garden patch, of a fortieth 
of an acre perhaps, may just as well yield ten bushels as three bushels : to induce farmers and gardeners to experiment with fertilizers not only as to the kind, that is 
to say, the constituents and their most effective proportions, but as to the mosi economical quantity to.use ; to experiment as to the most telling preparation of the soil, 
the depth to plant, the size of seed, the number of eyes, the distance apart. These will be among the subjects considered, not In a theoretical way at all. but as the 
outcome of fifteen years of experimentation earnestly made in the hope of advancing our knowledge of this mighty Industry. It Is respectfully submitted that these 
experiments so long carried on at 'he Rural Grounds, have, directly and indirectly, thrown more light upon the various problems involved In successful potato culture, 
than any other experiments which have been carried on in America. 
Price, cloth, 75cents; paper, 40 cents. THEiRURAL! PUBLISHING COMPANY, Times Building, New York- 
