their natural appetite is satisfied. If kept 
upon board floors or small pens, and fed 
principally upon meals and slops, they have 
a great craving for flesh, anil at such times 
not unfrequentiy devour their own offspring. 
He says the leaner you keep a sow the more 
she will root and gather worms and grubs. 
I think the deacon carries bis philosophy 
rather too far, but it may be, like most sto¬ 
ries, founded on fact. He recommends feed¬ 
ing bows that have this pig-eating propensity 
with some raw animal food, such as butch¬ 
er’s offal and plenty of roots, iu connection 
with the ordinary provender. Whatever 
may be thought of the deacon’s philosophy, 
he has beaten me on pigs. They look better 
and are nearly twice as many. With pigs at 
But it was a vast improvement over uie or¬ 
dinary method of feeding dry food and clear 
water. 
Wc continued to let the sheep have all 
they would cat or drink of these malt combs, 
even after they were turned to grass, at the 
same time allowing them some dry malt 
combs in the troughs. And now comes the 
point of my story. There was considerable 
red root in my clover pasture, just in blos¬ 
som, and it worried me a good deal to know 
bow to prevent it from going to seed. That 
question was soon settled. The sheep nip¬ 
ped off every green head and branch of the 
THE BEE SEASON OF 1875 —A FAVOR- 
ABLE BEPORf. 
The year 1875 has almost everywhere been 
a most unfortunate one for the apiarian. A 
dry, cold spring retarded work and the still 
more important breeding and hatching. 
There were fewer fruit blossoms in ear.y 
spring than usual, and those were kept back 
so late that they only lasted a few days, in¬ 
stead of two to four weeks, as usual. Cherry, 
plum, apple and pear trees were all in blos¬ 
som at once, and though some honey and 
more pollen were gathered then, it did not 
amount to much in the aggregate. Then 
followed cold, dry weather, the most unfa¬ 
vorable possible for white clover, and almost 
as soon as it was fairly in blossom continu¬ 
ous wet weather followed, which was quite 
as bad. Many bees perished in the rains and 
colonies were enfeebled. Honey also seemed 
to be washed out of the flowers by the wet 
w herever it prevailed. This is a rather blue, 
but mainly true, picture of the misfortunes 
of bee keepers in most parts of the North. 
At the South, however, we judge that it ha3 
been different. Better reports come to us 
from there, and the following from a Louisi¬ 
ana correspondent of Moon’s Bee World for 
August is probably as favorable a report as 
we shall see for this unfortunate year : 
« My barrels arc molasses barrels, and con¬ 
tain from 41 to 44 gallons, instead of 32, as 
you say. They weigh 500 lb3., on an aver¬ 
age. All the honey I have extracted this 
year was taken from 140 colonies, instead of 
300, as you write. I have taken my 140th 
barrel to-day, I have extracted 34,500 lbs. 
of honey since April 12, or an average of 175 
lbs. per hive, counting weak and strong. I 
will have GO barrels before this appears in 
the World, as 1 am taking 6 barrels, or 3,000 
lbs., per week. The colony which gave me 
16 gals, from April 12 to June 9 has thua far 
yielded 83 gals., or 398 lbs., and cannot fail 
to give me 500 lbs. before the end of the sea¬ 
son. Ilosmer had better look out. The same 
colony has raised two queens this season. I 
have hives that have yielded 8 gals., or 96 
lbs., at a taking. I hope to make between 
It is very ■wrong to become excited oc- 
cause other people’s opinions differ from the j 
advocate and patfOD of one particular breed 
of animals. Pennsylvania seems to be un¬ 
friendly to long wools. Well, let the good 
farmers breed and raise abort wools or fine 
wools. (In England we call South Downs 
short wools.) 
There is not the least doubt but that these 
warm-blooded and hot-headed gentlemen 
who are so very violent on one who sticks to 
long wools are a good-hearted sort, notwith¬ 
standing their hatred of the swindling set of 
men who own or praise the long wools ; but, 
in spite of all they say or really think, by 
using good long -wool rams they might, make 
a wonderful improvement in their flocks. It 
they saw the account of a show of sheep at 
Rochester some time 
statement of Mr 
result as followsMalt combs are rich in 
albuminoids, and it has been shown that 
when sheep arc furnished with the neces¬ 
sary amount of nitrogenous food they can 
then digest cellulose or woody fiber. If you 
feed a sheep on straw alone it will not digest 
as much of the straw us if it had grain in 
addition, And so with this red root or 
pigeon weed; • rdinarily the sheep will not 
touch it. But wnen you give the sheep rich 
concentrated food they will men eat more 
or less of this poor, innutritious food. 
It, bo happens that the sheep are having 
rich nitrogenous food, blit I am by no means 
sure that they would not, eat the red root if 
they had corn instead of malt combs. It is 
not the nitrogen they Deed, for dry young 
clover contains more nitrogen than dry corn, 
and yet they will not cat the weeds if they 
hare nothing but clover. What seems to be 
needed is richer and more concentrated food, 
and it will probably make very little differ¬ 
ence whether this rich, concentrated food is 
what we call a highly nitrogenous food like 
peas, beans, oil-cake or malt combs, or 
whether it is a rich, carbonaceous food, so 
called, like corn. 
The important fact (and I thank Prol. 
Atwater for bringing it out so clearly) is 
this If you want animals to eat poor food, 
do not starve them to it, but give them suf¬ 
ficient rich food to enable them to digest cel¬ 
lulose or woody fiber. It is a lesson which 
thousands of farmers need to learn.— Walks 
and Tulles in Am. Agriculturist. 
MY PLAN WITH PIGS 
I have studied the nature of the bog, and, 
after many trials and disappointments, have 
come to the following conclusionsFirst, 
have the pigs dropped about the first of May, 
since and noticed the 
Hakhis of Moretoa farm 
having exhibited a meri-io ewe weighing 60 
lbs., and her daughter by a long wool ram, 
weighing more than double, and a grand¬ 
daughter of the old ewe, having another 
cross of the long wool in her, which weighed 
correspondingly heavier, 1 don’t know how 
it was they did not attack the statement, 
more especially ns the slicep had all been 
together and had fared alike in every re¬ 
spect. There was nothing said about dirty 
noses or any allusion to filthy tails, so that 
there must have been in their appearance 
nothing to disgust any one. The better way 
for those prejudiced Pennsylvanians Is to 
take as an example the Spirit of the writer 
of the piece headed “ Improving Common 
Sheep,” page 30, who, although a successful 
breeder of fine wools, has the honorable soul 
which ought to be in even man's body and 
tells inquirers that other breeds have such 
good qualities of wool and mutton as well, 
and generously adds, “The three-quarter 
grade Cots wolds have an excellent wool for 
combiug, better even than the full-bloods in 
some respects.” 
Every one should understand what they 
write about, aud when any one condemns 
any breed of sheep because of some failures 
thev show a lack of general information. 
England is eminently a sheep-raising coun¬ 
try and a very successful one,—and here I 
wish the correction of Mr. Randall if 1 am 
wrong when 1 add that according to the ex¬ 
tent of Eugland there are 100 or more long 
wooled or down sheep kept for every one 
merino in the United States (this is in com¬ 
parative acreage) ; and if aught, is said about 
more woodland or farms, it must be recol¬ 
lected that, the gentlemen’s parks all over 
England containing deer are a set off. Aus¬ 
tralia patronizes and prizes merinoes, at the 
same time having long wools, and doubtless 
ere long a new > reed with all the best char¬ 
acteristics of both will be established. 
A Worn; in (J Farmer. 
thus avoiding the cold winds of March and 
April, and the overlaying occasioned by pen¬ 
ning in early spring. I save by this plan 
about ten per cent,., and sometimes more, 
especially of a wet, cold spring. Second, 
have a good blue grass or clover pasture for 
them to run in, with plenty of fresh water, 
aud feed liberally on corn. Third, the fol¬ 
lowing year have a good field of rye to turn 
on as soon as it begins to harden, and, if pos¬ 
sible a good clover lot. I feed no com while 
they are on the rye. In the meantime I 
have four or five loads of coal ashes from the 
steam mill, or refuse from the brickyard, 
and mix with Balt or wood ashes. By the 
first of September they are ready for corn, 
not fat, but healthy and sleek as moles. I 
then commence feeding, each day increasing 
the amount until they are on full feed ; never 
overfeed, but as much as they will eat up 
clean. I give plenty of fresh water, and in 
six weeks J am ready to market pigs that 
average over 300 pounds each. I am not par¬ 
ticular about the breed, but prefer a cross of 
Berkshire and Byfield. A person may do 
better w ith a few, but this plan is lor those 
who keep from sixty to one hundred head, 
and feed no cattle.— Cor. N. Y. Tribune. 
SUGAR BEETS FOR FATTENING SWINE, 
Jonathan Talcott gives a statement in 
the Boston Cultivator of an experiment per¬ 
formed on a Suffolk pig where sugar beets 
were largely employed for fattening. The 
animal was about a year old and the feeding 
on boiled sugar beets, tops and roots, began 
on the 16th of August and was continued 
three times a day until the 1st of October, 
after which ground feed was given, consist¬ 
ing of two parts of corn and one of oats, 
three times a day, till the animal was 
slaughtered, the meal being mixed with 
cold water. The result was, on the 15th of 
August, when the sugar beet feeding was 
begun, that the weight was 306 lbs. ; Sep¬ 
tember 1st, 390 lbs. ; October 1st, 450 lbs. ; 
November 1st, 520 lbs. This is the substance 
of the statement given, by which we per¬ 
ceive that the increase the lust of August, 
when fed on boiled sugar beets, was at the 
rate of two pounds per day ; the rate of 
increase on the same food continued through 
September. When fed on ground corn and 
oats, made into cold slop, the gain for the 
next fifty days was less than a pound and a 
half per day. 
SOWS EATING THEIR PIGS, 
AUGUST MANAGEMENT OF BEES. 
The Bee Keepers’ Magazine, in its August 
number, gives some valuable and timely 
hints as to what apiarians need to do to pre¬ 
serve their stocks in good condition. It says : 
“The season for storing surplus honey is now 
verging to its close. Iu all such places boxes 
containing honey should be removed, lest the 
bees carry it down and fill up the cells, which 
should be left for late breeding in the fall 
and afterward used for clustering in when 
the breeding season is past. Any weak 
stocks may now be strengthened by going to 
vour neighbors—who would otherwise mur- 
RICH FEED FOR BREEDING SHEEP 
I have a flock of pure-bred Cotswolds, 
kept for breeding purposes, and I feed the 
ewes and lambs liberally. This spring I hit- 
on a new method of feeding them which 
works to a charm, 1 feed no grain or oil¬ 
cake, my object being, not to get tbe ewes 
fat, but 10 secure a large flow of milk for the 
lambs. Formerly i fed bran for this pur 
pose, together with mangels and clover hay. 
This spring I fed malt, combs instead of bran. 
At first 1 fed it dry, but it occurred to me 
that when we want cows to give a large 
flow of milk we slop them. And I thought 
I would try slopping my ewes and lambs. 
We were cooking malt- combs for the pigs, 
and I told the shepherd to put some troughs 
aud half-barrels iu the sheep yard, and carry 
them a pail or two of these warm slops, and 
see if they would oat them. At first the 
ewes did not know what to make of them, 
and only drank a very lit tle. But- the next 
day they drank more, aud more the day fol¬ 
lowing, and the next day more still. “ Give 
them all they like to drink,” I had said ; “it 
will not hurt them.” And it did not. But 
it seemed impossible to give them all they 
wanted. We carried over 100 pails a day to 
a flock of till ewes. This was more work 
than I had bargained for, and so I gave up 
the idea of cooking and adopted a new plan. 
I put a linseed oil barrel, holding about 150 
gallons, in the sheep yard, near the pump. 
Into this we put a bag (50 lbs.) of malt combs 
and tilled the barrel with water, st irred up 
the malt combs and let them soak twelve 
hours. Then we filled the troughs with the 
slops and allowed the sheep to drink all they 
would. This was but little more labor than 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Remedy for Roy Cholera. —Eds. Rural : 
Will you please republish a recipe for hog 
cholera that I found iu the Rural of Nov. 
15 or 22, 1878 i 1 I used this remedy with very 
good sueceas, and although I am very care¬ 
ful about preserving every number of your 
valuable paper, those of the above - named 
dates have been lost.— John H. Armaling, 
Mason City, 111., Aug. 4. 
The following from the Rural of Nov. 22, 
1873, is propably the recipe to which our cor¬ 
respondent refers : 
Madder, 1 lb.; sulphur, 1 lb.; saltpeter, 1 
lb.; resin, 1 lb.; black antimony, % lb.; cop¬ 
peras, lbs,; asafetida, 3v lb« 5 arsenic, 2 
oz. Dose, one tablespoonful to five hogs, in 
slop or ashes, once a day if they have the 
cholera ; once a week to prevent it. 
It is not advisable to keep hogs in the same 
yard with hens. Old hogs will sometimes 
eat young chickens, and all are liable to form 
a habit of devouring tho droppings of fowls. 
When this is the case no amount of good food 
will fatten swine. They become poor and 
dull, and only entire exclusion of the hens 
from the yard will remedy the evil. 
1 
