JULY 25 
©ORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
gomefitic (Jfyamrmg. 
testing colobs OF WOVEN FABRICS. 2 
- I 
Tite Manufacturers’ Review translates 1 
from Professor Stein the following summary * 
of directions for testing colors for their fast- ' 
ness: * 
Red Colors.— A small sample of the yarn 1 
or fabric is boiled first in soap water, which 1 
should not affect the color and become but 
slightly colored itself ; secondly, in lime-wa- j 
ter, which should neither affect the color ( 
nor extract it. These tests are sufficient to f 
demonstrate the presence or absence of log- ] 
wood, winders and aniline colors. i 
Yellow Colors.— Boil samples successively i 
in water, alcohol, and lime-water. Colors i 
which are not fast enough color the water , 
and alcohol sensibly, and turn the lime- water s 
red. Annatto and turmeric are the most 
fugitive yellow colors ; fustic is a llttl“ faster. 
[Hue Colors. — (1.) Boiled in alcohol o fast, | 
blue color should not give a red, purple, or , 
blue liquid. (2.) Boiled in muriatic acid and . 
water, or alcohol, the liquid should not color 
red, nor should the color on the yarn or fab- ] 
ric change to red or reddish-brown. 
Purple. Colors.— The only fast colors of , 
this class are those derived from combining ‘ 
a vat blue or indigo carmine blue with coclii- ( 
neal and the madder purple. Boiled with 
dibit * alcohol {one half water) and left to , 
stand ten or fifteen minutes, fast purples 
suffer no change; nor should they turn 
brown or reddish-brown when boiled with 1 
dilute muriatic acid. 
Orange Colors.— Boil in water ; if it be¬ 
comes yellow, reddish yellow, or red, the 
color is not fast. If the water remains un¬ 
changed, boil in alcohol, which should like¬ 
wise leave a fast orange unaltered. 
Green Colors.— Boiled in dilute alcohol, 
they should not color it blue, green or yel¬ 
low ; muriatic acid should not be colored red 
or blue. 
Brown Colors.— It is quite difficult to test 
those colors for their fastness. Boiling water 
should not change them to red ; when 
steeped in alcohol, t hey should not become 
yellow. 
Black Colors.— Boiled in water and hy¬ 
drochloric acid, they should not be colored 
yellow. 
SUNDRY RECIPES. 
Lemon Cake.—I saw an inquiry in the Ru¬ 
ral New-Yorker for a recipe for lemon 
cake. I send you mine ; it is good. 1 cup 
of butter ; 8 of white sugar, stirred to a 
cream ; add the yolks of five eggs; 1 tea¬ 
spoon soda ; 1 cup sweet milk ; the grated 
rir.d and juice of one lemon ; -1 oups of flour 
and the whites of the eggs beaten to a froth. 
Lemon Pie. —l lemon cut line, rind and all; 
1 cup of water or sweet milk ; 1 cup sugar ; 
1 egg ; 2 tablespoons of flour ; corn starch is 
bett er. Bake with or without crust. 
Pieplant Jelly is good, flavored with lem¬ 
on. 1 prefer It without any flavoring at all. 
I always allow one pound of sugar for one 
pound of juice in making all kinds of jelly. 
A Good Pudding Sauce for some kinds of 
pudding is made with butter and sugar 
stirred till it is light. A piece of butter as 
large us a hen’s egg for one large cup of 
sugar is about right; can tell by tasting It. 
Auother 1 pint of boiling water ; 1 cup of 
sugar ; butter size of a walnut; 1 tablespoon 
of flour ; stir the flour with a little water to 
keep It smooth, then put in it the boiling 
water and sugar. Flavor with nutmeg or 
cinnamon. A Rural Reader. 
-- 
DOMESTIC BREVITIES. 
achs which crave it, and buy alcohol pure. 
It is just as cheap, for it can be reduced with 
water according to its strength. Use a gallon 
of alcohol to five or six of soft water. Pick 
your cucumbers, wash them carefully, so aa 
not to bruise them, and put them in as fast 
as they are collected. Stir them up from the 
bottom every day, and stir in the scum that 
rises as they work. This process soon makes 
good pickles and sharp vinegar. The sun or 
Are hastens the process. The pickles are 
nicer if small. 
Ntjgienic information. 
To make Mead.—' The following is an En¬ 
glish recipe:—Pour 5 gallons of boiling water 
upon 20 lbs. of honey ; boil, and remove the 
scum ns it rises ; when it ceases to rise add 
1 oz. of hops, and boil for ten minutes after¬ 
wards ; put the liquor into a tub to cool. 
When reduced to 75" of Fuhr. add a slice of 
bread toasted and smeared over with a little 
yeast, let it stand in a warm room, and be 
stirred occasionally ; and when it carries a 
head tun it, Ulling the cask up from time to 
time. When the fermentation has nearly 
finished bung it down, leaving a peg-hide, 
which may soon be closed ; bottle in about a 
year. 
To Remove Grease Spots, Jfcc.—The follow¬ 
ing may relieve some of the economical and 
troubled Marthas of mu* times. To remove 
grease spots, fly specks, &c,, from oil cloth, 
and window shades, rub the soiled spot with a 
clean, woolen rag wet in the water ol' am¬ 
monia, it will remove them without injury 
to the color or texture.—A unt Molly. 
Raspberry Pudding.— Line the bottom of 
a very deep pudding dish with slices of bread 
moistened with sweet, creamy milk, cover 
with a thick layer of nice berries sprinkled 
with sugar. So fill to the top with alternate 
layers of bread and fruit. Cover with an 
inverted plate and bake until the fruit is 
cooked. 
Fruit Cake. —1 pound of flour ; % pound 
butter ; 1 pound sifted sugar ; 1 pound rais¬ 
ins ; 1 pound currants; I pound blanched 
almonds ; l pound candied lemon or orange 
peel ; 9 eggs ; a few drops oil cinnamon. 
While Sponge Cake.— tumblers sugar ; 
whites of 8 eggs beaten to a froth ; 1 tumbler 
of flour; 1 teaspoon cream tartar mixed 
through the flour ; Balt ; bake % of an hour; 
season after baked. 
-- 
SELECTED RECIPES. 
Boiled Calf 8 Head.- First remove the 
brain, wash the head clean and soak for 15 
minutes. Then tie up In a floured cloth, and 
put into hot water ; remove the scum as it 
rises, throw in a little sale, and boil gently 
until perfectly tender. In the meantime 
wash and soak the brains in warm water, 
remove the skin or film, boil in a small 
saucepan 15 or 20 minutes ; when done chop 
with them 3 or 4 sage leaves that have been 
boiled tender, or parsley if preferred, warm 
them in a spoonful or lwo of melted butter. 
Skin the tongue, trim off the root and serve 
in a small dish with the brains around it. 
Send the iieud to table very hot, with melted 
butter and parsley poured over, A cheek of 
bacon, or very nice salt pork boiled, is the 
UBual accompaniment to calf’s head. Boil 
from 1^ to 2 hours. 
Whisky Pickles. —We often get hold of 
whisky that will eat up cucumbers speedily. 
Better leave such liquor for the human stotn- 
Pincapple Preserve.— Slice the pineapple 
rather thinner to preserve than to eat, and , 
take one pound of loaf sugar to one pound ( 
of fruit; powder the sugar, and place in the ( 
kettle alternately a layer of sugar and a 
layer of fruit. To each pound of fruit put 
three tablespoonluls of water. Let it re¬ 
main over a slow fire until the sugar is all 
melted ; then boil it slowly until the fruit 
looks clear ; take out. the fruit piece by piece 
aud lay them on a dish, until the syrup is 
boiled nearly to u jelly. Put the fruit in 
jars, and pour on the syrup hot. Cover the 
jars carefully with paper, which has previ¬ 
ously been dipped on belli sides in white of 
egg ; this will seeure their keeping and pre¬ 
serve the flavor of the pineapple. The ad¬ 
dition of two or three lemons may be consid¬ 
ered an improvement. 
Cherry Dumpling. —Put cherries 3 inches 
deep on the bottom of a porcelain-lined 
kettle. Throw in sugar to sweeten, add half 
teacup of water and sprinkle over enough 
flour to Slightly thicken the juice. Roll out 
raised Graham biscuit crust—shortened with 
cream—about an inch thick, which spread 
quite over the cherries. Cover the kettle 
tight, (shutting the cover in with a cloth 
spread over the top if need be), and cook 
steadily on t he top of the stove, taking care 
that it shall not burn, three-quarters of an 
horn* or so, until the crust is well cooked. 
The same may be more safely steamed if the 
conveniences are at hand. Another way is 
to j.mt the cherries into a nappie or pic dish, 
cover with thick crust, and hake in tne oven. 
Excellent f ir a breakfast dish, 
Russian Cream .—One quart of milk, three 
eggs, one cup of sugar, half package Cox’s 
gelatin, vanilla or lemon flavoring. Dissolve 
gelatin in half pint of tepid water, bring it 
to a warm temperature but not scalding. 
Beat the yelks of the eggs and sugar to¬ 
gether. Bring the milk to a boil, then add 
the dissolved gelatin, two eggs and sugar 
and let. it just come to a boiling point, but 
no more, as it is to stiff. Beat the whites and 
remove the mixture from the stove, and 
add whites to it., also flavoring, and pour 
into molds. This requires to stund longer 
than wine jelly. If wanted for dinner make 
the day before. Eat with cream if you like. 
Mint Sauce .—Take a bunch of green mint, 
and chop it fine with a knife, or rub it in a 
mortal*; add \i pound of fine sugar and half 
a pint of sharp vinegar. Stir or rub well, 
and serve cold. To be eaten with roast 
' lamb. 
IMPORTANCE OF WHOLESOME BEDS. 
Sleep to the working man is emphatically 
nature’s restorer; reinvigorating the physi¬ 
cal system, which through much toil has be¬ 
come weary, and keeping up that flow of life 
and spirits which are necessary to the per¬ 
formance of the arduous duties of farm life. 
A comfortable bed, as wo are ail aware, con¬ 
duces great ly to one’s rest. On this subject 
a recent writer says : 
Of the eight pounds which a man eats and 
drinks, in a day, it is thought that not less 
than five pounds leave his body through the 
skin. And of these five pounds a consider¬ 
able percentage escapes during the night, 
while he is in bed. The larger portion of this 
is water, but lu addition there is much offete 
and poisonous matter. This, being in great 
part gaseous in form, permeates every part 
of the bed. Thus all parts of the bed, mat¬ 
tress, blankets as well as sheets, soon becoino 
foul and need purification. 
The mattress needs the renovation quite as 
much as the sheets. To allow the sheets to 
be used without washing or changing, three 
or six months, would be regarded as bad 
housekeeping ; but 1 insist if a thin sheet 
cun absorb enough of the excret ions of the 
body to make it unfit for use in a few days, 
a thick mattress, which can absorb and re¬ 
tain a thousand times as much of these poi¬ 
sonous excretions, needs to be purified as 
often certainly os once iu three months. 
A sheet can be washed. A mattress can¬ 
not be renovated in this way. Indeed there 
is no way of cleansing a mattress but by 
steaming it, or picking it to pieces, and thus 
in fragments exposing it to the rays of the 
sun. As these processes are scarcely practi¬ 
cable with any of the ordinary mattresses, 
I am decidedly of the opinion that the good 
old-fashioned straw bed, which can every 
three months bo changed for fresh straw, 
and the tick be washed, is the sweetest and 
healthiest of buds. 
If, in the wintry season, the porousness of 
the straw bed makes it a, little uncomforta¬ 
ble, spread over it a comforter or two woolen 
blankets, which should be washed as often 
as every two weeks. With this arrange¬ 
ment, if you wash all the bed coverings as 
often as once in two or three weeks, you will 
have a delightful healthy bed. 
Now it you leave the bed to air, with open 
windows during the day, and not make it up 
for the night before evening, you will have 
added greatly to the. sweetness of your rest, 
and, in consequence, to the tone of your 
health. 
I heartily wish tills change could be every¬ 
where introduced. Only those who have 
thus attended to this important matter can 
judge ol' its influence on the. general health 
and spirits. 
shown to diminish the amount of blood cir¬ 
culating through the brain. 
- ♦♦♦ - ■ 
SALT IN SICKNESS. 
Db. Scuddkr says :—“I am satisfied that 
1 have seen patients die from deprivation of 
common salt during a protracted illness. It 
is a common impression that the food for the 
sick should not be seasoned, and whatever 
slop may bo given, it is almost innocent of 
this essential of life. In the milk diet that I 
recommend in sickness, common salt is used 
freely, (he milk being boiled and given hot. 
And if the patient, cannot take the usual 
quantity in his food, I have it given in lus 
drink. This matter is so important that it 
cannot be repeated too often, or dwelt upon 
too long. The most marked example of this 
waul, of common salt I have ever noticed lias 
been in surgical disease, t.specially in open 
wounds. Without a supply of salt the longue 
would become broad, pallid, puffy, with a 
tenacious, pasty coat, the secretions arrested, 
the circulation feeble, the effusion at the 
point of injury serious, with an unpleasant 
watery pus, which at last, becomes a mere 
sanies or ichor. A few days of a free allow¬ 
ance of salt would chaugo all this, and the 
patient get along well.” 
- *■+■* - 
Tooth ache Remedy.—I t is affirmed that 
the worst toothache, or neuralgia coming 
from the tooth, may be speedily and delight¬ 
fully ended by 1 ho application of a small bit 
of clean cotton saturated in a strong solu¬ 
tion ol’ ammonia to the defective tooth. 
Good news, if true. 
©lift Naturalist. 
TAMING 
HUMMING-BIRD. 
CAUSE OF SLEEPLESSNESS. 
Dr. Duckworth, in the British Medical 
Journal, calls attention to some causes of 
insomnia, which, he thinks, are hardly suf¬ 
ficiently recognized or adequately met by the 
resources of practical medicine. Recent re¬ 
searches have clearly shown that the brain 
is comparatively ftrnvrriic during sleep, and 
that the blood thus removed from the head 
is more freely supplied to the viscera and 
integuments. The most constant cause, and 
certainly the most frequent accompaniment 
of sleeplessness, is an opposite condition, or 
one of active and increased cerebral circula¬ 
tion, A species of nocturnal dyspepsia, mild 
in its character, and producing no actual 
suffering, may sometimes give rise to per¬ 
sistent insomnia. There may be no symp¬ 
toms beyond dryness of the mouth, burning 
of the soles of the feet, and heat and throb¬ 
bing in the head, and these are probably due 
to a too acid condition of the contents of the 
st inach and upper part of the small intes¬ 
tines, caused generally by excess in fatty 
and highly-seasoned food, in fruit, and in 
various wines. Sleeplessness may be due to 
bodily and mental over-exhaustion, which 
rcstil i s in an increased flow of blood to the 
brain, consequent upon vaso-motor paralysis. 
Again, it may be the result of mere habit, as 
in those cases where there has been a long 
course of broken rest ; it may be caused by 
persistent odors, by certain effluvia, by the 
absence of moisture in the air of a sleeping 
apartment, or by an improper elevation or 
depression of (he head. The treatment in 
most of these cases should of course be di¬ 
rected to the removal of the cause ; but, 
when it is found necessary to give drugs, 
bromide of potassium and chloral hydrate 
are probably the best, both having beeu 
The ruby-throat has sometimes been 
tamed. Mr. Webber, in his “Wild Scenes 
and Song Birds,” says, after several unsuc¬ 
cessful attempts, at last “I succeeded in se¬ 
curing an uninjured captive, which, to my 
inexpressible delight, proved to he one of the 
ruby-throated species, the most splendid and 
diminutive, that comes north of Florida. It 
immediately suggested itself to me that a 
mixture of two parts of loaf-sugar, with one 
of fine honey, in tun of water, would make 
about t he neatest approach to the nectar of 
flowers. While my sister ran to prepare it, 
I gradually opened my hand to look at my 
prisoner, and saw to my no little amusement 
as well os suspicion, that it was actually 
‘ i laying ’ possum’—feigning to be dead, most 
skillfully. It lay on my open palm motion¬ 
less for some mimutes, during which I 
watched it in breathless curiosity. I saw it 
gradually open Its bright little eyes to peep 
whether the way was clear, and then close 
them slowly as it caught my oye upon it. 
But when the manufactured neotnr came, 
and a drop was touched upon the point of its 
bill, it came to life very suddenly, and, in a 
moment, was on its legs, drinking with eager 
gusto of the refreshing draught, from a silver 
teaspoon. When sated it, refused to take, any 
more, aud sat perched with the coolest self¬ 
composure on my finger, and plumed itself 
quite as artistically as if on its favorite spray. 
I was enchanted with the bold, innocent con¬ 
fidence with which it turned up itskeen black 
eyes to survey us, as much os to say, ‘Well 
good folks I who are you V By the next day 
It would come from any part of either room, 
alight upon the side of n white China cup 
containing the mixture, and drink eagerly, 
wit h its long bill thrust into the very base. 
It would alight on my lingers, and seem to 
talk with us endearingly in its soft chirps.” 
Mr. Webber afterward succeeded in taming 
several of the same species. He gav« them 
their liberty occasionally, and they returned 
regularly. At the time for migration they 
left for the winter; but, the next spring, 
they sought their old quarters, and accepted 
the delicious nectar kindly provided for them, 
and by degrees -heir mates.— Pop- 
ular Science Monthly. 
Remedy you the Striped Bua.—Having 
occasion to use Paris green and calcined 
plaster, in proportion of cnoof the former 
to fifteen of the latter, as a destroyer of the 
potato bug, 1 tried the stuff on squash, melon 
and cucumber vines. With me, the mixture 
dusted on from a common dredging box, has 
proved equally effectual against the Qaforado 
potato beetle and the striped bug. On 
squashes of the te tide rest variety of foliage, 
like the Hubbard, for instance, and on the 
hardier, like Cymlin and the winter Crook- 
neck, this mixt ure, put on wuilo the plant Is 
wet or dry, does not injure them ; and *9 of 
musk melons aud cucumbeis. llie water¬ 
melon, however, does not bear such treat 
ment. 
