m 
lomrstic (Gnmomtt. 
CONDUCTED BY MARY A. E. WAGER. 
AN AIRY TALK. 
If air and water were taxed; if men and 
women could only have them by purchase, 
they would then most probably be fully ap¬ 
preciated. If there is any one unusual mani¬ 
festation in nature for which we feel in per¬ 
fect sympathy with the Ruler of Natural 
Forces, it is a hurricane—an indignation 
meeting of the winds—an active manifesta¬ 
tion at man’s ingratitude. Take, for example, 
Wlccpinar Rooms, 
which, in the majority of houses, are the 
smallest apartments in the dwelling, and 
with very meager facilities for ventilation. 
Hygienic ideas are slowly adopted, and 
modern private houses are constructed with 
trausomes oyer the doors, which not only 
admit fresh air but warmed air, if the house 
contains fire. 
An individual of educated intelligence de¬ 
tects impurities in air, when an ignorant 
person would have no idea of their existence. 
The result, or effect upon each individual, is 
the same physically, while the former suffers 
mentally, which the latter in blissful igno¬ 
rance escapes, The stench that escapes 
through the door of some sleeping rooms 
upon being opened in the morning, is enough 
to poison a family of seven souls. If each 
individual breathes two quarts of air at each 
respiration, it is evident that a short time 
will exhaust all the living, vital air in a large 
room even, if it is a close one. 
If the sleeping rooms in your house do 
not admit of thorough ami continual venti¬ 
lation, if is your first Christian duty to make 
them so. The windows should lower from 
the top. A draft or passage of air should be 
effected somehow. If you have children or 
servants, it is us much your duty to see that 
they are supplied with fresh air during their 
sleeping hours as it is to look well to their 
moral well-being. Nobody ever died from a 
proper amount of fresh air, while thousands 
are victims, yearly, of carbonic acid gas. 
Women, generally, don’t affect to know 
much about the virtues of oxygen, or hydro¬ 
gen, or nitrogen, or the properties of gases. 
These terms strike them as stupid and 
opaque. Carbonic acid gas is air, or the 
dead, effete remains of it, after we have once 
breathed it. It is foul and unwholesome, 
like food that we have eaten, and which has 
yielded to our bodies its nutritive properties. 
We don’t eat food twice. We should be hor¬ 
rible heathens to do that. But we breathe 
air over, and over, and over again, when 
the earth floats in an infinite sea of freshness, 
and yet we shut it out, and call ourselves 
“Christians” and “civilized!” Heaven 
save the mark! 
If we were a man we should always carry 
a cane with a crooked handle, and don’t 
know but we shall, as it is, unless our 
righteous indignation subsides, or is relieved 
by i lie free use of the pen. Wc would un¬ 
doubtedly be dubbed “ the walking ventila¬ 
tor,” for we should lower windows in 
churches, open ventilators in cars, make 
room for air to enter in public libraries, and 
our walking stick should be an Esculapius 
of prevention, rather than cure. 
Wc often have wondered at the ridiculous 
faith manifested by preachers in expecting 
the “Spirit of God” to fill the “house,” 
when the house, or church, was so full of 
filthy, dead air, as to pollute every body and 
thing in it. God is in the air—the freak air; 
His beautiful, vivifying influence does not 
harmonize with foulness, and darkness and 
pollution. And if the preacher at length 
says hesitatingly, “ Brother, won’t you lower 
that window a little ,” as it he had given 
utterance to an heretical idea, we wonder 
that lie did not throw up his arms and ex¬ 
claim tlnimleringly “ For Heaven’s sake, let 
us have air l” 
Dear Rural reading women, if you have 
any misgivings as to the wholesomeness of 
the air you breathe, in-doors, go without for 
a few minutes and compare atmospheres. 
Leave your sleeping room in the morning as 
close as you slept in it, go out. of doors, 
breathe freely and plentifully, always through 
your nose, keeping your mouth closed, and 
then re-enter your room, and you will be 
enabled to make an intelligent estimate of 
your ventilation. 
A semi-medical woman averred in a lec¬ 
ture the other day, that coarse, dark com¬ 
plexions and pinched features were half the 
result of ill or no ventilation. When we 
know the inconvenience and actual discom¬ 
fort that many women will undergo for the 
sake of being what they suppose to be 
“ beautiful,” we feel that we have struck the 
key-note to ventilation in demanding it for 
Beauty’s sake. Women are in-doors more 
than men, and so suffer more from impure 
ah. In fact, they sutler more from almost 
everything, the result of various causes; but 
half living and half dying on impure air is 
the result of only ignorant stupidity or intel¬ 
ligent, reprehensible carelessness. 
CONTRIBUTED RECIPES. 
llecipe for Corn Bread. — “ Anonymous ” 
asks for a recipe for the genuine yeast-raised 
Indian bread that can be baked in a stove 
oven. I had an early experience in the New 
England style of rye and Indian bread, the 
delicious flavor of which is not yet forgotten. 
It was made of three parts corn meal to one 
of rye flour, to this was added about a tea¬ 
cupful of finely si fled stewed pumpkin for 
each loaf, mixed quite soft, allowing room 
for the corn meal to swell, and the same 
quantity of yeast as other bread. A pinch of 
salt is added, and afso soda if the yeast is 
not quite fresh. Bake in deep pans, (iron is 
best,) and when put in them to raise, smooth 
over the top with the hand or spoon dipped 
in water. A brick oven IS best, but a stove 
oven rightly tempered will do, a little hotter 
at first than for wheat flour, then with 
moderate heat for two or three hours longer, 
to bake thoroughly. As a substitute for rye 
flour, wheat, flour can bo used ; and for the 
pumpkin, one spoonful of molasses. Any 
common bread maker will understand that 
these ingredients are to be mixed thoroughly 
with warm water too soft to mold, and raise 
until very light.—W esterner. 
• . 
Chocolate Cake. —One cup sugar; one cup 
flour; three eggs; three tablespoon tills melted 
butter; three tablespoon fills of milk; one tea- 
spoonful cream of tartar; one-half teaspoon* 
ful soda. Bake in thin layers. Grate one- 
half' of a cake of chocolate; beat the whites 
of three eggs to a froth, add sugar to the 
taste and t he chocolate. Put together warm 
like jelly cake, using the chocolate mixture 
like jelly. 
Fried Cakes. — One cup sugar; one cup 
sour cream; one and one-lialf cups butter¬ 
milk ; three eggs; one teaspoonfui of soda; 
nutmeg. 
Ginger Snaps. — One cup molasses; one 
cup of sugar; two cups of butter; ginger and 
spices. 
Washington Pie. —One cup of sugar; one 
cup of sweet milk; one-fourth cup of butter; 
two cups of flour; one egg ; one teaspoonfui 
of cream tartar; one-lialf teaspoonfui of soda. 
Bake like jelly cake, and spread on the 
cream cold. 
For Making the Cream. — One pint milk, 
boiled; two tablespoonfuls of corn starch or 
flour mixed with a little cold milk; one egg; 
sugar to the taste; a little salt; flavor with 
vanilla. If you want it extra nice, add one- 
half a cup of desiccated cocoa-nut to the 
cream as prepared above. 
Cream. Pie .—Make the cream as for Wash¬ 
ington pic. Bake two pie crusts on separate 
plates. Just before you want to use it, pour 
in the cream. Nice for tea. 
Cheap Sponge Cake. —Break two eggs in a 
teacup; beat slightly; fill up with thick, 
sweet cream; then add one cup of white 
sugar; one enp of flour; one teaspoonfui of 
cream tartar; one-half a teaspoonfui of soda. 
Flavor with lemon. 
Helen Cake. —Two cups of sugar; three 
cups of flour; one cup of sweet milk; one- 
half a cup of butter; three eggs; two tea- 
spoonfuls of cream tartar ; oue teaspoonfui 
of soda. Beat the whites of eggs separately. 
Make half into fruit cake, by adding spices 
and fruit.— Mrs. F. S. 
Delicate Cake. — One-lialf a cup of sweet 
milk; one cup of white sugar; one-fourth 
of a teaspoonfui of soda; one-half of a tea¬ 
spoonfui of cream of tartar; one and one- 
lialf tablespoonfuls of incited butter; whites 
of two eggs, and one cup of flour.— Cousin 
Amelia, Ludloicmlle, K. F. 
iii III 111 
I I H 
I I || || I j 
Table Mato. —We give herewith an Illustration 
Of a table mat, which is much superior to, and 
Is superseding, the straw ones. They retail in 
sets of six at 43.50. But if “ household geniuses ” 
are more available than greenbacks, some ex¬ 
planation as to their manuraetura will be de¬ 
sirable. Two kinds of wood are used—a light 
and dark, (maple and black walnut, if you 
please,) cut or sawed into strips half or three- 
quarters of an inch in width and a quarter of an 
iucli in thickness. These strips are glued to an 
oval, or circular-shaped piece of brown canton 
flannel, and if neatly made present, an appear¬ 
ance similar to the engraving. They should be 
made of different sizes to suit the tureens and 
platters commonly used for hot meats and vege¬ 
tables. 
-- 
WuntcJ —Directions for preparing common 
engravings on paper, suitable for coloring in 
water colors; something that hardens, to pre¬ 
vent the paint from absorbing, similar to pho¬ 
tograph and other card-boards. Can some reader, 
or one of those on your editorial staff who pro¬ 
vide for this department, furnish such informa¬ 
tion ?— VV ksterner. 
i£tvtomcrIogmtI. 
[Questions to be answered in thfe Department, when accompanied 
by specimens, should be sect directly to C. V. Riley, 221 North 
Main Street, St. Louis, Mo.] 
UNIVERSAL REMEDIES. 
[FIEue is something from the American Ento¬ 
mologist for November, which so thoroughly ac¬ 
cords with our own regard for tho nostrums 
which are propagated as “ universal remedies,” 
and these nostrum dealers, that we give it space. 
—Eds. 
Wc have received several circulars from 
tho “Union Fertilizer Company of Now 
York,” crying up the merits of a miraculous 
panacea of thefts, which they kindly offer to 
the public at the low price of $45 per ton, 
packed in barrels ready for shipment. The 
Secretary of this Company rejoices in the 
very appropriate and suggestive name of A. 
S. Quackenrosh, and he assures us that the 
article which he offers for sale, besides being 
an excellent Fertilizer, is “ sure death and 
extermination to the Canker-worm, the Cur- 
culio, flic Apple Moth, the Potato Bug, the 
Cotton Worm, the Tobacco Worm, the Hop 
Louse, the Army Worm, the Currant Bug, 
and all descriptions of insect and vermicular 
life which infest and devastate the Orchard, 
tho Garden, or the Farm.” 01 course, as 
with all other quack remedies blazoned forth 
with such a vast parade of bosh, there is a 
host of certificates appended to the printed 
Circular, showing how “the Insect aud 
Worm Exterminator” was applied by Mr. 
Jones to his currant hushes, and how not 
long afterwards Mr. Jones’ currant bushes 
were entirely free from worms, though they 
had previously been swarming with “ ver¬ 
micular life;” how Mr. Smith, who had 
manured his potato patch with the Patent 
Exterminator, raised a much better crop ol 
potatoes than his neighbor Thompson, who 
had tried to grow potatoes without any ma¬ 
nure at all; and how a dozen different men, 
whose orchards were formerly much troubled 
with canker-worms, aud who have, for the 
last year or two, been drenching the tipple 
trees with heroic doses of this never-failing 
Bug-destroyer, have scarcely seen a single 
canker-worm on their trees, ever since they 
invested their money in the Great Miraculous 
Insect-killing Exterminator. But who does 
not know that, whether the “ Exterminator ” 
be applied or not, all currant worms after 
they have got their growth disappear from 
among the leaves in order to form their 
cocoons ? Who denies that every Fertilizer, 
that contains no other ingredients than clean 
sand, must necessarily be more or less bene¬ 
ficial to some, crop or other; and that though 
it may be positively injurious to wheat, to 
corn, to hops and to fruit trees, it may yet be 
an advantageous preparation to apply to po¬ 
tatoes? Lastly, what well informed Orcli- 
ardisfc is not aware that, for the last year or 
two, the Canker-worm in several widely re¬ 
mote regions in the United States has ceased 
to swarm as it used to do — most probably 
from the action of the different parasites that 
prey upon it, either when it is in the egg or 
when it is hi the larva state? The trouble 
with tdl such panaceas as this vaunted New 
York “ Exterminator” is, that we hear noth¬ 
ing of the ninety anti nine cases where the 
Universal Remedy was applied and found to 
do no good, while in tins one case where the 
medicine worked well, or was supposed to 
work well, tins happy experimenter lauds it 
to the skies in a flaming advertisement. In 
the words of the veteran sportsman, when 
his juvenile companions were bragging of 
their achievements with the fowling-piece— 
What Is hit Is history, 
But what is missed is mystery. 
Of course, tor all such interesting and in¬ 
structive advertisements as those above re¬ 
ferred to, the eloquent inditer of them may, 
or may not, get “ value received ” from this 
Right Honorable Company, which has ap¬ 
parently been born under the most felicitous 
auspices in Wall street, N. Y., and after 
being carefully nursed through a rickety 
childhood in the Gold Room of the Great 
City of Gotham, is now in its mature man¬ 
hood flooding the whole country with its 
elegantly printed Circulars, in praise of “ the 
only sure Remedy for destroying Worms 
and Insects injurious to Vegetation.” 
“ But,” it will be said, “ these are mere 
vague generalities.” Well, then, let us come 
to close quarters with A. S. Quackkxbosk, 
Esq. You assert roundly, friend Quacken- 
bosh, that your Patent Nostrum is “ sure 
death and extermination” to all descriptions 
of insect life. Of course, then, you have 
experimented with the different noxious in¬ 
sects that afflict the Farmer, the Fruit 
Grower and the Gardener, and are tolerably 
familiar with the natural history of each of 
them. Of course you are well acquainted 
with the twelve very distinct bugs that at¬ 
tack the Potato, as long ago catalogued in 
this Magazine, and the two different worms 
that infest the Cotton Plant, namely, the 
Cotton Caterpillar and the Boll Worm. Of 
course you arc thoroughly aware that tho 
Tobacco Worm which troubles the Connec¬ 
ticut tobacco farmer is a very distinct spe¬ 
cies from that other Tobacco Worm which j 
is found in Kentucky and Maryland and 
Virginia. Of course you arc completely 
posted as to the well-ascertained fact, Unit 
the Cotton Caterpillar of the South, the 
true Army Worm of the Northern States, and 
in the northwest corner of New York the 
Tent Caterpillar of the Forest, are all three of 
them, in certain localities, popularly desig¬ 
nated by the same name of “ Army Worm.” 
Of course you yourself perfectly under¬ 
stand what you mean by the term “ Currant 
Bug; ” but, for our own part, we must can¬ 
didly confess that we never heard any par¬ 
ticular insect called by this name, though 
we have in our time listened to a great deal 
of talk about, “Currant Borers,” and “Cur¬ 
rant Worms,” and “Currant, Plant-lice.” 
Since, then, Mr. Secretary Quacicenbosh, 
you know so much on all these different en¬ 
tomological points—which after all arc the 
mere A, 1?, C of the science—how in heaven’s 
name does it come about that, on the very 
Title-page of your Great Braggadocio Circu¬ 
lar, you warrant your Patent “Fertilizer” 
to be sure death and exterminat ion to “ THE 
Potato Bug, THE Cotton Worm, THE To¬ 
bacco Worm, THE Army Worm, and THE 
Currant Bug?” Arc you actually green 
enough to suppose that there is only one 
kind of Potato Bug, when in reality there are 
twelve ? That there is only one Worm 
that infests the cotton plaut, when iu point, 
of fact there arc two ? That there is but one 
Tobacco Worm, and one so-called Army 
Worm, when every entomologist knows that 
there are two insects which pass by the 
former, and three which pass by the latter 
name? And lastly do you expect us poor 
ignorant country folks to understand, at the 
iirst glance, What you mean by your recon¬ 
dite and learned disquisition about “THE 
Currant Bug?” Quackenbosii ! wc are 
really sorry for you ! We fear greatly that, 
instead of being a decently good entomolo¬ 
gist,, tolerably well acquainted wit h the Nox¬ 
ious Insects of the United States, you are a 
mere entomological Quack; and that, in¬ 
stead of talking good common horse-sense to 
ns, you are uttering all the time nothing but 
Bosn! 
In sober serious earnest, what Stock- 
grower would trust a. sick horse or a sick 
cow to a veterinary surgeon, who actually 
did not know the difference between a horse 
and a cow? And yet thousands of farmers 
are trusting every day to the delusive hum¬ 
bug, which is broached by this New York 
Company, about the hundreds of different 
kinds of Noxious Insects that swarm among 
ns in the country, when it is demonstrable 
from the very circulars, which this precious 
Company puts forth with such brazen ef¬ 
frontery, that it cannot tell the difference be¬ 
tween a Bee and a Beetle; and that the only 
insects with which it, is practically familiar 
are the insects of city life, namely, Cock¬ 
roaches, House-flies, Mosquitoes, Fleas mid 
Bed-bugs, with perhaps a small infusion of 
Head-lice and Body-lice. Farmers of the 
United States! how many more times are 
you going to lie fooled by a set of men, who 
live in a wilderness of brick walls and brown- 
stone palaces; and know no more about you 
and your thousand and one insect enemies, 
than a Scotch Highlander does about knee- 
breeches ? 
In one word, we would earnestly advise 
our readers, whenever they meet with a pre¬ 
partition which is warranted to destroy all 
bugs without exception—no matter whether 
it, be labeled as “ Best’s Invigorator,” or as 
the “ Insect Exterminator” of some Eastern 
Company—to set down the authorn of that 
preparation as quacks, charlatans and hum¬ 
bugs. Different insects difl'er far more wide¬ 
ly from each other, than docs a Horse from 
a Hog, or a Sheep from a Rabbit; and as we 
know that food that would poison a horse 
may often be eaten with impunity by a hog, 
and that a sheep can thrive Upon a great, va¬ 
riety of weeds which would he deadly poison 
to almost any other plant-feeding quadruped, 
we may reasonably infer a ‘priori— even if 
we have no special experience on the subject 
—that a particular chemical.preparation may 
sometimes lie destructive to one particular 
form of insect life, and yet prove to he en¬ 
tirely innocuous or even salutary when em¬ 
ployed against every other species of insects. 
Nothing is more certain than that there is 
no Royal Road to the destruction of the Bad 
Bugs; and that the only way in which we 
can fight them satisfactorily, is by carefully 
studying out the habits of each species, and 
adapting the mode of attack to the peculiari¬ 
ties of the fortification which we are about 
to besiege. The tactics that took Sevastopol 
would have failed at Vicksburg; and Rich¬ 
mond would never have fallen, if the opera¬ 
tions which proved so successful against the 
Mississippi fortress had been exclusively em¬ 
ployed against the capital city of the South¬ 
ern Confederation. 
-- 
The Squash Hus, the* Entomologist reports, has 
not, touched the White Bush Scollop squash, 
while it has almost ruined the Hubbard squash 
alongside ot It. To kill this bug, laydown pieces 
of boards along- the rows. The bugs will gather, 
during the night, under the boards and may be 
destroyed in the morning. 
Scientific anti fistful. 
THE MOON. 
The moon is our nearest celestial neigh¬ 
bor. How the stars grow pale and dim in 
her queenly light. And yet those modest, 
twinkling stars are as much greater than the 
moon—one might almost say—as the moon 
is greater than a Lucifer match. Yet, she is 
of great importance to us. Without her 
there would he no easy division of the year 
into months; the navigator on the high seas 
would lose one great help in his reckonings; 
and there would be no eclipses. When we 
reflect that even the dates of history submit 
to be rectified by these, we have a glimpse 
of their value beyond the mere raising of a 
momentary wonder. 
“ The man in the moon ’’ is her oldest and 
only inhabitant, and he is nothing but a shade. 
Her face is dreadfully pitted and scarred,— 
torn into high and rugged mountains, and 
valleys dark and deep. The shadows of 
these hills falling across the vales give the 
rude out line that somewhat resembles a face. 
But near as the moon is, we never saw 
hut about half her surface. She has two 
sides, and what the other may present we 
Can only conjecture, for as she goes around 
the earth and turns on her axis in exactly 
the same time, she always turns the same 
face to us. This slow revolution on her axis 
is one of her motions. This, combined with 
that around lint earth, and that of tho earth 
around the sun, and that of the sun around 
Alcyone, and that, of Alcyone around -? 
the problem of calculating her true path in 
the heavens becomes a very complicated 
affair. We may safely leave that to tho 
astronomers, 
But she is not alone in this. There is a 
sisterhood of moons us well us of planets; 
four accompanying Jupiter -in Ids course, 
and eight add right royally to the splendors 
of Saturn’s evening sky. The planet Uranus 
has four, and far-wandering Neptune one. 
But these distant moons have little In tercet 
save to the deeper students of the skies. 
Mathematicians revel here. Their methods, 
so marvelously refined, may here, find appro¬ 
priate work. I notice that Professor Esty 
of Amherst lias been making himself famous 
by a computation of the orbits of the moons 
of Saturn. 
But to return to our own moon, foreteller 
of rain or drouth to some, now frightening 
children, and now giving children of forty 
years or more a superstitious tremor, some¬ 
times, as her faint crescent gleams over the 
unfortunate left shoulder, let us take one 
farewell glance at her in the glad liarvest¬ 
time. Why do wo say “harvest moon?” 
Is it because then, as if to befriend the hus¬ 
bandman for a number of consecutive nights, 
she pours forth the radiance of her full orb 
at nearly the same hour? Poetry must yield 
to mathematics. A little observation shows 
Ihtil. at. the lime of the harvest moon the 
plane of her orbit cuts our horizon at a sharp 
angle. Hence it is tlmt in her dally progress 
of about thirteen degrees, gaining but little 
in the perpendicular below the plane of om- 
vision, there is but little difference in the 
times of two consecutive risings. 
J. W. Quinby. 
- ■ -++ 4 .- 
USEFUL AND SCIENTIFIC ITEMS. 
Ink and Light. —The action of the light 
will obliterate writing made in purple ink. 
Important documents should, therefore, be 
written in some other color, really black ink 
being the best, Much of the so-called black 
ink is Iml. a muddy brown, and should be 
left on the shelves of the shop-keeper. 
Motion and Life Inseparable .—The cele¬ 
brated Dr. Gregory, in the course of one of his 
medical lectures at, Edinburgh, stated that, 
one cannot stand perfectly motionless for 
half an hour; that he had once tried to do 
so, and had fainted at the end of twenty 
minutes, the blood requiring the aid of mo¬ 
tion from the body in order to retain its full 
circulat ing power. 
Old Ocean in Repose .— An unusual sight 
was presented on the coast at Newport, R. 
I., on November 13th — the ocean in a state 
of repose—the long continuance of westerly 
weather having had the effect of calming 
down the sea to a river-like stillness. At 
the bathing beach there was an entire ab¬ 
sence of surf, and a small boat could have 
been launched from there with ease at any 
time during the day. The tides, too, were 
remarkably scant during the week, there 
being scarcely three feet rise and fall. 
Freezing the Brain. —A curious physiolog¬ 
ical experiment has recently been made. A 
few grains of barley were placed before a 
hungry pigeon. While pecking at, the barley 
the brain of the pigeon was frozen by a 
spray of ether. The bird, being thus de¬ 
prived of consciousness, ceased pecking, 
and remained as if dead. The barley wua 
then removed, and, the ether spray having 
ceased, the brain was allowed to thaw. 
The bird soon returned to life, and its first 
act was to renew the pecking for a moment, 
though no food was before ii. 
V 
