BI(inmo , j#3.00 PER YEAR. 
XCRMS . ! ^mgie ,\o., Ei-lu Pei 
NEW YORK CITY AND ROCHESTER, N. Y, 
A«itiTPT l, c( • ! ^ Ueolunon Ht,, I\^w YorU # 
^***^"”*|82 llullalo Hi., Kocheater. 
YUL XXIII. NO. 26. 
FOR THE WEEK ENDING SATURDAY, JULY i, 1871. 
WH0I.E NO. H18, 
1 Entered according to Aot of Congress* in the year 1871, by I), n. T. Moohr, ill the utllce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.] 
be f.loultnt-D‘»rli. 
CARRIER PIGEONS. 
The Voyngeurs or the Continent. 
We have heretofore given several species 
of the Carrier Pigeon, and give in this con¬ 
nection a well-developed specimen of those 
used during the seige of Paris—the Voyagcur 
or Carrier Pigeon of the Continent. This 
variety of Carriers have much more power 
of wing tliau the English, and possesses a 
more highly developed liomeing instinct 
than any of the other breeds. They did 
good service for the Parisians during the re¬ 
cent siege, imposed upon them by the Prus¬ 
sians, when they had no access to news from 
the outside world, save through those little 
winged messengers. 
This breed of Carriers are natives of Bel¬ 
gium, where pigeon races are considered a 
national sport, and patronized and supported 
by all classes of society, from the nobility to 
the peasant. These pigeons are the largest 
of the Carrier tribe—nearly equaling in size 
the Blue Rock. They are a very hardy bird 
and stand hardship and endurance better 
than any other variety. It is said these birds 
are trained by stages at gradually increasing 
distances, and when the final stage has been 
reached they are all sent off together, being 
liberated at an early hour in the morning— 
many of them flying homeward at the rate 
of from thirty to forty miles an hour, accord¬ 
ing to the distance. 
Some of these birds were located in Paris 
before lhe commencement of the siege, and 
were taken from the city during that time in 
balloons, and allowed to return with mes¬ 
sages, when the Provisional Government of 
France was established at Tours. The charge 
for pigeon messages into Paris was one franc a 
word. The letters and messages were tran¬ 
scribed on a large sheet of paper, micro-photo¬ 
graphed on a small scale, and then inclosed 
in a quill, which was secured to the tail 
feathers. As many as three or four hundred 
messages being conveyed on a small sheet 
about two by one and a quarter inches in 
size; these dispatches were directed to the 
chief of tlie Paris telegraph service, by whom 
the messages were transcribed by the aid of 
a powerful magnifying glass, and tlieu for¬ 
warded to their destination. 
THE EGG SWINDLE. 
Tiie following, from the London Garden¬ 
ers’ Magazine, about English egg venders, 
is not inappropriate nor improper in view 
of the information an American poultry 
paper recently vouchsafed to its readers, 
and which, we published on page 336, cur¬ 
rent volume of KtiRAi. New- Yorker: 
The egg swindle is in its way equal in au¬ 
dacity and succeas to any swindle of modern 
times. Why it should enjoy immunity from 
the assaults of tire press is a mystery, for 
never was a fraud better entitled to expos¬ 
ure, or its victims more deserving of protec¬ 
tion. But wluit is the egg swindle ? If our 
readers will look out, they will very shortly 
he advertised of its nature by announce¬ 
ments in the agricultural anti horticultural 
paper of “ Eggs for setting,” at so much per 
set > warranted always from ” prize birds,” 
and “ select” and “ celebrated strains.” The 
puces charged arc by no means exorbitant, 
" e,<i the eggs as good as the vender himself 
"‘"i d put iii the nests of brooding hens in 
118 °"’ u yard. Nor, indeed, are all die ven- 
! l,(| eggs at fancy prices swindlers; for 
111 thL, as in other of the like nature, there 
a,e ,lf>r *orable exceptions, ami it is bard that 
tlie J l|f}t should suffer for the unjust. But 
we arc bound to say that a large proportion 
I a Ur ‘ **>ld for “ selling” are worth- 
eas ’ UU( ^ R C! in only be by catching new 
(l, h es fhat this particular trade can live, 
tobably the rogues in the business make 
but a small gain in the end, for those who 
have been bitten once will be twice shy, and 
a second order can scarcely be expected 
from a fancier who has found by experience 
that eggs from A or B, though obtained at a 
high rate per setting, are of no more use for 
improving a yard than so many pieces of 
clmlk. The swindle cannot be said to con¬ 
sist in sending out eggs of inferior strains, or 
of breeds other limn those advertised; for, 
obtained them? When eggs have become 
rotten in the warm nest, who is to say that 
they were dead when first placed there f In 
such cases it is fair to make general deduc¬ 
tions, and it may bo said with little fear of 
contradiction that fully three-fourths of all 
the eggs sold to amateur breeders of poultry 
are dead as door nails at the very moment 
they are packed up in compliance with their 
“obliging” and “pre-paid” orders. We 
kurti fjttsbanirriK 
SETTING MILK FOR CREAM. 
I wish you would give me a description of tiie 
beat method or getting milk to make butter. I 
have always used pans, butuow I have in con¬ 
templation a design to use vats with running: 
water, with the addition of leo when needed, to 
cool it. What size vats will be moBt convenient 
a illd VO VA.Gr 10UXt CJA. liltlli.lt PIG XUOtN. 
save that form and color afford some indica¬ 
tions of the breeds they represent, the pur¬ 
chaser lias usually no means of knowing if 
lie possesses the birds whose eggs he offers. 
The fact is, dead eggs tell no tales about the 
quality of birds that produced them, hut they 
do proclaim the seller to be a scoundrel; and 
it is high time t hat a clear case of swindling 
by this system were submitted to the opin¬ 
ion of a legal tribunal under an accusation 
of fraud. 
It is the custom of the fraudulent dealer 
in eggs to kill them before they quit his 
hands. He may in mercy send one or two 
live eggs of the right sort with a parcel of 
dead ones of any sort that in color and size 
answer sufficiently for the purpose of trade. 
No one needs to be told that to render an 
egg useless lor the nest is easy enough, with¬ 
out spoiling its appearance. A few seconds’ 
immersion in boiling water will accomplish 
the object of the cheat. A smart shock ac¬ 
complished by a quick movement of the 
hand while the egg is grasped firmly, will 
sufficiently rupture the membranes and dis¬ 
arrange the fluid contents as to serve the 
same purpose. It matters not how eggs are 
killed ; it is a fact that they are killed pre¬ 
paratory to being sold at from one to five 
shillings each, and that is the infamy we feel 
it our duty to expose. Those who kill eggs 
cau always betake themselves to the same 
argument as those who kill garden seeds. 
They can repudiate the accusation of fraud 
by charging the purchaser with unskillful- 
ness in obtaining progeny. 
When seeds have been in the ground a 
month and there is no plant to justify the 
sowing, who is to say the seeds have been 
killed in heated ovens before the purchaser 
warn our readers to buy of breeders in whom 
they can trust by personal knowledge or pub¬ 
lic repute, and to lie content witli eggs of no 
character at all, so long as they are alive, 
rather than pay fancy prices to people they 
know nothing of for eggs of the finest breeds 
and strains that ever were known. Those 
who possess the best birds are the least de¬ 
sirous to part with eggs, but a few who make 
a trade of egg selling manage to whip up a 
little local fame at exhibitions for advertising 
purposes, and being unable to supply eggs of 
first-rate quality, resort to the practice of 
killing what they sell, that, us regards the de¬ 
tection of the fraud, the purchaser may lie 
placed in the very first instance horn de combat. 
-- 
POULTRY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Hens 1 .ay I mi Soil Shell 
We have letters from several correspond¬ 
ents relative to hens laying soft, or shelless 
eggs, and asking for a remedy for the same. 
The laying of shelless eggs arises, as a gen¬ 
eral tiling, from undue excitement of the egg 
organs. If our correspondents wifi reduce 
the feed of their fowls, the number of their 
shelless eggs will soon he lessened, 
W hut’s the Mutter with my Chickens f 
Mv chickens don’t lay; what’s the matter ? 
They arc young fowls. They seem to want 
to roost all the while. What’s the matter 
with them ?—N. li. W., Aiken, 8. C. 
Food lor Pigeon*. 
G. B. Ali.en, Homer, N. Y. — The best 
food we know of for pigeons, and that on 
which they will thrive, is a mixture of peas, 
Indian corn and barley. Peas with a change 
of corn is excellent for them. 
for thirty cows, aiul how shall 1 arrange the 
milk vats in one or more reservoirs. I would 
like to have yon (five me all the general infor¬ 
mation, and expense in carrying: out your plans 
of such a milk or butter apparatus.—H omrii 
Kawson. 
There are two plans that may he adopt¬ 
ed so as to secure the benefit of holding the 
milk at un even temperature by the use of 
running water. The Orange Co. plan is to 
have tanks or pools excavated in the earth. 
These pools are about two feet deep, six feet 
wide and twelve feet long. They are flowed 
with water, say, to within two or three inch¬ 
es of the top or surface of the earth. Then 
pails twenty inches long and eight inches 
broad are provided to hold the milk which, 
as soon as it comes from the cow, is strained 
in the pails and immersed in the water-vat 
for the milk to cream. These pails hold 
about fourteen to sixteen quarts, and two 
pails, on au average, are required for a cow. 
We do not know what the cost of these 
pails is at the present time; but probably 
from fifty to seventy-five cents each. 
The cost of making a milk room on the 
Orange Co. plan cannot be stated with any 
degree of accuracy, as there is very great va¬ 
riation in price for labor and material in dif¬ 
ferent localities. Again, some farmers would 
do a considerable share of the work with 
the farm hands and farm teams at odd spells, 
which would be a great saving in expense 
over the cost of erection, Azc., where the 
work was to be done under contract. These 
estimates properly belong to the locality 
where the buildings are to be erected, since 
all the items wc have named are better un¬ 
derstood there than with us. 
The other plan referred to for setting 
milk is less expensive thau that last de¬ 
scribed, inasmuch as a good common milk 
bouse may be used for the purpose. In this 
case a set of pans, ou the Jen kings or 
Jewett plan, may be adopted instead of the 
cold water pools and the milk pails. These 
pans are double—that is, an oblong tin pun 
placed in a wooden vat with space between 
the two for water. The water may be con¬ 
ducted from the spring or penstock by 
means of pipes to fill the space between the 
vats, and then conducted off by means of 
pipes so that there is a constant flow of 
water surrounding the inner pan, and thus 
the milk may he kept at an even tempera¬ 
ture, say at 00 , although the temperature of 
the atmosphere of the room may lie 10° or 
18° higher. These pans are made of various 
sizes, and each should be large enough to 
accommodate the whole mess of milk from 
the dairy at, one milking. Four pans are re¬ 
quired to make a set, and when the fourth 
pan is wanted for use the first is ready to 
skim. That is, the milk in the first pan 
will be thirty-six hours old when the milk is 
ready to be strained into the fourth pan. 
Thus, it will be seen, after the four pans 
once become full the first milk is to be 
skimmed and emptied, ami is then ready for 
the next milking. In other words, one pan 
is to ho skimmed and emptied of its 
Bkimmod milk every twelve hours, and each 
pan or milk when ready to skim is thirty-six 
hours old. The time is quite long enough 
to get up all the cream on this plan; the 
temperature having been kept uniform, the 
cream is in good order and in condition to 
be made Into the best butter. These pans 
are about five inches deep, and about one 
square foot of pan-bottom will be sufficient 
for the milk of two cows. 
A twenty cow pan costs about $12; so 
that the entire cost of pans for a dairy of the 
size named, all arranged lor receiving the 
water underneath the milk, will be a little 
less than $50. For ten cows the expense is 
about $30, and for fifty cows $80. In the 
arrangement of the pans they stand side by 
side, and the water is constantly flowing 
under all the pans, or from one to the other. 
In case the pan containing Uie warm milk 
happens to he nearest the supply pipe, the 
communication of water to the other pans 
should be closed until the warm milk is 
cooled, when it "nay be kept up from one to 
the other. Thus it will he seen that good 
butter may he made in warm weather on 
the above plan without going to the trouble 
of building an expensive milk cellar. 
Our correspondent will readily under¬ 
stand, from what we have said, the general 
features of the plans named for setting 
milk, and from the figures given, it will be 
easy to estimate pretty nearly wliat the cost 
will be for a dairy of thirty cows. 
-- 
DAIRY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Factory Fixture*, Ace. 
A correspondent from Minnesota writes: 
“ We intend building a cheese factory and 
wish to put in the best Improved fixtures, as 
vats, presses, heaters, &c., &c., and wish your 
advice as-to kind. If you would give us a 
short list of the principal things used in a 
factory and those you consider best, you 
would very much oblige us. We should like 
to know what wages we should have to pay 
for a good cheese maker from New York, 
the Company paying his expenses here and 
back.” 
The work on “ Dairy Husbandry,” soon 
to be issued from the Rural New-Yorker 
office, discusses cheese factory fixtures very 
fully, and gives illustrations of all the im¬ 
plements used at these establishments. Our 
correspondent will find the subject much 
more satisfactorily treated in this book than 
wc can give space to in these columns; 
While the cuts show the peculiarity of differ¬ 
ent heaters, vats, &c., and their adaptability 
to special cases. 
First class cheese makers demand from 
