THE RURAL HEW- 
feEG Si 
sects upon which he feeds. Woe to the bee¬ 
hives whose neighborhood is infested with 
toads. From the stomach of a little toad, not 
larger than my two fingers, I removed 39 
honey bees, a potato bug and a hornet. Still 
my bees did not thrive, and after many visits 
I at length surprised at midnight, lantern in 
hand, two enormous toads on the very alight¬ 
ing boards of my hives close up to the clusters 
of bees that were unable to find proper ac¬ 
commodations inside the hives that sultry 
night. The toads had grown fat and clumsy 
through imbibing the sweetness of many a 
honey bee. I had not the hardihood at that 
weird hour to remove their monstrous stom¬ 
achs or to think of counting the number of 
bees they had slain. Sometimes after taking 
a bee in its mouth, a toad will give a sudden 
twinge and look astonished as if it could say— 
“ Bless my soul, how hot his little foot is !” 
One day this season James called me into a 
certain back yard where sat, close up to a 
greasy bone, three small toads, elbows lightly 
touching. Every moment a fly alighted on 
the bone, whereupon one or other of the 
toads snapped it up. The number of flies that 
each consumed must have been simply enor¬ 
mous. When a toad is satisfied with his con¬ 
quests and wishes to retire from view, he be¬ 
takes himself to a softish plot of ground, and 
giving a sweeping or swimming motion with 
each of his feet, removes the earth from be¬ 
neath his body. After a very few efforts the 
body sinks below the surface of the ground. 
Another effort and the fresh earth is forced 
up and drops lightly on the creature’s back. 
In an exceedingly short time the toad has dis¬ 
appeared, but at intervals the earth moves 
slightly as the delver goes down. 
Until this hot summer of 1888 I had sup¬ 
posed that toads reveled in heat. This season 
I had good evidence that, like human beings, 
the toad has no fondness tor the heated term, 
but that he appreciates the luxury of ice in 
midsummer. My friend Phillips has his ice- 
chest in his north porch. A small lead pipe 
conducts the water from the melting ice be¬ 
yond the floor of the porch, where it drops 
two or three feet to the ground. One hot day 
in J uly, I saw a toad sitting beneath the pipe, 
and enjoying a bath of ice water. As the 
days went on, the number of toads increased 
until one sweltering day in August when the 
mercury stood at over 100 degrees in the shade 
I counted 13 toads huddled close up to the 
spot where the ice water was dripping. The 
crown of my hat would almost have covered 
the whole of the snug party. The water was 
perfectly pure and cold, and not an insect did 
I ever see about the drain, so that I feel posi¬ 
tive that the toads were not there seeking 
food. In the very center of the group, with 
legs sprawling, and body flattened so as to 
receive the cooling bath to the best advantage, 
was by far the largest toad of the 13. The icy 
water was dropping fast on the center of his 
back. The spatters were doing something 
toward cooling off the little toads. Whether 
one toad had made the discovery of the 
charmed place and invited “his sisters and 
his cousins and his aunts,” or each had made 
the discovery for himself, we may never know; 
but one fact was certain from the position of 
things,—every one knew which was “the 
biggest toad in the puddle.” 
Greeley, Colo. Oliver Howard. 
“ The stars come nightly to the shy; 
The tidal wave unto the sea ; 
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, 
Can keep my own away from me.” 
— Burroughs. 
PRACTICAL PENNSYLVANIA POINTS. 
When the heat, and hurry of the season are 
over and the crops, whether good or bad, 
have been gathered and secured, when as 
Christmas Day approaches and the hard¬ 
working farmer who has been pressed with 
work since early spring, has a little leisure to 
look back over the past and see where and 
how he has succeeded best, he should not fail 
to study the history of his farm for the past 
season so that, by adopting the same course in 
some things and avoiding it in others, he may 
achieve as great or greater success the next 
year. The shrewd farmer learns from his 
failures, and will never allow himself to be 
oeaten the second time in the same way. 
In looking back over my own farm oper¬ 
ations the past year, my wheat crop affords 
me the most pleasure, not because the yield 
was so large, and the profit so great, for such 
was not the case, but because I did the very 
best I could. In preparing the ground no 
pains were spared to get it into the best con¬ 
dition, and have it sown with good, clean 
seed, and at the proper time. Nothing was 
jeft undone, so far as I know, the doing of 
which could have added a bushel to the 
crop. I did my whole duty as well as I knew 
how. About one-third of the field was sown 
with Lancaster Red, and the remainder with 
Martin’s Amber. The latter is not an amber 
wheat at all, as raised in this region, but a 
fine, large-kerneled, white wheat. Both 
varieties came up well, grew vigorously, 
tillered well, “hugged the ground,” and be¬ 
fore winter set in had covered the earth com¬ 
pletely with a splendid carpet of living green. 
No field of wheat ever went into winter 
quarters in better condition. The ground 
froze up very solid and deep before New 
Year’s; some snow fell in January and rains 
soon melted it off, leaving puddles of water 
in every depression. Then the weather turned 
cold and froze those puddles into solid ice, 
which lay on the wheat until spring. Even 
then, after the ice had thawed, the ground 
being still frozen, the water could not sink or 
run off, and stood in puddles for some time 
where the ice had been. If the plants in those 
depressions had not already been smothered 
to death by the ice, this standing water 
would have made an end of them. On all 
those spots, which, taken together, must have 
measured one-third of the area of the whole 
field, there were weeds in plentiful profusion, 
but no wheat. The parts of the field that 
were not winter-killed produced so abundautly 
that the y ield was 18 bushels of good plump 
grain, per acre, on an average, for the whole 
field. The red wheat ripened more than a 
week sooner than Martin’s Amber, but the 
latter gave considerably the better yield, and 
I am very favorably impressed with it as 
a profitable variety. The field measured 
about seven acres, and was a sandy loam, 
“bottom land,” or river flats. 
The farm operation that was not at all 
satisfactory to me and the one I shall not be 
likely to repeat, is planting potatoes too late. 
This year I planted part of my crop about 
May 10, and the remainder on May 30. The 
first planting gave much the better yield, and 
there wasn’t half so much trouble to keep the 
bugs off. One application of Paris-green on 
the first planting killed all the bugs and I 
had no more trouble with that piece. The 
last field planted required three different ap¬ 
plications and even then the leaves were 
eaten off on a good many hills, and on others 
the foliage was injured by too much of the 
poisonous green. Hereafter, the potatoes on 
on this farm, if I am about, will be planted 
from May 1 to 10, and they will be the best 
early varieties. Early potatoes, planted early, 
get most of their growth before the bugs have 
become so thick and plentiful, and before 
the inevitable summer drought comes on. 
The particular thing for which most of our 
neighbors have to be thankful, is an ex¬ 
cellent crop of buckwheat. Some of them 
raised on fields containing seven acres, an 
average of 40 bushels per acre machine 
measure, or about 44 bushels struck measure, 
worth 00 cents per bushel, or over $26 per 
acre. All who sowed buckwheat this year 
have reason to be thankful. The only cause 
for regret they can have is that they became 
weary in well doing and did not sow more. 
The ground was very dry and hard in this 
part of the country when the proper time 
came for plowing for buckwheat, and it was 
such hard work for the teams, and the soil 
turned up in such a baked and lumpy condi¬ 
tion, that many did not sow as much as they 
had intended, and some quit when they had 
10-acre fields half plowed. 
The particular thing for which some of my 
neighbors have no reason to be thankful, and 
for which there is nobody to blame but them¬ 
selves, is poor corn. The fore part of the sea¬ 
son was not favorable for corn, being cold 
and dry, but their corn would not have been 
good had the season been ever so favorable, 
because they planted it on poor land without 
manure, or on stubble land instead of on in¬ 
verted sod. Good tillage is a good thing. 
Jethro Tull believed it was everything ; but 
From Nature. Fig. 416. 
the fact is that a first-rate crop of corn cannot 
be raised on an impoverished field, no matter 
how much tillage is given to it, or how 
favorable the season may be. 
Sugar Run, Pa. J. w. J. 
“ Rest for the weary hands is good 
And love for hearts that pine ; 
But let the manly habitude 
Of upright souls be mine .” 
— Whittier. 
UNITS PROM THE INSTITUTES. 
What is a creamery? A creamery, as ap¬ 
plied to Orange County, is a place where they 
buy milk, set it over-night, take off about a 
quart of cream from each can in the morning 
and send the rest to New York and sell it for 
first class pure Orange County milk. 
Farming is a business. One great need is 
that business principles be applied to it. 
The farm house is the heaven of the farmer’s 
wife. 
Is it possible for the farmers of Orange 
County to organize more than two in a body? 
It is astonishing that 2,000 farmers of 
Orange County should be led by the nose by 
half a dozen milk dealers in New York City. 
The great trouble with the fruit market is 
not so much over-production as under-con¬ 
sumption. 
The Delaware grape is probably the one 
most liable to injury from overbearing. 
Concord and Brighton come next, but they will 
bear immense loads without particular injury, 
if well fertilized. 
There is j ust as much profit in a mistake, if 
you make it soon enough in life, as there is in 
many successes. 
Each pound of poor cheese and butter put 
upon the market injures the price and pre¬ 
vents the sale of five pounds of good cheese 
and butter. 
In private dairies in Vermont the butter is 
largely made by the men. thus affording the 
women much-needed relief. 
A trust is the devil’s way of doing business. 
One-third of the butter made in the State is 
sold at a price that is totally unremunerative 
to the producer, mainly because it is made at 
a season of the year when the market is glutted. 
Farmers instead of being in the X Y Zs of 
their profession are really in the A B Cs in so 
far as they are trying to improve the quality 
of their live stock and its products, without 
paying attention to the keeping up and im¬ 
proving of the fertility of their soil. 
Too many farmers lose time, labor and 
money in adapting their work to their build¬ 
ings, rather than adapting their buildings to 
the work required of them. 
All the help needed at any one time may be 
profitably employed all the time. 
Each farm, each barn, each dairyroom, in 
the State should be an experiment station 
under the direction of its intelligent owner. 
A porous cheese is often considered a first- 
class cheese by a home dealer, but will not 
sell so well for shipping and will not keep so. 
well if there was any taint in the milk. 
----- 
“*he haughty eye shall seek in vain what! 
innocence beholds; 
No cunning finds the key of heaven, no 
strength its gate unfolds. 
Alone to guilelessness and love that gate shall 
open fall; 
The mind of pride is nothingness; the child¬ 
like heart is all." —Whittier. 
VERMONT VERITIES. 
Good Farming Does Pay.— One of the 
most pleasant and profitable farm operations 
I have engaged in during the past year was 
the early cutting of my grass. I hired help 
and cut it in a short time. The work was 
pleasant because one lines to feel that he is 
getting a piece of work done in season and in 
good shape, and also because a number of 
hands rushing things along make work seem 
far easier. It was profitable because it cost 
for help only about one dollar per ton, and 
the hay is worth three dollars a ton more for 
being cut early than it would have been had it 
stood three or four weeks later. I have be¬ 
come thoroughly disgusted with the practice 
of letting grass stand till it is ripe and the 
leaves are dry. If the haying is out of the 
way, one has time to fight weeds and insects. 
It costs but little more to cut grass at the 
proper time than later. It must be cut some 
time and how much better to cut it at the 
right time. 
Then there are pleasure and profit in feed¬ 
ing such hay. The cows give more milk and 
make better butter and more of it on early 
than on very late-cut hay. I was a good deal 
interested in Mr. Terry’s “ Notes About Win¬ 
tering Stock, ” page 756. Wintering stock at 
a profit is something I have studied a good 
deal. 
There is little trouble about making work¬ 
ing horses pay their way all winter here in 
Vermont. There is wood to draw; many • 
farmers have logs and hemlock bark to sell; 
then there is ice to be got and lots of it if one 
uses deep setting for milk. Then sawdust 
must be got for ice and for bedding, andl 
many draw out on the snow all the manure 
they make m the winter. During sugaring,, 
horses in many cases have to draw sap, and. 
in such winters as the last many horses earn a 
good share of their living by breaking roads.. 
Add to this, driving to town from one to half- 
a-dozen times a week as many do, and not 
only do horses get exercise, but they pay 
their way and more too. 
But it takes a good deal of skill to make- 
the wintering of other stock pay. I see more 
and more the need of good farming—of profi¬ 
table rather than profitless farming. The* 
different ways men winter stock are good! 
illustrations of the two kinds of manage¬ 
ment. Here is a man whose cows run on the' 
mowings as long as the ground is bare. They 
get little at the barn and dry up in November J 
they come to the barn rather thin, and go dry 
three or four months, and are fed on straw 
and coarse hay, getting no grain till they come 
in. They drink ice water, their stable is cold, 
and their manure is thrown out-of-doors. Now 
there are thousands of farmers who act in this 
way,and of course such farming doesn’t pay. It 
cannot. Only a few days ago a farmer told 
me that if my cows could not make butter 
without grain, he didn’t want them. He 
came to buy and did not dare to take one of 
mine because he was afraid she would not dq 
GREGORY’S SPRUCE. 
