FEB. I! 
tube into the teat after milking, the tube 
being closed at the bottom by a piece of cork 
or India rubber, will have the effect of stretch¬ 
ing the membrane and enlarging the orifice, 
by giving a new set to the muscles of the teat or 
to the sphincter muscle at the base of the teat; 
or a piece of whalebone may be filed into a 
proper shape, as shown in the illustration, 
both to enlarge the duct and to be retained in 
its place, without danger at the same time of 
penetrating too far so that it cannot be with¬ 
drawn. The form shown in the illustration, 
Pig, 46 provides for all these; whalebone is 
to be preferred because it is hard, smooth, 
elastic and cannot be broken. It should A 
be well oiled with pure sweet oil be- I I 
fore it is inserted into the teat. 
Leaking of the milk is erased by the I 
exact reverse of that which produces 
hard milking. It is doubtful if any 
permanent remedy can be found for it. 
A temporary preventive, and one not 
at all difficult of application, is to 
smear the teats of a leaking cow with 
photographers’ collodion as soon as she 
is milked. A bottle of collodion may 
be kept in the barn (always well cork¬ 
ed or it will evaporate very soon), and L 
a small quantity may be rubbed over 
the teat and on the end of it with the Fl0 ’ 48 ’ 
finger. The collodion contracts considerably 
as the chloroform evaporates ^from it and 
practically forms a tight bandage around the 
teat, which compresses the duct. When, as is 
sometimes the case, a cow will lose two or 
three quarts of milk a day, it may pay to use 
this remedy. A rubber band around the teat 
has been suggested, but is not to be recom¬ 
mended, as it would obstruct the cii’culation 
and cause trouble. 
Spattering of the milk is produced by a rag¬ 
ged edge of the skin at the extremity of the 
duct of the teat. When it is permanent it 
will require for it9 removal the insertion of a 
short plug having the form shown at Fig. 
46, by which the extremity of the orifice 
will be brought into more even shape. But 
generally the use of a piece of smooth pumice 
stone, rubbed gently upon the edge of the teat 
before and after milking, wall remove the 
loose scales of the skin which cause the trouble. 
When the stream of milk is diverted from its 
course and broken in the manner referred to, 
it may often remedy the trouble to clear the 
end of the teat with the finger-nail, by which 
any loose scale of skin will be removed. The 
skin is changed in its natural maimer by the 
flaking off of minute scales or shreds, aud as 
these are worn off or fall off new skin appeal’s 
under them. It is this continual reparation 
of the skin tissue which is the cause of the 
spattering, and when the cause is known the 
remedy becomes very simple. If the pumice- 
stone or finger-nail does not effect a remedy, 
the difficulty may be removed by applying a 
little wet carbonate of soda or saleratus to the 
end of the teat and rubbing it a minute ; this 
will dissolve the scale and cause its removal. 
KICKING COWS. 
Some time ago a correspondent of the Ru¬ 
ral New-Yorker objected to my prescrip¬ 
tion of kindness as a cure for kicking cows, 
and related how he had made a cure by means 
of a rope used to tie the legs of the cow. 
Sometimes, I admit, kindness is not effective, 
as where a cow is suffering fx’oiu sore teats, 
when she cannot bo blamed for kicking, not 
being a rational and reasonable being. Then 
it is necessary to tie the leg, aud I here give a 
plan for doing this in a very simple manner. 
Tt is by the use of a fastening common in 
Irish and Scotch dairies, and known as a 
a Bpaneel. It consists of a loop of cord about 
us thick as a common clothes line, and about 
20 inches long, and having a cross stick fast¬ 
ened at one end. This is shown at Figure 47. 
It is used as follows : One end is looped around 
one of the cow’s legs just above the ankle, and 
the end with the cross 
stick is carried around 
the other leg aud the 
01*088 stick is passed 
through the doubled 
cord, as shown at Figure 
48. The cow cannot lift her leg to kick aud 
the band is very quickly and easily applied 
and taken off. Such a fastening should be 
kept in every cow stable to be ready in case 
of accident, for the quietest cow may kick 
and upset a pail of milk when the teats are 
cracked and sore in cold weather, or scratched 
by briars when at pasture, or when they are 
tender after calving. I have used this fasten¬ 
ing frequently with the most satisfactory 
effect. II. Stewart. 
IBisctLLcmeoits. 
RURAL BRIEFLETS. 
Trop-XOLU.m, Empress of India, is an Eng. 
lish novelty which will soon be catalogued in 
America. It is of close, compact habit like 
King of Tom Thumbs. Its foliage is said to 
be of the bluest of blue-greens, and the flowers 
of a deep brilliant crimson, are borne in the 
greatest profusion..... 
The Florist and Pomologist gives a colored 
plate of the fruit and leaves of the Waterloo 
Peach. This fruited in New York where it 
originated in 1877, and was introduced by 
Ellwanger & Barry of Rochester, where it 
ripens the last of July, It is of medium size 
and very good quality... 
Professor Beal was anxious to fill some 
of the vacancies in the Agricultural College 
(Lansing, Mich.) grounds with the best new 
apples from Russia. These trees could have 
been obtained from the Iow'a Agricultural 
College for $25. The Michigan State Board 
of Agriculture said there was no money for 
such a purposel...— 
The American Wonder Pea evidently grows 
in favor with years. It is of the first quality, 
early, half-dwarf and prolific. This was 
tested at the Rural Grounds several (four, we 
think) yeara ago. It grows to the hight of a 
foot or more, and the peas mature at about 
the same time as the Little Gem which variety 
it closely resembles. Tbe peas are wrinkled, 
sweet, tender and delicious. 
There is a question which we would like to 
ask botanists: We have among p)antsJ9am$ite s 
and epiphytes.. The first, like tbe Mistletoe, 
penetrates the bark of the foster tree and 
lives upon its sap, which, it seems, it elabor¬ 
ates for itself. We have also parasites desti 
lute of green leaves and stems, as, for example, 
the dodder. This has no leaves and its stems 
are of a golden color. It is supposed to live 
upon the elaborated sap of the plants to which 
it attaches itself and hence has no need of 
digestive organs. Epiphytes merely attach 
themselves to other plants, their roots only 
adhering to the surface bark. They seem 
merely to hold the plant iu place. Such 
air plants (many of the orchids for example) 
must draw all of their food from the air. 
Now in the ash of such plants we find potash, 
phosphoric acid, lime, sulphur, etc., aud the 
question we have to ask is: Where do these 
ash constituents come from ?.... 
There are many new varieties of peas 
offered the present season that according to 
seedsmen’s circulars are far better aud more 
productive than any of the old kinds. It is 
well to te6t these new kinds sparingly. It 
doesn’t cost much; it creates an additional in¬ 
terest in the vegetable garden which is so 
sadly neglected by muuy farmers, i >ur read 
ers must not forget the Telephone for a tall- 
growing intermediate, or the Little Gem for 
dwarf... 
The Albany Cultivator and Country Gen¬ 
tleman of a late date presents a picture of 
Spiraea {Exochorda of sune) grandifloru, re¬ 
drawn from the London Gardeners’ Chronicle, 
Our comtemporary remarks that ‘ ‘ it is hoped 
it may endure our Winters”—and again, 
“Should it prove hardy with us, it will be¬ 
come one of our finest shrubs.” There is no 
doubt us to its hardiness, being one of the 
hardiest of Spirmas. We have had it at the 
Rural Grounds for nearly nine years, while we 
have known of it in neighboring grounds 
for not less than five years previously. It 
was introduced from China as we learn, about 
1855, or not loug after. It begins to bloom 
with us the middle of May, continuing in 
bloom until early Juue. Tbe shrub grows to 
the hight of about 10 to 12 feet—round in its 
form. The leaves persist and remain green 
long after those of most deciduous shrubs and 
trees huve fallen. The bark exfoliates similar 
to that of the Nine-bark or Spiraea (Neillia) 
opulifolia. The flower’s are an inch or more 
in diameter and are borne m such profusion 
that the shrub when in full bloom is u sheet 
of white. Cuttings do not strike readily, so 
that it Is propagated chiefly by layers, for 
which reason, probably, it 111 is remained rare. 
Has this shrub fruited with any of our con¬ 
tributors or readers f.... 
Mr. D. Rick of Adrian, Michigan, sends us 
well ripened seeds of the Rural Branching 
Sorghum which is the third or fourth speci¬ 
men we have received from different parts 
of that State. There is something queer 
about the maturing of this seed. Last year it 
scarcely matured iu South Carolina, it has 
never fully matured at the Rural Grounds. 
And yet fine specimens have been sent to us 
from Michigan and from Nebraska!. 
--- 
Pasteur and some of His^Discoveriks.— 
This eminent savan has devoted years tc grop_ 
i ngjunong the infinitesimally small invisibili¬ 
ties of Nature, and has gained more valu 
from this minute field than any bonanza king 
has ever gathered from mountains of ore. 
He has won world wide honor and fame for 
himself, because of the immense gain to aJl 
human beings in the world, and to all their 
flocks, from his patient labors, keen insight, 
and grand discoveries. It does not seem long 
since we were accustomed to the statement 
that the phenomena of fermentation defied the 
investigation of the ablest chemists, and were 
utterly lawless and unexplainable. But it ii 
now many years since Pasteur deduced and 
clearly codified the laws regulating the pro¬ 
cesses once so mysterious and uncontrollable. 
Since that great triumph he has made succes¬ 
sive axlvauce* in the study of contagious or 
transmissible diseases, gaining continually 
new points of explication and mastery, and 
opening anticipations of entire future control 
of these fearful pestilences. He is said to be 
engaged this Winter iu a study of the infec¬ 
tion of yellow fever. In his paper read before 
the International Medical Congress which met 
in London last August, he explained the the¬ 
ory of vaccination and the circumstances un¬ 
der which chicken cholera, for example, or the 
terrible splenic fever, better known here as 
malignant anthrax, m cattle becomes virulent 
and fatal on the one hand, or attenuated on 
the other, with the advantages iu the latter 
case not only of averting mortal danger, but 
of exempting the animals from risk of future 
'infection at the expense of a brief term of 
greatly mitigated suffering. But for this 
means of prevention and control the account 
given by this great discoverer of the swarm¬ 
ing germs and of their retaining their vitality 
and power of virulence iu earth or air 
for many years would be irredeemably 
frightful. We will give the chief points 
of Pasteur’s exposition, not in the hope 
of rendering busy farmers cryptologists, 
but of possibly enabling them to judge whetb 
er their local veterinary doctors are up with 
the progress of science in this obscure but 
most important direction. 
The following passage from Pasteur’s ad¬ 
dress, as reported in the Agricultural Gazette, 
illustrates the virulence of the germs by which 
contagious diseases are conveyed.—E ds. R. 
N-Y. _ 
“Let us take, then, a fowl which is about 
to die of chicken cholera, and let us dip the 
end of a delicate glass rod in the blood of the 
fowl with the usual precautions, upon which I 
need not here dwell. Let us then touch with this 
charged pointsome bouillon depoule , (chicken 
broth) very clear, hut first of all rendered sterile 
under a temperature of about 115 ° Centigrade, 
and under conditions in which neither the 
outer air nor the vases employed can intro¬ 
duce exterior germs—those germs which are 
in the air or on the surface of all objects. In 
a short time, if the little culture vase is placed 
in a temperature of 25 v to 35^ C. (77° to ( J5 W F.) 
you will see the liquid become turbid and full 
of tiny microbes shaped like the figure 8, but 
often so small that under a high magnifying 
power they appear like points. Take from this 
vase a drop as small as you please, no more 
than can be carried on the poiut of a glass rod 
as sharp as a needle, and touch with this point 
a fresh quantity of sterilised bouillon de poule 
placed in a second vase, and tbe same phe¬ 
nomenon is produced. You deal in the some 
way with a third culture vase, with a fourth, 
and so on to a hundred or even a thousand, 
and invariably within a few horn’s the culture 
liquid becomes turbid and filled with the same 
minute organisms. At tbe end of two or three 
days’ exposure to a temperature of about 80 ° 
C. (86° F.) the thickness of the liquid disap¬ 
pears aud a sediment is formed at the bottom 
of the vase. This signifies that the develop¬ 
ment of the minute organism has ceased—in 
other words, all the little points which caused 
the turbid appearance of the liquid have fallen 
to the bottom of tbe vase, and thiugs will re¬ 
main in this condition for a longer or shorter 
time, for months even, without either the 
liquid or the deposit undergoing any visible 
modification, inasmuch as we have taken care 
to exclude the germs of the atmosphere. A 
little stopper of cotton sifts the air w hich en¬ 
ters or issues from the vase through changes 
of temperature. Let us take one of our series 
of culture preparations—the hundredth or the 
thousandth, for instance—and compare it in 
respect to its virulence with the blood of a 
fowl which has died of cholera; in other 
words, let us inoculate under the skin ten 
fowls, for instance, each separately with a 
tiny drop of infectious blood, and ten others 
with a similar quantity of the liquid m which 
the deposit bas first been shaken up. Strange 
to say, the latter ten fowls w ill die as quickly, 
and with the same symptoms, as the former 
ten, the blood of all will be found to contain 
after death the same infectious organisms. 
This equality, so to speak, in the virulence 
both of the culture preparation and of the 
blood, is due to an apparently futile circuru. 
stance. I have made a hundred culture pre¬ 
parations without leaving any cousid.rable 
interval between the impregnations. Well, 
h^re we have the cause of the equality In the 
virulence.” 
And the following extract exhibits the Im¬ 
portant fact that the virulence of tbe germ- 
growth is attenuated by a term of exposure 
to the air; and that vaccination with this at¬ 
tenuated virus does not have mortal or every 
very painful consequences, while it delivers 
the system from liability to virulent, contagion 
by using the aliment on which the germs feed: 
“ Let us now repent exactly our successive 
cultures with this single difference, that we 
pass from one culture to that which follows it, 
from the hundredth to, say, the hundred and 
first, at intervals of a fortnight, a month, two 
months, three mouths, ten months. If. now, 
we compare the virulence of the successive 
cultures, a great change will he observed. It 
will be readily seen, from an inoculation of a 
series of ten fowls, that the virulence of one 
culture differs from that of the blood and 
from that of a preceding culture when a suffi¬ 
ciently long interval elapses between the im¬ 
pregnation of one culture with the microbe of 
the preceding. More than that, we may rec¬ 
ognize by this mode of observation that it is 
possible to prepare cultures of varying de¬ 
grees of virulence. One preparation will kill 
eight fowls out of ten, another five out of ten, 
another one out of ten, nnother none at all, 
although the microbe may still be cultivated. 
In fact, what is no less strange, if you take 
each of these cultures of attenuated virulence 
as a point of departure in the preparation of 
successive cultures, and without apprecia 
ble interval in the impregnation, the whole 
series of these cultures wi l reproduce the at¬ 
tenuated virulence of that which has served as 
the starting point. Similarly, where the vir¬ 
ulence is null, it produces no effect. How, 
then, it may be asked, are the effects of these 
attenuated virulences revealed in the fowls f 
They are revealed by a local disorder—bv a 
morbid modification, more or less profound, 
in a muscle, if it fs a muscle which has ln-eu 
inoculated with tbe virus. The muscle is 
filled with microbes, which are easily recog¬ 
nized, because the attenuated microbes have 
almost the bujk, the foim, and the appearance 
of the most virulent microbes. But why is 
not the local disorder followed by death ? For 
the moment, let us answer by a statement of 
facts. They are these—the local disorder 
ceases of itself, more or less speedily; the mi¬ 
crobe is absorbed and digested, if one may 
say so; and little by little the muscle regains 
its normal condition. Then the disease has 
disappeared. When we inoculate with the 
microbe the virulence of which is null there 
is not even local disorder, the natura median- 
trix carries it off &t once, and here, indeed, 
we see the influence of the resistance of life, 
since this microbe, the virulence of which Is 
null, multiplies itself. A little further, and 
we touch the principle of vaccination. When 
the fowls have been rendered sufficiently ill 
by the attenuated virus which the vital resist¬ 
ance has arrested in its development, they will, 
when inoculated with virulent virus, suffer no 
evil effects, or only effects of a passing char¬ 
acter. In fact, they no longer die from the 
mortal virus, and for a time sufficiently long, 
which in some cases may exceed a year, chick¬ 
en cholera cannot touch them, especially un¬ 
der the ordinary conditionsof contagion which 
exist in fowl-houses. At this critical poiut of 
our manipulation—that is to say, in this inter¬ 
val of time which we have placed between two 
cultures, and which causes the attenuation— 
what occurs I I shall show you that in this in¬ 
terval the agent which intervenes is the oxy¬ 
gen of the air. Nothing more easily admits of 
proof. Let us produce a culture in a tube con¬ 
taining very little air, and close this tul>e with 
an enameler’s lump. The microbe In develop¬ 
ing itself will speedily take all the oxygen of 
the tube and of the liquid, after which it will 
be perfectly free from contact with oxygen. 
In this case it does not appear that the mi¬ 
crobe becomes appreciably attenuated, even 
after a great lapse of time. The oxygen of 
the air, then would seem to he a possible mod¬ 
ifying agent of the virulence of the microbe 
of chicken cholera; that is to say, it may mod¬ 
ify more or less the facility of its development 
in the body of animals. May we not be here 
in presence of a general law applicable to nil 
kinds of virus 1 What benefits may uot be the 
result ? We may hope to discover in this way 
the vaccine of all virulent diseases; and what 
is more natural than to begin our investigation, 
of the vaccine of wbut we in French call 
eliarbon, what you iu England call splenic 
fever, and what in Russia is known as the Si¬ 
berian pest, and iu Germany as the alilzbrand f 
In this new investigation 1 have bad the assist¬ 
ance of two devoted young savants, MM. 
Chamberland and Roux.” 
There is much inquiry aud anxiety in many 
parts of the country (now that small pox is 
widely prevalent) about the safety and expe¬ 
diency of vaccination. This slip answ ers some 
of the questions, 
“ What is the cause of w hite specks In but¬ 
ter?" was the subject of a question in one of 
our „ Transatlantic contemporaries, says the 
