DEC. 24 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
80S 
Bantams. —The Bulletin says that one desi¬ 
rable feature in regard to Bantams is that they 
are eminently useful pets ; for they are invari¬ 
ably good layers of large eggs, no matter what 
the breed, and their small, plnmp bodies are 
moBt delicious eating. The surplus stock,each 
year, can always be disposed of at a fair price, 
if one has any hesitancy in serving them up on 
the table, and thus they prove themselves more 
than self-sustaining. This is more than can be 
said of most other pets. 
Plymouth Rooks. —Without wishing to say a 
word in derogation of any breed, Mr. Dickie pre¬ 
dicts in the Poultry Bulletin that in ten years 
more, or at the end of its Becond deoade, the 
Plymouth Rock will be one of the leading, if not 
the leading, fowl with the average poultry keeper 
of our oountry.; 
Poultry Houbes —A warm,light, clean and dry 
house in which the birds may roost and lay their 
eggs and take shelter in oold or windy weather, 
is indispensable to success in poultry-keeping.— 
Bacon’s Guide. 
Fattening must be completed in ten days, for 
after that period they begin to lose weight. 
The best age for table birds is when they are 
from (four to six months old.—Poultry Book for 
the Many. 
Aoornh, baked in an oven and ground into 
flour, are recommended by a German paper as a 
valuable food for poultry. 
Jukstrial jSonctics, 
THE INTERNATIONAL DAIRY FAIR. 
FREE LANCE. 
A mountain of effort has produced a mouse 
of effect in the greatly advertised and puffed, 
so-called International Dairy Fair, held last 
week in New York. “ For what purpose was all 
this waste of time and money ?" After spend¬ 
ing some hours in considering the question, in 
walking up and dowm amongst the tables loaded 
with cheese and tubs of butter, and observing 
the experts mixing tastes and looking remark¬ 
ably wise over the samples of obeese, the con¬ 
clusion forced itself upon me, that it was 11 much 
ado about nothing.” No one who went to see 
the show came away one whit the wiser for it, 
nor am I able to see that one useful purpose 
was effected, beyond the advertising of a few 
prominent produce-commission men. There 
was nothing new shown to any dairyman, or 
anything of interest to one not versed in the 
business. To see a pile of some hundreds of 
bags of salt upon one side, and a few ordinary 
oows with a few hulls, (are these dairy ani¬ 
mals ?) upon the other, and a pyramid of for¬ 
eign oheese, as the most conspicuous part of the 
exhibition, was productive of regret that the 
time taken to see all this was as good as thrown 
away. And yet there was a lesson to be learned 
from it. 
Every one who knows anything of dairy mat¬ 
ters and things in general, knows that the 
American people are not consumers of cheese ; 
and that the greater bulk of our product is sent 
abroad. He also knows that the ohief reason 
that we are not a cheese-eating people, is that it 
is difficult, if not impossible, to procure a piece 
of cheese at any retailing establishment in city, 
town or village, that is fit to be eaten ; farther, 
that the cheese offered for home consumption is 
the same thing everywhere, without auy more 
variety than goodness, with one notable excep¬ 
tion. This is: that occasionally a rare quality 
or shape of cheese is discovered by accident in a 
fancy grocery store, but. it is offered as a foreign 
article. And this brings to my recollection the 
fact that the most interesting thing to mein the 
whole display was a sample of oheese which 
seemed to be of foreign make, and which was 
the only specimen of anything which was differ¬ 
ent from the common (indeed too common) 
bulky cheese of our home dairies. Small, thin 
cheeses they wore, of such a small size as to at¬ 
tract a would-bo purchaser for this convenient 
character, and of such quality as to keep for 
even years. These were of the kind that are 
sold in the stores as Euglish dairy oheese, aud 
yet they were the product of a New York, (Ot¬ 
sego County) dairyman. But there was no place 
for them in the whole exhibition, exoept as for¬ 
eign oheese : and among the foreign oheese they 
were exhibited, as well aB classed. 
Truly “a prophet is not without honor save in 
his own country and among his own people;” and 
so an enterprising and skillful American dairy¬ 
man who makes a fanoy oheese, such as the 
English Gloucester, or Stilton, or the French 
Brie oheese, must bell his product as a foreign 
article, or find no oustom for it. Why cannot 
our dairymen make as good oheese as foreign¬ 
ers? We have learned to compete favorably 
with the Euglish pro ole in the common quality 
which suits a gror <o. aud can be eaten in 
large slices by a hm gry laborer with hiB coarse 
bread, tut the delicately flavored oheese is all 
imported, or if made at home is sold us imported. 
This is the fault of the dealers who encourage 
this prejudice in favor of foregn articles and 
against oar home-made products. While thiB 
continues, there can be no hope that Americans 
will become consumers of oheese. We desire 
variety as well as excellence in onr viands, and 
the prevalent idea that we cannot appreciate 
goodness for itself alone, is a false one. 
It is a matter for regret that those who have 
usurped the lead and control of the American 
dairy interest, I mean the produoe-commiBsion 
men, seem to have no idea that the home market 
is worth caring for, but that their main efforts 
seem to ran in the way of getting all the con¬ 
signments they can and shipping them abroad 
for a market. And out of this idea seems to 
have grown the gTeat International Dairy Fair, 
which I presume has not been so successful as 
to tempt a repetition. It is not to the credit of 
our leading dairymen that they should be led 
by the nose fay a few dealers in dairy salt and 
commission men ; or should permit such per¬ 
sons to rau their conventions. These men are 
well and useful in their way, and may be able 
to give acceptable advice as to markets, but a 
good dairyman should know the “ ins and outs” 
of his own business. 
fairs Ijusbaniin) 
WHICH BREED FOR THE DAIRY.—NO. 2. 
L. 8. HARDIN. 
SHORT-HORNS. 
The first in order for discussion is the Short¬ 
horn. Her friends, on both sides of the water, 
BLACK 
are clamorous to have us consider her a dairy 
oow. If I had my way, I would no more con¬ 
sider the Short-hern a dairy oow than I would 
the Hereford, Polled Angus r Texas oow. To 
be sure, every oow that givo„ milk has a right 
to go in the dairy, if anyi i is foolish enough 
to put her there. Men ; eep cows in the 
dairy, that give no more milk than a good-sized 
goat would. This is a free country—for the 
majority. The sight of the table given in my 
article in a late issue of the Rural, has given 
grave offence to Harris Lewis. 
The advocates of the Short-horn for the dairy 
base their claims, not upon what she is going 
to do, nor upon what she can do, but, remarka¬ 
LE&HOB,NS. 
ble as it may appear, solely upon what her 
ancestors have done. This reminds one of that 
imbecile vanity that we too often see in our own 
fair Kentucky—men, in drink, acting the beast 
and claiming to be gentlemen because their 
honored ancestors were gentlemen. We have 
no time in this country to rely upon the honors 
won by our remote ancestors; we must do the 
deed ourselves if we expeot the reward. In 
this State where Short-horn breeding is at the 
hight of its glory, the Short-horn cow has 
been weeded from the dairy. Her tendency, 
when fed riih food, to fatten and dry up rapidly, 
coupled with the waste of food in carrying sev¬ 
eral hundred pounds of useless flesh, has caused 
her most enthusiastic friends to desert her. The 
fact that she has been in this country longer 
than any other breed of thoroughbreds, and has 
not now what one would call a standing in the 
dairy, is pretty conclusive evidence that, in some 
way, the dairyman has arrived at the conclusion 
that she is not the cow for him. 
The authorities of this country differ very 
much on the subject of this cow’s dairy quali¬ 
ties; but the richest piece of breeding pniloso- 
phy I have seen on this subject, is from the pen 
SPANISH. 
of Prof. Arnold. He says : “In crossing with 
natives the modern Short-horns in which the 
capacity for milk has run low, the later acquisi¬ 
tions give way and drop out, and the progeuy 
takes back, and the original form of the early 
Short-horns and their tendenoy to milk revive.” 
Let us.see about that. He acknowledges that 
the milk haB been bred out of the Short-horn. 
The ball’s parents have been bred for beef until 
the milk is gone. One, and I think I may say 
the prime point in thoroughbreds, is their power 
of stamping their likeness upon their offsprings. 
This beef-bred bull when put to a Shorn-horn 
oow, produces a strictly beef animal; but when 
put to a scrub cow, he does not produoe the 
same beef animal for which he has been bred, 
but, presto! he changes his whole nature, 
abandons the beef characteristics of his breed¬ 
ing and goes in another direction! Ah! Prof. 
Arnold, you are a mighty authority among those 
who sit with open months and Bwallow your 
dicta, but with those who reason for themselves, 
the admiration for you is passing away.— 
(? Eds.) 
I do not feel at liberty, nor is it necessary, to 
restate the arguments against this cow for .the 
dairy, that I have so often made through the 
press. The fact that Harris Lewis has the only 
herd of thoroughbreds that I have been able to 
hear of, that were kept for butter making, 
shows to what a limited extent the Short-horn 
cow has made her way with the American dairy¬ 
man. At the same time it will not do to entirely 
pass over that ever-recurring argument for the 
Short-horn in the dairy, to the effect that when 
her milk gives out she can be turned to a profit¬ 
able beef animal. Having had some pretty 
rough experience in handling beef cattle, I am 
satisfied that no man on earth can make money 
fattening old dairy oowb, if the food he gives 
them has aDy reasonable market value. Does 
not every grazier know that, in order to save 
himself any margin for profit in fattening 
beeves, he must nse gTeat oare in selecting, not 
old cows, but young steers ? and they must be 
good ones at that, with the least possible ten¬ 
denoy to offal and the greatest possible tendenoy 
to take on flesh kindly. There is no room for 
foolishness here if one expects to come out even 
in the fall. In fattening cattle, deliver me from 
old pot-bellied cows, no matter what their 
blood. 
MtisceUaiuoiis. 
CATALOGUES, &c., RECEIVED. 
“Just to Pleabe the Boys,” A new serio¬ 
comic song, published by F. W. Helmick, 136 
W. Fourth St., Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Circular of College of Agriculture of 
the University of Minn. All information 
anent studies, etc. will be supplied by C. Y. 
Lacy, College of Agriculture, Minneapolis, Minn. 
Vick's Illustrated Monthly for December— 
handsome, bright and full of good things, as 
usual. The present number contains, as a front¬ 
ispiece, a very fine colored plate of the new Ama¬ 
ranth, Sunrise. Published by James Vick, Roch¬ 
ester, N- Y. 
The Dairy Interests Abroad, a paper read by 
-Mr. F. B. Thurber at the late International Dairy 
Fair. It describes recent English and French 
Fairs together with methods of manufacture 
pursued abroad and details considerations af¬ 
fecting the foreign market for Amerioau Dairy 
products. 
Third Retort of the Montreal Horticultural 
Society and Fruit Growers’ Association of the 
Province of Quebec for the year 1877-3. This is 
a well-edited pamphlet of 123 pages containing a 
very interesting report of the discussions of va¬ 
rious members of the Society on horticultural 
matters. Henry 8. Evans is the Secretary. 
Mr. Vick sends a bound volume of bis maga¬ 
zine for 187S. He says that he thinks it “ pretty 
good and quite handsome ” but that, not being 
an impartial judge of his own work, he would 
like onr opinion. 
The volume is, of coarse, the size of the 
Monthly. It comprises 376 pages and a oaref ally 
arranged index, hundreds of well-executed wood- 
cuts and about twenty oolored plates of well- 
known flowers. Now, to tell in a few words what 
might be strung out to & column—it is the most 
interesting popular treatise upon flowers and 
their culture that we have hitherto seen. 
Circular of the University of North Car¬ 
olina. containing a list of the Faculty, the 
oourse of studies, and other interesting particu¬ 
lars. We are glad to learn that this institution 
is fast advancing towards its ante-bellum, pros¬ 
perity, having, in itB first session of 1878-9, 
reached 175 matriculates, with a promise of an 
increase to 200 In the second session. Full par¬ 
ticulars of everything, the studies, etc., at the 
University, will be furnished by President R. P. 
Battle, Chapel Hill, N. 0. 
The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United 
States by Thomas Meehan, published by L. 
Prang A Co., Boston, Mass. Again we have to 
acknowledge the receipt of parts (14, 15, 16 and 
17) of this ever welcome work. Mr. Meehan’s 
heart is evidently in this work, and the text is 
no less interesting and instructive than the ool¬ 
ored plates are true to life and beautiful. We need 
only repeat our advice to all interested in onr 
native flowers to subscribe for the work. L. 
Prang A Co will answer all inquiries respecting 
details which the Rural placed before its read¬ 
ers when the work was first offered to the pub- 
lio. 
BB.O'WN 
