THE RURAL WEW-YORSCIR. 
FIS.48 
speak, the charge made by Mr. Goodman 
(page 39) that I am “ persistent in my side 
blows at the Jerseys and their breeders.” 
Mr. Goodman is a breeder of Jerseys, and if 
I have done this, I will freely admit that I 
have done him an injustice and that he has 
the best of reasons to give me “ a dig ” for it. 
I would then take his dig as a rebuke which 1 
have deserved and would repent in dust and 
ashes. But I wholly repudiate the meaning 
which he gives to my strictures upon “fancy 
farmers,” and the unwarranted values they 
put upon some strains c£ Jersey cattle. .Not 
that I should be so foolish as to object to any 
two men bidding against each other for the 
possession of a noted cow until one is forced 
to give $3,000 for it or $4,500 for a bull, by 
the persistency of the other. Mr. Goodman 
will doubtless agree with me that this is a 
fancy price altogether, and not one that de¬ 
pends upon the merits of the animal. 
I have repeatedly said in these “Notes” that 
we have no need of importing Jersey cattle; 
that we have already the best Jerseys in the 
world, and that it is a mere waste of money 
to hand over to foreign breeders thousands 
of dollars for their stock when we have as 
good and better at home. And I think Mr. 
Goodman has admitted as much himself at 
times. Does not he see that I am working al¬ 
together in the interest of native breeders of 
cattle? Further, 1 have said that Jerseys 
are the best butter cows in existence, but I 
have also said that there are some poor Jerseys 
and that some farmers who have got hold 
of some of these have expressed disappoint¬ 
ment at the result. What I have intended to 
express has always been that this extrava¬ 
gant speculation, or fancy, for certain strains 
of Jersey cattle is a damage to the farmer 
because it tends to increase unduly the mar¬ 
ket value of the stock and put it bey ond his 
reach. 1 would feel it to be a cause of the 
greatest rejoicing if every butter maker could 
have a herd of Jerseys, or at least a good Jei“ 
sey bull and have grade Jerseys in his dairy. 
But I have known it to be injurious to the 
farmer and to the reputation of the Jersey 
cattle that a breeder w ill dispose of bis culls 
and poor calves to bis neighbors on the 
strength of the character of the breed, which 
has been puffed and boomed up by statements 
of the records of phenomenal cows. 
The parents of an extraordinary animal 
are not necessarily of equal value to their 
wonderful progeny, nor are its uncles or its 
cousins or its aunts, or even its sons or its 
daughters necessarily certain to be as extra¬ 
ordinary ; and yet on the strength of a record 
by no means so clearly testified to as would 
be required of evidence in a common justice’s 
court in a suit for live dollars, every distant 
relative of the cow to which such a record 
has been given, has an enormous value put 
upou it, and persons who can ill afford to 
lose the money are induced to purchase such 
animals on the strength of their pedigrees 
and which do not nearly approach the records 
of the illustrious relative. 
year. At one time this cow was sold for $28 
and was considered an ordinary heifer. It is 
evident this cow, like 6ome phenomenal horses 
whose youth was passed in obscurity, has 
been going through a course of training, and 
it’s an interesting question how long she will 
last under this sort of feeding until she is 
carried off by the usual milk fever. 
Now let us see where the milk of this cocoa- 
nut comes in. King of Scituate, son of Jersey 
Belle of Scituate, a cow having a record of 
25 pounds two ounces (and it should be added 
to this record that she died of milk fever, I 
think the next time she calved), will serve 
cows for $500 each. Will Mr. Goodman ad¬ 
vise farmers to pay such a price for their 
cows ? The cows, it is true, are limited to 
those having a record of 18 pounds of butter 
weekly, in which case King of Scituate may 
very easily get a good deal of credit which 
may really belong to the cows. 
Now we are on this subject it might be in¬ 
teresting to mention the names and records 
of the most productive Jersey cows. They are 
as follows ; 
Jersey Queen,. 746 pounds of butter 1 l one year. 
Eurotas.....778 
Pansy...871 
Lady Mel.90 
Jersey Bell (dead).... 25 
Couch's Lily.71 
Eveline of Jersey. 2 
Jersey Prize. 18 
Mica. 10 
In 80 days. 
In 7 days. 
In 81 days, 
in 1 day. 
In 1 week. 
kets by the smaller horned and hornless 
breeds. 
Because of the enormous numbers and wealth 
of the Short-born interests at Chicago, and in 
the West generally, the Hereford breeders 
heretofore have hardly received the credit due 
them or their stock, and therefore it is neither 
generally known nor publicly acknowledged 
that, as specimens of well-bred Hereford*, the 
show of them at Chicago wus far superior to 
that of the Short-horns, when taken as speci¬ 
mens of the breed. Further, while there are 
many fine herds of Short-boras in Illinois, to 
Kentucky belongs the herds of the bluest and 
choicest blood; but in the case of the Here- 
fords, the herds of Messrs. Miller and Culbert¬ 
son, of Illinois, the principal competitors at 
Chicago, are second to none either in this 
country or England. It may appear as if it 
were going out of the way to say so much for 
the Illinois herds of thoroughbred cattle, but 
having been witness to the heroic straggles of 
the gentlemen named against the overwhelm¬ 
ing Short-horn majority, it does not seem to 
be out of the way to say a generous word for 
the weaker party in the contest, whether the 
Short-horns or the Herefords shall be tho 
kings among the large breeds of neat cattle. 
“ 2 OZ8. 
M 
" lOOZB. 
It 
“ 10OZS. 
These are all blue-blood Jerseys of recorded 
pedigrees. But some equally prolific cows 
have come from the oldest stock in the coun¬ 
try, that known as the importations of Mr. 
Taintnor, of Hartford. Of this stock Annie 
Logan produced three pounds of butter - in one 
day, and Maggie Mitchell two pounds 14 ounces 
in the same period. These, however, were bar¬ 
ren victories, because a cloud hung over the 
birth of the cows, and they were not recorded 
in the Herd Book. And so their families ar e 
not in request except by farmers who for¬ 
tunately, however, can purchase the stock for 
its intrinsic value. 
TWO SIGNIFICANT LESSONS OF THE 
CHICAGO FAT STOCK SHOW. 
B. F. JOHNSON. 
I take the part of the farmers, and they 
are necessarily the natural antagonists of 
the breeders in a business sense. I have not 
the slightest antipathy to the breeders and I 
acknowledge the groat value of their services 
to the farmers with the most cordial gratitude, 
I kuow the breeders deserve recompense for 
their valuable services, but I know, too, that 
the breeders, as a rale, do not get these big 
prizes, but that too often speculators who 
come in between the breeders and ti io farmers, 
“ fancy” and not fancy as they may happen 
to be, take the cream of the profits of the 
business, and simply because of the money 
they are able to use in it. 
Mb. Goodman is in error when he says $46,- 
000 were ever paid for a Short-horn cow. A 
bid at that price was made at the New York 
Mills sale by a “cranky” person whose head 
was knocked out of level by the riotous fun 
of that sale, and the principal for whom the 
purchase was said to have been made repu¬ 
diated it. The cow went to a well-known 
herd at a very much lower figure, which, 
however, was never pubb'shed, although the 
figures were given to a few in confidence, 
among whom I was one. 
Again I deny that these “long-pursed fel¬ 
lows,” as Mr. Goodman calls them, with but 
few brilliant exceptions, improve stock to 
any great extent. They buy the best and 
most noted stock they can pick up for the 
glory of owning it, but after a time the ani¬ 
mal, forced to death, goes the way of ali flesh, 
and soon the family becomes lost in the com¬ 
mon herd. That thebe cows are forced must 
be admitted. It is reported that Jersey Queen, 
the latest phenomenon, consumes eleven 
quarts of shorts, ground oats, and corn meal, 
and a peck of carrots a day, besides the best 
of hay c ul libitum. On this in her seventh 
year she made 74b pounds of butter in the 
As time weakens the sensational impres¬ 
sions produced by great numbers of extraor¬ 
dinarily fat, large and good butchers’ animals, 
such as were congregated at the late Chicago 
Fat Stock Show, the real lessons taught aud 
the drift of public opinion concerning butch¬ 
ers’stock arc more distinctly seen and their 
significance and value more correctly estima¬ 
ted. Thus, on reflection, the fact appears that 
the animals were too monstrously fat for any 
good or profitable use; that there was too 
much tallow to the amount of lean meat, and 
that improvement in feeding butchers’ stock 
hereafter must be in the direction of increas¬ 
ing the latter aud diminishing the former. To 
what an extent and how strongly this feeling 
prevailed on the occasion under notice was 
strikingly illustrated in the awards of one 
of the committees, comprised wholly of prac¬ 
tical butchers, who, rejecting the hog-fat and 
tallow-laden steers, gave the premiums to 
round-bodied, not over-fat animals, which 
would weigh out the most lean meat at the 
butcher’s block and have the least proportion 
of tallow, or, in other words, offal. This 
was a wholly new departure on the part of the 
committee, aud affords the explanation how' 
it was that a former committee, making fat 
the standard of merit as heretofore, passed 
over quite unnoticed fat steers which a subse¬ 
quent committee awarded the highest prizes 
to. 
But the second important fact brought 
out was that the average large, fat steer, 
whether blooded or grade Short-horn or Here¬ 
ford, is quite too big for the average daily 
wants of the butcher or his customers, and 
that, therefore, if the size of the old breed 
cannot be reduced so as to afford a loin steak 
of less than three or four pounds aud a two rib 
roast weighing not more than eight or ten 
pounds, some of the smaller breeds, like 
the old Devons or the new Galloways and 
Polled Angus, will soon become the favorite of 
the meat-eating public. That this is the drift 
of public sentiment is further evident in the 
way the some time-since-discarded Devon is 
again coming to the front, and it affords the 
explanation, beyond any consideration of no 
horns or color, of the surprising numbers in 
which the Galloways and the Angus breeds 
are appearing on the scene. 
What is wanted, then, as indicated by the 
drift of public opinion and as shown by the 
under current at Chicago, is not only butch¬ 
ers’ stock with less tallow and more leau meat, 
but of less weight with more age added (with¬ 
out which there can be no such thing as first- 
rate beef), aud it remains to be seen whether 
Hereford and Short-bora breeders will accept 
the facts, reduce the size of their stock, feed 
aud exercise so as to pi oduce less tallow and 
more lean meat, or whether they will suffer 
themselves to be crowded out of the best mar- 
POLLEN ESSENTIAL FOR BROOD¬ 
REARING. 
G. M. DOOLITTLE. 
Of late much has been said of the deleteri¬ 
ous effects of bees eating pollen as a Winter 
diet, and out of it there seems to have grown 
the opinion in the minds of some that pollen is 
a necessity when brood is being reared. In 
other words, it is claimed by some that no 
brood can be reared without pollen, for we 
find in a prominent work on apiculture these 
words: “ We are interested about pollen be¬ 
cause bees cannot rear brood without either it 
or some substitute for it.” Again: “They 
(the bees) bad no pollen and, of course, 
no brood-rearing could go on without it.” 
Also we find these words coming from high 
authority: “ I have further stated that pollen 
was an indispensable requisite to brood-rear¬ 
ing; that it is an essential element in the food 
of larval bees;” after which the writer goes 
on to give circumstantial evidence to substan¬ 
tiate his position, without giving any positive 
proof that such posit ion was correct. As pos¬ 
itive evidence in court is considered to be of 
greater value than negative, I desire to 
give some such proof that the above writers 
are mistaken. 
Borne years ago I learned that a neighbor, 
living about a mile away, was to kill his bees 
the next day by the method practiced by our 
forefathers called “ brimst-oning.” Accord¬ 
ingly I went and saw him, and got permission 
to drive out the bees and save them from 
such a cruel death, if I would secure to him 
the combs aud honey. After obtaining the 
bees 1 carried them home aud put them in a 
hive together with six frames of nice, new 
comb without pollen. They were then fed 
very thick sirup made from standard A sugar, 
until I considered they bad sufficient stores 
for Winter. As it was late in October, they 
had but two chances to fly after they had 
|>een brought home and placed in the- cellar 
for Wiuter. We have no flowers yielding 
pollen late in the Fall, consequently no pollen 
was obtained. Along in the fore part of Feb¬ 
ruary I commenced to stimulate them by jar¬ 
ring the hive to arouse the bees into activity, 
so that they would feed their queen. This was 
repeated afterwards by way of experiment. 
About the middle of March a fine day occurred 
when these beets were sent out for a fly, as wus 
our custom at tbat time. After their first 
excitement at being out in the warm sunshine 
had somewhat subsided, the hive was opened 
and, much to my suti-faction, 1 found brood 
in two combs, amounting to nearly half a 
frameful, comprising eggs, larvm and sealed 
brood, with now and then a hatching bee. At 
night they were returned to the cellar, where 
they remained till the middle of April, when 
I found their numbers had much increased 
aud that they had doubled their brood. I then 
began to feed flour, which they worked on 
eagerly as bees generally do in early Spring. 
Here I wish to introduce another person 
giving positive evidence, for “ in the mouths 
of two or three witnesses every word may be 
established.” This person is no other than Mr. 
E, Gallup, for whose opinions on apiculture I 
have the highest respect, and who was consid¬ 
ered high authority a decade of years ago as 
an apiarist. He tells us in the Bee Keepers’ 
Journal for October, 1870, of an experiment 
he had made by - way of putting a small 
swarm of bees in a hive late in the 
season and feeding them till they had 
built thin, small pieces of comb, when 
they were placed in winter-quarters “ without 
a particle of pollen." He then tells us how he 
began to stimulate this little swarm about the 
first of February, and says: “ The queen com¬ 
menced breeding, and by the time the bees first 
flew out in the Spring they had doubled their 
number,” and this without a particle of pollen. 
Next we And on page 965 of the Bee-keepers’ 
Magazine for 1880, these words from the pen 
of Prof. Hasbrouck: “They are certainly 
wrong who say that pollen is indispensable to 
the raising of young bees, because I have had, 
as an experiment, abundant brood raised by 
bees shut up on new comb and fed on refined 
sugar sirup when they could not possibly got 
a grain of pollen from any source.” This, 
coming from an apiarist of close observation, 
can be relied upon, which, with the testi¬ 
mony of others, proves conclusively that 
brood-rearing, to a considerable extent at 
least, can be carried on without any pollen 
whatever. 
From many observations made during past 
years, I am of the opinion that the state of 
the surroundings, such as warm or cool weath¬ 
er, plenty of honey being secreted In the flow¬ 
ers, or no honey at all, a desire to keep up a 
rapidly diminishing colony, or a perfectly 
healthy one, has more to do with brood-rear¬ 
ing than plenty of pollen. That the “scram¬ 
ble” for pollen in early Spring excites brood- 
rearing uo one will deny; but pollen may 
come in quite as freely in the latter part of 
September, and yet no brood-rearing at all be 
the result. Much depends upon whether the 
bees desire brood or not; if they do, they will 
rear it without pollen, as our experience 
proves. If they do not so desire, a hive full 
of pollen has no effect upon them. Anything 
exciting to activity has a tendency toward 
brood-rearing, while that tendiug to quietude 
gives a reverse result. 
Borodino, N. Y. 
LIGHT OR DARK ITALIANS. 
PROFESSOR A. J. COOK. 
The question of hue in our Italian bees is 
one of no little importance, as clearly in¬ 
dicated in its frequent discussion at conven¬ 
tions and in the journals. Of late the sub¬ 
ject has been agitated afresh, Mr. Demaree of 
Kentucky arguing in favor of the bright yel¬ 
low type, while Mr. Dadant, one of the most 
able and experienced bee-keepers of America, 
pronounces in favor of the darker, leather- 
colored Italians. Mr. Heddou also supports 
Mr. Dadant by urging the superiority of the 
more sober-colored bees. My attention was 
called to this subject 11 years ago, as it be¬ 
came my duty as Secretary of the Michigan 
Bee Keepers’ Society, at that time, to read be¬ 
fore the association an article on this same 
topic, written by Mr. E. Gallup, a man whose 
name carries weight, and most justly, in all 
matters pertaining to the apiary. Mr. Gallup 
argued most stoutly for t-lie darker-hued type 
of bees. The doctrine was regarded as he¬ 
terodox at the time, and the position was 
criticised with no small amount of severity. 
But the arguments were so strongly put, and 
so well sustained, that I was much impressed 
by them. Since tbat time, I have observed 
tbe matter closely, have made extended in¬ 
quiries, and have become more and more 
assured that there was truth in the position 
taken. 
I think the Italian bee as it exists in Italv, 
is very superior. I am equally well convinced 
that as yet American breeders have not the 
skill or patience to sustain the excellence to 
its fullest extent. Moreover, so far as I have 
observed, these bees fresh from the Ligurian 
hills are of the nun sober color, or leathery 
hue. The bees from imported queens, while less 
beautiful than are those bred in our country, 
are, 1 think, more active, w hile the queens are, 
I tielieve, more prolific than are Americ an-bred 
queens, especially if long bred without inter¬ 
mixture of newly imported l>lood. This is 
supported not only bymy own observation, and 
tbe three very able persons named above, but 
also by several others w ho have been so placed 
as to study the merits of the two types of 
Italian bees. 
The gi eat point, which has been kept in 
view by the American breeders, especially if 
breeding to sell, was high coloration. This 
was a sine qua non to be secured at all 
hazanls, and the other desirable qualities 
that might appear came rather as by acci¬ 
dent, not as the result of skill in breeding. 
It is easy to see how this course, while it 
would enhance the beauty of the bees, would 
not tend to promote or retain other qualities, 
like activity, prolificness, long tongue, etc., 
which are really of Tar more importance to 
tbe practical bee-keeper. It is also to be 
noted that the added hight of color is usually 
attended with greater freedom from irritftble- 
ness. The highly colored bees were the more 
amiable. We can easily see how that beauty 
aud a gentle demeanor would bo strong qual¬ 
ities, especially for the bees of a breeder who 
was raising them for the general trade. I 
once bought several colonies of bees of this 
sort from an apiarist who had succeeded in 
breeding the most btautiful and uniform bees 
so far as color was concerned, that I ever saw. 
