AUG'24 
858 
THE RURAL HEW-YORKER. 
getting paid according to the per cent, of 
solids it contained, I would not want any 
larger cows than 1 would for butter making. 
A small cow with the right kind of machinery 
in her can get all the milk solids out of a given 
amount of feed as well as a big cow. But if 
you have good, big cows and they give you a 
fair profit, keep them, but breed them to the 
smallest good dairy bull you can find and if 
the result is a more concentrated cow I think 
you are the gainer. a. l. Crosby. 
Catonsville, Md. 
WHENCE COMES THE COLOR OF 
BUTTER. 
BUCEPHALUS BROWN. 
The editor of the Maine Farmer, who is 
also secretary of the Maine Board of Agricul¬ 
ture, and a practical dairyman and fruit¬ 
grower, (known to be successful at both), 
complains of being made “ tired to read the 
many efforts of the know-nothing suburban 
at enlightening the dairyman on methods and 
practices in his work.” This is in reference 
to the following from the Rural New- 
Yorker. 
“ There is a much better way of making 
good-looking butter than by adding question¬ 
able ingredients to it, and it is a much more 
profitable way. It is to put the color into the 
feed, by feeding sugar-beets, carrots, par¬ 
snips or squash, notably the last, with a ration 
of corn meal and bran, in addition to clover 
hay and corn fodder. By these means one 
can in winter make butter as sweet and at¬ 
tractive as in June.” 
To which the somewhat hasty Down Easter 
responds by 1 he dogmatic assertion that “it 
is green food, (not yellow), that gives the 
golden hue to butter, and the color goes up or 
down in accordance with its presence or ab¬ 
sence.” 
It would be very interesting if editor Gil¬ 
bert, restraining his wrath, had told us how 
he knows his statement to be true. The time 
is fast going by for dogmatic assertion, unac¬ 
companied by proof, to be accepted as truth. 
Even a suburban farmer may be allowed to ex¬ 
periment in feeding his cow s for color in their 
butter, and to record the result for the infor¬ 
mation of others; and however far-back 
another farmer may be farming, that fact 
alone is not sufficient to justify so much scorn. 
It is quite plain that neither of the two 
statements necessarily invalidates the other; 
and it is sure that even if both were true, (as 
probably the majority of farmers think) they 
do not exhaust the truth on this subject. 
I have kept cows, and milked them, for 40 
years, and have always desired to have the 
butter of a good, natural yellow. It is a mor¬ 
tification to have to dye butter in order to 
have it sell, or look right on the table. But I 
have had to^do it; and so, no doubt, has our 
Maine frieDd. Nevertheless, I have had cows 
which would make yellow butter without any 
green food. Also, I have had cows that 
would make only a very pale, yellow butter 
on the best of grass. As to the effect of vege¬ 
table colors, yellow or green, upon the color 
of butter, it has often proved very uncertain. 
In a chemical point of view, there is not so 
much difference between them as necessarily 
to settle the point that yellow food will not 
highten the color of butter in any case. My 
experience leads me to believe that it some¬ 
times will; but it has also proved that it 
often fails. 
The dominating fact in the case is, that 
something in the constitution of the cow her¬ 
self has more to do with the intensity of the 
yellow in her butter than any feed; else 
why do we look for the yellow skin, and why 
do the yellow-skinned Jerseys and Guernseys 
give us so much high-colored butter, irrespec¬ 
tive of feed? And again, why will a cow give 
a higher-colored butter on the same feed after 
than before calving? 
Since winter dairying has become common, 
and the cows are made to come in late in the 
season, there has been much less difficulty in 
getting a good natural color in winter butter. 
The assumption that all the color of the inter¬ 
muscular fat, the skin and the butter fat of 
the cow, is derived from the chlorophyl of the 
once green plants upon which cows are fed in 
winter, is too lacking in proof, and is con¬ 
fronted by too many plain exceptions to be 
set up as absolute truth. Both corn-meal and 
roots when liberally fed, have often appeared 
to deepen the color of the butter. I do not 
know of any recorded experiments carried on 
with accuracy to show that butter will be 
colorless when no food containing green 
chlorophyl is fed. Here is a chance for our 
experiment stations. Meantime, perhaps, we 
had all better avoid positive statements on 
the subject. 
<T!)C Pcmltnj 
AN INTERESTING CHICKEN EXPER¬ 
IMENT. 
I will give Rural readers the benefit of 
my loss and experience in rearing chickens 
by artificial heat. I bought the buildings in 
a vacated lumber camp and stocked a large 
boarding-house with 100 Plymouth Rocks in 
tho fall. A large stove protected by wire net¬ 
ting stood in the middle of the room. Aside 
from the grain ration, I put away several bar¬ 
rels of shells and forest nuts—mostly acorns. 
Wild turkeys and pigeons eat acorns, ani 
domestic poultry relish nuts after they are 
crushed in the bone-mill. To save time such 
nuts can be raked and shoveled. Scratching 
over the leaves gives the fowls the desired ex¬ 
ercise in winter. Early broilers were my 
object, so I canvassed the neighborhood for 
sitting heus in December, the chicks to be 
removed as soon as hatched, to the loft over 
the stove which was provided with several 
lath heat legisters in the hennery. The 
mother hens were confined in coops. The 
chicks had the run of tne loft floor, well 
lighted by windows. The laying hens were 
on the ground floor. By February 1st 
I had 600 emaciated chicks which be¬ 
gan to die by the dozen from no perceptible 
disease. I had a good supply of onions and 
cabbages so much coveted by fowls in win¬ 
ter. I fed them rabbit meat; still they died. 
Several people of culture, booked high in 
poultry lore, gave the cause of the mortality 
among them up as an enigma, when asked 
for a remedy, and said, “You can’t raise 
young chicks in that way now. it’s out of 
season and contrary to Nature.” I placed a 
thermometer on the first floor. It registered 
a little above the freezing point. In review¬ 
ing the past, when the school teacher placed 
water on the school stove to supply moisture 
to the room, it came to me that I was kiln-dry¬ 
ing the chicks; that moisture was wanted in 
that atmosphere which was drier than the ze¬ 
ro air outside. As soon as the stove generated 
steam those chicks huddled over the registers 
to receive it. They also began to pay atten¬ 
tion to their toilet, pluming themselves ,and 
they grew as they might have done in “balmy 
June.” 1 believe that caged birds and infant 
children suffer in winter from fever heat. 
Indianola, III. L. 
(Btottatkwjftl. 
A STONE-MASON IN THE GARDEN. 
OLIVER HOWARD. 
Here it is midsummer. Everybody is busy, 
and there is more work than all hands can ac¬ 
complish. I chanced to hear Florence say 
that a man at the baik door was asking for 
something to eat. Presently 1 said : 
“Where is that hungry man ?’’ 
“I fed him at the door and he is gone. 
There he goes toward town.” 
I called after him, wondering what kind of 
a man this could be. who was willing to beg 
my bread when there were 17 mouths in our 
house, counting children, workmen and visit¬ 
ors, that must be supplied. “ Here, sir 1 Do 
you want work ?” The man walked slowly 
back—a strong-looking man, perhaps prema¬ 
turely aged. He had not asked for work. 
“ Go and work in the garden this afternoon 
and I will give you 50 cents and your supper.” 
“ I’ll do it,” he said. “ Half a dollar would 
help me a good deal as I am fixed now.” 
He bad been a soldier, was 53 years of age, 
and was a stone-mason by trade. He had 
held a claim in Kansas and had traveled 
through several cities seeking for work. He 
stayed with us a few days; a man who had 
roved over the world a great deal; an intelli¬ 
gent, quiet man to all appearances, strong 
and willing. As a “ comrade,” I did my best 
to find him a place on some stone-work at the 
new foundry; and at last he drifted away, 
after purchasing a new hat. 
He was a very candid sort of a man, and as 
he took a good hoe in hand he said: “ I shall 
not be much of a hand in the garden. I have 
never been taueht. I don’t know anything 
but just my trade.” It was true. If I worked 
with as little skill in my garden as did the 
stone-mason, I would certainly some day be 
begging bread, too, or worse. The eye that 
had been trained to hew stones to a line, and 
to lay the foundations of great buildings se¬ 
curely, could seeno difference between a red- 
root weed and a potato plant. I pointed out 
the slight difference in color, and the differ¬ 
ence in the form of the leaf, but he couldn’t 
“ catch on.” He tried hard to please me, and 
I let him alone, but yesterday in weeding 
after him, we were able to discern “ the stone¬ 
mason’s row ” all the time. 
Now I have a suspicion that there was a 
fundamental error in my stone-mason’s educa¬ 
tion. He had not been taught to observe and 
discriminate. Prof. Agassiz would not have 
confounded a useless weed with a noble escul¬ 
ent. His trained eye would have “ caught on” 
at once. May it not have been that the mason 
has this fatal lack of discrimination in his 
own trade, and so roams from city to city, 
working a few days here and there, and then 
pushed gently out of the way to give place to 
a more intelligent workman? 
I trust I do not seem to be belittling the 
comrade. I suspect he did far better in my 
garden than I could possibly do with his 
plummet and trowel. But look at it, you who 
wish well to the babes in a million cradles 1 
What about this modern narrowing down of 
human activities and observation? In our 
shoe manufactories one laborer does one small 
thing toward making a shoe, and that is all. 
No man makes the finished article. My stone¬ 
mason told me that something very similar 
was going on in his trade. 
In all trades the tendency is to concentrate 
effort on some one detail, to educate one facul¬ 
ty, one set of muscles. Pretty soon there comes 
a great invention or a business stagnation and 
numberless helpless crafts lay all along the 
shores of the ocean of labor. We educate a 
man so that he can make a pin-head better 
than any other man in the world. Wbat then? 
Possibly next year some inventor will give us 
an implement that will completely supersede 
the pin or human labor in making it. What 
then is to become of our famous pin-head 
maker? 
The only answer I can make is this: Since 
competition is bound to become sharper and 
sharper, our bjys and girls must be educated 
broader and broader as the field of labor nar¬ 
rows. If the labor that sustains me calls but 
for the education of one set of muscles, health, 
happiness, common sense demand that the 
gymnasium or some substitute shall train my 
other muscles. With trained muscles one 
may quickly and easily adapt himself to 
changes of occupation. 
Most of us having eyes see not, and having 
ears hear not. Take a chiid, and what does 
he see in the vegetable kingdom ? Most child¬ 
ren see almrst nothing. But let a botanist 
train the same unseeing child, and what a 
change! A whole new world opens to him. 
A thousand mai vels are revealed where be¬ 
fore he absolutely saw nothing. He would 
know a red-root from a potato. And the long 
and short of the lesson that my indigent 
stone-mason taught me is this: broader edu¬ 
cation for muscle and brain. 
Weld County. Col 
POTATOES ARE ROTTING. 
DR. BYRON D. HALSTEAD. 
We have had an unusually wet July, and 
with the thermometer at only a moderate 
hight during the same time the most favor¬ 
able conditions have obtained for the 
development of the many forms of blight, 
mildew, rot, etc., which prey upon the 
farm and garden crops. At the time of 
writing, August 7th, the vineyards in many 
places insure no crop for this season; the pear 
orchards are frequently without foliage 
enough to protect the starved fruit from the 
sun, and, worst of all, the potato crop is cer¬ 
tain to be small and of poor quality. 
The low form of plant which has been prey¬ 
ing upon the potato and generally known by 
its effects as the rot, is a very rapid grower 
and does its destructive work without giving 
much warning. This may be in part due to 
the nature of the mildew, but, perhaps, more 
to the particularly favorable conditions fur¬ 
nished by the texture of this plant and its near¬ 
ness to the soil. In a rank-growing potato 
field the herbage or “ tops ” make a thick suc¬ 
culent mass, each portion of which whether 
it be leaf or branch is easily penetrated by 
the threads of the fungus. This mildew here¬ 
tofore has made sad inroads in the potato crop, 
and invariably the seasons of much rot have 
been years of excessive moisture. That the 
plant causing the decay of the vinos and 
tubers is fond of moisture proves no exception 
to the general rule for this class of plants 
This is especially true when the rains are 
coupled with much cloudiness and a moder¬ 
ate temperature. Tnose days that are spoken 
of as “close” are the ones in which the bread 
molds in the pantry, the shoes in the closet 
and the living plants in the gardon. What 1 
other conditions favor tho development of the 
rot it is not so easy to state. Some think that 
an abundance of coarse manure or like decay¬ 
ing substance in the soil induces the decay. 
(Continued on Page 563.) 
farm 0cfW0ira$. 
A HOME-MADE HARROW. 
I Send— see Fig. 210— a plan of a home¬ 
made harrow like one I have used for several 
years. It should be used after other harrows 
to make the ground fine and smooth Take 
seven pieces of board four feet long, five inch¬ 
es wide and one inch thick; fasten them 
strongly together with nails; then bore holes 
three inches apart in the cross-pieces for the 
large eight-inch nails so that they will go 
through snugly and stay with the heads one 
inch above the boards. Then they can be 
driven down if desired at any time. Put a 
chain or any fastening at one corner as the 
barrow should be drawn cornerwise. Two 
can be hinged together if desired. The ex¬ 
pense will be from 75 cents to $1 if the imple¬ 
ment be made at home. There will be 15 large 
nails in each cross-piece— 60 in all. t. a. j. 
Binghamton, N. Y. 
TO REMOVE A CORK. 
At Fig. 211 is shown a simple method of ex¬ 
tracting a cork from inside a bottle with a 
string. It may not be new to some Rural 
readers, but after proving its simplicity, con¬ 
venience, and effectiveness, I could not re¬ 
frain from sending it to the paper. 
A FRIEND. 
SOME LABOR-SAVING APPLIANCES IN 
HOG FEEDING. 
Scoop for Dipping Slop from Barrel.— 
This is made from an old gallon paint can. 
The handle is of wood and nailed on, nails be¬ 
ing driven through the can into the wood, 
and stayed by a band of hoop iron as shown 
in Fig. 212 in the upper part of the cut. On 
a cold, frosty morning it is no fun to lift the 
bale of the bucket from the rim. Two small 
blocks of wood grooved to fit the ba'e and 
then wired on as shown in Fig. 212, in the 
lower part of the cut, will save much trouble. 
Truck for Wheeling Slop.— Have an 
axle bent to fit half way around the barrel. 
Bolt on shafts and a cross-piece, as shown at 
Fig. 213. Two inches beyond the axle fasten 
on the shafts movable hangers (h, h) Fig. 214. 
The hangers should be a little over half the 
length of the barrel, with the lower ends sharp¬ 
ly turned up to catch under the barrel. They 
may be fastened on by curving the upper 
ends over the shafts and driving over them a 
staple loosely enough to allow play, to keep 
them in place. The barrel in which the slot 
is cut should be placed on a block five or six 
inches high with a part of the bottom pro¬ 
jecting on each side of the block to allow the 
hangers to take hold. Raise the shafts up. 
This lowers the hangers. With one foot and 
the catch in one hand shove the hangers under 
the projecting bottom of the barrel so that 
when the shafts are lowered the hangers will 
lift the barrel, place the bent part of the catch 
over the top edge of the barrel and fasteu the 
other end to the cross-piece with a pin as shown 
in Fig. 214. Then wheel the barrel to the 
pig-pen ; have another block of the same size, 
and reverse the operation. It will save emp¬ 
tying slop if two barrels are used. A swing¬ 
ing leg should be placed on the other end of the 
shaft away from the handles, with a string 
attached to the handle so that it can be draw T n 
out of the way when the barrel is in motion. 
Catonsville, Md. P. b. c. 
RURAL SPECIAL REPORTS. 
Colorado. 
Greeley, Weld County.— As yet we have 
no very large markets for our abundant 
truck, except Denver, and that is so well sup¬ 
plied that we cannot ship thither. Cheyenne 
used to be a good market; but I suspect the 
good people of that berg used to pay higher 
for “ garden sass ” than any people on tho 
continent. Now the truck gardeners of north¬ 
ern Colorado just tight tor the market. One 
man I know, in his eagerness to hold the 
trade, ships large consignments of vegetables, 
saying to the dealers: “Take this: tell all 
