THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Stalling for ip |louitg 
THE WASP AND THE BEE. 
In a garden sweet and fair. 
Once a bright and busy pair 
Held a brief conversation on a lily. 
" Mr. Wuap," remarked the Bee, 
“ Your maneuvera puzzle me. 
You must either be a lazy rogue, or silly. 
* In the school where you were taught, 
Was the fact before you brought 
That our time is equivalent to money? 
Now for days and days we’ve met 
'Mid the pinks aud mignonette, 
But you never seem to carry any honey ! 
Said the Wasp: *’ You make me smile 
With your blunt, outspoken style, 
You have many tliiugs to learn, 1 must declare; 
For a thousand sunny hours 
You've beeu pumping at the flowers, 
And you never dreamed of poison being there. 
“ From the phlox aud columbine, 
Bleeding heart aud eglantine. 
Soon your treasury of bouey-comb you fill; 
While I, coming in your wake, 
From the self-same blossom take 
All the rankest sort of poison by the gill. 
Let me whisper in your ear: 
I have found while roaming here 
Over gardou, over orchard, over field, 
That the fairest growths of flowerB 
Which adorn these haunts of ours, 
hue most deadly kind of poison often yields.” 
*' Bless my sting 1” exclaimed the Bee, 
" Every day we live to see 
Will some wonder parry with it, I suppose. 
Who would think a nauseous drug 
Could be stored away so snug, 
In the heart of such a blossom as the rose f" 
And, with that it flew away, 
To a field of blooming hay. 
un the buttercup and clover to alight: 
While the Wasp set out to fiud 
Something suited to his mind. 
And was soon lu a camelia out of sight. 
FARMING FOR BOYS ANJ GIRLS.-NO. 4. 
HENRY STEWART. 
The Air mid Sts Tses in Agriculture 
derived from the carbonic acid of the air, a sub- 
Btance in Itself that could not he breathed by an 
animal for one minute without sudden death; and 
the ammonia and nitric acid are also very neces¬ 
sary to plant growth. Besides these, the oxygen 
of the air is needed to support plant life. It is re¬ 
quired for the first sprouting of the seed; Its 
presence is necessary to enable the first tiny root¬ 
lets to absorb, and the first weak leaves to digest 
and convert Into plant substance, the food which 
exists In the soil; not a single bud can open with¬ 
out the needed supply of oxygen, and this gas Is 
also necessary to enable the plant to unfold Its 
blossoms, and It endows these with their delicious 
fragrance: it gives sweetness to some fruits, an 
agreeable acid to others and It performs an essential 
service In the ripening of the seed. From the birth 
to the death and decay of a plant, oxygen Is al¬ 
ways serving an active purpose, and as animals 
could not exist lor one moment without It, so 
plants would never exist In Its absence. This 
furnishes one of the many analogies which exist 
In the life and growth of both animals and plants. 
Let us consider for a moment how useful it Is 
for a farmer or gardener to know of these facta 
In regard to the air which surrounds us. Let us 
consider a corn field in the Summer time. A 
shower has fallen and as the hot sun baa quickly 
dried the surface or the soil, it has become baked, 
hardened and encrusted. No air can penetrate. 
The corn Is deprived of its needed supply of air. 
The roots cannot take In their nourishment; the 
circulating sap Is not able to change Its burden of 
food Into life giving elements; the leaves droop, 
curl and become pale, the plant Is suffering and no 
longer grows; It slmplj exists, sickly and weak. 
The farmer comes wlih his cultivator and loosens 
the ground and destroys the hardened crust upon 
it. The air Instantly circulates through the mel¬ 
lowed soil, the roots go to work with vigor, the plant 
breaths and feels again, and the observant farmer 
noticing the improvement, sees that the cult l vatton 
of the soil is or great advantage to his crop; but 
why It should be, he cannot tell and does not know, 
unless he understands the nature of the air and 
its wonderful Influences iipon plant growth. 
-»♦ » -— 
A FAITHFUL DOG. 
Evert one will remember the Mill River horror of 
a tew years ago and the bursting or a reservoir 
among the hills, above Williamsburg, Maas., 
which brought desolation and death to so many 
homes, and laid waste entire villages. 
and herbage eight Inches thick, lay another set of 
eggs upon that, and so on to the top, there being 
commonly Irom one to two hundred eggs In a nest. 
With their tails they then beat down round the 
nest the dense grass and reeds, five feet high, to 
prevent tire approach of unseen enemies. The fe¬ 
male watches her eggs until they are hatched by 
the heat or the. sun, and then takes her brood un¬ 
der her own care, defending them, and providing 
for their subsistence. Dr. Lutzonberg, of New Or¬ 
leans, told me that he once packed up one of these 
nests with the eggs In a box for the Museum of 
8t. Petersburg, but he was recommended, before 
he closed it, to see that there was no danger of the 
eggs being hatched on the voyage. On opening 
one, a young alligator walked out, aDd was soon 
followed by the rest, about a hundred, which he 
fed In his house, where they went up and down 
stairs, whining and barking like young puppies.— 
Lyell, the Geologist. 
LETTERS FROM THE COUSINS. 
Dear Uncle Mark :—I did not receive any seeds 
but I thought I would tell you of what flowers I 
have. I have quite a variety of flowers, of which 
I will nameJPhlox, Drummondil, Sweet Mignonette, 
8lngle and doublu Chinese pinks, single and double 
Japanese pinks, and the Heddewlgtt Pink, balsams, 
cockscombs, snap-dragons, petunias, coreopsis, 
pansies, China asters and morning glories. My 
pinks have done grandly ; there are some of them 
which measures t wo and one-half Inches in diam¬ 
eter, The phlox was one mass of beauty. I never 
had such a mignonette before. It seemed as if It 
would smother itself In Its rapid growth. My 
cockscombs and China asters are beginning to be 
beautiful. My balsams are quite large aud hand¬ 
some. My snap dragons are Indeed beautiful; 
more so than ever before. My petunias have 
done finely—but my pansies did not do very well 
as it. was very dry, but I tried to be faithful In 
waterlog them. We had a coreopsis which came 
up last Fall, and wintered nicely. We trans¬ 
planted it quite early. When It commenced blos¬ 
soming, which was the first of June, It measured 
three feet four inches In hlgut, and three feet in 
diameter. On the 4th of July it had 109 blossoms 
on It, each blossom as large as a 50 cent piece, and 
several times since then It has had 200 blossoms 
on It at one time. Some neighbors and friends 
whom I thought were superior florists were look¬ 
ing at my bed and I was regretting that the 
iabht| limiting. 
“GOD KNOWS.” 
[Some years ago a child's body wcb found on the 
South coast of England, having been thrown there by 
the waves. The parish clerk, on being asked what 
should be put on its grave, answered in perplexity: 
" Cod know*." This proved a fitting epitaph.] 
Where the tear-fed violet blooms. 
Where the shade of the minimum chases; 
Where in mossy marble tombs 
81eep the dead beneath the daisies, 
Where the mourner slowly wanders 
When the bird has sought its nest, 
Ana amid the gloaming ponders 
Over tune who tranquil rest; 
Clouds across the crimsoned sky 
Homeward gayly were careering: 
Buttn that lone churchyard, I 
Heeded not that night was nearing. 
Discords in ruy bosom swelling 
Broke the music of life’s song, 
For my soul was weary dwelling, 
'Mid the over-earthly tlirong. 
Far within the stilly shade 
Of a quiet, sequestered corner, 
Where the wild flowers bloom aud furl 3 . 
Gently nurtured by no mourner, 
Was a grave, an infant's only. 
No one knew the name she bore. 
Ask the waves which, dark and lonely. 
Cast her lifeless on the shore. 
O'er the grave a humble stone 
Reared its lichencdhead so lowly, 
Like a sentinel alone, 
Watching 'mid the silence holy. 
Hither came the croaking raveu; 
From this stone its weird notes rose; 
On its surface rudely graven 
Were the simple words; “ God knows." 
As a moonbeam on the sea 
nhsrms tiro sad wind's shvieks to singing 
So these teuder words to me 
Turned my song, sweet solace bringing. 
Though my thorn-strewn way was dreary, 
Though my feet found no repose, 
Yet my soul, life-worn and weary. 
Rested in the thought: “ God knows." 
EXTRACT FROM A SERMON BY C. H. 
SPURGEON. 
1 was present at a meeting of believers a short 
The air serves a most Important purpose In the 
growth of plants. Out of 100 parts of the weight 
of plants grown as farm crops, 95 to 99 of these 
parts are derived from the air, in one way or an¬ 
other. Every person, then, who lives on a farm 
ought to kuow something about this very needful 
suostance. The atr surrounds us lu every direc¬ 
tion ; it penetrates Into every space, no matter 
how small. It cannot he seen, yet It possesses 
color, for the beautiful light blue of the sky, and 
the deep blue which bathes a distant mountain, 
are really caused by the atr through which our 
sight passes, Just as when we look through a piece 
of colored glass every object appears to be of the 
color of the glass. Air has weight. Its weight can 
be felt when we stand In a strong wind, for wind 
Is only air In motloo, and the force with which the 
breeze presses upon our bodies, or upon any other 
object, la notblog more or less than the weight of 
the atr increased by Us motion; just the same as 
the force of a ball which strikes the hand consists 
of Its weight multiplied by Hs motion or velocity. 
The weight ot the air is known to be 538 grains, or 
one ounce aud 58 grains (nearly one ounce and a 
sixth of an ounce) to each cubic foot, so that a 
room 40 feet square and IS feet high would contain 
about a ton of air. Knowing the weight of air we 
can tell very nearly how much of it surrounds the 
earth, that Is, its bight above tbe ground, because 
we know that a column of it exactly one Inch 
square weighs Just 15 pounds. It la because of Its 
weight that it forces itself into every crevice and 
opening, however small, and penetrates Into every 
part of the soli, lining every space between the 
particles, unless It is dislodged and forced out by 
water. When, however, the water sinks Into the 
soil or dries out ot it, the air immediately fills the 
space again. The air couslsts of a mixture of two 
gases, oxygen aud nitrogen, or very nearly 21 parts 
of the former and T9 ot the latter In bulk. Tbe 
weights of these two gases differ, for In 10,000 
pounds of air mere are z,3iT pounds of oxygen to 
7,631 pounds of nitrogen. These gases are mixed 
together only, and da not form u union ; In a simi¬ 
lar manner to that In which a quantity of rye 
and wheat might be mixed together aud still re¬ 
main separate in reality so far as tbe Individual 
grains are concerned. The air also usually con¬ 
tains several substances which exist In It as Im¬ 
purities, and are derived chiefly irom the decay ot 
organic matter, 'lhese are carbonic acid, am¬ 
monia, and nitric, nitrous, aud sulphurous acids. 
These occur In very small quantities, the first 
being the most abundant, but yet there are only 
four parts ot It lu 10,000 of air. Nevertheless this 
small quantity exerts, and has exerted, a most 
wonderful effect on vegetation, for It has been the 
principal substance wnich has entered into and 
formed the plants which have, In tholr decay, pro¬ 
duced the vast beds of coal aud peat, whose local 
quantity Is tar beyond tbe power of the mind to 
conceive. 
The air also contains about one part in loo ol 
water In a state of invisible vapor; dissolved In 
fact, and as Imperceptible to the sight as salt or 
sugar are when dissolved In water. Warm air 
can hold more water than cold air; when the air 
Is cooled the vapor Invisible before, becomes per¬ 
ceptible, and forms fog or clouds; when the cold 
becomes greater the vapor is still more condensed, 
the small particles Join together and fall lu drops 
as rain, or it the cold Is very great, crystals of 
beautiful shape form and fall as snow. All tuese 
peculiarities of the air reader it very useful to the 
farmer, for It the air were dry there would be no 
rain, It, It were pure there could be no vegetable 
growth, for the principal part of a dried plant Is 
Riding about four mlie3 below Williamsburg 
a short time ago, when a fellow passenger re¬ 
marked, pointing to a clump of trees by the river 
side. 
•• I shall never forget a scene I witnessed there 
during the search for Oodles after the Mill River 
disaster some years ago. The drift wood and de¬ 
bris had made a deposit beside that tree nearly 
twenty feet In depth and there I saw a large dog 
crying pitifully. As we drew near we found that 
the dog was fastened down by a slick of umber 
and unable to move. Ills eyes were like balls of 
Are and he was fearfully emaciated. At first we 
feared to go near him, but floally released him and 
gave him some. food. He dropped the food look¬ 
ing down and whining. 
‘Some one Is here,’ one of our company said, and 
we commenced digging, and while doing so the 
dog lay very quiet, but the moment we ceased he 
seemed to grow almost frantic. When we com¬ 
menced digging he laid down again but no effort 
would induce him to taste the food before him. 
At last after hours ot labor we found the body of an 
old man, and a little later a little boy, over which 
the ralthful dog had been keeping watch. The 
joy of the poor brute was great but the food 
which he had so generously refused would never 
be eaten by his young master. 
This story Interested me greatly, said my friend, 
for 1 knew the dear little hoy who went out with 
his faithful dog to the meadows that dreadful 
morning and the kind old man, his grandrather, 
who hearing that the terrible flood was coming 
went out to seek him. They were all swept awa y, 
but tbe marvel was how they kept together dur¬ 
ing that fearful four miles and now the poor dog 
should know they were burled deep below him. 
lie had not lasted food for a week, hut he will 
never know want again. The family so terribly 
bereaved reside In Boston now, but the heroic dog 
Is boarded In Williamsburg where the Mends 
over whom he kept such faithful watch are sleep¬ 
ing.” Mrs. E. J. R, 
-♦-*-«-- 
GIVE THE BOYS TOOLS. 
Almost all hoys are naturally mechanics. The 
constructive aud Imitative faculties are developed 
In part, at a very early age. All hoys are not ca¬ 
pable of being developed Into good, practical, 
working mechanics, but most of them show their 
bent that way. There are few cases in which the 
boy has no competent Idea of the production or u 
fabricated result from Inorganic mateilal, but 
Buch cases are. Given the proper encouragement 
and the means, and many boys whose mechanical 
aptness is auowed to run to waste, or is dlvei ted 
from Its natural course, would become good work¬ 
men, useful, producing members ot tbe Industrial 
community. 
The mechanical boy ought to have a shop of hts 
own, Let It be the attic, or an unused room, or 
a place and tools. Let him have a good pocket 
knife, gimlets, chisels, gouges, planes, cutting 
nippers, saws, a foot rule, and material to work. 
Let the boys have a chance, If he la a mechanic 
it will come out, and he wlU do himself credit, 
if he falls he is to follow some calling that does 
not demand mechanical skill. 
• - » ♦ » — ■ — 
ALLIGATORS’ NESTS. 
Thb8k nests resemble haycocks. They are four 
feet high, and five In diameter at their bases, be¬ 
ing constructed with grass and herbage. First, 
they deposit one layer of eggs on a floor of mortar, 
and having covered this with a stratum of mud 
drought pinched It, they said they did not see 
how It could be any handsomer. Will you please 
give me the botanical name of what is commonly 
known as camphor plant. Your affectionate 
niece, Petunia. 
IClnnamomum camphora Is the botanical name 
of the green-house plant known as camphor 
tree.—U. M ] 
Dear Uncle Mark:— I will give you and the 
cousins my experience In sweet-potato growing 
away up here in Northern Vermont. Last Spring 
I purchased of B. K. Bliss & Sons, ot New York, 100 
sweet potato plants ot the Early Golden variety; 
these 1 planted three feet apart each way, putting 
three plants in a hill. Owing to the dry weather 
about one-fourth ot these died; from the remainder 
I dug one bushel and a peck of potatoes. Whether 
this Is a large or Bmall yield 1 do not know, but I 
think It would pay well to raise them at 75 cents 
per bushel If they yielded at this rate. I take 
great Interest In reading the Rural, especially the 
horticultural columns, and should miss It very 
much If 1 did not have the reading of It. 
Yours truly, W. H. Rand. 
Chittenden Co., Vermont. 
[To succeed well In the more northern States 
there should first be a ridge constructed by turning 
two furrows of earth over well-rotted manure, 
and after this ridge Is nicely smoothed and round¬ 
ed the plants Bhould he set from 10 to 15 inches 
apart and kept carefully weeded. One hundred 
and fifty bushels to an aero would be a fair yield. 
—U. M.J 
Dear Uncle Mark :—Many thanks for the seeds 
you so kindly sent me. They all grew finely and 
flowered beautlfully. The portuiaca were very 
pretty and ot six different colors. Every seed of 
the musk-melon grew and was a surprise, Indeed. 
They were the best we ever bad, I have saved the 
seeds from the best ones to plant next year. I am 
Interested lu the letters from the cousins, though 
I think some or them very careless with the seeds 
which require so much labor and expense, or tbey 
would take more pains to cultivate them and 
not say they failed to grow or they forgot to plant 
them, or neglected them In other ways, which 
showed they took little Interest In their culture. 
We ought to take all the pains we can, for what 
is worth doing at all la worth doing well. 
Your grateful niece, Alice Bparrow. 
Oneida co., N. Y. 
Uncle Mark;— My mother takes the Rural 
and we think It a splendid paper. We have only 
taken It this year. I should like to Join your Hor¬ 
ticultural Club It you will let me. The seeds you 
sent my mother all did well but the oats, we did 
not raise any at all. We raised a Mangold Wurt- 
zel that weighed ten and one halt pounds, and we 
tnank you very much for the seeds aud hope you 
will remember us again In the free seed distribu¬ 
tion. Yours truly, Mellik Kino. 
Dekalb Co., Ill. 
Uncle mark;— My father has taken the Rural 
for more than ao years, and likes It very much. I 
am 13 years old and go to school. We live on the 
shore ot Lake Champlain. I would like to Join the 
Horticultural Club. I atn much Interested In the 
culture ot flowers. We have a few, but they 
are not very choice. I think Edith would be a very 
pretty name for Mary Walker’s little sister. 
From your new cousin, s. b. h. 
Washington Co., N. Y, 
time ago, when a conversation of this kind occur¬ 
red. A brother In the Lord, one of the mo3t fer¬ 
vent men I know, said that sometimes when his 
piety flagged, and hts heart grew cold, he found 
It a very blessed thing to go and visit the sick and 
the dying ; and he found t his to be such a sweet 
restoration to bis faith that he recommended us all, 
as often as we could, to frequent dying beds. Now, 
another brother who was present, who preaches 
the Gospel, but who at the same time Is a butcher, 
said ho thanked God he did not need to go to a dy¬ 
ing bed to see Jesus, and to get hts heart set right; 
that he had had as sweet fellowship with God In 
Camden Town Market, as he ever had In the house 
ot prayer, and that he found It beat always to live, 
as hts brother wished to live sometimes—namely, 
always conscious of sin, and always looking to the 
sin offering. 
Come to Jesus, then, as you came at first. 
Fly to the fountain always as needing constant 
Cleansing—not as though you had not been wash¬ 
ed, but still abiding, continuing in blessed recogni¬ 
tion ot your present cleansing that flows Crom tbe 
fountain Ailed with blood. It Is very sweet to re¬ 
member that the foutualn we sing about, as being 
opened In Jerusalem, Is opened "for the house of 
David aud for the Inhabitants of Jerusalem"—not 
ao much for sinners, though It la opened for them, 
as for saints—" for the house of David and the in¬ 
habitants ot Jerusalem." Let. us always be coming 
to It; and eacb morning and each night let this be 
the cry of our spirit, " Still gulpy, still vile, still 
polluted, we see Jesus, and seeing IJlm, we know 
that we are saved." 
Should not this, also, he the mode of our life In 
another respect? We are now disciples. Being 
saved from our former conversation, we are now 
become the dl3clples of the.Lord Jesus ; aud ought 
we not, as disciples to be constantly with our Mas¬ 
ter ? Ought, not this to be the motto ot our life, 
*• We see Jesus ?” We should not regard the com¬ 
mands of Jesus Christ as being a law left to us by 
a departed Master whom we cannot see, and to 
whom we cannot fly. la it not better to believe that 
t hrlst Is a living Christ, that He Is In the midst 
ot nis Chruch still, observlog our order, notlug 
ourobedlenee or ourdisobedlencc, a Master absent 
In one sense, but. still In another point of view ever 
present, according to ills promise—" ho, 1 am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world ?” 
-♦♦♦-- 
Tuerk is a power in the soul, quite separate 
from the intellect, by which God Is felt. Faith 
stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism 
of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but 
on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The 
revelation of the Hon was to proclaim a Father, 
not a mystery. No science can sweep away the 
everlasting love which the Intellect docs not even 
pretend to Judge or recognize.—F. W. Robertson. 
-■♦♦♦- 
“ Under wliose preaching were you converted 7” 
“ Under nobody’s preaching," was the pleasant, 
smiling reply;“ it. was under Aunt Marys prac¬ 
tising." The life that her aunt led before ber was 
the means of leading her to the Savior, it was not 
what the aunt might, have said, but it was what 
she did—her consistent example, which was the 
means of her niece’s conversion. 
Dying and death are two distinct thingsthere 
is something gloomy and melancholy about dying, 
whereas death is nothing, but as It opens the way 
to glory—R, Watson. 
-- 
1’rutu la In morals what steam Is.In mechanics 
—nothing can resist It, 
