MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
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STRASBOURG GEESE. 
Mode of Fattening Ceese Livers for Pates 
de Foie Cras. 
In 1872 the Rural New Yorker contained 
an illustration of the mode of marketing 
and feediug geese with a view of fattening 
their livers, as it obtains in Germany. The 
following interesting account of the details 
aB practiced at Strasbourg will be read with 
interest. It. is from the Pall Mall Gazette: 
Thrir proprietor explains thet they are all 
nine months old, and have cost him, loan as 
they are, about 2 fr. 50 c. apiece; lie then 
makes a sign to half a dozen bare-armed 
gh'b, who speak no French, and amid con¬ 
siderable commotion and protest from the 
remaining uinty-four, six geese are collared 
and inarched away to tv cellar half under¬ 
ground, where wide and sloping stone tables 
are arranged in tiers so far as the eye can 
see. In the murky light thrown in by some 
twenty air holes one can at first distinguish 
nothing; but by-an 1-by it becomes apparent 
that hundreds of geese are lying already 
Strapped on their backs on the upper tiers, 
and gasping hysteric things—probably words 
of love and encouragement—to one another. 
Our business being for the moment at the 
lower tables, the nix girls take usch their 
goose, lay him gently but firmly on the 
stone, so that ids tail just projects over the 
ledge, and then tie down his wings, body 
and legs tight with plaited whip-cord, the 
legs and wings being well spread out to par¬ 
alyse anything like vigorous gymnastics. 
The bird's neck is left free, and it seems that 
during the first three days he makes a vio¬ 
lent use Ol’ it; but towards the fourth day he 
arrives at the consciousness that by strug- 
g’ing and croaking lie does nothing to amend 
Jus lot, nud from that time he may be trust- 
e 1 to lie Still for the next seven weeks; that 
is, till the hour of release and killing. 
Without pausing to sec all the hundred 
geese tied down, we may go on at once to 
tne upper tiers, whore the birds who have 
been lying for three, five, or six weeks re¬ 
spectively are taking their case and waiting 
to be fed by half a dozen other Alsatian girls 
laden with large wooden bowls. Each of 
these bowls is filled with a thick, white 
paste, made of parboiled maize, chestnuts 
and buckwheat, most nourishing; and the 
mode of administering the dinner is for the 
girl to catch the goose by the neck, open his 
bill with a little squeeze, and then ram three 
or four balls of the paste down his throat 
with her middle finger. The goose having 
been t.lms refreshed, resumes his slanting 
position and digests till the next time for 
feeding, which arrives about two hours 
after, the meals being about six a day. 
But now we have done with the women, 
for a pensive man—a connoisseur of the obe¬ 
sity of geese—breaks upon the scene, climbs 
upon the topmost tier of all, and proceeds to 
ex .mine the birds who may be “ripe.” He 
has an eye as judicious as that of a gardener 
inspecti g melons; and his is the responsible , 
task of pronouncing what birds would die of 
natural death within twenty-four hours, if , 
not di-patched beforehand, if a goose dies ] 
of natural death he is good for nothing. He ; 
must be unstrapped and executed at the pre- , 
cise psychological moment when Nature is j 
growing tired of supporting him, and the 
knack of detecting that moment can only 
come of long practice, and fetches the pos- , 
sensor wages us large as those of a diamond | 
valuer. Oar pensive functionary' has not 
been a minute ou tha table before he certi- , 
fies four geese ready for the slaughter. All , 
four of them have stomachs of the size of 
pumpkins, and from what one can gather of 
their broken remarks, it is a sincere relief to 
these when a couple of male acolytes climb 
up. loose their bonds, imd bear them out of i 
the cellar to a pent-house across the yard, ] 
full of knives and chopping blocks. ’ i 
A click with the chopper on the neck of j 
each, a rip with the knife, and in less than i 
five minutes after their transfer the car- i 
oasses of the four \ lctimsare lying in a hoap, i 
while their livers a e being conveyed with ■ 
all respect and care to the trufiling house. , 
The carcasses, shrivelled out of all kuowl- i 
edge, are sold for about 8d. apiece to peas- i 
ants, who make soup of them; the livers are i 
first eliane.d, then put to scale, and our lour j 
geese are declared grand birds, all of them, 
for t-hei" livers weigh from two and one-half 
to tl res pounds each. The next step is to 
take e ... h liver and to lard it With truffles, i 
in the proportion of one-half pound of truf¬ 
fles to one pound of liver, and then to con- I 
vey it to an ice-house, where it remains on a 
marble slab for a week, that the- truffle per¬ 
fume may thoroughly permeate it. At the 
end of u week each liver, being removed, is 
cut into the size required for the pot which 
it is to fill, and introduced into that pot be¬ 
tween two thin layers of mincemeat, made 
1 of the finest veal and bacon fat, both truffled 
like the liver itself, and one inch’s depth of 
the whitest lard is then spread over the 
whole, that none of the savor may escape 
in baking. 
The baking takes about five hours, and ab¬ 
sorbs all the energies of four intelligent 
French men in white, who relay each other, 
to see that the fire never blazes too high or 
sinks too low. When tne cooking is over, 
nothing remains but to pack the dainty 
either in tin or earth or wood, according as 
it. may be needed for home or foreign con¬ 
sumption, and to ship it to the four points of 
the compass. 
A question may here arise as to how many 
geese die naturally before the above pro¬ 
cesses can be earned out to a happy end; 
but it is a pleasing fact that few’ geese die, 
and only those ill-regulated birds who had 
unsound constitutions or no ambition for 
high destinies. It is on record, however, 
that a member of the Society for the Sup 
pression of Cruelty to AnJtnuls once arrived 
in Strasbourg aimed with the L.irochefou- 
cauld Jaw, and endeavored to cope with the 
pie factors; but lie was worsted, und theri 
are strong reasons for suspecting that he 
was a Socialist. 
-- 
CHICKENS HATCHED EEOM DESEETED 
EGGS. 
A somewhat unusual occurrence having 
transpired on my farm during the past ten 
duys, and knowing that perhaps not another 
such case exists, I send you the full particu¬ 
lars for publication in your columns, should 
you deem them of sufficient importance. 1 
had a lieu setting ou a nest I a afield near 
the fence, somewhat exposed to the sun’s 
lu-at. After setting on the nest to within 
two days of the time the brood should make 
its appearance, she was apparently sun- 
struck or overcome by the heat to such an 
extent as to leave her nest. Seeking a shady 
spot, the lien laid down on her side gasping 
for breath and appeared to be dying. In a 
short time, however, she recovered, but 
abandoned her nest. After the nest had 
been abandoned, and all efforts to induce 
the hen to finish her work had proved a 
failure, at the end of three days the eggs 
w r ere placed in a basket and brought to my 
kitchen, and there lett for three days longer. 
Thinking the eggs worthless, I took the 
basket with the intention of turowing them 
away. I began, for my own satisfaction 
and by way of experiment, opening the eggs, 
and after opening four or five of them was 
rewarded by finding in each of three eggs a 
live chicken, and the three chickens are 
alive to-day und running with another brood 
on my farm, 'flic next day I broke the bal¬ 
ance of the eggs, and had 1 been more care¬ 
ful in disposing ol’ them would have had at 
least tw'o more chickens, for they chirped 
w'hen they struck the wall against w hich 
they were thrown. 
The unusual occurrence has surprised many 
farmers in my neighborhood, who are as 
much astonished as I certainly uni at the 
fact of bringing live chickens out of eggs six 
days after they had been abandoned by the 
hen. Have you any such event on record? 
Putnam Co., N. Y. a. l. o. 
No; but the extraordinary occurrence 
would not have occurred had the tempera¬ 
ture in w'hich the eggs were kept been lower. 
It is not more extraordinary than that chick¬ 
ens should hatch in horse manure without 
the agency of any hen whatever. 
4 4 4 
“WILL POULTRY PAY I” 
In Rural New-Yorker of July 11th, page 
26, is conta ined an inquiry, “ Will Poultry 
Pay ?” Your answer contains a very correct 
reply to that inqu.ry, and will suffice for all 
practical purposes, so far as practical infor¬ 
mation can be conveyed by precept. But 
neither your precepts nor what is written in 
the books nor published in the papers, nor 
what Mr. C. E. Howard can “ tell us,” will 
embrace sufficient knowledge for the gentle¬ 
man who wishes to raise 4,000 or 5,000 fowls 
a year and make it pay. All the recorded 
and traditional knowledge on poultry raising 
if imparted to him simply as recorded and 
traditional, will not auswer his purpose. 
They will, however, be sufficient for him to 
begin with. Like the lawyer or physician 
or merchant, who have gone through their 
preliminary studies, he can begin ! But this 
beginning will be the beginning of wisdom. 
What he acquires after this he can count on 
as his own practical knowledge, acquired 
from experience on the spot. This is better 
than gold. Gold may slip through the fin¬ 
gers and be lost. This knowledge will not be 
lost. He will then not fee) under the neces¬ 
sity of inquiring which is the best breed. 
Apropos of breeds, I wish to make one re¬ 
mark which seems to me of most import¬ 
ance to the beginners. It is thisSelect 
that breed or those breeds of fowls, which 
are most common and most, general in the 
neighborhood in -which you intend to follow 
your business ; at first, become thoroughly 
acquainted with all their properties and 
qualities. Then yon wifi know something; 
then you will have a standard of compari¬ 
son ; then you will be on a pur, as to breeds, 
wiih the general intelligence of the commu¬ 
nity vrith whom you propose to settle. Let 
not this general intelligence be underrated. 
It is the intelligence which books cannot 
communicate. It is the instinct of wisdom 
which makes the earth fruitful, which fills 
the garden with ripe vegetables, the pail 
with rich ru ilk, the poultry yard with healthy 
chickens. Then, by slow degrees, we can in¬ 
troduce the fancy breeds. Subscriber. 
(UHiC (Burden. 
MUSHROOMS. 
Can some reader of the Rural, who has 
raised mushrooms, tell me why I failed to 
obtain a crop of good-sized mushrooms '( 1 
obtained my spawn of James Vtok, and it 
w is good. 1 beat line some well-fermented 
bone manure und filled boxes with it. The 
boxes were from 6 to 18 inches deep, from 10 
to 20 inches wide, aud from 1 foot to 5 feet 
long. I trod the manure In the boxes so that 
it was firm, and put soil in the manure from 
1 to 2 inches thick-, having put pieces of 
spawn about 8 indies apart one inch deep in 
the manure. I did not make the soil very 
firm ; it was loose aud slightly sandy. I put 
some boxes in my cellar, some in my barn, 
some under my barn floor, which is about 18 
inches from the ground. The largest box 
was put under the barn floor. About six 
weeks ago 1 began to correspond with Saji 
UEL Hensiiaw of New Brighten, who sug¬ 
gested to me to put fresh cut sod, grass flown 
wards, over my boxes and beat them firm ; 
the word “ firm” 1 read “fine,” so I beat, the 
soda fine and left, them loose, putting them 
two-thirds over my large box. Two weeks 
ago an almost infinite number of very little 
mushrooms appeared all over the sod and 
none where I had not put sod ; but they did 
uot grow larger than the end of my lead pen¬ 
cil. The same is true of two boxes in my cel¬ 
lar ; they are covered with little ones ; the 
largest I have got was about the size of a 
two cent piece. In the end of the box which 
i did uot cover with sod and which was 
under my barn, I put; a piece of spawn six 
inches deep, and I am successful in produc¬ 
ing spawn, for it has run through and filled 
that end of the box with spawn that smells 
so strong of mushrooms that in the absence 
of something better I am tempted to eat. 
This is also true of one box in my cellar which 
I emptied this morning ; it is one mass of 
spawn. 
Another box which was close to this, has 
neit her mushrooms on the top nor spawn in 
the body of the manure. I think I mixed 
cow and hoi-se manure for tltis box and also 
foj‘ another, both of which are wholly desti¬ 
tute of little mushrooms and show but little 
or no evidence of spawn. I think the spawn 
did not run tu the mixed manure. 
1 want some one to tell me why I failed to 
get gcod-sized mushrooms. Was it because 
the top of my manure and soil was not made 
solid enough, or was it because, my soil is a 
very little sand}’, or what was it ? If some 
one can tell, they will greatly oblige. 
te gjjiqinn. 
T. H. Y. 
-- 
GARDENERS’ NOTES. 
Scalded Onion Seed .—Having read in sev¬ 
eral newspapers that if black onion seed 
were quickly scalded before sowing, they 
would come up sooner and more abundantly 
than if sowed without scalding, I resolved 
this year to try it and see for myself if it 
were true. Accordingly, I proceeded to the 
garden, sowed first a row of ary seed and 
then a row of scalded seed rolled in plaster, 
and 90 continued to do until I had sowed 
eight rows. I stuck a stick at, every scalded 
row, that I might be sure which ones they 
were, also sowed some wet onion seed rolled 
in plaster. The result was, in about three 
weeks the dry seeds came up ; also those 
rolled in plaster; but uo onions ever made 
their appearance among the scalded seeds. 
The seeds were sowed from the same paper. 
So no more scalded onion seeds for me, no 
matter where the receipt comes from.— Ber¬ 
nice Better. 
RE-SWALLOWING HONEY. 
AVhether the nectar of flowers is chemi¬ 
cally changed in the honey-bag or other 
laboratory of the bee previous to being de¬ 
posited in cells, is a question on which differ¬ 
ent views have been and. still are held. 
Hnnler, Bonner, Polltill, Langstroch, and 
others expressed a belief that it underwent 
no change ; but Kirby ard Spence, Reaumur, 
&<\, maintained that it did. 
At the Ent.omo ogical Society’s meeting in 
February, 1873, a notice was communicated 
by Mr. F. Smith of recent researches made 
by Drs. Von Schneider and Von Siebold “on 
artificial honey obtained by feeding bees 
exclusively with malt. The question lias 
been raised whether the substance thus ob¬ 
tained was real honey, and whether, conse¬ 
quently, the bee was able to change: malt 
sugar into honey in its stomach.” Dr, Von 
Schneider “arrived at the conclusion that 
the carbo-hydrates, sucrose and dextrose, 
contained in the malt are actually changed 
by the bee into honey sugar, and that malt 
honey differs only from ordinary honey in 
wanting the specific aroma given to the lat¬ 
ter by the (lowers on which the bees had 
been gathering.” Professor Von Siebold 
was also stated, when investigating the se¬ 
creting organs of the bee, “to have discov¬ 
ered three entirely distinct and very compli¬ 
cated systems of salivary glands with sepa¬ 
rate excretory duets.” 
In the face of such testimony, and without 
clear evidence to the contrary, it would be 
presumption to uffirui nectar is deposited in 
combs in exactly the same condition a3 it is 
found when gathered. But although 
changed in some respects, this does not ifford 
any ground for saying it requires to be 
“swallowed twice” or ten times, to be con¬ 
verted into honey proper. In wet, unfavor¬ 
able seasons honey is poor in quality, and if 
we take the Crude-like product of one hive 
and feed another with it we shall find, on 
breaking up the fed hive, that the honey 
with which it was supplied is still crude, and 
has not been perceptibly altered by passing 
a second time through the receptacles of 
bees. 
The experiment of getting supplies direct 
from the fields for inspection was tried (June 
26th). A frame with empty comb was 
placed over the central aperture of a stock 
box during the forenoon, and removed at 2 
P. M. As expected, the new honey brought 
1j, wJigii jerked from the cells into a glass 
vase, was found to be thill and crude, but it 
was the veritable article. It was almost 
identical with good honey when mixed with 
a third part of water. To try the effect of 
evaporation, the new honey was placed 
under the fierce rays of a burning sun. At 
the end of two hours it became quite con¬ 
sistent, lacking in no property save aroma, 
ft was sweet and thick, and all that could be 
desired, flavor excepted, and this udraits of 
explanation. 
But as bearing on the subject of “ re-swal¬ 
lowing,” I may mention that Monday, June 
15th, was the first storing day in my district. 
At that date I had a unicomb observatory 
hive with stores just exhausted. Foragers 
went out and brought back loads, many of 
them going direct to the upper part ol’ the 
comb, and putting what they had gathered 
into the empty cells there. These gatherings 
wore carefully watched and scrutinised at 
intervals both by night and day. No attempt 
was made to remove them ; they remained 
in the cells where they were first lodged, and 
as the weather proved favorable, had addi¬ 
tions made to them dully. I remarked that 
sealing did not immediately follow the filling 
of the cells, and that it took place on the 
§ide of the comb exposed to the sun’s rays 
two days sooner than on the side opposite. 
Whilst the ceils remained open I also ob¬ 
served as a constant occurrence a bee dip its 
proboscis into half a dozen or more cells in 
succession, and apparently lick up the water 
wliich, being lighter than honey, had come 
to the surface or outside. The amount of 
water obtained in collecting honey is greater 
than I imagined, and the quantity doubtless 
explains why bees are not seen going in sum¬ 
mer, as they do in spring, to pools and 
marshy places for a supply. 1 am therefore 
of opinion that “ re-swallowing” is uot need¬ 
ed tor the manufacture of good honey ; that 
proof of the alleged fact is wanting ; that 
the specific gravity of honey tends to bring 
its watery particles to the front, where they 
can be evaporated by the heat of the hive or 
appropriated for use by the bees ; end that 
neetar when collected only requires to have 
the water separated from it to become rich, 
consistent honey.—R. S., in Cottage Gar¬ 
dener. 
