45o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
July 10 
to four times per day, and are fed bran mashes in 
which oats are mixed, about twice a day—at 6 A. m. 
and 3:30 r. m., each animal getting about two quarts 
or so at a feed. 
As 1 watch the feeding from day to day, it seems to 
me that the cattle and sheep are fed most liberally of 
both hay and grain—all they will eat. Yet they do 
not seem to have the appetites here that they do on 
shore, for often when the grain is poured in front of 
them, they give it scant attention. It has seemed at 
times as though some of them must be a little sea¬ 
sick, for they lie down and stretch out head and legs, 
just as though they didn’t care whether school kept 
or not. The general health of the animals on board 
is excellent. Eight sheep have drooped and died, 
perhaps half a dozen horses have got out of condition 
and one has died, and two or three steers have got 
“off” their feed; but otherwise, nothing has occur¬ 
red worth noticing. We are now on our eighth day 
out, and the stock are looking fresher and brighter 
than when we started, including the droopy ones. 
About half of the cattle are being shipped by one 
New York exporter, while another New York house 
is shipping the rest of the cattle, all the sheep and 26 
of the horses. Of the remainder of the horses, a 
dealer in Ireland has a part, while a Liverpool dealer 
has the rest. All the stock on board is being shipped 
by men permanently in the export trade. Each firm 
has a foreman and a gang of men where necessary, to 
work under him. About 40 men all told are looking 
after the stock on board, of whom a large percentage 
are working their passage back to the old country. 
The permanent employees, excepting the foremen, re¬ 
turn on this boat and come back with a fresh consign¬ 
ment. The foremen return on a passenger boat of 
the same line, so as to save time for the exporters. 
The stock is kept well bedded, and but little ma¬ 
nure is thrown overboard, it being covered with bed¬ 
ding, and serving as a protection to the animals in 
rough weather, preventing slipping and bruising. 
If the readers of The R. N.-Y. could look into this 
magnificent ship, they would see as contented a look¬ 
ing lot of animals as can be found, and it is a rare 
thing to see any disturbance among them, or hear any 
bellowing. They lie about and chew the cud with 
the supremest comfort. The persons shipping furnish 
their own feed, while the steamer provides the neces¬ 
sary water. The boat is lighted with electricity, and 
has water on each deck. The ventilation is of the 
best character. 
The export business is rapidly growing, and numer¬ 
ous steamers now ply between New York, Boston, 
Baltimore and other large places to English ports. 
As yet, I have secured no definite figures, but I am 
told that, when one stays by the business and watches 
the markets carefully, there is good money in it. Of 
course only the best of cattle and sheep are exported. 
We have some magnificent specimens on board, and 
the average of the lot is high. The sheep are mostly 
wether lambs of extra quality, showing a strong ad¬ 
mixture of South Down blood. Merino grades, how¬ 
ever, make the best shippers. 
These animals will be landed at Liverpool, will be 
inspected, as they also were at New York, and the 
sheep and steers will soon be killed, there being a ten- 
days limit to keeping them alive on shore when ex¬ 
ported for slaughter purposes. Each steer has a tag 
in his ear with U. S. A. and a number on it. This 
number is recorded by the United States inspector at 
the point of shipment on the coast, and if he should 
be thrown out for any cause on reaching the other 
side, he could easily be traced up to the party from 
whom he was purchased for export. The British 
government has elaborate printed laws governing the 
introduction of stock to her dominion ; the United 
States also has similar laws, every animal is carefully 
inspected on each side of the Atlantic, so why should 
not our English cousins eat good meat ? They do. 
They eat the best in the world. 
The good ship Georgic carries in her hold, below the 
cattle and other stock, two enormous refrigerators, in 
which I saw 3,200 quarters of dressed beef and a lot 
of other meat placed, and she also contains over 
270,000 bushels of grain and a great load of other 
merchandise. She has a crew of about 60 men, and 
her captain looks with more than ordinary interest 
on the safe transmission of the animals. For that 
reason, he is popular with the shippers and the men 
who have charge of the animals. c. s. plumb. 
At Sea, Steamship Georgic, June 14, 1897. 
R. N.-Y.—It appears, from Prof. Plumb’s article, 
that our brute friends are carried about as comfort¬ 
ably as are human passengers in the steerage. We 
hope that this careful and humane treatment will 
lead to a heavy increase in our export trade in live 
stock. It is singular that live stock and dressed beef 
are carried in the same steamer. With such careful 
inspection, it would seem that our European friends 
need have no fear of the cattle we are sending them, 
as some of them seem to have, 
WHAT THEY SAY. 
Young Stock on the farm. —The little picture 
shown at Fig. 193 illustrates a scene often witnessed 
on the farm. We like to encourage the children to 
take an interest in the poultry and other small stock. 
On our- own farm, the poultry are as tame as dogs, 
and follow the children about from field to field all 
over the farm. The other day we were surprised to 
find some of the smallest chickens down in the oat 
field far away from the brooder. They had followed 
the children down the road and into the field, and in 
the end they all came back at night safe and sound. 
We like to encourage the children in this plan of 
making friends with farm animals. It develops a 
side of character too likely to be neglected and, as 
we believe, teaches the children to be useful, as well 
as to be kind and considerate with living pets. 
A Trial Bed of Strawberries. —On page 424, we 
spoke of a wonderful trial plot of strawberries ex¬ 
hibited by J. H. Hale at the Connecticut Pomological 
Meeting. Mr. Hale tells, in the Strawberry Culturist, 
how this plot was prepared : 
The bed was prepared by spading in a liberal amount of well- 
rotted stable manure to the depth of 15 inches, early in July last; 
three weeks later, 100-pounds fine ground bone and 50 pounds of 
muriate of potash were spread on the surface and thoroughly 
hoed in ; a week later we began setting the plants and continued 
the operation until about the middle of August. All runners were 
kept off and they were hoed as often as once a week until late in 
the fall, when they were given a good mulch of coarse hay; this 
was removed early in April. When first uncovered, they were 
given a spray of the Bordeaux Mixture, and have had three 
applications since for the purpose of checking any leaf rust that 
might appear. It was, probably, a mistake not to give them one 
spraying in October last. 
Such a trial bed is a great advertisement in any 
strawberry field. It helps sell the crop. 
Hens in Narrow Quarters. —In November, 1896, I 
shut in a room 12 x 14 feet, 22 hens and one rooster. 
They were not out of this room until the middle of 
May, 1897. They began laying soon after being shut 
up, and averaged six eggs per day up to January 1, 
and from that date to May 15, averaged 12 eggs per 
PIANO OUT; HENS IN. Fig. 192. 
day. These fowls were fed in the morning ground 
feed consisting of about eight parts wheat bran, one 
part corn meal and one part linseed meal by measure, 
mixed in water salted, a handful of salt for 125 fowls. 
In cold weather, I used warm water. They had 
crushed oyster shells and clean water by them all the 
time, crushed green bone twice a week, and occa¬ 
sionally, crushed flint rock. The room was white¬ 
washed twice, and the hens were treated to a dusting 
of air-slaked lime once by holding the hen up by the 
legs and sifting the lime in the feathers with the 
hand. The fowls are descendants of a cross of the 
White and Brown Leghorns. I have no bone mill, 
but have in the hennery a bowlder about two feet in 
diameter, on which with a three-pound hammer, I 
mash the bones and the stone for my fowls. I also 
have 50 fowls, same age, hatched in the spring of 
1896, which had comfortable rocsting quarters, a shed 
12 x 16 feet and unlimited range, fed exactly the same 
as those confined, except the crushed stone, which 
have done no better than those confined. From this 
experiment, I concluded that no one who wishes to 
keep fowls need be without them, even though their 
quarters should be narrow. d p a. 
Bullville, N. Y. 
A Piano-Box Poultry House. 
Oftentimes, the keeper of a small flock of hens does 
not feel that he can afford an expensive house for 
his poultry ; the lumber necessary might not cost 
much, but it might be necessary to have a carpenter 
build it, which would materially add to its cost. This 
is frequently the state of affairs in town, where the 
chickens have to be kept in an inclosure, In such a 
place, was recently seen the poultry house shown at 
Fig. 192. It was simply an upright piano box ; such 
a box may frequently be bought in town very cheap 
from some one who has no place to store it, and if 
arranged as described, will make a desirable home for 
ten or a dozen chickens with “ the lord of the flock.” 
The box was set up on bricks, two high, to allow a 
free circulation of air under it in the summer. The 
upright front was fastened firmly to the sides, after 
a hole was cut at one side to allow the fowls free 
passage. Inside, laths were nailed over the cracks, 
and in the fall, the entire inside was sheathed with 
building paper, making it warm and cosy. The slant¬ 
ing front was arranged to work on hinges, being 
hinged to the upright front so that it could be brought 
for.ward when raised. Inside, cleats were attached 
the width of a window sash, and in this a sash was 
fastened arranged so as to slide under the cover. The 
cover, by the way, was sawed in half so that the 
part covering the glass could be raised and the other 
half remain closed. The expense of this house was 
small, and the labor necessary to put it in shape did 
not require the services of a mechanic. Moreover, 
the slope of the box was just right for the glass front, 
and the whole made a warm, light house. The nests 
were arranged so that they could be easily reached 
by letting down the cover. In the fall, the space 
between the box and ground was banked up with sod 
which, of course, added to the warmth of the house. 
“ Edgewood.” e. R. k. 
Trees Planted by Robert Douglas. 
Below I give you the measurements of a few trees 
growing on the dear old homestead, planted by my 
father during the past 50 years. Here is a Norway 
spruce with an eight-foot body circumference, 
branched to the ground, and measuring 54 feet from 
tip to tip of branches. Beside it is a hemlock 33 feet 
across the branches. A Blue spruce of deepest blue 
is about 30 feet high. A group of White pines on 
the bank of a ravine are 40 to 65 feet high. Here 
are grouped Austrian hemlock, balsam, Douglas 
Golden Arbor vitae, etc., 20 to 30 feet high. Here is 
the Broad-leaved Large-coned balsam, a variety much 
superior to the Abies balsamea in that it is darker, 
denser foliage, branches to the ground, holds out in 
old trees as well as in the spruces ; it is in every way 
a superior tree. As yet it is unnamed, except to dis¬ 
tinguish it, we call it the Large-coned from its larger 
cones, and Broad-leaved from its much broader leaves 
than the common. It is well worth introducing, and 
should replace the common balsam, for its marked 
superiority is great. An American elm is eight feet 
in circumference, and 74 feet across the branches. A 
Silver maple measured 2% feet in circumference. A 
Tulip tree is 50 feet high. A European elm is two 
feet two inches through the body, an Abies concolor, 
the most beautiful of evergreens, 20 feet tall, and an 
Englemanii 18 feet. There are many more trees of 
large proportions, but thinking some of the trees re¬ 
markable, I send you this. One tree worthy special 
notice is an elm father dug in the woods and planted 
in front of his residence. The lowest branches of 
this tree are 15 to 20 feet from the ground at the trunk 
of the tree, but the tip ends of the branches about 
30 feet from the tree, droop so that they touch the 
ground on either side. The drive to the front door 
is under this green arch of nature. What could be 
finer, what could be a better monument to the tree- 
loving parent that planted, trained and cared for this 
noble tree ? chas. w. Douglas. 
Illinois. 
FROM TIMOTHY MEADOW TO HAY. 
WHAT CROP FOR ( ONNKCTING LINK? 
Tbe following questions are sent by a subscriber in Lancaster 
County, Pa.: “I have a 20-acre field of Timothy that I wish to 
plant to corn next spring, and would like a green manure to turn 
down, say May 1, 1898. I wish the stable manure for my clover 
fields. What would be the best to do with it after the hay is re¬ 
moved ? Would it pay to sow to rye?” Will you tell us what you 
would do in such a case? In other words, what, has been the 
result of your experience with various short-lived crops for green 
manuring ? 
Cow Peas, Rye and Chemicals. 
I would seriously consider the advisability of re¬ 
serving the manure for the Timothy field, and fertil¬ 
izing the clover fields with a mixture of say 600 
pounds acid phosphate and 150 pounds muriate of 
potash per acre, at a cost of something like $7. In 
that case, I should turn and pile the manure in 
the yard where it lies, taking pains to shake it 
well apart and tramp it down firmly in broad, flat 
piles to assist decomposition, and get it in better 
shape for top-dressing the Timothy field after plow¬ 
ing. But the fact remains, that every man under¬ 
stands his own situation best, and your corres¬ 
pondent, no doubt, has good and sufficient reasons 
for the course he expects to pursue. With reference 
to a green crop for turning under, my way would be 
to get on the meadow as soon as possible with a good 
breaking plow say, No. 40 Oliver chilled, put the 
other team on a subsoil plow behind, have the roller 
in the field and roll thoroughly noon and night. 
After plowing, cut it up in good shape with the Cut¬ 
away harrow, finishing with the Acme, and roll. 
Then with a grain drill set to sow 2% bushels wheat 
per acre, and for each acre, about 500 pounds acid 
phosphate, 150 pounds muriate of potash, and 100 
pounds nitrate of soda, sow 30 bushels cow pe^s, of 
