484 
[JULY as 
business in disgust. These men had devoted 
several years to breeding up and improving 
their flocks, and they had attained a very high 
degree of excellence, when just as they were 
in a condition to realize some benefit from the 
results of their labor, care and skill, to save 
themselves they are suddenly forced to sell off 
their whole flocks and quit. I said their whole 
flocks, but I’ll take that back; I meant to say 
the shattered remnants of their flocks For— 
tell it not in the wilds of Texas, nor even 
whisper it in the woods of Maine—vile curs 
had worried and destroyed the best part of 
them! 
I hate to tell it, but it is a fact that even 
here, in this “great agricultural State of 
Illinois,” worthless—the word is too mild, but 
but I’ll use it here— curs nightly prowl about 
the country and destroy valuable, wealth- 
producing sheep by the hundreds. 
In an adjoining township lives a boy, 14 
years old, who by industry and frugality had 
become the proud owner of the finest small 
flock of sheep in this section. There were 18 
of them, part he had raised and part pur¬ 
chased when lambs, from different flocks 
around. One night this week 11 of them were 
destroyed by prowling curs. Such occur¬ 
rences as this make me hot all over. The 
damage has been assessed at $50, and.it will 
be paid out of the dog tax, if there is that 
amount in the treasury. If not, the boy will 
have to wait until it accumulates. 
To an intelligent man it really seems incred¬ 
ible that farmers—men who are engaged in 
wresting from the soil a bare living—should 
keep, feed and pay taxes'on from one to three 
despicable curs, which are of no earthly use to 
them or any one else. They do it, hundreds, 
thousands of them; and I know of no shorter 
and surer way of getting into a first-class fuss 
than to allow valor to overcome discretion 
and kick one of these “my dangs!” 
Those men who own and maintain these 
abominable beasts will use every contemptible 
subterfuge, and even openly and basely lie to 
avoid being assessed for them. The tax is $1 
each, and the fund thus raised goes to pay for 
the sheep they kill and cripple; and so great 
has been the damage wrought that some town¬ 
ships will'not have funds sufficient to pay off 
all claims in years. I have been elected asses¬ 
sor of this township twice, and chiefly because 
I made it a special point to spot every dog and 
assess it to the man who kept it; I could not 
be elected again if I wished to be—which I 
don’t. So cordially]do]some dog-owners hate 
me that they would yell with delight if some 
dire evil should befall me. To the sheepmen 
these dog-owners say, “We pay the tax on our 
dogs, and we] have a perfect, right to keep 
them. If you don’t want your^sheep chawed 
up take better care of them.” 
Not a thousand miles from here lives a man 
who some years ago had a large number of 
sheep destroyed by dogs, and as the neighbor¬ 
hood swarmed with the vile beasts he knew it 
would be useless to try to discover the partic¬ 
ular ones that did the mischief, so he kept his 
own counsel and made no mention of his loss 
to any one. For several nights he rode about 
the country using every possible means to in¬ 
duce the dogs at each house to rush out at him, 
and whenever they did sohe fed them some 
nice little pieces of “peppered” mutton. In 
less than a week one would have supposed 
that a severe type of dog cholera had raged in 
that locality, so great was the mortality 
among the curs." It was rather a tough meth¬ 
od of procedure, and had he been discovered 
it would have gone hard with his person and 
property, but thereafter his flock was unmo¬ 
lested, and increased apace. 
The tax of. $1 .levied on dogs has caused 
considerable acrimony among Jdog owners, 
but it has had the effect of largely reducing 
the number of worthless curs. There are too 
many of them yet, however, and how to rid 
the country of them is a problem to be solved. 
In addition to the township tax of $1, there 
is levied in this village a tax of $1 on each 
male, and $2 on each female. This has had 
an excellent effect, and the number of these 
useless beasts has been reduced from some¬ 
thing over 100 to less than ,30. If the town¬ 
ship tax could be raised to $5 on females, I 
think the result would be salutary. 
Here is a little item for dog fools to consider: 
In the pursuit of my duties as assessor I called 
at the house of a colored man, and as he was 
absent his wife answered my interrogatories. 
In reply to the question whether they kept a 
dog, she said: “No, sah! Jim, he says that a 
dog would eat as much as a pig, an’ so we keep 
de pig instead ob de dog; 'cause yo see we kin 
make po’k outen de pig. Besides a dog ain’t 
no’count nohow.” A short time age, “Jim, 
he” bought and paid for a house and three lots, 
while some of his white neighbors who keep 
one or two dogs are still renting, and likely to 
continue doing so to the end of their days. 
Christian Co., Ills. 
PLANT SMALL TREES. 
That is an excellent article in the Rural, on 
page 418, made up from a conversation with 
Mr. Douglass, about planting small trees in 
preference to larger ones. Eighteen years ago 
I began the planting of trees of various kinds 
on a waste piece of some acres. I pursued 
this gradually for several seasons, and before 
I got through, had set out some thousands, 
scarcely one of which was over 18 inches 
to two feet high. Nearly all these lived, and 
have grown better, and are now larger than 
those set out by my neighbors at the same time. 
Theirs were from six to nine feet high and the 
trunks limbless three-fourths of their length 
to the top. 
A gentleman from the city purchased a 
place not far from mine four years ago. In 
planting his lawn, and also on the side of the 
reserved to be piled around the trees close to 
their trunks after they had been set out in the 
Spring. This is very pernicious ; the manure 
should never be placed nearer to the trunk 
than one foot, and spread thence in a ring to 
the width of a perpendicular line to the ground 
from the ends of the most extended branches. 
A. B. ALLEN. 
A CHEAP FARM HOUSE. 
The house shown at Figs 266, ’67, ’68 was 
built by Mr. E. G. Hurst of Addison Co., 
Vermont. This is what he says about it: “It 
is not aesthetic, only a handy kind of house 
for plain people. The size is unessential (mine 
is 32x26 feet for the main part) and it may be 
varied to suit circumstances. The plan needs 
little comment, except the arrangement of 
the sink, wash-bowl sink and wood box. (See 
rrernTTm 
A CHEAP HOUSE. 
road in front of it, he obtained from a nursery 
trees five to eight feet high, not one of which 
lived, owing partially to his miserable method 
of setting them and the poverty of the soil. 
Of cource I could not give him any advice as 
to this, recollecting the old adage of advice 
“ unasked, being received unwelcome.” So 
instead of that, and for fear of offense, I asked 
him to Uook at my thrifty trees, and when 
doing so I explained to him how small they 
were when selected, and how roomy I had 
made the holes, how carefully.I had spread out 
the roots, and covered them with the best soil 
Fig 267.) These stand in the partition between 
the kitchen and dining-room, coming out flush 
with the wall of the latter, and are inclosed 
on both]sides with doors opening into both 
rooms. The sink doors are in three parts so 
as to fold back out of the way. The wood box 
and wash-bowl sink have each single doors on 
both sides. These doors are three feet six 
inches long, and swing two feet six inches 
above the floor. The space below the doors is 
paneled and that above plastered. Under the 
sink is a cupboard opening into both rooms, 
and above the whole are two cupboards, one 
-2 6 fT. 
Fig. 268. 
when planted. This seemed to have a little 
effect upon him, and the next year he set out 
a number not over three or four feet high. 
But most of them have shared the fate of the 
first, though more would have lived had the 
soil] been richer and they had been better 
planted. 
The manure and other compost used to en¬ 
rich the soil, instead of being spread broad- 
cast and plowed in the previous autumn, were 
for each room. The woodbox, washboard and 
sink, each, occupy a space 2 feet 4 inches x 18 
inches and the sink with the pump, 5 feet x 18 
inches. The wash-bowl sink is furnished with 
a stationary bowl and waste pipe. Closets for 
dishes, etc., stand in the pantries near the sink. 
We find this arrangement of sinks and wood 
box very convenient and compact, and being 
finished in butternut and ash, it presents a 
very pleasing appearance. 
In the Rural the back pantry shown in the 
ground-plan is a lean-to, the roof coming up to 
the bottom of the chamber window. The house 
can be built here for about $1,500 but one can 
make it cost a good deal more if he tries.” 
el) 
flu 
ARTIFICIAL COMB. 
A QUESTION OF PRIVILEGE. 
Some years ago, in an article in the Popular 
Science Monfhly, June, 1881, p. 254, in speak¬ 
ing of the uses of glucose, I employed the fol¬ 
lowing sentence: 
“In commercial honey, which is entirely 
free from bee mediation, the comb is made of 
paraffine, and filled with pure glucose by ap¬ 
propriate machinery.” 
In the article in question I do not give my 
authority for the above and since that time 
this statement has been declared false, and I 
have been published, in at least one journal 
ostensibly devoted to the interests of honey 
producers, as a “willful and malicious liar.” 
Usually I take no notice of attacks made upon 
me in language which excludes the possibility 
of its author being a gentleman; but in this 
case I depart from my usual custom at the re¬ 
quest of a friend who has been for more than 
20 years editorially connected with the agri¬ 
cultural press of this country. 
The statement in question was made on the 
authority of Dr. E. J. Hallock, an eminent 
chemist, whom unfortunately, science lost by 
death several years ago. Lr. Hallock was at 
that time a resident of Boston and editor of 
the Boston Journal of Chemistry. Neither 
Dr. Hallock nor myself believed at that time 
that such artificial comb could be made com¬ 
mercially successful, although honey made in 
that way could be sold at an enormous profit 
if the comb could be made to sufficiently 
counterfeit the genuine article. It is possible 
that Dr. Hallock may have been misinformed 
in respect of this matter, but I cannot say that 
he was. Moreover, the statement is of such a- 
nature that I did not anticipate that any one 
would seriously suppose that comb honey is 
in danger of being replaced by the spurious 
article. I make this statement for the benefit 
of those who may have been deceived by the 
malicious slanders which have been circulated 
concerning me. 
The adulteration of honey is practised to a 
most alarming extent in this country, and 
every bee-keeper will join me in my labors to 
detect and remove this fraud. To ray per¬ 
sonal and scientific friends I have no need to 
speak. I address this note to those who may 
have been led, without a knowledge of the 
facts, to believe that I purposely sought to 
pervert the truth. h. w. wiley. 
JUDGING AT FAIRS. 
T. H. HOSKINS, M.D. 
Boom, for great improvements; exhibitors 
as well as managers at fault ; two honor¬ 
able exceptions in fair management ; re 
quirements for premiums. 
The fair season is approaching, and with it 
the not diminishing sense among would-be ex¬ 
hibitor of vexatious uncertainty regarding 
the fairness of the awards. I believe that our 
fail's would be more than a hundred per cent, 
better, in every way, if this uncertainty could 
be removed from the minds of enterprising 
producers. The fact of having received a 
first or second premium is deprived of a great 
part of its value by the knowledge that awards 
are so often unjustly or unintelligently made. 
The officials of many of even our largest so¬ 
cieties, being without any real responsibility, 
and under no danger of investigation, have 
become mere rings, and by .“deals” which 
would not discredit Wall Street or Tammany 
for gross rascality, they often “ fix” commit¬ 
tees according to their own interests, or those 
of wealthy exhibitors, who know how to pull 
the wires, which means how to influence the 
managers in the appointment of judges. 
But not all the faults of fair management 
are of this sort. The exhibitors themselves 
show an astonishing amount of ignorance, or 
contrariness, in preparing their exhibits and 
making their entries. So general is this that, 
if the rules were strictly enforced, there 
would often be scarcely any competition, so 
few would be qualified to compete. 
There are some honorable exceptions to be 
noted. At the Bay State Fair in Boston, two 
years ago, (to be repeated this year at Spring 
field) we saw, for once in New England, a 
great fair honestly and strictly managed, and 
