902 
range about the brooder house grounds after three 
or four days. Another lot I placed in one of my 
colony houses (No. 4) on the opposite side of the 
road, and the remainder still farther away in No. 28, 
which has not had a hen or chick in it for severat 
years. All were brooded in “the good old way.” 
The feed, as before, was oat flakes and chick food 
at the start, followed by my dry mash and cracked 
corn as the chicks got older. In order to give the 
germ theory a sure chance, I deliberately took a box 
of dry feed in which the sick incubator-hatched chicks 
had been scratching and eating and gave it to the 
first lot in the brooder house. I was equally careful 
not to allow anything from the brooder house to be 
carried across the road or go near the other two lots. 
This last experiment has eliminated the brooder from 
the problem, and seemingly leaves the disease germ 
of contagious brooder cholera as the solution of the 
problem. The first lot went the same way as the 
others, in spite of the mother hens clucking about 
and scratching their best for them. Instead of the 
original 80 I only have about 20 weak, sickly chicks, 
some of which will yet doubtless die, while the other 
two lots are hale and hearty and a joy to the heart 
of their owner. At this writing they are about five 
weeks old, and I believe all danger of their having 
the disease is past. 
Again the question, “What ails the incubator 
chicks?” It will not do to lay it to want of vitality 
in the parent stock, for all were hatched from the 
same breeding pen in the big hen barn. The answer 
must be a contagious germ disease, the germs of 
which are apt to infest houses and grounds where 
chickens have previously been raised. We all know 
how discouraging it is'to try to raise chicks on ground 
infested with the germ of gapes. How shall we 
get rid of the germs? I burned sulphur in my 
brooder house last Spring before beginning opera¬ 
tions until it smelled for weeks thereafter, but without 
doing any good, as results have shown. The Deacon 
suggests real old-fashioned fire for the brooders and 
all movable fixtures. On his suggestion I took a box, 
carried it to an open space outside, smeared it all 
over with kerosene, and applied a match, while I 
stood by with a bucket of water. It was soon en¬ 
veloped in a sheet of flame. When I thought the 
germs were sufficiently roasted to be “defunct,” I 
dashed cold water on the box. It was not much 
hurt by its fiery bath. Don’t set a boy at this job. 
This treatment will not do for the floor and side- 
walls of the house itself, of course, for evident 
reasons. Will scraping with a sharp trowel, followed 
by a double coat of good paint, do the trick? Let 
us have an answer from some of our scientists. 
_ 0. W. MAPES. 
THE FARM UNDER YOURS. 
A Machine for Deep Tillage. 
While at the recent Ohio State Fair, the writer’s 
attention was called to the Spalding tilling machine, 
a machine designed for deep plowing and thorough 
pulverization. The inventor has had much experience 
with disk plows in California, and this machine is 
the result of his efforts to make a plow that would, 
at one operation, fit the soil for asparagus culture. 
Other plants also require thorough soil preparation, 
and good farmers are demanding tools that will do 
the work in a satisfactory manner; hence this ma¬ 
chine has been put upon the market. Good farming 
means drainage, deep plowing, the sowing of lime, 
the replenishing of soil fertility and big crops of 
the legumes and grains, and in this scheme, the means 
of deep plowing were lacking heretofore. The old 
subsoiling idea was good, but was premature, and 
the subsoil plow was a failure, and so is the disk 
plow for sod, but in this new machine we have 
something that takes the place of both, and does 
the work far better, and it comes at a time when 
we know what we want in the way of deep plowing. 
The picture, Fig. 500, shows what this machine does 
to the soil and how it does it. The machine is pro¬ 
vided with two 24-inch disks, one in front of the 
other, the rear one set lower than the front disk, 
and will cut a furrow 10 to 14 inches wide and 16 
to 18 inches deep, requiring three or four horses to 
pull it. These are conservative figures, and have 
been many times exceeded in field trials. In use, the 
top soil and its sod and other trash is thrown into 
the deep furrow of the previous round, and then 
another section of soil is cut from just under where 
the first cut was made and is thrown on to the other, 
covering up all trash effectively. Of course, those 
who have not practiced deep plowing must work down 
slowly, as the nature of the soil will allow, but when 
ready for deep plowing and thorough tillage, so 
as to make use of the farm under your old one, 
this machine of great possibilities is the tool that 
will enable you to accomplish your purpose easily. 
Ohio. W. E. DUCKWALL. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
BATHROOM FOR FARMHOUSES. 
Last Fall, after bathing in a wash basin for over 
30 years I determined to install a bathroom in my old 
farmhouse, but when figuring out the cost and neces¬ 
sary equipment I found that the ordinary bathroom 
was out of the question for me. My water supply 
consisted of an underground cistern with a pump in 
a room adjacent to the kitchen. To install a bathtub 
would require more room than I could spare, and 
would have necessitated an elevated tank, a hot water 
boiler and water-back attached to the kitchen stove, 
and considerable costly plumbing, which all together 
would have cost not less than $100. I then set to 
work figuring how I could bathe without the tub and 
r 
PLAN OF THE BATHROOM. Fig. 501. 
the costly waterworks, and resolved upon the fol¬ 
lowing plan. 
First one corner of a room on the ground floor, 
which contained a small window, was partitioned off, 
using dressed flooring for the purpose. The space 
was about four feet by 6 V-i or seven feet, and a door 
was made in one end of the long side of the partition. 
Next all of the floor space not covered by the door¬ 
way was graded to one corner and a hole two inches 
in diameter was bored through the lowest point into 
the cellar. This graded portion was covered with 
galvanized sheet-iron, the edges of which were turned 
up so as to flash the side walls for about six inches, 
and a hole one inch in diameter was made in the 
lowest point directly over the hole in the floor. The 
side walls of the bathroom were now covered with 
oilcloth to a height of about 40 inches, the oilcloth ex¬ 
tending down over the flashing for about two inches. 
The remaining floor space was covered with floor 
oilcloth. An old pump pipe which had been discarded 
from a well because of rust was passed through the 
cellar and an elbow turned up under the hole in the 
sheet-iron floor covering to receive the escaping wa¬ 
ter. This pipe was carried, just under the sod, for 
about 40 feet below the house, and affords ample 
drainage. 
The shower bath was then made by supporting a 
galvanized-iron bucket of five gallons capacity from 
the ceiling by means of a quarter-inch rope and a 
small pair of iron pulleys. This enables the bucket 
to be lowered for filling w r ith water of the desired 
temperature, and the pulleys make the elevation of 
the filled bucket so easy that a child can work it. A 
small refrigerator spigot was placed in the side of 
the bucket as close to the bottom as possible, and to 
this a rubber tube about six feet long with spray noz¬ 
zle was attached. After painting the room white and 
placing a curtain at the window and some hooks 
behind the door for clothing, a small board was at¬ 
tached diagonally in one corner for a seat, and a 
standing board, made of slats, about two feet square, 
placed on the sheet-iron floor to stand on while bath¬ 
ing, and the bathroom was complete. Cost: 100 feet 
No. 1 flooring, $2.50; one five-gallon iron bucket, 50 
cents; six feet rubber hose, 45 cents; one spray nozzle, 
60 cents; sheet iron, 8x214 feet, 80 cents; paint, 80 
cents; oilcloth, 75 cents; hinges and latch, 30 cents; 
spigot, 50 cents. Total, $7.20. 
October 16 
This proves to be most economical both from the 
standpoint of original cost and the amount of water 
necessary, five gallons of water used in this way prov¬ 
ing to be more than one person requires to secure a 
most satisfactory and refreshing bath, while the same 
amount in a tub would hardly wet one’s feet. After 
thoroughly wetting the body the water is shut off and 
the soaping and scrubbing get the body in a good 
glow and covered with lather. The water is then 
turned on again and the final cleansing done. The 
rubber tube and spray nozzle permits the water to be 
impinged on any part of the body desired. In the 
Winter a small oil stove placed in one corner will 
produce a sweat bath in three or four minutes in the 
coldest weather. I fear I was mistaken in saying 
that this was economical in the amount of water used, 
for my children cannot be kept away from it. For¬ 
merly their bath was little short of torture to them, 
but now they insist on a bath every day, and even the 
youngest is able to take care of himself with no dan¬ 
ger of getting upset in the tub and drowning in the 
absence of his mother. The joyous shrieks that come 
from that room on a hot Summer afternoon are worth 
10 times its cost and labor of constructing. 
Sunham, Md. _ g. s. m. 
MORE GROWTH THAN FRUIT. 
What would you do if you had a small piece of 
land heavily stocked with fruit plants, bushes and 
trees and the said plants, bushes and trees were 
making a vigorous growth, but not yielding as 
much fruit as you thought they should? Stable 
manure I have in only small quantities. Will ground 
bone (our cheapest source of phosphoric acid) with 
potash do any good? Can one use too much of those 
two fertilizers for the good of the crop? A list of 
above fruits would include practically all fruits grown 
in this locality. Irrigation is practised and fair cul¬ 
tivation given. Oldest trees are about 10 years old, 
and from that graded down to one. Can we feed those 
two fertilizers to a crop as one would hay to a horse 
without danger to the erdp? j. e. 
Washington. 
R. N.-Y.—If we had such a condition on our own 
farm we should conclude that the soil was rich in 
nitrogen and was driving the trees and vines too much 
to wood growth. That is usually the result when 
nitrogen is out of proportion to the potash and phos¬ 
phoric acid. Wood is made at the expense of fruit 
buds. Stable manure alone will make matters worse, 
for that supplies more nitrogen. Fine ground bone, 
three pounds to one pound of muriate of potash, will 
make a good combination for the trees and bushes. 
About 600 pounds per acre of this mixture will prob¬ 
ably be about the limit of economy. You could hardly 
use too much bone to hurt your trees, but muriate of 
potash contains chlorine—found in common salt—and 
too mtfeh of this would hurt the trees. Feeding a tree 
is somewhat like feeding hay to a horse. You would 
not throw so much before him that he would waste 
it after eating what he needs. 
STRANGE ATTACK OF POTATO SCAB. 
I’m stuck! I’m in darkness and wishing for 
light, and so I come to the source from which 
I have, unknown to you, drawn many good 
things, via The R. N.-Y. I inclose a paring 
from a potato out of my patch to show how 
they are coming, and possibly to help the answer to 
my query, Why? These potatoes were planted on a 
low knoll, practically waste land, in grass and un¬ 
cared-for for more than 20 years. No cattle ever on 
it nor anything else that I know of, excepting hens 
one Summer. Last December this was broken up and 
this Spring well prepared for planting. No manure 
was used; potato fertilizer in the hill; seed soaked 
two hours or more in solution of corrosive sublimate, 
and any that were scabby, only a few, previously 
scraped. Vines looked fine and blossomed freely; 
sprayed four or five times with Bordeaux and arsenic. 
This grass land immediately adjoined a garden spot 
where potatoes had been planted for some years and 
almost always came scabby. Can the Potato beetle 
carry scab, or what is the matter? Farmers whom 
I have talked with think it is strange and outside of 
their experience, and that is why I am troubling you. 
I want to be shown, for which I trust I shall be duly 
grateful. I. p. 
Massachusetts. 
R. N.-Y.—We are unable to get anything more than 
a guess at the cause. The germs of scab are not 
carried by Potato beetles, so far as we know. They 
can be carried by earthworms and in the drainage 
water through the soil. Our guess is that the soil 
of the garden is well filled with the germs, and that 
the drainage water carried them to the new soil. If 
this was alkaline, those germs would develop and 
spread rapidly. This is the only explanation we can 
offer. 
