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OQBE’S BUBAL HEW-YOBXEB 
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^omcjitiq (Beano mo. 
REPLY TO M. J. SMITH, IN RURAL NOV. 8. 
I think my life never yielded me happier 
days than when I was keeping house in the 
city, on a small salary. I, too, went from 
the abundance of a farm to my own little 
home, and solved for myself the problem of 
wholesome living at a very moderate cost. 
Firstly , the salary was not spent till earned 
—and t hat was the first plank in our plat¬ 
form. We nr.ver asked credit. At the very 
beginning we made a careful estimate of 
probable expenses, and allowed a margin 
for mistakes. By paying down, and by buy¬ 
ing in quantities we saved no inconsiderable 
amount iu the course of a year. 
But I suppose my questioner craves some¬ 
thing more definite. Does she mean, I won¬ 
der, to be a vegetarian l That method would 
not be an economical one in my household. 
In the days I write of, I laid great stress upon 
soups. Boiling, as w« all kuow, is the way 
to obtain the greatest amount of nourish¬ 
ment from meat, und the cheapest grades of 
meat yield excellent soups. While porter¬ 
house steaks cost twenty cents per pound, or 
over, beef may be had for eight cents, equal* 
ly good for soups, and free from bonus. Thin 
beef from the flank rolled and tightly tied in 
cylindrical form is elegant to cut cold. Eor 
variety it may he spiced, or spread with 
dressing of bread crumbs, aud after boiling 
let it brown in the oven. The variety or 
soups Is endless ; but all of them, to be made 
in perfection, should be simmered slowly in a 
tightly covered saucepan—should be allowed 
to cool and every particle of fat removed, 
then heated to the boiling point but not 
allowed to boil. Soups are varied by flavor¬ 
ings, and one need hardly repeat a soup from 
one year’s end to another. 
I cannot give bills of fare, since what 
would suit me and mine might not do at all 
for M. J. 8. & Co. One thing occurs to me, 
however,—a caution as to the waste of flour 
and bread, especially the latter. Not a crumb 
need mold, and every fragment can bo 
made palatable iu drawings, " Isaac” brewis, 
fried dishes, puddings, &c. Hominy, farine, 
rice, tapioca, sago and oat meal, give the 
basis of many healthful dishes for breakfast 
and supper, as well as desserts. Boiled rice 
left from dinner is very nice when cooked 
over with a bit of butter, the yolk of an egg 
and a dURt of pepper : or it may be used for 
croquettes or for griddle cakes. The butter 
question is a serious one. to a young house¬ 
keeper. I used to save beef drippings and 
skimming* with scrupulous care, clarify 
them aud use for much of my shortening. 
Milk dishes number their host—there are 
delicious desserts to be made with ueitlier 
butter nor eggs, and many without, milk. I 
know of one table amply supplied, and with 
many so-called luxuries, at an average of 
less than live dollars per week. 
On the whole I am almost envious of my 
questioner, aud if I can help her at all by 
such hasty notes as these, I am quite at her 
service. Dobe Hamilton. 
--- 
GRIDDLE CAKES. 
palate and stomach, is one of the illustrations 
of human depravity. 
The best griddle cakes t ever ate were 
stirred, with buttermilk, not too old, and 
just enough soda to counteract the acid, not 
more than an hour or two, or immediately 
before cooking, and were as tender, brown 
and puffy as one could wish. People who 
find buckwheat cakes too hearty for them to 
digest comfortably, may have nice breakfast 
cakes made in the same way of wheat or corn 
meal; they may also he made deliciously of 
nearly or quite sweet milk and a very little 
or no soda by heating an egg und stirring 
into the hatter. I would that every wife, 
mother and housekeeper had knowledge 
enough of chemistry to understand the bane¬ 
ful effects of rottenness In the food which 
they prepare for husbands, children and 
friends ; and of the poisonous solutions ct 
tiu to which they treat them at almost every 
meal, especially iu winter, when so much is 
prepared beforehand and left to “stand” 
until used. I have enough faith in woman¬ 
kind to believe that if they only knew, there 
would be less fermented bread, less batches 
of buckwheat cakes soured aud fermented 
for months in the batter-dishes, less apples 
and other acid fruit stewed, and allowed to 
stench hi tin pans for days and weeks. As 
for griddle cakes their millennium will have 
dawned when . 
Till- old fn*y middle, the Iron made griddle. 
The old greasy middle that "smokes up’ tlio house 
is forever banished from the cook-room, and 
the soapstone, griddle, rubbed with a little 
salt occasionally to keep it from “ sticking,” 
takes its place. Geualdink Geiimane. 
DOMESTIC BREVITIES. 
Ginger-Snaps, —One cup of molasses sor¬ 
ghum is best; one-half cup of sugar ; one 
egg ; one cup of butter and good lard mLxed ; 
one tablespounful of vinegar ; one teaspoon¬ 
ful of soda; ginger. Put the molasses iu a 
basin and set it. on a warm part of the stove. 
Put in the vinegar and soda, and stir it well. 
Put hi the shortening aud let it, stand till it 
melts. Beat the. sugar and egg together ; 
put into the basin ; add the ginger and flour 
to make it quite stiff ; knead it well, roll it 
thin, bake it quickly, thou keep them in a 
dry place and you will have excellent gin¬ 
ger-snaps.— d. v. W. 
Soft Ginger Cookies .—One cup of molas¬ 
ses ; two tablespoons of butter ; three table¬ 
spoons of water ; one teaspoon soda ; ginger. 
Roll out as soft as possible. Very nice.— 
d, V. W. 
d'ieittijk und Its 
METAL HANGING FOR WALLS. 
So the time for frosty mornings and hot. 
griddle cakes has come. ! and, throughout 
the laud, hundreds of housekeepers are 
“starting” a mess, that will foam like the 
waters of a soda fountain and rot and stink 
like the contents of a brewery ; and that is 
to be the elevating medium for “raising” 
their breakfast cakes from now until the 
summer’s sun drives the. frost from the air 
and pork grease and griduie cakes from their 
bill of fare ! People who live in cities and 
villages, and have only a scanty supply of 
milk, or none at all, have some excuse for 
stirring buckwheat cakes with warm water 
and "raising” them with yeast ; but the 
bat ter should never stand more than twelve 
hours and never in a tin dish. There never 
was a greater fallacy under the sun than 
“starting” buckwheat cakes as soon us the 
first frost comes and continuing them all 
whiter in the same tin batter-dish, without 
once emptying and cleaning, that there may 
be some of the first fermented, stenchy batch 
left to make them “ light; ” aud that farm¬ 
ers’ wives, who have barrels lull of sour milk 
and buttermilk, which is better, should adopt 
this fallacy and have their breakfast cakes 
a* blue aud solid us clay and whetstones and, 
when fried in the grease from a piece of pork, 
about as unwholesome and indigestible, 
when they might, with the same labor, have 
them light, crisp, tender and brown ; should 
make, that which might and ought to be a 
luxury an abomination, repugnant alike to 
It is now proposed to use hanging made of 
metal; and an.account of this new invention, 
which comes to us from Paris, has been read 
before the Society of Arts. The metal em¬ 
ployed is tinfoil, in sheets about sixteen feet 
long, und from thirty to forty inches wide. 
The sheets are painted and dried at a high 
temperature, and are then decorated with 
many different patterns, such as foliage, 
flowers, geometrical figures, imitations of 
wood or landscapes. When decorated, the 
sheets are varnished aud again dried, and 
are then ready for sale. Tinfoil is in itself 
naturally tough ; and the coats laid upon it 
in preparing it for the market increase the 
toughness. The hanging of these metallic 
sheets is similar to paper hanging, except 
that the wall is varnished with a weak kind 
of varnish, fluid the sheet applied thereto. 
Thus in this way a room or a house may he 
newly painted, without any smell of paint to 
annoy or harm the inmates. 
---- 
GEOLOGICAL PERIODS. 
Prof. J. D. Dana, in speaking of the slow 
process of mountain making, estimates that 
the interval between the beginning of t he 
primordial and the metamorphism in the 
Green Mountains was at least 10,()0u,000 years; 
that the next epoch of great disturbance was 
at, the close of the carboniferous era, in which 
the Alleghanies were folded up, while tto 
Appalachians were at least 153,000,000 years 
in making. The displacements of the Con¬ 
necticut Rivet*sandstoSo, and the accompa¬ 
nying igneous ejections which occurred be¬ 
fore the cretaceous era, took place some 
7,000,OUf) years after the Appalachian revolu¬ 
tion. The earth’s contraction required an 
exceedingly long era in order to accumulate 
force sufficient to produce a general yielding 
and pliation or displacement of the beds, and 
to start a new range of prominent elevations 
over the earth’s crust. 
PERPETUAL PASTE. 
Dissolve a teaspoonful of alum in a quart j 
of water. When cold, stir in as much flour - 
as willgive it the consistency ol' thick cream, 
being particular to beat up all the lumps ; 
stir in as much powdered resin ns will lay ou 
a dime, and throw in half a dozen cloves to f 
give it a pleasant odor. Have on the tire a ; 
teacup of boiling water, pour the flour mix- j 
ture into it, stirring well at the time. In a ‘ 
few minutes it will bo of the consistency of • 
mush. Pour it into an earthen or china ves- i 
sel ; let it cool ; lay a cover on, and put in a, 
cool place. When needed for use, take out a j 
portion .and solten it with warm water. 
Paste thus made will last twelve months. It, 
is better than gum, as it doos not gloss the' 
paper, and can be written on. 
■-♦-*-♦- , 
SCIENTIFIC AND USEFUL NOTES. 
Freezing of Sap in Winter :— A remarkable 
paper has recently been contributed to a 
German magazine, by Prof. Mohr, showing 
not only that the sap does not freeze in trees 
and plants which live through hard winters, 
but also the reason why it docs not. freeze. 
He says that though it is true water as we 
generally see and understand it, freezes at 
thirty-two degrees, it does not do so when its 
particles are finely divided. Tropical plants 
have large cells, and these are the ones in 
which the gap freezes; but in plants with 
very small cells in which the liquid particles 
tire finely divided, there is no freezing of the 
liquids until after the structure has received 
injury of some sort. This is true he says of 
iu sects and insect pupae. They never freeze; 
but i'Tit. one apart, soon after the humors 
solidify, and on thawing life flies. 
Lime for Preserving Timber.—A writer in 
Chambers's Journal says that certain facts 
have been made known which show that 
lime is a good preserver of timber. Ships 
and barges used for the transport of lime last 
longer than others. A small coasting schoon¬ 
er, laden with lime, was cast ashore and sunk. 
She was raised and set afloat once more, and 
remained sound fyr thirty years. Again, a 
platform of nine planks was used to mix 
mortar on during three, generations ; then, 
being no longer required, was neglected, and 
at length was hidden by grass that grew 
over it. Sixty years afterwards, on clearing 
tlie ground, it was discovered sound and 
well-preserved. 
Zinc Signs. —The Manufacturer and Build¬ 
er gives the following recipe for lettering 
zino labels :—Two parts acetate of copper 
(verdigris), 2 parts chloride of ammonium 
(sal-ammoniac), 1 part lampblack, 20 parts 
water ; mix well In a glass-stoppered bottle, 
aud shake before using. For flue lettering, 
you may apply it by means of a blunt-point¬ 
ed steel pen. 
Tragacanth Mucilage. —Take ol' powdered 
trugacanth, l dram ; glycerine, 0 drams ; 
water, enough to make in all 10 ounces. Rub 
tlie tragacanth in a mortar with the glycer¬ 
ine and then add the water. This will pro* 
‘ dliee a mucilage at once of excellent quality. 
lilack Branding ink.— Triturate together 
1 part of pine soot and 2 parts of Prussian 
blue with a little glycerine ; then add 0 parts 
J- of gum-arabic and sufficient glycerine to 
form a suitable paste. 
CAPACITY 
HONEY BOXES. 
A writer (we don’t kuow who nor where 
it first appeared) makes the following state¬ 
ment :—After weighing a great many boxes 
of different sizes, and figuring it all out, I 
have found, as a rule, that a box when filled 
with newly-made comb, and the. honey all 
sealed over, will contain three pounds of 
honey to every one hundred cubic inches of 
snare contained in the box Tims a box ten 
space contained in the box Tims a box ten 
inches long, six inches wide, live inches deep, 
inside measure, will contain tlireo hundred 
cubic inches of space, and will consequently 
hold nine pounds, when filled as above sta¬ 
ted. This rule holds good with any size of a 
box, from twelve pounds down to five 
pounds. Boxes of the capacity of fifteen to 
twenty pounds usually contain a trifle in 
excess of the above estimate, while tnoso of 
twenty-five pounds capacity, frequently con¬ 
tain two or three pounds in excess. 
----- 
■Winter. Feed for Beks.—A Gemma apia¬ 
rian has exnerimented for twelve years with 
winter food for bees, and says A mixture 
of seven parts sugar aud four parts water, 
reduced to two parts sugar and one part 
water, gixes a simp for bees as healthy and 
nourishing as the best honey. This mixture 
loses, while over the fire, one portion of its 
water, thus reducing it. to two parts sugar 
aud one part water—the best proportions. 
APPLE TREE BORERS. 
_________ 
I wish to inquire something about borers, 
especially those which attack the Mountain 
ash aud apple trees. Those found in the 
Mountain ash are of a brown color and about 
an inch long, and they boro directly into the 
solid wood, near the siirfa e of the ground. 
Those iu the apple trees arc of a lighter color, 
and work between t he bark aiul wood, and 
when the bark is removed they fall out. 
Any Information in regard to these pests will 
be thankfully received.—W. T. Conklin, 
Luzerne Co., Pet. 
The two kinds of borers you mention at¬ 
tack both the apple and Mountain ash, and 
we frequently find them in the same tree. 
The larger borer of the two, which you found 
boring into the solid wood of the Mountain 
ash, is the larva, of a very pretty beetle 
known as Saperda Candida of Fabrictts, or 
S. hid It at a of 8 AY. We presume Mr. SAY 
named it IHvittala because it has two longi¬ 
tudinal white stripes on the back ; hut as 
Farriops named and described before Mr. 
Say, bis name must stand in lieu of the lat¬ 
ter. ThiB beetle i« about an inch long, quite 
slender, having three brown and two white 
stripes on the thorax and wing covers. It 
usually .appears iu spring, living about, at 
night and hiding during the day. 
The female deposits her eggs in the crev¬ 
ices of the bark near t he gromid, where they 
soon hatch, the grubs boring directly into 
the tree, as you state. Now wc have always 
noticed that this beetle prefers young trees 
to very old cues, also, those trees around the 
stems of which grass and weeds have been 
allowed to grow through the summer ; and 
probably for the very good reason that the 
bark of young trees, as well as those shaded, 
is tender ; and instinct directing the female 
saperda to choos« a spot where her young 
will most readily find the food required. If 
instinct guides her in selecting trees belong¬ 
ing to the same family, such as the Apple, 
Mountain ash and Hawthorn, upon which 
to deposit her eggs, it certainly would not 
fail to aid her in making some discriminat ion 
in finding the best spot upon the stem. Now, 
i his little beetle docs not go blundering about 
laying a few eggs upon the Oak, Hickory or 
Spruce, not knowing whether her young 
could live upon this wood or not; but she 
knows how to feed her offspring much bet¬ 
ter than many bipeds who might affect to 
despise so minute a member of the animal 
kingdom. We do not suppose that keeping 
the ground free from all weeds or grass about 
the stems of trees is a sure preventive against 
tho attacks of tills borer ; but we never had 
a tree attacked that was thus cared for, al¬ 
though these insects are plentiful enough in 
orchards near by which arc not cultivated. 
But for a certain preventive, we would say, 
firs!., dig out every borer in the trees ; then 
wrap the stems from the surface or just 
below it, and upward one or two feet, with 
heavy straw paper, painting the outside of 
it with tar. A small quantity of ashes or 
lime heaped about the stems will sometimes 
{ prevent the attacks of this insect ; but. with 
? all the various preventives, an examination 
} of the stems once or twice a year will be 
time well spent. 
The other borer, to which you refer as 
feeding between the bark and wood, is quite 
generally known as the Flat-headed apple 
tree borer, and is the larva of a beetle known 
: to Entomologists as Chrywhathris fnnorata, 
Fabr. This beetle is about, a half inch long, 
rather flat, of a greenish-black color, the 
e under side haring the appearance of polished 
. copper, it does not Confine itself to the 
s Apple, Mountain ask or other trees of the 
I same family, Imt attacks the Maples and 
I probably several other kinds of trees. As 
II the female does not always deposit, her eggs 
f at the base of the stem, the application of 
f preventives is more difficult than with the 
n first-mentioned insect; but several applica- 
N tions of soap to the stems and branches dur- 
'! ing the summer, will usually prevent them 
l. frbra doing any considerable damage. 
ENTOMOLOGICAL NOTES. 
Phylloxera Remedy .—A Paris correspond¬ 
ent says :—Apart from flooding vines, a new 
means of killing the Phylloxera is to bore 
three holes, two feet deep, by means of a 
dibble and a mullet, around the root of the 
vine, pour into each hole D* ounces carhuret 
of sulphur called also sulphuret of carbon 
and alcohol of sulphur; cover iu the hole, 
hut do nob water, the. liquid evaporates rap¬ 
idly, and its terrible fetid smell and acid 
burning taste destroy in a week every bug 
iu its vicinity. 
