farming is carried on. Any business which is 
able to establish a special market and draw 
buyers from all parts is able to command bet¬ 
ter prices than oue which depends upon the 
general market. 
Rev. W. F. Clark favored progress in dairy¬ 
ing. The management of the cheese factory 
has improved faster than the production and 
delivery of milk. Dairy farmers lack thor¬ 
oughness. lie favored carrying instruction 
right to their doors. First, hold free conven¬ 
tions in the towns of the dairy districts, where 
their best home talent could reach the factory 
patrons and instruct, them in the requisites of 
successful dairy farming. Second, employ 
experts and allot to each 18 or ill) factories,and 
make it the duty of the experts to regulate 
everything about the factories and extend 
their labors to the farms and herds of the pat¬ 
rons, correcting evi Is and giving the required 
instructions for producing the best milk and 
delivering it in the. best condition. This idea 
was favored by the convention and bids fair 
to be canned out during the coming season. 
The possibilities of dairying were presented 
by Mr. Thomas Shaw. There should be a 
more scrupulous honesty permeating a ll the 
details of dairy farming, and a higher stand¬ 
ard for the dairy herd. Dairymen should 
bring their troubles to these conventions and 
submit them to the scrutiny of all present, 
who w ill be most likely to throw some light 
on the means of remedying t he troubles in the 
future. The dairyman who does not encount¬ 
er and overcome obstacles is not progressive, 
and he who is not progressive is sure to be 
left behind in the race. There is inexcusable 
meanness in the practice of dishonesty by the 
patrons of cheese factories, who not only 
inflict a degree of evil ou themselves, but a 
much greater one on their unoffending and 
perhaps unsuspecting neighbors. Improve¬ 
ment in dairy farming is not for the benefit 
of the factories alone, but for the greater ben¬ 
efit of the farmers themselves, who will reap 
the reward of increased receipts. 
The kinds of cheese wanted and the kinds 
not wanted were pointed out by Mr. John 
Robertson. Those not wanted are stiff, dry, 
curdy, soft, pasty, loose, open-cutting, bitter, 
sour, strong-flavored, a variety of sizes in the 
same factory, and that made from dirty, 
tainted or skimmed milk. Too mueh rennet, 
tainted rennet, to > little rennet, too much or 
too little heat,, too mueh acid, bad condition 
of the herd, rank flavored food, variable tem¬ 
perature m the curing room, whey-soaking, 
uncleanliness, carelessness and all kindred 
causes tend to the production of those objec¬ 
tionable qualities in cheese. The kinds of 
cheese wanted are mellow', silky, meaty, solid- 
textured, fine-grained, rich, pure, nutty or 
creamy flavored, shapely, clean, smooth-rind 
and uniform-sized cheese of 60 to 70 pounds 
weight. This kind of cheese is made from 
wholesome, clean milk, with a proper amount 
of sweet rennet, even and sufficient, but not 
too much heat, fine and even cutting, gentle 
stirring to prevent adhesion of the lumps 
to each other, avoidance of too much acid, 
warm make and pressroom, even temperature 
in the curing j’oom and scrupulous care and 
neatness at all points. 
Prof. L. B. Arnold dwelt upon the import¬ 
ance of property-constructed dairy buildings, 
and gave a description of the one lately 
erected at Cornell University as a model. It 
is comparatively inexpensive, but by the use 
of building paper is provided with four or five 
dead-air spaces in the walls, which render the 
interior practically free from the influence of 
changes in the outside temperature. He also 
exposed the poor economy of employing cheap 
cheese makers when the best can be had at 
reasonable wages. A single stile often realizes 
the difference in wages for the entire •season. 
He also deprecated the hurry so often mani¬ 
fested by cheese makers to get their work off 
their hands, thereby prematurely lushing the 
curds to press when they ought to be curing 
in the vat or sink. 
Mr. D. M. Macphersou runs 66 cheese 
factories in Eastern Ontario. He is studying 
to get rid of the exercise of judgment as much 
as possible, on the part of the cheese maker, 
and reducing everything to routine practice. 
In the first place, ho is careful to have correct 
thermometers, finding those iu common use 
vary from two to ten degrees. He sets his 
mdk at 81) to SO degrees, according to tempera¬ 
ture and season; takes one hour for coagula¬ 
tion tit to cut; cuts flue and even, and is one 
hour steadily raising the temperature to !)8 
degrees—not above, as he considers it injurious. 
As soon as tile curd will string the least hit by 
the hot-iron test, ho draws the whey; he piles 
ll P the curd and ehoddors m the vat, frequent¬ 
ly cutting it in quite small pieces, and turning 
it to facilitate the separation of the whey: 
when it will spin a half-inch on the hot iron, 
he grinds the eurd; he then lets it stand an 
hour and air, keeping it warm, but frequently 
stirring if, then lie salts the curd and lets it 
Stand another hour exposed to the air before 
he puts it to press. The pressing is light at 
first and very gradual. 
Mr. Robertson, Jr., follows the rule of hav¬ 
ing his curd coagulate ready to cut in as many 
minutes as he wants it days to be curing and 
ready for market, that is to say, it he desires 
the cheese to he fit for market in SO days, he 
puts rennet enough in his milk to complete the 
coagulation ready to cut in 80 minutes; this, 
with his system of handling curds, produces 
about the desired result every time. 
The subject of the sanitary arrangement of 
the factory Was discussed; the health officers 
are taking hold of the Subject to remove offen¬ 
sive (jig-styes, whey vats and leaky spouts that 
scatter the whey in inaccessible places that 
cannot he cleansed. 
On the whole, the Canadians appear to be 
more widely awake to the necessities of suc¬ 
cessful dairying than are their neighbors in 
the States. “c.” 
Sl)C ^cntlivi) Diivi), 
SOD-HOUSE FOR POULTRY. 
The best winter-laying my hens ever did was 
when they lived in a '‘sod-house.’' (See Fig. 
59). A pen was built and a door frame was set 
into it on the most sheltered side and sods 
built over and around it, making the founda¬ 
tion about three feet broad. Earth was liber¬ 
ally heaped over all, anil a ventilating tube, 
8x10 inches, was set iu the top like a chimney. 
The most successful cheap contrivance ever 
EVERGREEN BLACKBERRY. From Nature 
(See first page.) 
used for saving the little pitiful chicks is a 
hole dug in the ground, not over eight inches 
kr 1/^11 
Fig. 59. 
deep. A box, with an opening on t he most shel¬ 
tered side, is set over the hole, and the entire 
thing is snugly banked up wit h earth. (See 
Fig. 60). Putone brood 
jf\ in each place of the 
j kind and feed with 
screenings and crumbs 
- - - - - fJA-' from the fable, and see 
Fig. 60. how well it pays. If 
you give them drink 
enough they will not he stunted in size. An 
old salt barrel, sawed in halves, or, for small 
fowls, even a nail keg, laid on its side in the 
hole and banked up, or sods built up around 
it, will answer well. 
MRS. E. S. LINCOLN. 
FIVE GOOD LAYERS. 
In the Fall of 1884, I purchased five pullets 
and one cockerel of the Plymouth Rock breed. 
The hens averaged 7% pounds and the cock 
weighed 11 pounds. There was also one egg in 
the coop when they arrived at the express 
office, which showed their good will; and 
from the first of January, 1885 to the 81st of 
December, 1885, they layed 1.051 well-developed 
eggs, or 210 1-5 jier hen. In January they 
layed 38; February, 76; March, 92; April, 136; 
May, 102; June, 94; July, 112: August, 94; 
September, 90; October, 71; November, 8<); 
December, 86; the record was kept each day. 
If the readers of the Rural wish, I will draw 
plans of our hen-house, and explain howl feed 
chickens. [Certainly.— Eds.] j. t. w. 
Decatur, Ind, 
Cnioffiolorikftl. 
THE MILDEW OF THE GRAPE-VINE. 
AN EFFECTUAL REMEDY FOR PERONOSPORA. 
PROF. C. V. RILEY. 
( Continued .) 
Sulphur as a means of checking or remedy¬ 
ing this particular mildew has proved a fail¬ 
ure, and indeed no satisfactory remedy has 
until recently been found, though prophylac¬ 
tic means, such as those recommended by Mr. 
Wni. Saunders, namely, the sheltering of the 
vines by a board cov¬ 
ering over the trellis, 
have been more or 
A less successful. 
The fact that no 
Jm ir satisfactory remedy 
'/Am existed until lately 
was well illustrated 
Jppijijf by the discussion 
which followed the 
reading of a paper by 
J* Mr. F. S. Earle,at the 
'Wp- -\ meeting of the Ameri- 
can Horticultural 
igjWr ’ Society, at New Or- 
leans, last February, 
Br on “Fungoid Diseases 
of the Strawberry.* 
The concensus of 
opinions was that we 
• have no remedy for 
most of the fungus 
diseases of plants. 
That this was, unfort¬ 
unately, a true state 
of the ease, practical 
cultivators will ad¬ 
mit ; for,though intel¬ 
ligent treatment will 
check the growth of 
the black knot and the 
proper use of lime and 
sulphur will check 
Erysiphe and Uncin. 
ida, these tire about 
the only fungus dis¬ 
eases which we can 
control with satisfac¬ 
tion and certainty. 
Prof. G. C. Caldwell 
s reported to have 
stated about a year 
ago, at a meeting of 
a Nature. Fig. 52. the New York Horti¬ 
cultural Society, 
that mildew could 
be prevented by soak¬ 
ing the stakes in the vineyard in a solution of 
blue vitriol: but as that report does not specify 
which mildew was intended, 1 know not how 
authoritative it is. 
During my visit to South France in the 
Summer of 1884, I was struck with the pre¬ 
valence of this Duoray Mildew in most of the 
viueyards, and the French grape-growers 
around Montpellier fell far more auxiety as 
to the consequence of this perouospora than 
they did as to the work of the Grape-vine 
Phylloxera. They feel now that with the aid 
of our American stocks they can coutrol and 
defy this underground pest; but the pero¬ 
uospora, which was a few yeans ago unknown 
to them, but which has been introduced with 
the American vines, has so for entirely baffled 
them, as, l believe, it has baffled our own 
grape-growers. 
In an address which I had the honor to deliver 
before the Central Society of Agrieultureof the 
Department of Herault in Juoe,18S4,and which 
t reated principally of insecticides mid insecti¬ 
cide appliances, I took occasion, iu view of the 
interest then felt in this mildew, to recommend 
♦Many writers on myoologtcal subjects misuse this 
term "fungoid'’ (which means something not a fun¬ 
gus, but fungus like) lu speaking of true fungi or of a 
fungus diseases. 
the use of the following as a promising fungi¬ 
cide: The ordinary milk-kerosene eimdsion 
prepared after the formula given in my late 
official reports as U. S. Entomologist, with 
from two to five per cent, of carbolic acid and 
the same percentage of glycerine, and then 
diluted in 20 to 50 parts of water to one of the 
emulsion and sprayed onto the under sur¬ 
face of the leaves by means of a cyclone 
nozzle of small aperture, so as to render the 
spray as fine a*f possible. The suggestion of 
the carbolic acid was due to the results ob¬ 
tained by Prof. Gustav Foex, Director of the 
Ecole Nationale d’ Agriculture at that place. 
It was very gratifying to find this recom¬ 
mendation at once acted upon, and, up to the 
time when 1 left Montpellier, witli satisfactory 
results. Poe ports of further trials showed also 
that this mixture so sprayed at once arrests 
the spread of the mildew. I was well aware 
of the difficulty of dealing satisfactorily with 
a fungus which may, iu a single night, with¬ 
out any warning, manifest itself all over a 
vineyard; but it is a great point gained to 
know how to check it, even if the knowledge 
may at times lie of little practical avail in large 
vineyards. But much good nevertheless re¬ 
sulted, and "Le Provide Riley” was much 
written about in La Vijne Amoricaine and 
other vitieultural journals a year ago. How¬ 
ever, the experience of the past year in France 
has furnished a remedy which, from all ac¬ 
counts, is iu every way satlrfactocv, because 
it not only destroys direct, but acts as a 
prophylactic. 
My attention was drawn some months ago 
to two articles by C. B. Cerletti published the 
15th and 30th of August in the He vista di r iti- 
coltura ed Englogia It a liana, announcing 
the success of hydrate, or slaked lime. My 
friends, M. J. Leiehtenstein and P. Vial a, of 
Montpellier, the latter having charge of the 
Labaratoire de eiticxdtvre at the Ecole 
Nationale d- Agriculture de Montpellier ,soon 
thereafter communicated to me the discoveries 
made. M. Velicogna in a report in the Actes 
et Me moires dela Soviet£ imperiale et royale 
d Agriculture de Gortiz , for September and 
October, 1885, has also discussed the effect of 
hydrate of lime at length, his formula being 
2>i kilogrammes of the lime (ehaux cteinte) in 
100 liters of water. 
The general tone of the experience with this 
hydrate of lime is satisfactory, but with a 
mixture of hydrate of lime, and sulphate of 
copper is still more conclusive, and numerous 
communications to vitieultural journals and 
to the French Academy attest the complete 
efficacy of the remedy. It has been the custom 
iu some of the wine-growing parts of France 
to sprinkle lime and verdigris upon those vines 
which border on the roadside, as a means of 
warding off depredators. It was found that 
vines so spattered were not infested by Per- 
onospora. while the rest of the vineyard might 
he attacked. This discovery led to further 
experiments. 
Various formula 1 have been given, but the 
most important articles are those by M. A. 
Perrey in the Comptes Rendus de VAc. d. 
Sc. Oct. 5, 1885, and by M. A. Millardet in the 
same publication and reproduced in the Mes¬ 
sage r Agricole du Midi for Nov. 10, 1885. 
From this lat ter article I condense the follow¬ 
ing: Dissolve eight kilogrammes (IS pounds) of 
ordinary sulphate of copper, iu lfx' litres (about 
22 gallons) of any kind of water (well, rain, or 
river), iu a separate vessel. Mix 30 litres 
(about gallons) of water, and 15 kilogram¬ 
mes (about 84 pounds) of coarse lime so as to 
make a milk of lime. Then mix with this the 
solution of sulpha re of copper. These will 
form a bluish paste. Pour a portion of the 
mixture in a bucket or other vessel, thorough¬ 
ly shaking it, and brushing the leaves with a 
small broom, taking care not to touch the 
grapes. There Is no fear of any accident, not 
even to the most tender portion of the vines. 
The treatment was made from the lOthto 
the 20th of July. At some points the oper¬ 
ation was repeated a second time at the end of 
August, but without much advantage. It was 
therefore demonstrated that one application 
was sufficient. 
The mixture, when dry, sticks very fast to 
the leaves. After the vines were treated 
there were several showers the beginning and 
end of August, also the frequent September 
rains, notwithstanding which the evidence of 
the efficacy of the treatment, where no more 
than half the leaves were touched by the mix- 
ture, could easily be detected. That this rem¬ 
edy will prove effectual for the many other 
similar white mildews on other plants, caused 
by other Perouospora?, there can be little 
doubt. 
The same fear of danger as to the effect of 
this fungicide on the vine and on the wine, has 
been experienced in Europe as we experienced 
in this country in the early use of Paris-green 
as an insecticide, and experience alone w ill 
settle the amount of danger there may be in 
the use of this new remedy. 
