NOV. 20 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 
appointed in the results. Purchasers for the 
market do not look with favor upon the mut¬ 
ton of Cotswold, and as mutton is the chief 
end of a sheep, a breed that is not productive 
of superior mutton can never be popular 
among farmers who look to the markets for 
the disposal of their surplus stock. Yet thiB 
fine sheep has a large place to fill in the world. 
For crossing on the common grade Merino it 
cannot be surpassed; and while it is In demand 
for crossing there must be business for breed¬ 
ers. And Kentucky has proved itself to 
be remarkably well adapted for breeding fine 
stock of all kinds. 
The headquarters of the largest breeders of 
Short-horns are in Kentucky. The grazing 
farm of Mr. George Hamilton, near Mount 
Sterling, keepB 250 cows and heifers, all high¬ 
bred and members of the first families. A 
combination of the Hamilton family own, in 
all, about 700 head. The reputation of Ken¬ 
tucky stock has been well earned by careful 
breeding and persistence and perseverance in 
keeping to well chosen families. One of the 
oldest breeders in .that State, Mr. Abram 
Renick, who may be called the father of Short¬ 
horn breeders, keeps only one family, the 
Rose of Sharons, of which he has now 65 
females and all are descended from one cow 
bred by Mr. Bates, the noted English breeder. 
How rare is this quality of perseverance! And 
yet it la a key to success in any enterprise, and 
much more in agriculture, in which one has 
to wait longer for results than in any other. 
What farmer sticks to one plan, one method, 
one kind of stock or, In many cases, even to 
one farm, for a dozen years. This constant 
change Is the vice of our system, or rather of 
our want of system. And failure, or at least 
indifferent success, and grumbling are the 
consequences. Farmers should learn that 
success in keeping stock comes from within 
the herd or flock and not from without. No 
one can make a mark who is ever changing 
his breeding animals, for he cannot stamp 
any certain character on his stock, and he can¬ 
not improve. _ 
The great bugbear of farmers in this business 
is close breeding. A farmer who was discus¬ 
sing this question with me recently, seemed to 
think what he called incestuous breeding of 
animals was a crime, an unnatural aud repre¬ 
hensible proceeding. He had never heard or 
known how our best stock has been bred, and 
how closely the most successful breeders have 
kept to one blood. Mr. Bates never hesitated 
to use the 6Uine bull on mother, daughter and 
granddaughter, when the auiuial suited him, 
This was his groat principle in breeding, and he 
once remarked that "it was by keeping to this 
rule that his success had been entirely due .’’ 
Now no man can hope to improve his stock 
except l y the use of superior males; for it is 
from these only that Improvements come. It 
is impossible to change one's breeding animal 
every year; this is perhaps a fortunate thing 
for the second or third cross of a good pure¬ 
bred male upon the progeny of a fairly good 
but common-bred female must improve the 
eross each time. There are two things that 
should he done by farmers; there may be more, 
but these are indispensable; these are, to study 
the principles and history of breeding; then 
choose good and suitable slock for the pur¬ 
pose and stick to it, improving it as skillfully 
as they may. This is important because it is 
from improved 6tock first, and then better 
feeding that the improved system of agricul¬ 
ture that is needed must start. 
glatrj) gusbattiJrg, 
THE DAIRY COW. NO 16. 
HENRY STEWABT. 
Construction and line of Ice-liouseg. 
Ice will retain the solid form for a long pe¬ 
riod if kept in a perfectly well-constructed 
house. The principles of construction upon 
which the effectiveness of an ice-house depend 
are: non-conductibility of the walls ; perfect 
draiuage at the foundation; perfect sealing of 
the floor and the drains against the entrance of 
air; sufficient protection from rain and air at 
the top; and ample ventilation in the upper 
covering. With all these secured the material 
and the form of the building are secondary 
considerations. 
Some years ago a friend who had a Summer 
residence on the border of one of the pictur¬ 
esque lakes which abound in the upper penin¬ 
sula of Northern Michigan requested me to 
build and fill an ice-house for him, for a supply 
of ice for his family in the coming Summer. I 
performed this com mission and, as it turned out 
to be the best ice-house I have constructed at 
any time, I will describe it here. The house 
was 24 feet by 18, outside measure; the outside 
wall was made of diagonal boarding covered 
with dressed weather-boarding, six inches 
wide, laid oyer paper sheathing. The studding 
was of 2x4-inch Btuff. An inner wall of com¬ 
mon boarding laid horizontally wub built 12 
inches from t^e outer wall, aud the studs of 
both walls were kept from spreading by nu¬ 
merous pieces of hoop-iron securely nailed to 
the opposite studs. This space was filled with 
fine refuse ffiarcoal (braize) from charcoal 
kilns at an adjacent iron furnace. The roof 
was ot common pine shingles laid upon tight 
boarding and open around the eaves for the 
thickness of the rafters. The roof projected 
three feet at the eaves. The foundation was 
dug out three feet, the earth being a dry. por¬ 
ous gravel that needed no artificial draining. 
The ice was of the best kind, being two feet 
thick, clear and free from snow, such 
ice being quite common in that severe 
northern climate, where the mercury some¬ 
times stays many degrees below zero for 
weeks and often sinks into the bulb of 
the thermometer, or to 32® below zero. It 
was packed closely in square blocks and a 
space of 18 inches was left around it, which 
was packed closely with leaves, raked up in 
the woods before the snow fell, for several 
feet, and the rest was packed wi th sawdust. 
The house was 14 feet from sill to plate and the 
ice was packed from the floor, which consisted 
of two feet of sawdust, to within two feet of 
the eaves, and covered with from two to three 
feet of Bawdust. Several small holes were 
cut in the form of stars in the front 
and rear gables. The house was filled in 
very cold, dry weather, and as soon as 
filled the double doorway, which was made of 
strips of matched boards placed crosswise, was 
filled with sawdust. Three outside doors, one 
above another, for use as the ice might be 
lowered in higbt, were hung aud closed by 
latches. Outside stairways were made by 
which the two upper doors were reached, 
SOME RECENT NOTES ON THE CENTRIF¬ 
UGAL CREAMER. 
PROFESSOR G. C. CARDWELL. 
ICE 
SCALE, 12-FETOAIilNCH 
ICE HOUSE.— FIG. 375. 
This was done iu the Winter of I860. The 
owner, whose business was in New Orleans, 
was detained by tbe war and did not see his ide- 
house until 1865, in the Summer of which year 
it was opened, and some of the ice was still 
there in the center of the packiug and a con¬ 
siderable thickness of the packing was frozen 
around it. 1 don’t think much of the ice had 
melted, but believe the bulk of it had evapo¬ 
rated, knowing how rapidly blocks of ice will 
disappear by evaporation even iD the coldest 
weather in that climate. 
I do not know that there is any better way 
of constructing an ice-house than the above ; 
but perhaps it was unnecessarily elaborate. 
Since then I have kept ice perfectly well in a 
corner of a barn by making a board partition 
at the required place, lining the barn wall in¬ 
side and packing it full with clover chaff— 
which, by the way, is an excellent non con¬ 
ducting substance, as are also buckwheat 
hulls, oat chaff and buckwheat chaff—and by 
packing the ice well with at least a foot in thick¬ 
ness of dry sawdust all around and above it. 
fig. 376. 
The ice-house attached to the dairy de¬ 
scribed in the last chapter, was made with 
double walls, a foot thick, the outer wall of 
common siding and the luner one of rough 
boarding without any protection, the space 
between these being filled with sawdust. No 
inside packing is used, bat the ice is laid close 
to the inner wall, ana every crevice is filled 
with broken ice so as to make a solid mass. 
At least, these were the instructions given to 
the owner, and as no complaint has been made 
it is to be supposed the house is satisfactory. 
__ ^ 
ICE FORK.—FIG. 377. 
The easiest method of filling an ice-house is 
by a sliding trough upon which the blocks are 
drawn in by ice-forks or ropes to which ice- 
tongs are attached. The ice-fork consists of a 
long handle having two sharp steel points af¬ 
fixed at one end, one to push and oue to pull 
with, as shownin cut fig. 377. Ice should be cut 
in cold, dry weather and packed as soon as 
cut. It should be cut in regularly-shaped 
blocks; 24x16 inches, or 18x12, is a convenient 
size, because with these the joints can be 
broken and each layer made to seal the joints 
of the one below it. In packing the house a 
quantity ol broken ice should be kept on each 
layer aud swept and packed into the crevices 
with a broom and a thin-edged wooden imple¬ 
ment made for the purpose (figure 376). The 
fine dust left upon the ice will help to separate 
the blocks when they are taken out for use. 
Cooling the Cream Before Churning. 
It has been found in some recent experi¬ 
ments, of which an account is given in a recent 
number of the Milch Zeitung, with cream from 
a centrifugal separator, having a temperature 
of 57 to 60 degrees, that if it was churned at 
once 17 per cent. less butter was obtained than 
if it was first cooled down to about 34 degrees; 
and on making a further application of this 
result it appeared that butter was in general 
more easily made from cooled cream. The im¬ 
portance of cooling the centrifuge cream is 
well understood iu Sweden ; therefore the use 
of this instrument does not do away with the 
necessity of ice or cold water in the dairy, and 
suitable cooling arrangements. Nevertheless 
there is no little gain in tbe smaller extent of 
these arrangements that wonld be necessary, 
and the shorter periods of time for which they 
would be called into requisition. When the 
cream was obtained by ordinary methods it was 
observed that if the milk was 6et at a temperature 
below 55 degrees, there was a loss of only 3.3 
per cent, of butter in consequence of not cool¬ 
ing the cream before churning; but if the 
cream rose at a temperature of 60 or above, a 
loss of 10 per cent, of butter resulted from not 
cooling it. 
duality of the flutter from Centrifugal Cream. 
When centrifugal separators were first intro¬ 
duced it was quite commonly asserted and be¬ 
lieved that the butter made irom the cream 
would uot keep so well as that from cream ob¬ 
tained in the ordinary manner, and that, there¬ 
fore, this process could not be used to advantage 
unless the cream or the butter was to be con¬ 
sumed Immediately. There appeared to be, in 
the nature of the case, no good ground for any 
such assertion ; supposing the cream to be as 
carefully kept, and the butter as carefully made 
iu the one case as iu the other, we should rea¬ 
sonably expect it to be equally good. In some 
recent tests of the centrifugal creamer, by 
Fleisehinan aud Vieth, samples of butter from 
cream raised in cooled cans, and from cream 
separated by the centrifugal process were sent 
to an expert in dairy produce; most careful 
tests revealed no difference either in flavor or 
in keeping qualities. 
Quantity of Butter Yielded by the Centrifugal 
Broceui). 
Numerous experiments have shown that a 
greater weight of butter is obtained from a 
given quantity of milk with the centrifugal 
creaming process than with other methods of 
separating the cream; iu the various tests that 
have been made, this increase ranged from 
eight to 3d per cent. The difference varying 
according to the character of the milk. It has 
been shown that this larger yield is really due 
to a more complete separation of the batter 
fat from the milk, and not to a larger propor¬ 
tion of salts and water or other foreign matters 
in the butter; the skimmed milk from the cen¬ 
trifuge is poorer in fat than that from the 
Bwartz process or from any other method of 
setting the milk for cream in common use in 
Europe. In several comparative tests recently 
made the proportion of fat in the centrifuge 
skimmed milk ranged from 0.21 to 0.44 per 
cent; when the cream was separated by ordi¬ 
nary methods from milk of the same richness 
in fat, the proportion of fat left iu the skimmed 
milk, though iu some eases lower than the 
highest limit with the centrifugal machine, 
waB in others fully twice as great. 
The Temperature of the Mllli aud Yield of 
Butter. 
The temperature of the milk as it flows into 
the centrifugal machine is a matter of great 
importance, as shown by numerous recent ex¬ 
periments. The last number of the Milch 
Zeituug contains an accouut of some trials 
with Fesea’s machine which illustrate this 
point. Ou running about 11 pounds of milk at 
a temperature of 60 degrees through the ma¬ 
chine per minute, the skimmed milk con¬ 
tained 1.5 per cent, of fat, against 3.1 per cent, 
in the whole milk, and from 38 to 40 pounds 
were required to a pound of butter; if the 
milk was first warmed to about 90 degrees 
when delivered from the machine, it contained 
but 0 5 per cent of fat if run through at the 
same rate; if passed through at the slow rate 
of 6.5 pouuds per minute, the milk delivered 
contained in the two cases of cool and warmed 
whole milk, 1.0 and 0.8 per cent, of fat re¬ 
spectively. Fleisehinan aud Vieth, as the 
result of a large number of experiments with 
a De Laval’s centrifugal separator, found that 
the proportion of fat in the skimmed milk de¬ 
creased invariably with the elevation of the 
temperature of the milk delivered to the ma¬ 
chine. On raising the temperature from 43 to 
100 degrees, and testing the milk delivered by 
the machine at several points between these 
two extremes, the fat fell from 0.58 to 0.15 per 
cent. These figures Illustrate very strikingly 
the superiority of some machines over others, 
as well as the point under discussion. 
These centrifugal machines are in great de¬ 
mand 'in Europe; some of the firms that 
manufacture them are crowded with orders 
faster thau they can be filled. Their usefulness 
in the dairy is fully established there, and it Is 
plain that they must sooner or later come into 
extensive use in our great dairy regions here. 
Meanwhile, valuable experience in their con¬ 
struction and management is being accumula¬ 
ted, of which we shall have the full advantage, 
when our dairymen shall come to realize the 
necessity of adopting this Improvement over 
what they will not long hence regard as the- 
clumsy and cumbersome method of setting the 
milk in pans or pails, that must be carefully 
kept cool for 24 or 30 hours before the cream 
can be obtained. Such slow and poky ways 
will then, at least so far as regards factory 
butter making, be turned over to people who 
still cast their votes for Andrew Jackson for 
President. 
A WESTERN FARM GARDEN. 
WILLIAM FALCONER. 
A reader of the Rural who resides in Mor¬ 
gan County, Illinois, has written to me for ad¬ 
vice. She saysBy the assistance of my 
two sons (one 16 aud the other 12), who never 
saw a flower garden iu their lives, I have laid 
off and made about 35 large and small beds, 
besides some winding paths with borders. I 
have several different designs, some, I think, 
very pretty for children to have made. I have 
also some large tubs as substitutes for vases. I 
wanted some kind of a lawn vase or basket, 
but could get none to suit me here.” 
Flower Beds. 
I appreciate all attempts to beautify our 
homes by the use of flowers and ornamental 
gardens, hut a multiplicity of flower beds is 
old-fashioned, and, i am happy to say, now an 
almost obsolete adornment. Neither have 1 
any sympathy with the geometrical filiforms 
that once were fashionable as flower beds, for 
It is not the outline of the bed so much as what 
it contains that is modern art. The cirele, 
oblong square, diamond, heart, and five-cor¬ 
nered star are the most desirable shapes. In 
the days of our forefathers the outline of the 
bed was its pattern, for at that time the beds 
were mostly seifs and ribbons, i. <?., each bed 
was either filled entirely with one kind of 
plant or with rows of several kinds. Now a¬ 
days, however, the outline of the bed has but 
little to do with its pattern, only oblong squares 
aud circles are most esteemed, because they 
are the easiest designs on which to define a 
pattern. The great variety of plants at our 
command and available for the flower garden 
renders it easy work to display in one bed in¬ 
tricate geometrical designs neatly and accu¬ 
rately, and of great diversity of hue. 
But this is not the garden of the Western 
farmer who has no greenhouse but his window. 
He wants around his home trees aud shrubs 
and vines and lovely flowers, bright and per¬ 
manent-plants that want no hot-house nurs¬ 
ing, but year after year come up again, each 
season stronger than before. Arranging such 
plants in a series of little beds is neither for the 
good of the plants nor consistent with modern 
gardening. Large oblong squares are tLe 
most convenient beds for pereunials, for in 
such we can have masses of many plants and 
a continuance of bloom from April to Novem¬ 
ber. Regarding the 
“ Winding Palhn,” 
I can only say meaningless walks annihilate 
the very end for which they are introduced ; 
every path should be a needed oue, and there 
should not be any path that is not needed. 
First determine that a path is needed there, 
then tone your path iu easy, graceful curves. 
Straight walks, unless they cannot well be 
waved, are not desirable, aud much less so are 
those of oft-repeated or deep S-like curves. 
Garden Vases 
are of great vuriety and necessarily high- 
priced. A vase to suit us depends upon whether 
we want the vase for its own ornamentation 
or for the same purpose we want a flower-pot 
or bed, namely, to grow plants iu. Proper 
vases should be so constructed as to have au 
air chamber botween tbe outside shell of the 
vase aud the basin that contains the plaut- 
roots. This is usually accomplished by the 
assistance of a zinc basin made to lit inside the 
earthe-u vase. This chamber counteracts the 
parching action of the sun aud wind upon 
the roots, for in vases, as in pots, the 
most vital rootlets creep arouud just, inside ibo 
casing of the vase, aud therefore under ordi¬ 
nary circumstances they are the first to suffer 
from heat and drought. But if the vases 
be heavily filled with drooping plants before 
they are put outside, the inside basin may be 
unnecessary, the green mantle being protec¬ 
tion enough- Wooden vases, as tubs and half¬ 
barrels, need not have the inner basin, as the 
action of the weather injurious to the roots is 
very much less on wood than ou earthenware. 
There are many cases iu which vases are ad¬ 
missible to the garden, but in no sense, nor 
under any circumstances, can I countenance 
the garden use of vases for the vases’ sake. 
The plants the vases contain are the ornament, 
the vases'are merely flower-pots, and the better 
the pots are hidden by the plants, the prettier 
appear the vases. 
