1886 
THE BUBAL MEW-VOBKEB. 
necessary to enable him to get into the town. 
The unending monotony and heavy strain of 
the field labor have produced two ugly phe¬ 
nomena, of which I heard a great deal during 
my sojourn in America. One is the prevalence 
of brutal murders. On this side of the Atlantic 
brutal murders are usually committed in 
towns ; in America it is the reverse. That is 
one phenomenon. The other is the fact that 
the women in a good number of cases become 
insane.” 
What do you think of the picture ? Is it 
entirely untruthful ? Would it be possible to 
find iu this country a community in which a 
stranger would get such au idea from the 
appearance of the people ? 
Period of Gestation.— 
emare. 
Days. 
.. 830 ro 100 
Average 
810 
cow. 
.. 221 to 3*1 
280 
slicen nml goat. 
.. 113 to 1.VI 
IV) 
pig. 
.. mi i<i 127 
120 
(log.. 
.. t • ;o 
63 
cat. 
.. no to ot 
r.5 
rabbit.. 
... 28 to 80 
30 
These periods vary with individuals and 
with breeds; with the sex of the offspring, the 
age of the dam, and her strength and condi¬ 
tion. They also vary because of the length of 
the season of heat, ^or this may continue seve¬ 
ral days, and impregnation may occur some 
time after service, when the ovulo passes 
through the Fallopian tube. This passage re¬ 
quires four to five days in the coiv and sheep, 
and eight to ten days in the dog. Some ani¬ 
mals always carry their young for an abnor¬ 
mal period, either shorter or longer, and this 
habit becomes characteristic with them. The 
Dutch cows are said by Professor Brown to be 
more regular, and to keep closer to the average 
period of 280 days than any other breed. A 
mare served by a Thoroughbred horse will go 
longer with foal than oue served by a cold¬ 
blooded horse, and a mare goes longer with a 
mule colt thau with a horse colt. 
Yearly Cost of a Dairy Cow.— At a 
meeting of the Wisconsin Dairyman’s Associa¬ 
tion last Winter, says the Farmers’ Review, 
the question how much it costs to keep a dairy 
cow through the year came up and a number 
of prominent dairymen gave their estimates of 
the cost. Struing au average, the amount 
was about $35.00 os the cost in Wisconsin. Ar 
this rate the value of the products ot tne cow 
should not fall below *00.00 per annum, or a 
profit, above cost of keeping, of $25.U0, to make 
a living business for the dairyman. At this 
rate twenty cows would only net $.500 per. 
year. The Dairyman makes the statement 
that Sibley & Miller, of Pennsylvania, buve 
learned the secret of beeping a eow a year— 
and well too—ou *12.00. Taking the above 
figures—$00.00—as the value of the products 
of the cow, she would give a profit of $48.00, 
and a dairy of twenty oows would not $900 a 
year instead of *500, as iu Wisconsin, The 
secret is in growing enormous crops of fodder 
com ou ground made rich by heavy manuring. 
These crops were formerly cured, but for the 
last two years have been converted into silage. 
“The Good old Times.”—"I guess that all 
those farmers who are groaning so about low 
prices and high taxes and who are longing for 
the ‘good old times’ don’t remember much 
about these same ‘good old times.'” said a vet- 
eran Orange County farmer, at. Goshen, New 
York, the other day. “1 can remember,” be 
said, “when we were compelled to haul our 
gram, butter, pork, tvud eggs all the way to 
Newburg, going oue day and returning the 
next. Wo generally got 15 cents a bushel for 
oats and 10 cents a pound for butter. Seven¬ 
ty-five cents a bushel for wheal was a fancy 
price, if we got six or eight cents a dozen 
for eggs wo thought we were doing well. Nice, 
corn-fed pork, dressed, we carted to market 
for *2 a hundred. The butter we put ou the 
market, in those days was the genuine Orange 
County article, yellow as gold and as hard as 
a walnut. I’ve sold tubful after tubtul of 
butter for 10 cents a pound that would net mo 
75 cents easy if 1 had it, or any like it, to sell 
now. That was long before the Erie Railway 
came through here and put. us up to selling 
our milk iusteud of making it into butter. 
We didn’t have any lime-preserved eggs iu 
those days to sell, either. As for 
taxes I paid $100 ou my farm of 100 
acres when 1 was getting only' 10 cents 
a pound for my butter. Ou the same 
farm uovv i pay $42.60, and my dairy brings 
me the year round what is equal to nearly 
three times ten cents a pound for butter. There 
is a great deal of humbug,! tell you, in this 
mourning for the good old times, and 1 know 
it.” 
Milk at Less Than One Cent a Quart. 
—Experiments have been made at the Massa¬ 
chusetts Agricultural Experiment Station to 
determine the cost of a quart of milk when 
feeding various kiuds of food in different com¬ 
binations. These consisted of bran, shorts, 
corn meal, gluten meal (the refuse from glu¬ 
cose factories), hay, corn fodder and corn 
silage. The result is reported as follows: Iu 
feeding the bran, or shorts, corn meal and 
gluten meal, 3Q pounds’ weight of each was 
used. Two of the foods were also combined, 
making 6 1 i pounds to feed each cow daily, and 
at times a combination of three kinds was 
used, making 0% pounds' feed daily to eaeh 
eow. The remaining food was either hay, dry 
corn fodder or corn silage. The highest 
amount of hay eaten by any cow in one day 
was 20 pounds, and of silage 55 pounds. The 
apparent bulk of the silage over the hay, as 
shown by weight, may he explained by the 
fact that the lmy is dry While silage is juicy. 
The highest cost of milk per qua rt was from a 
liberal liay and grain feed, being 2.00 cents per 
quart. The milk produced at the lowest cost 
was from a moderate feeding of silage and 
corn meal, and was but .83 cent per quart. 
It may be noticed, therefore, that, a quart ot 
milk produced by feeding bay and grain costs 
as much as 2 1 y quarts produced by feeding 
silage and coru meal, and so far as the quality 
of the milk was concerned under the varying 
conditions of feed given, no serious alteration 
in its composition was noticed. 
M. Charles Girard, cheinistof Paris recent¬ 
ly amused himself by investigation of theingre- 
dients o' a beautiful red currant jelly charm¬ 
ingly put up for export to the United States. 
There was uot an atom of fruit iu the mass, 
as was demonstrated by the adding to it of 
methylated alcohol, which would have turned 
it green had it contained anv fruit acid. It 
was found to consist of gelatine, sweetened 
with glycerine residue, colored with pichsine 
la poisonous mineral extract) and flavored 
with no oue knows what. A great many peo¬ 
ple in this country imagine no currant jelly 
so good as that which is imported from France. 
TRUE INWARDNESS. 
At the recent London Dairy Show, the 
prizes went to the cows giving the largest 
yield of richest milk. There is naturally some 
fault found with this system of judging. The 
cost of production should always be taken 
into account. A cow that gives 20 quarts of 
milk with a profit, of only five per cent, ou the 
cost of feed, is less profitable than oue that 
gives 15 quarts with a profit of !0 per ceut 
The best cow is the most profitable. Re -k- 
oned in this way, some of the smaller breeds 
will beat the larger. 
Mr. Robert DouoLAS.ofWaukegan.nl., 
has done a great deal to bring the merits of 
the Wild Black Cherry (Prunus serotiua) be¬ 
fore the people, both East aucl "West. He 
says it grows rapidly iu all the tree-bearing 
territory east of the Rockies, and this cau not 
be said of any other forest tree of so much 
value .. 
Mr. Gregory, in the Weekly Press, says 
no one can keep squashes to advantage until 
he has learned to keep the temperature of the 
storehouse near the freezing point. The great 
desiderata are a low temperature and a dry 
air... 
Mr. Henry Stewart, who has had some 
experience with sheep iu North Carolina, has 
found that th ;y go through the Winter better 
after having been sheared, and stand the cold 
rains ami storms better than with a thick 
fleece on them. Some pure Cheviot sheep suf¬ 
fered severely with their fleece live or six 
inches in length, and some of the ewes were 
unable to rise ou account of the weight of the 
water in the wool after a night's heavy rain. 
With a thin fleece the water is shed and shak¬ 
en off, and the sheep do not suffer from the 
cold. Hence fall shearing, eveu of the spring 
lambs, Mr. Stewart thinks, is good economy. 
The cow must be kindly treated or the milk 
is poisoned, says George T. Yugell. Milkmaids 
who can sing while milking are paid a higher 
price in Switzerland thau those who cannot.. 
According to the Government returns there 
are iu Great Britain about 900,000 agricultur¬ 
al laborers, farm servants and cottagers. 
About oue in 50, namely, 17,802, have either a 
run on a farm for a eow, or land on which to 
keep a cow... 
Here is what Professor G. T, Brown, pro¬ 
fessional head of the English Agricultural 
Department, says of inoculation in connec¬ 
tion with contagious pleuro-pueumouia among 
cattle. “ If inoculation is practiced at all as 
au alternative to slaughter iu the ease of cattle 
which have l>eeu exposed to the contagion of 
pleuro-pueumouia, but are not discoverably 
affected, the Inoculated cattle should be kept 
in the infected place until they are in con¬ 
dition for t he butcher, and the infected place 
should not lie declared free while any of the 
inoculated cattle remain alive.” It will gen¬ 
erally be agreed, after tins declaration, that 
stamping out is the easier way of getting rid 
of the disease... 
There are several reasons, Mr. Stewart 
says, why any practical dairymau will use 
salt dry aud uot dissolved iu brine for the pin- 
pose of butter malting, but the greatest of all 
is the simple fact that butter cannot be salted 
with brme unless the liquid is actually mixed 
with it, aud this mixture of water would be 
an adulteration aud a fraud upon the con¬ 
sumer.. ... .. 
At the Rural Grouuds we. are now (Oct. 25) 
eating the new pear Dr. Reoder. It is medium 
iu size—larger than Seckel aud otherwise, as 
to appearance, much the same. In quality it 
is more juicy, less sweet, not quite so fine- 
fleshed, but more sprightly. The tree has 
borne a very fair crop. 
A CLASS in vocal music or a singing school 
is an excellent thing for rural neighborhoods 
during the Winter, says the Orange Co. 
Farmer. Music and books will make the 
poorest home brighter ... 
A writer in our esteemed contemporary 
the Chatham Courier, asks farmers to consider 
whether they lose or gain by allowing their 
buildings to go unpainted; whether they lose 
mon>’y by giving their stock and swine good 
bedding aud comfortable winter-quarters; 
how many of the needy poor might be fed with 
the grain that is eaten by rats and mice?. 
Tiie Western Agriculturist says that many 
experiments have been tried iu Germany for 
the purpose of discovering whether pure 
water, taken in large quantities by animals 
which are being fattened, is favorable or 
otherwise to the process. The conclusion come 
to ou this question is that water introduced iu 
large quantities into the digestive organs in¬ 
creases the elimination of carbonic acid by the 
animal, aud consequently hinders the forma¬ 
tion of fat. Wheu cattle are to be fattened, 
therefore, no more water should be given to 
them than is necessary for diluting the food 
and quenching thirst... 
In some parts of England Prickly Comfrey 
is said to be a first-rate food for pigs Mr. 
James Howard, in the Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society, says that eveu well-fed 
pigs are exceedingly fond of comfrey and that 
it is the best, of green food for them. This is 
important. Comfrey will yield an immense 
amount of leaves and a constant supply ot 
them. 
The Sanitary Committee of the Port of 
Loudon report that while very small quanti¬ 
ties of frozen meat are constantly condemned 
as unlit for food, many large lots come to 
hand iu a condition to warrant this procedure. 
It has always beeu supposed that Australian 
frozen meat was sure to reach England iu 
a fine state of preservation. This does no. 
look like it. Bad eggs are hardest to detect 
by the Board of Health officials. Mauy de¬ 
cayed eggs are sol i simply because there is no 
practical test for large quantities. 
Gov. Roos, of New Mexico, in his annual 
report to the government, recommends “a 
system of storing basins at the heads of the 
several streams ” to save a vast amouut of 
water for irrigating purposes. “ This would 
reduce to cultivation many millions of acre* 
of productive laud now barren and desolate.”. 
As au instance of the advantage of using a 
pure-bred bull, rather than even a good grade, 
the National Live Stock Journal tells of a 
farmer who by using a good grade sire has 
been enabled to turn off three year-old steers 
that average close to 1,100 pounds, while one 
in the lot, of the same ago as the others, and 
treated in the same manner, but sired by a 
pure-bred bull, weighed close to 1,800 pounds, 
or a gain of nearly 200 pouuds through the 
added quality of the sire alone. This steer 
dressed SO pounds more than the best four- 
year-old ho had marketed during the same 
season, aud dressed 2Jti pounds more than two 
car-loads of the progeny of grade sires 
averaged.. -... 
This is the way an English farmer prepares 
food for his work horses :—Hay 400 pounds, 
corn 300, oats 200, beuus 100. The hay is cut 
and the grain Is bruised and all mixed together. 
From 20 to 24 pounds of this mixture form a 
daily feed for large horses. 
Professor Gleason’s advice is good, viz.: 
Never to say “whoa” to a horse except whoa 
you want him to stop motion at once. If you 
merely want him to slacken his speed, say 
“easy” or “slowly” or “steady”. ... . 
Seldom is either party to a great lawsuit 
satisfied with the result, says the Cultivator. 
Even to the one who obtaius a favorable ver¬ 
dict, the long list of expenses, vexatious de¬ 
lays ami uncertainties more than offsets the 
tru its of victory. .. 
A writer in the Breeder’s Gazette says of 
the milk of Uolsteius that it takes the cream 
longer to rise thau it does from the milk of 
other breeds; that Holstein milk is more 
dense aud does uot sour as soon as other milk; 
hence this quality is particularly valuable to 
the milkmau aud cheese manufacturer; that 
Holsteiu milk is remarkably rich m caserne, 
the cheese basis; hence for tne production of 
753 
cheese it has no equal; that Holstein milk is 
rich, aud has a good body even after it has 
beenskincmed . . 
There seems little doubt that Prof. Wiley’s 
experiments to manufacture sugar from sor¬ 
ghum cane by the diffusion process have prov¬ 
en successful. 
TRANSCONTINENTAL LETTERS. 
LXVIX. 
/ MARY WAGER-FISHER. 
SHU in the Grand Canon; length and hight 
of the canon ; scenery and climate of the 
cailon; vieic from Prospect Point; Solo¬ 
mon's Temple; the Pyramid; Babel's Tore- 
er; Sunset Peak; other striking features; 
growing grandeur; the start to the train. 
On the following morning we went in quite 
an opposite direction from the Diamond Creek 
Canon, and after a walk of three-quarters of 
a mile from the hotel we reached the Colora- 
lo River, which, at this point, is 320 feet wide 
and varies iu depth from 150 to 225 feet—a 
mu ldy-lookiug stream aud one upon which I 
should not like to venture in a boat. The en¬ 
tire length of the cation is 325 mites, and the 
highest cliffs—called Aubrey Cliffs—rise to a 
hight of 7,800 feet, and it may serve for com¬ 
parison to bear in mind that 5.380 feet consti¬ 
tute a mile. The cliffs iu the Diamond Creek 
do uot rise much above 3,000 feet, an l in some 
places they rise nearly, if not quite, to that 
hight, perpendicularly, and to the very top, 
in the crevices, grow cacti or some variety of 
vegetation. We went up this canon for three 
rules, and in this distance saw but one water- 
rail. and that not high. Auaximauder and 
Far lee climbed to the top of the cliffs at one 
point, and enjoyed an outlook over the sur¬ 
rounding country. Pedesfcrianism at no time 
in the Diamond Creek Canon is particularly 
liffieult when one is equipped with stout boots 
and a dress suitable for such a tramp. There 
are nr bridges or ladders, anl for a good part 
of the way one could go on horseback. The 
rir is delightful—one can walk a great dis- 
rance without any sense of fatigue. 
Radiating from the spirt where the rude 
hotel stands, the canon in every direction is 
opeu aud sunny, aud of considerable width, 
filled with a sandy soil in which grass and 
flowers grow, and thickly planted with boul¬ 
ders. It would seem that here ac oue time a 
mighty stream must have flowed, where now 
there is only the shallow Diamond Creek re¬ 
in forced, maybe, by the eveu less significant 
contribution from Peach Spring Canon, and 
in order to enter the Diamond Creek Canon 
proper, or to reach the river, oue must 
traverse this open sunny plantation of rocks, 
The shore of the river is deep sand, and in it 
was growing and blooming a most exquisite 
white abronia. Farlee said it bloomed there 
the entire Winter, ami the year round, 
as well as various other flowers. The temper¬ 
ature varied but slightly iu the course of the 
year—there was neither dampness nor dew, 
but a marvelously pure, dry air at a low alti¬ 
tude, and tie grew enthusiastic over the future 
of the cation when it should become the great 
resort of invalids in need of just that kind of a 
climate. As dry air usually can only be had 
iu high altitudes, the cation certainly has a 
claim on the attention of people who demand 
a peculiarly dry atmosphere, and still cannot 
endure the nervous strain produced by a high 
altitude. However, on that morning, Farlee 
was particularly desirous that I should climb 
to Prospect Point—a hight 1,500 feet above 
the river level, whence we could take in all 
the great features of the cauon. It was a 
most fatiguing scramble, Farlee going ahead 
aud reaching down a hand to pull me up the 
declivities. The laddie climbed on his hands 
and knees, aud ere the day was done he was in 
tatters like the ideal beggar, All the way up 
we found au abundance of new and beautiful 
flowers—never failing to gather specimens— 
aud on the veiy top of Prospect Point I found 
masses of the exquisite Mariposa Lily—its 
large, mauve-colored cup spotted \\ ithredand 
brown. Ou the top we added stones to the 
cairn already there—wrote our uames on a 
slip of paper which went into a bottle kept 
there for the purpose, aud sat down to wonder 
aud to gaze. Farlee scut out some of his tre¬ 
mendous screeches—we all screamed ourselves 
hoarse, to hear the echoes carried from peak 
to cliff and back again. 
So far I have led the readers of these letters 
Concerning this cauon ou a rather unenter- 
taiuing scamper l fear, for the sole reason that 
the great features of the canon are indescrib¬ 
able by peu, photograph or pencil. Moreover, 
they grow hourly iu magnitude. The louger 
we looked at the cliffs, the walls, the enormous 
rock exposures, eroded ages ago under water, 
