343 
CORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
AY 30 
®Itf faulty ggaqiL 
EXPERIENCE WITH FOWLS. 
Editor Rural New Yorker,—I send you 
my poultry account for the year ending 
May 8 , 1873, in the hope that it may prove of 
interest to your numerous readers, such ac¬ 
counts being interesting to me: 
DU. 
To 11 lipjis and 1 rooster, ...*M go 
■ feed from May 8.1873. to Mity 8,1871. 38 <<i 
materlulB for coops for chicks. % ui 
B f v 3C young roosters, BOc. *is (hi 
i 41 pullets wintered over, (10c. IM m 
4 roosters, 7fi«». x 00 
“ 140 dozen exk utric... 3(1 so 
“ 1H bushels manure, 43c._ 4 50 
“ 150 chicks now on bund. 4 to 7 weeks old, 
and which I may safely value at 18 l-3c 27 Ml 
11 hens on hand (original stock) 60c. 0 bo 
*115 00 
51 M) 
Profit.. 
I think this is a very fair showing for the 
number of fowls at the start, making a profit 
of over $5.70 per head. I muy add that 1 
lost over 50 chicks last summer by hawks 
and weasels. The fowls are of the common 
sort, weighing about 4 lbs, each. A few of 
my chicks have had the gapes ; but thus far, 
I have lost none by this malady, as ] cure 
them with a horsehair loop. Laying the 
chick between my knees, on its back, I press 
tho tongue outward and hold it with the left 
thumb, passing tho horsehair (simply beat 
double) down the open windpipe (not the 
throat) and give the hair a quick roll between 
the thumb and first finger of the. right hand ; 
the rotary motion of the loop involves the 
gape worms in a coil about it. I have tried 
the pepper and the lime bath and other re tn 
edics (?) witli a pleasant failure in every in¬ 
stance. 
Among my chickens gapes do not appear 
unless access is hud to barnyard manure. 
I delve up a piece of soil daily to let the chicks 
get angle worms, on which they thrive amaz¬ 
ingly. My brood hens are not allowed to 
run about wit h their chicks, but are tied by 
the leg near the coop till the chicks are 
weaned ; none are therefore lost by running 
through the dewy grass on cool mornings, I 
have lost but one hen in the year, although 
the fowls all around have died in large num 
bers from cholera. 
I noticed in the last Rural New-Yorker 
a word or two regarding sett ing too many 
eggs under a hen at a time, 13 being enough 
it was said. Here is my experience this 
spring Of 72 eggs set under 3 good-sized, 
ordinary fowls, 6‘J hatched, 2 eggs had full- 
sized dead birds, and 1 egg was addled. 1 
have had 4 hens to hatch this week, 3 of 
them witli 17 eggs each and 1 with 18, every 
egg hatching. 1 have found that there is a 
good deal in having a warm, moist nest. I 
have a small box for each hen ; 3 inches of 
fine earth mold in the bottom and a little 
soft hay on this ; the sides of the box fit up 
closely to the hen’s feathers, not much room 
being to spare for cold air. On a flat bottonir 
ed nest I do not think 13 eggs would do as 
well us 18 would do in oue of my boxes. 1 
have put 60 eggs in an incubator of my own 
manufacture, and I shall report on the suc¬ 
cess thereof at another time ; the eggs should 
hatch in 4 days more. I opened an egg at 
the 7th day and another at the 12th ; in each 
young birds were alive and of proper size for J 
that leugth of lime. < 
I shall d i - pose of my present stock tl)is sea- ! 
son and try Buff Cochins, some eggs of which 
I have now sitting. I have no elegant hen * 
house ; on the contrary, it may safely be ' 
termed plain, being 10x8 feet and 6 feet high, 1 
boarded up on back and ends, south side hav- 1 
ing rails nailed lengthwise on it, close enough ( 
together to keep tho fowls in. A rail floor * 
was first faid, and on this a eluy covering 8 * 
inches deep was placed and allowed to hard- ‘ 
en. During the winter I swept up the drop- 1 
pings every morning. I do not have my l- 
neighbors’ hens eating witli mine, as I call 1 
mine by whistling as for a dog ; they don’t ( 
know what “Chick, chick I” means, and v 
neighbor’s fowls tbiuk I’m calling the dog, 1 
and keep off. There is one drawback to this v 
method of calling ; I dure not whistle “ Shoo 
Fly,” no master how exuberant my feelings, C 
without instantly having to wade through a t 
hundred or more chickens, hens and roosters, s 
R. H. Clayton. t 
Hopewell, Mercer Co., N. J., May 12, ’74. e 
which is to give all the country maidens a 
dot, or dowry, is—feathers. The only capi- 
. tal required is a pair of scissors. How much 
money do you think is annually lost in 
America by tho waste of feathers ? Geese, 
ducks, turkeys, hens, and pigeons lose large 
i quantities in one way and another—by acci¬ 
dent, moulting, battles, and death. Feathers 
stick in the mud, on weeds, on brunches and 
sticks ; they lie on the wood piles, by streams 
—everywhere one wanders he will find a 
feather. A feather is almost indestructible. 
| Jt rnay be blown from mountain-top into 
i valley and back again, and remain the same 
i beautiful and delicate thing. Well, these 
wandering feathers that seem so insignifi- 
i cant constitute -or may—veritable riches. 
! Listen: 
The down of geese and ducks has for a 
long time been veiy highly valued, “ downy 
beds of ease” being the incarnation of re¬ 
pose, while the bed-covers of silk lined with 
down have been, on account of their high 
price, only enjoyed by the rich. But in Paris 
“ artificial down” has come to be more high¬ 
ly valued than the natural down, because it 
is much lighter. This is made from feathers 
of no matter wlml kind of feathered animal, 
by cutting the barb of the feather from each 
side of the quill and putting them (the barbs) 
in a stout cloth suck, and then rubbing them 
between the bunds us a wash-woman does 
linen. Five minutes’ rubbing will have 
mixed the mass in a felt-like substance, ren¬ 
dering it homogeneous. That, is edredou ar- 
tiflciol, and sells in Paris for something over 
$8 in gold a pound, and this price is con¬ 
stantly increasing. But there is something 
more wonderful still. A process has been 
invented for making cloth of feathers. To 
make a square metre (a metre is three inches 
more than a yard) of cloth—cloth vastly 
lighter and warmer than wool, from 700 to 
750 grammes (a gramme is equal to 16.0 grains 
avoirdupois) of this artificial down. But 
this feather cloth— drap de plume—it takes 
color admirably, and is almost linwear-out- 
ablc, because, instead of breaking and cut¬ 
ting in the places most exposed to wear, it, 
mats itself more and more into a felt-like 
substance. This discovery is one of the most 
remarkable of the age. 
Now for some figures. The estimate has 
been made that in Franee aloue enough 
feathers are allowed to go to waste each 
year to make from 7,000,000 to 8 , 0 (K), 0 (X) 
square metres of cloth ! Tn other words, as 
much is lost in France in feathers as is paid 
for cotton 1 This being true of France, how 
much more is it true of the United States ? 
A girl of eight or t en years can see from this 
how valuable every feather—every one—is, 
and her chance for money-making, for } if I 
mistake not, the price paid for down is higher 
in America than in France, and it finds buy¬ 
ers everywhere. Experiences result in facts, 
and here is one : The feathers that three- 
fourths of the country people throw away 
amount in value to more than twenty cents 
lor each ordinary hen ! lu faot, a hen’s 
wardrobe weighs usually from 52 to 52 gram¬ 
mes, and sometimes weighs as high us 64. 
“Don’t despise the little things.” Feathers 
mean fortune.— Mary A. E. Wager, Paris. 
able, provided food and water are both at 
hand ; and this is the most economical way 
to rear them, as they are less liable to be de¬ 
stroyed by vermin in the fields. 
Bugs, Wortns and Chicken Cholera. —A 
correspondent of the Prairie Farmer says :— 
“ We have noticed that whenever the chick¬ 
ens follow the plow, and gorge themselves 
with bugs and worms, soon cholera breaks 
out among them. Our remedy is -.—To one 
gallon of sour milk, add a tablespoonful of 
powdered alum, set It in shallow vessels, 
where the chickens can drink as often as 
they choose. We have used this remedy for 
the last three years, and none of our chick¬ 
ens die witli cholera, when we attend to it in 
time.” 
Food for Young Goslings. —The Cottage 
Gardener says that nothing is so good for 
goslings as grass ; that is probably why so 
many are kept where there are commons. 
Oatmeal put in u pan of water is excellent 
food for them, and it is often wise to add 
some bran to it. Chickens should have bread 
and milk, chopped egg, cooked meat cut up 
fine, crumbs, soda of growing grass, fresh 
earth, and, in bad weather, beer. 
THE FOOD OF HUMMING BIRDS. 
The long bills of humming birds have been 
held by some naturalists to be tubes into 
which they suck the honey from flowers by 
a pistou-iiko movement of the tongue. Mr. 
Bel/, the author of “ The Naturalist in Nica¬ 
ragua,” dissents from this view. The hum¬ 
mingbird undoubtedly sucks honey from 
flowers, but its principal food is insects. 
Home species in Central America are seldom 
seen about flowers, and Mr. Bell' never ex 
amined the bodj r of a humming bird without 
finding insects in its crop. The tongue, he 
states, for ono-half its length is composed of 
semi-horny tissue, and cleft in two ; the two 
halves are laid flat against, each other when 
at. rest, but can be separated at the will of 
the bird, and form a delicate, pliable pair of 
forceps, most admirably adapted for picking 
out minute insects from among the stamens 
of flowers. The woodpecker, which has a 
similar extensile mechanism for protruding 
its tongue to a great length, uses it also to 
procure its food—in this ease soft grubs from 
holes in rotten trees ; and to enable it. to 
pull these out the end of the tongue is sharp 
and horny, and barbed with short, stiff, re¬ 
curved bristles. 
NOTES FOR NATURALISTS. 
POULTRY NOTES. 
A FORTUNE FROM FEATHERS. 
Very recently a new invention has opened 
the way to a new utility, and the wealth of 
France rests in her wonderful utilization of 
even the meanest things. This new thing, 
A Question J or Egg Philosophers.— About 
a year ago an egg was shown to the editor 
of the Groton Journal—a perfect egg, shell 
and all, about an inch in diameter, which 
was formed within the yelk of a good-sized 
hen's egg. A similar one has recently been 
shown to tho editor of the Norwalk ( 6 .) Re¬ 
flector, who pronounced it “a curiosity, cer¬ 
tainly.” And in the Encyclopedia Ameri¬ 
cana, published in 1885, it is said“It hap¬ 
pens not very rarely that a small egg is 
found within one of common size.” Now, 
Mr. Editor, will some of your almost count¬ 
less readers (surely they are uncounted) 
kindly favor us with un explanation of, first, 
how the smaller came within the larger? 
(the king’s question of “how got the apple 
within the dumpling?”) and, second, how 
the shell of the smaller could possibly form 
within the larger?—M. M B., Groton, N. V, 
Turkeys aiul Small Fruits. —“Rural,” in 
Chicago Tribune, says :— I have been obliged 
to give up the turkeys, as some years they de¬ 
stroy more small fruit and garden-truck than 
they are worth. The bronze, or more prop¬ 
erly, the domesticated wild turkey, is more 
troublesome than the common domestic tur¬ 
key. and is also more disposed to ramble off 
to the neighbors. As a general thing, tho 
turkey is less profitable than the common 
fowls ; yet some people are very successful 
in rearing them. If hatched and brought up 
by the common hen, they are far more traet- 
A Martiniquan Snake. — The Islund of 
Martinique does not present an alluring 
prospect, to the gardener, or to those fond of 
walks and retreats in coo i, shady places. 
There is a species of venomous Bnake abound¬ 
ing there, called the Iron Lance, which has 
a penchant for pre-empting all Inviting 
nooks and resting spots under the trees and 
in the grass, and which resents, with the 
incision of its fangs, any intrusion upon its 
solitude. As an average, about S00 persons 
are bitten by this testy little reptile annually. 
Of these, sixty or seventy cases prove fatal, 
and many others result in nervous diseases 
which oue would scarcely choose in prefer¬ 
ence to death. 
IFnxp# vs. Spiders. —In last month’s Sci¬ 
ence Gossip an interesting story is told of u 
fatal combat between a wasp and a spider. 
The writer says :—“That spiders are most 
afraid of wasps, I infer from a circumstance 
1 witnessed many years ago. A wasp be¬ 
came entangled in the web of a spider, lo¬ 
cated in the upper corner of a window, when 
the spider rushed out to secure his prey, and 
a battle of some minutes duration occurred, 
ending in a dear-bought victory for the 
spider, the wasp falling dead on the floor, 
and the spider dying a few minutes after¬ 
wards.” 
The Frog Barometer. —In some countries 
frogs are used as barometers ; the species 
employed for this purpose is the green tree 
frog. They are placed in tall glass bottles 
with little wooden ladders, to the top of 
which they always climb iu fine weather, 
and descend at the approach of had weather. 
This is a cheap and highly interesting weath¬ 
er glass where the green tree frog is to be 
produced in its natural state.— Science. Gos¬ 
sip. 
Squirrels Nursed by a Cat.— Ail English¬ 
man, who has a cat which has nursed “a 
nest of squirrels” is in trouble as to how 
they will live after the cat ceases giving 
them food. They will doubtless take care of 
themselves ! 
MALFORMATION OF FISH EMBRYOS. 
Fish culturists, especially those who have 
to deal with the various species of the sal- 
monida, are frequently struck with the nu¬ 
merous eases of malformation in the embry¬ 
os hatched out by them ; these sometimes 
constituting a marked percentage of the 
whole number, resulting, it is supposed, from 
too great rapidity of development, or some 
other at present unknown agency. In some 
instances the percentage is so large, as ma¬ 
terially to affect the number of salable fish 
produced, as they sooner or later succumb in 
the struggle for existence. 
Dr. Knoch of Moscow has lately been 
studjring the nature of malformations in the 
trout, salmon, and whltefish and finds the 
most common monstrosities to consist in the 
possession ; first, of two heads ; second, of a 
double vertebral column and cord ; third, of 
malformations as regards divergence of the 
body from its axis of length ; fourth, of de¬ 
fects of the organs of locomotion ; fifth, of 
anomalies in the vegetative sphere ; sixth, 
of defects in the organs of sense. 
It is possible that similar malformations 
occur in equal proportions in other fishes, 
but such of these as come under the cogni¬ 
zance of the student sire usually so small as 
not to be appreciable. Malformations are, 
indeed, quite common in the gold fish and 
carp, particularly the former ; and tho Chi¬ 
nese have already developed a number of 
special races bearing distinctive names, and 
characterized, among other features, by the 
possession of an extra number of tails. 
-- 
CONSTRUCTION OF FISH PONDS. 
Dr J. H. Slack says in the Tribune :—Use 
no wood whatever. I have had an extended 
and expensive experience in regard to lisli 
pond, and have always found that stone or 
brick is cheapest in the end. In building a 
dum 1 first lay up a line of brick extending 
to within an inch or two of the line of the 
top of the dam. Now pile your dirt on each 
side of the wall and you can bid defiance to 
the musk rats, which have often in one 
night destroyed the accumulated fishes of 
years. Do not trust to plank, tho vermin 
seem rather to enjoy eating their way 
through them. The proportions of the dam 
should bo as follows : Let the breadth on the 
top equal the higbt. Thus if your dam is ten 
feet high, let the width of the top be ten 
feet and that of the base thirty feet. Face 
the sluice way with stone or brick and let it 
extend to the bottom of the pond. Place at 
tlie outlet two Bets- of screens of galvanized 
iron wire, the uppermost Vicing for the pur¬ 
pose of catching any leaves, sticks, &e., 
which may find their way into the pond, the 
lower to prevent the escape of the fishes. 
One Inch mesh for the upper and one-lialf 
inch for the lower will be about right. Ar¬ 
range these so that they can be readily re¬ 
moved and cleaned, and then keep them 
clean. 
-»♦ » 
GOLD FISH AS FOOD. 
Seth Green says he never said that gold 
fish are a good eating fish, but lie tells tho 
Germantown Telegraph his story as follows : 
1 have said that it could be eaten, that it 
would keep soul und body together, and that 
there are many waters suitable for it where 
no good fish would thrive ; that it was good 
for other fish, was handsome to look at and 
that it is very nice to have in your waters so 
that the children and ladies can take their 
little pail when they go fishing and bring 
home a few for the aquarium. Now, Mr. 
Editor, 3 ’ou must not forget that there are 
hundreds of thousands of people who would 
be glad to have a gold fish, or anything else 
for their breakfast, that would keep soul and 
body together. 1 don’t expect the rich will 
eat them. We must stock our waters for 
the people. If there is fish of any kind put 
in any water that is not a game-fish, some 
book sportsman flies up and w rites an article 
for some paper that Beth Green has put 
some fish in some water that is v ery disgust¬ 
ing to sportsmen. But the writer is sure not 
to sign his real name to it. I got u great dis¬ 
gust lor an 41 alius ” when I was a boy. 
--♦-*-♦-- 
The Best Trout Fond in N. Y. State. 
—Just east of Coming is a pond which Seth 
Green has pronounced the best natural trout 
pond in the State. It has, however, been 
filled with pickerel and suckei's, which the 
village sportsmen are now endeavoring to 
take out by seines. 
