have seen, to produce progeny of their own 
sex. 
There is still another theory which has 
found many believers in the United States. 
It is that after an animal has once conceived 
and borne progeny the sex may be governed 
by noting the desires of the female. If her 
last progeny Ire a male, her first desire, if 
bred, would produce a female* the second a 
male, the third a female* and so on. Closely 
allied to this theory is the one that in such 
animals as the cat and pig* which produce 
several young at a birth, each alternate swell¬ 
ing of the uterus produces progeny of the 
same sex. That is, if the sack next to the 
vagina produces a male, sacks three, five aud 
seven will, and sacks two, four, six and eight 
will produce females. Iu the above case if 
sacks two and four fail to conceive then the 
progeny would consist of four males aud two 
females. This theory has been proven by in¬ 
vestigations conducted on the University farm 
to be totally unreliable. 
After careful aud painstaking observation, 
study aud inquiry 1 am led to believe that the 
parent having the most healthy and the 
greatest sexual aud physical vigor wilh in a 
very large majority of cases, not only control 
the sex, but will transmit to the offspring its 
qualities and characteristics, be they good or 
bad, in more marked degree than the parent 
having qualities less vigorous and healthy. 
Iu all other respects except sex, we all admit 
that the stronger blood governs to a greater 
degree thau the weaker, and what is stronger 
blood lint improvement by improved environ¬ 
ments and selection of the best, and the best 
is always the most vigorous iu the qualities 
which wo must desire to perpetuate and im¬ 
prove. 
If we desire trotters, or beef or milk, we se¬ 
lect animals which are most vigorous iu these 
respective directions, expecting improvement 
in the offi pring though coupled with animals 
inferior to themselves. Failure to realize ex¬ 
pectations is usually due to waut of knowl¬ 
edge or judgment. If, then, superiority con¬ 
trols more largely than inferiority in all other 
directions, why not in the direction of sex ? 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
LIVE STOCK NOTES FOR OCTOBER. 
HOUSES. 
“Brown October” brings us to the sere aud 
yellow leaf which typifies death aud decay. 
The fall is always a critical time with live 
stock after the exhaustive effects of the heat 
and of work aud the worry from insect pests. 
It is a period when disease comes like old 
Time with its scythe, aud mows a swath of 
death Tin's is most true just now when a 
prevalent disease is killing off hundreds of 
horses and threatening thousands of others. 
Care is specially needful now for disease is 
mostly always due to some mistake or neglect. 
Is your stable dump, uncleau, rotten and 
soaked with tilth under the tioor, aud has it a 
low ceiling aud no ventilation? If so you may 
expect to have sick horses if an epidemic comes 
your way. Nay, it may begin with you aud 
spread from your stable like a fire, for an out¬ 
break has always a birth-place aud a begin¬ 
ning just like this. Are your horses poorly 
fed, left out in the chilly damp field 
at night, worked hard in the suu and 
in the dust aud sweat of tile field? Do they 
drink from a mud-hole or a stagnaut 
pond which smells badly and is filled 
with putridity? Then you may be a victim; 
nay, you will be if the pervading germs of 
disease, happen to be blown your way,aud it is 
just such horses as this which become affect¬ 
ed with the nervous disorder kuowu as spinal- 
mouingitis, which lias prevailed over one whole 
State and may spread widely. The fall months 
call for special care in feeding and providing 
the most healthful conditions as precautions 
against loss of vigor and enfeebled health; for 
these, if uegleetcd now, will be fruitful of 
damage in the coming winter. It is better to 
spend food liberally now aud so prevent loss 
of condition than to lavish it iu the spring in 
the vain endeavor to briug up poor annuals 
and regain what is lost. Green corn-stalks 
provoke diarrhea; when the pasture falls off 
feed the earliest hay, keeping the sheaf oats 
until later. New oats may often prove un¬ 
wholesome aud are to be avoided. Rye straw 
cut aud moistened and mixed with bran and 
corn meal makes excellent feed for horses 
when hay is scarce; or it may he mixed half- 
and-half with huy, even when this is plenty. 
COWS AND CATTLE. 
Avoid swamp pastures; be careful against 
contact with traveling herds; never admit a 
drover’s herd to the pasture where the cows 
and cattle run. Texan fever is prevalent 
among these herds, and losses are quite fre¬ 
quent just uow. If any animal dies of disease 
let the hide be buried deeply with it. Men 
have perished miserably from small scratches 
received in skinniug dead cattle. Give young 
cattle a few doses of the common mixture of 
sulphur and molasses; equal parts of sulphur 
and cream-of-tartar, and two parts of mo¬ 
lasses are an excellent tome for young cattle. 
On the first appearance of disease seek advice, 
or give a pound of Epsom salts to an ox or 
cow and four ounces to a calf. Avoid all nos¬ 
trums, as saltpeter, wood ashes, soot, etc,, etc. 
Oxen lame iu the feet should be put in a clean 
stall; the feet should be washed aud dressed 
with carbolated eosmoline. Don’t let cows 
fall off iu milk. When pastures fail, go to the 
corn field. Especially keep calves growing 
aud in full vigor. Emasculate the male 
calves this month. 
SHEEP AND LAMBS. 
Sheep are uow painfully worried by the gad 
fly. Give them a shelter aud a low, close shed 
to huddle in, where they can evade this pest. 
Where the tick prevails this is a good time to 
dip both sheep and lambs. Remove the rams, 
if any are kept, from the flock; and put the 
ewe lambs by themselves with the wethers. 
Ewes coupled in October will lamb iu March; 
if lambs are not desired so early keep the rams 
separate. It is best to keep the ram iu a sep¬ 
arate lot and only turn in the ewes at night. 
All sheep intended for market should be sold 
at once, every day's delay is a loss of profit. 
To keep old sheep is a waste of food. Exam¬ 
ine the feet aud pare them when undergrowu 
with loose decayed lioru, and shorten the too 
long toes. This prevents foot-rot. Give breed¬ 
ing sheep extra feed: bran is the best and 
cheapest. 
SWINE. 
It is time now to put up pigs to fatteu. A 
pound of weight is made more easily now than 
at any time later Soft corn makes good pork 
and the fresh stalks will make flesh aud fat. 
Small potatoes boiled and given cold with 
skimmed milk, make very cheap and very 
good meat. Keep feeding pigs clean. Filth 
is absorbed by the skin into the blood aud few 
people like it, if they kuow it, in their meat. 
Supply plenty of pure, cool water. This is 
indispensable to wholesome meat, A sick hog 
makes sick pork and this makes persons sick. 
Rats should be kept out of pig-pens. They 
almost invariably harbor parasites aud infest 
the pigs. A pig-pen should be raised at least 
a foot from the ground and this will effect¬ 
ually keep out rats. 
Push on the little pigs. These ought to grow 
at least four or five pouuds a week from four 
weeks old, and seven pounds a week from three 
months old. Nine-months-old pigs are the 
most profitable aud may weigh 300 to 300 
pounds easily with good feeding. Young boars 
should be altered as soon as the hot weather 
is over: about the middle of this month is a 
good time. Store pigs and brood sows should 
run at large in a gram stubble or a potato 
Bold with a dry shelter of some kind provided 
for them as long as possible. Dry leaves make 
the best winter litter for pigs 
SALT OR NO SALT FOR COWS ? 
T. D. CURTIS. 
Aii experiment in NOT sal tiny; duration of 
churning; salt a constant constituent of 
the blood; wild animals crave it; excep¬ 
tional experimented results; French Gov¬ 
ernmental experiments on feeding salt; 
German and English experiments all suji- 
port the practice; salt a preventive of dis¬ 
ease's salt in milk; danger of not feed¬ 
ing it. 
In reply to a paragraph of mine in favor of 
salting cows, Mr. J. R., of Charter Oak, Iowa, 
wants to know if I ever tried not salting 
cows. He then says that for one whole year, 
during which time lie made gilt-edged butter 
from 14 Jersey cows, Lie did not give them a 
grain of salt. They were fed corn and Timo¬ 
thy hay only, aud “the butter always came iu 
20 minutes"—a most remarkable fact, if our 
correspondent is exact as to time! Thu time 
taken in churning usually lengthens as the 
season advances, aud is longer with dry feed 
than with succulent grass. Ho adds: “VVe 
thought the temperature of milk aud cream 
settled that part of the business.” So it does, 
in one sense. If the temperature is too high 
or too low, the butter will not. separate from 
the buttermilk; but it is not. the only thing 
that influences the time required to churn. 
The size of the cream globules and some con¬ 
ditions not yet understood affect the churn¬ 
ing. The greater or less viscousness of the 
milk—the more or less albumen perhaps—has 
its influence. Prof, Babcock, the Chemist of 
the New York Agricultural Experiment Sta¬ 
tion, lays a deal of stress on this. Our cor¬ 
respondent goes on to say that the cows re¬ 
mained “iu thriving condition,” and that 1(5 
steers of superior size and quality, when sold 
in Chicago, never had any salt, while his 
mule team has bad no salt for four years: yet 
“they are always sleek.” They are fed twice 
a day and run iu pasture at night. No one’s 
young stock, he claims, look better or are 
healthier thau his. Hence, he wants the 
Rural to try the experiment of not feeding 
salt, and report the result. 
Now, to make a scient ific experiment of any 
nature requires time, care and expense, aud 
when made it does not settle the question any 
more than one swallow makes a spring. It 
requires a series of experiments, carefully 
made, to determine conclusively a question 
like this. Fortunately such experiments have 
been made, aud confirm the general observa¬ 
tion aud belief that salt is beneficial to stock, 
if uot absolutely necessary to its long contin¬ 
ued health. Salt is a constituent of the blood, 
without which lifccaunot be maintained, and 
must be derived from some source. So pow- 
erful is the iustiuot of wild animals for salt, 
that, they go long distances and run great risks 
to get it. Hence salt licks are favorite resorts 
for hunters. In countries where salt, is scarce 
no article of commerce is rated so high: and 
prisoners purposely deprived of salt, 
have died miserable deaths in conse¬ 
quence. All these things are matters of 
record, and so well known that apparent 
exceptions have no weight with the sci¬ 
entific mind, which insists on knowing all the 
conditions Dr. Tanner lived forty days ou 
water, but forty-day fasts have not become 
common. Linus Miller, of Chautauqua 
County, New York, wintered his cows on two 
quarts of Indian meal a day, aud others suc¬ 
ceeded with the same experiment; but the 
cruelty of it was so apparent that no one but 
Miller himself, who became a crank on the 
subject, ever repeated it. So Prof. Edwards, 
of Randolph, New York, wintered a lot of 
stock ou an exclusive diet of corn silage, just 
to see if it could be done. But no one else who 
understands anything about the laws of feed¬ 
ing will attempt to make this a regnlar prac¬ 
tice. In these cases, as in Mr. R's the animals 
were declared to remain “ in thriving condi¬ 
tion ”—a term so vague that it conveys no 
definite idea to the reasoning mind. Mr. IPs 
pastures and meadows, although iulaud, may 
have a very saline soil. Cattle and men iu 
the vicinity of salt-water, require very little 
if any salt added to their food—less than those 
living ou high lands remote from saline 
vapors. Besides, other conditions being favor¬ 
able might largely overcome deficiencies iu a 
single one. But, our correspondent’s corn and 
Timothy are far from a well-balanced food. 
Timothy has no excess of nitrogenous material, 
while the eoru is highly carbonaceous. More 
muscle and milk-forming material would 
make more and better milk. 
The French Government, years ago, ap¬ 
pointed a commission to experiment on the 
question of feeding salt to domestic animals. 
The substance of its report was, after careful 
experimentation : 1. That salt ought to be 
fed to domestic animals to replace the saline 
matter washed out of their food by boiling, 
steaming, etc. 2, That salt counteracts the 
ill-effects of wet pastures and food, on sheep, 
and prevents foot-rot. 8. That salt increases 
the flow of saliva, and therefore hastens 
fattening. 4. That iu making mixtures of 
chaff, potatoes, beets, bran, oil-cake, etc., salt 
always ought to be added. The daily allow¬ 
ance of salt recommended by the commission 
was for a milch cow or ox, 8 ounces; for a 
fatting stall-fed ox, 2'to 4'u ounces; fora 
fatting pig, 1 to 8 ounces ; for a loan sheep, 
to % of an ounce ; for a horse, donkey or 
mule, 1 ouuce. These men worked under 
scientific conditions, and knew what they were 
doing. In reference to experiments made in 
Germany, the celebrated Prof. Liebig re¬ 
marked that they “are highly instructive; for 
m the bullocks that had u<> salt, except that 
which their fodder contained, there was an 
insufficiency for the process of secretion. . , 
The other animals which had received salt 
daily remained lieultby, their blood remained 
pure and proper for all the objects of susten¬ 
ance. They received a powerful and indis¬ 
pensable means of resistance against outside 
disturbances of their health. The bodies of 
the others could bo compared, iu regard to 
disease, to u light, combustible material to 
which only a spark was wanting to cause it 
to burst out into flames and to be consumed.” 
In other words, they lacked power to resist 
disease, which may bo the condition of Mr. 
lt.’s herd. 
If my article were not getting too long, I 
would continue quotations from those who 
have investigated the subject of feeding salt 
to domestic auimals, but 1 must hasten to a 
close. Professor L. B. Arnold says: “The 
percentage of salt iu a cow’s milk is generally 
greater than the percentage of salt in her food, 
and as a large and unnatural flow is induced by 
a long course of artificial training, her food 
ordinarily becomes incapable of supplying 
her with the quantity' required to perfect the 
milk, the flow is diminished and the quantity 
rendered imperfect,when salt is withheld from 
her. Another authority, Dr. F E. Engel- 
hardt, says: “ When the flow of milk is larg¬ 
est, the requisite amount of salt (aud soda de¬ 
rived from it) is considerable, and not being 
readily derived from the food, needs to be sup¬ 
plied by feeding salt; hence it is that all ani¬ 
mals in the season of lactation have a stronger 
appetite for salt than at other times, anil 
hence also cows that give the most milk con¬ 
sume salt the most eagerly.” 
Englishmen have also made experiments in 
the same direction, and with the same conclu¬ 
sions, that salt is necessary to health. With 
these facts before him,perhaps Mr. R. will uot 
thmk it uecessary for the Rural to experi¬ 
ment on not feeding salt. He is nmkmg a 
a dangerous experiment in not feeding salt, 
and will be exceedingly lucky, to say tbo 
least, if disaster does not overtake his stock. 
He must concede that they relish salt, which 
is a pretty strong indication that it does them 
good; while the small saving in not feeding 
them salt is no consideration in view of the 
danger incurred and the gratification of which 
his animals are deprived. Salt at least does 
them no harm. But, if he must continue the 
no-salting practice, let him try salting some 
regularly, while treatiug them in all other re¬ 
spects the same as his other auimals, and note 
the result. 
CLEANLINESS IN BUTTER-MAKING. 
In regard to butter, the kind and quality of 
the herbage and the character of the grain 
ration influence and affect its excellence much, 
but cleanliness iu the manufacture is, after all 
a more important matter. This, says a recent 
foreign writer, the farmers’ wives of Nor- 
rnautly aad Flanders seem to understand; but 
it is not equally well understood everywhere. 
At Isigny, a place in great repute Cor making 
butter which sells in the Paris markets 
for an equivalent of GO to TO cents a pound, 
extraordinary care is taken with the vessels 
used for the milk and cream. After using 
they' are rubbed with green nettles iu the first 
place, then pluugod iu boiling water, where 
they remain for half an hour, aud are after¬ 
wards dried lie fore a charcoal fire. In Nor¬ 
mandy every household keeps a thermometer 
in the milk room, and they control the tem¬ 
perature iu such a way that it is kept between 
18 aud 14 C.—84 aud 55 F, In whiter there is 
a tendency for the mercury to go lower aud 
in summer higher. The first is corrected by 
an open charcoal lire, and the other by splash¬ 
ing the stone Hags of the floor with cold water. 
The cream is skimmed into tall, narrow- 
mouthed vessels, that form preventing in a 
measure, the access of air, which causes the 
cream to become rancid. The churning is 
done very early' in (he morning, often the 
second, and at the latest every third day. If 
the greatest attention to cleanliness is found 
essential to high quality in butter when it is 
uot difficult to control t he summer temperature 
between 50 and GO degrees F,, how much more 
important is cleanliness in climates where the 
mean temperature is 20, aud the possible, 80 or 
40 degrees higher. b. f. Johnson. 
Champaign Co., Ill. 
BLUNTED TASTES. 
Probably one of the prolific causes of poor 
butter results from the common use of tobac¬ 
co aud other stimulants, which blunt the 
tastes of dairymen and render them incapa¬ 
ble of enjoying or even perceiving the delicate 
and delicious aroma of fine butter. It also ac¬ 
counts for the use of poor, strongly-flavored 
salt, because it is cheap, the users asserting— 
probably honestly—that they can distinguish 
no difference between such salt and the finer 
brands. Dairymen with tastes thus blunted 
send poor butter to market, expecting to get 
top prices for it. and are ready to swear that 
the quality of th“ir butter is as good as that 
of anybody’s. They put on exhibition at 
fairs, to compete for premiums, stuff that no 
one with acute taste would think of eating. 
There is no way of accounting for such stu¬ 
pidity, except through the blunted tastes of 
dairymen, resulting from the use of deadening 
stimulants, like tobacco, whisky beer, aud, 
perhaps, highly seasoned foods. A dairyman 
should bo a clean man, with all his natural 
tastes ami sensibilities in a healthy ami active 
condition. t. d. Curtis. 
SUCCESS IN DAIRYING. 
A noted dairy expert gave an opinion a few 
years ago that Kentucky could never become 
a dairy State because it had not many flowing 
springs, forgetting that rain water caught iu 
a clean cistern is the purest possible, distilled 
