1872.] 
4=9 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
new concerning this trouble. What I then said about it 
has only been confirmed, and what was recommended has 
been successful, with us at least. We rid ourselves of it 
by destroying the contents of every affected hive. Our 
near neighbors have not brought in any from abroad, and 
we expect to remain free from it until they do. Movable 
combs will allow close inspection of every comb. When 
every neighborhood is sufficiently informed, and will reject 
every diseased stock, foul brood will be among the things 
only heard of. Those expecting to make the most from 
their bees, must make themselves acquainted with the 
mel-extractor, its advantages, usff, etc., and find another 
great advantage in the movable combs. Study the subject 
—Bee Culture—now, before work occupies the entire at¬ 
tention. The field for discoveries is extensive, and to a 
great extent unexplored.—[Mr. Qninby’s “Mysteries of 
Bee-Keeping” still continues to be the standard work. 
See Book List. —Ed.] 
Books Noticed. 
Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Fruit- Growers' Society, 
1871. A volume of less than 100 pages, but contains 
more than much larger reports often do. An address by 
President Hoopes, a paper on Pear Culture, by Mr. 
Sattcrthwaite, and one upon Insects Injurious to the Ap¬ 
ple, by Mr. Rath von, are among its contents. 
Treatise on Ventilation. Comprising Seven Lectures, 
delivered before the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, by 
Lewis W. Leeds. New York: John Wiley & Sons. This 
seems to be a thorough discussion of a most important 
subject and is copiously illustrated. 
Smithsonian Report. The Annual Report of the Board 
of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 18G9, with 
the moderation that becomes books printed at the Gov¬ 
ernment office, has just reached ns. The scientific pa¬ 
pers attached to the report appear to be more than usu¬ 
ally interesting. 
American Rome-Book of In-door Games, Amusements, 
and Occupations. By Mrs. Caroline L. Smith (Aunt 
Carrie). Illustrated. Boston: Lee & Shepard. This is, 
with one exception, a capital work for young people. It 
is full of games, new and old. The book would have 
been much better if the stuff about the Toilet, which is 
worse than useless, and the matter relating to sick-rooms, 
had been omitted. 
Fireside Science. A Series of Popular Scientific Essays 
upon Subjects connected with Every-day Life. By James 
R. Nichols. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 
The New York Observer Year-Book for 1872. Sidney 
E. Morse & Co., New York. $1. 
Independent Sixth Reader. By J. Madison Watson. 
New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. $1.50. This seems to be 
a very judicious selection from the writings of authors 
from Shakespeare down to Greeley. 
The Department of Agriculture—Re¬ 
port for 1871. 
Mr. Capron resigned his position as Commissioner of 
Agriculture, to take office under the government of Japan, 
and Mr. Frederick Watts, of Pennsylvania, was appointed 
successor, and assumed the duties of Commissioner in 
August last. All that we know about Mr. Watts is, that 
he is highly esteemed in his own locality, as an excellent 
citizen and a good farmer; that he is over seventy years 
of age, and that he was President of the Board of Trustees 
of that much mismanaged institution, the Agricultural 
College of Pennsylvania. The appointment having been 
made and confirmed, nothing is to be said upon its fit¬ 
ness. The public acts of the officer and the official 
documents emanating from him are proper subjects of 
notice and criticism by the agricultural press. 
In his first report Mr. Commissioner Watts labors under 
two difficulties : he has nothing to say, and he takes 14 
pages to say it in. We do not often meet with so much 
commonplace, even in government reports. 
Upon page 4 of the Report we find the following; 
“It will be remembered, that by the act of the 2d of 
July, 1862, Congress donated to the States public lands to 
1 provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the 
mechanic arts.’ This was a new and important era, and 
may be said to mark the beginning of scientific knowl¬ 
edge as it pertains to agriculture.” 
If this language means anything, it means that previous 
to the year 1862there was no “scientific knowledge as it 
pertains to agriculture,” but that this knowledge had its 
beginning in that year. Later in the report, the Com¬ 
missioner, in speaking of the works in the Department 
library, says, “Many of them are not accessible in any 
other library in the country.” It must have been from 
some of these remarkable books that the Commissioner 
obtained this remarkable information in regard to “ scien¬ 
tific knowledge as it pertains to agriculture.” 
Those who read only accessible books, suppose that 
Davy, Berzelius. Liebig, Boussingault, Way, Johnstone, 
Voelcker, Lawes, Gilbert, Pugh, and a host of others, long 
before 1862 contributed something to “ scientific knowl¬ 
edge as it pertains to agriculture.” But the head of our 
Department of Agriculture says differently, and he ought 
to know. We are informed that the various literary col¬ 
leges spoil farmers’ sons, while the agricultural colleges 
turn them out good boys, willing to stay upon their 
fathers’ farms. Neither of these propositions is suffi¬ 
ciently established to make it safe to assert it in an offi¬ 
cial report. Detraction of “ universities, colleges, and 
schools ” seems to be a hobby with Mr. Watts. He was 
“ down on them ” in 1864, and is after them again in 1871. 
In the report of the Board of Trustees of the Agricul¬ 
tural Coliege of Pennsylvania to the Legislature, for the 
year 1864', and signed by Frederick Watts, President, we 
find Mr. ^Vatts’s views, and that they are unchanged in 
1871, is.ahown in his report as Commissioner: 
commiss'ner watts in 1S71. 
“ It mnst be Conceded that 
the literary institutions of 
the country educate boys to 
a state of total unfitness for 
the occupat ions of the farm. 
The father finds his boy, 
after his return from an ab¬ 
sence of a single year, to 
have had his thoughts and 
views centered upon an out¬ 
side world, and when he has 
graduated and returns after 
an absence of four years, he 
gazes around to conclude 
that the farm is no place for 
him ; his father and mother 
and brothers and sisters are 
no companions for him ; his 
thoughts and theirs have 
been pursuing different 
paths; all congeniality of 
feeling is lost and gone, 
and he is driven to the 
nearest county town to 
prepare himself to make a 
poor figure in professional 
life, and perchance to be led 
into the haunts of intem¬ 
perance and vice, realizing 
for his anxious parents not 
only the loss of the hardly- 
earned expenses of his edu¬ 
cation, but the loss of the 
son himself.” 
PRESIDENT WATTS IN 1864. 
“ The individual members 
of the Board of Trustees 
have labored assiduously for 
several years to establish a 
school, where an education 
may be obtained which will 
qualify farmers’ sons intel¬ 
ligently to pursue their 
fathers’ business. They 
have been influenced by the 
belief that this object can 
not be attained at any of the 
literary colleges of our 
State; that the knowledge 
and habits which they im¬ 
part disqualify youth for 
such pursuits, and thereby 
defeat the object of the pa¬ 
rent, and add nothing to the 
interests of agriculture. Our 
experience teaches us, that 
a farmer’s son, graduated in 
such an institution, finds no 
place, ever after, in the do¬ 
mestic circle of his family; 
he is actually driven, by his 
education, into the neces¬ 
sity of resorting to some 
neighboring town, in pur¬ 
suit of a learned profession, 
where he soon forms habits 
of idleness and intemper¬ 
ance ; and the result is, that 
the father not only loses the 
expenses of his education, 
but the son himself.” 
Warmed-over dinners are often necessary and tolerable, 
but are not we entitled tO something better than warmed- 
over reports ? 
We have not time to notice the Commissioner’s pecu¬ 
liar views concerning Agricultural Colleges; but we 
think it will be long before they send the results of their 
experiments to Washington to be worked up, as he sug¬ 
gests they do. 
The Commissioner thinks that the Annual Volume 
should not be published, in which we can only in part 
agree with him. In the main, the Annual Reports for 
the past few years have been creditable and useful, and if 
the Commissioner’s suggestion that they be placed on 
sale at cost be adopted, the objection of free book 
distribution at Government expense would be removed. 
But the Commissioner proposes to run opposition to the 
agricultural journals by means of his monthly reports. 
In referring to the foreign journals received at ihe De¬ 
partment he says: “ They furnish the results of the very 
latest investigations in entomology, botany, agricultural 
geology, and microscopy, as well as experiments in 
agriculture, which could be abridged and published in 
the monthly reports of the Department before they could 
be reproduced by the agricultural journals of the coun¬ 
try.” How do our brethren of the press like this ? 
The seed business is to be continued in its objection¬ 
able features, and, instead of pints and quarts, bushels 
and half-bushels of grains are recommended. We are in 
favor of a properly managed distribution of seeds. 
New varieties, not.yct in commerce, maybe obtained by 
the Department and distributed, but we do object—and so 
does every right-thinking man—to furnishing to Members 
of Congress, at public expense, innumerable packages of 
seeds with which to court favor with their constituents. 
These seed packages are a thorough fraud ; they contain 
the seeds sold everywhere, of the commonest sorts. It 
is a flagrant injustice to the seedsman, and no one can 
tell why Government should interfere with their business 
any more than with that of the druggist or grocer. If we 
are to have a general free seed distribution, let us have 
one also of family pills and spices. Let us also have the 
hoes, and rakes, and all other implements necessary to 
cultivate the plants sent by mail with the seeds. The 
,“ Tabular Statement ” of seeds sent out includes under 
“ Cereals,'" 113 varieties of vegetables and 54 varieties of 
flowers. In the same table, under “ Textiles," we have 
peanuts. We once knew a pompous man who spoke of 
a potato as an excellent condiment, but it takes an official 
report to call a peanut a textile. We might show up more 
of the weaknesses of this weak report, but we leave it 
with a feeling of melancholy that the official representa¬ 
tive of American agriculture should make so poor a 
showing. We have no high hopes for the Department of 
Agriculture under its present administration. We ayvait 
in patience further developments. It may be that'one 
who makes a weak report with his pen may prove a good 
executive officer. One of these days the farmers will 
make themselves felt; then the Department of Agri¬ 
culture will be quite different from what it ever has been. 
--—---- 
Maple-Sugar Item. 
BT W. I. CHAMBERLAIN, HUDSON, O. 
Last spring, in painting a lot of new covers for sap- 
buckets, it occurred to me to make one side red and the 
other white. The object is this : in gathering sap where 
the trees are close together, and of course not in rows, 
it often puzzles a man to tell which trees he has visited. 
It is harder still, if two or three men gather to one team, 
or when you have to go and empty the barrels, or when 
night suspends the work unfinished until the next morn¬ 
ing. The best local memory needs some help. Now, if 
when tapping you place all the covers red side up, for in¬ 
stance, and at the first gathering turn each cover white 
side up when you take the sap from its bucket, there never 
will be any uncertainty. You never will need run to a 
tree the second time, nor miss one. You can tell ten 
rods off, by the color of the cover, whether there is sap in 
the pail. Each gathering will change the color of all the 
covers. If one does not wish the expense of planing and 
painting both sides, a simple “ dab ” of red paint one side 
will answer the purpose. One stroke of the brush will 
do. Still, the covers ought to be planed and painted on 
both sides, to keep them from soaking water, and from 
warping in the sun ; and they can just as easily be painted 
different colors on different sides. They ought to be 
turned over, too, at each gathering, or they will warp in 
time, even if painted. So this device makes no extra 
expense or work, and saves many steps and much leaving 
of sap. It is not patented, but saves more labor and loss 
than many devices that are. The more it is used by sugar- 
makers, the better I shall like it. 
Another improvement I have lately made. Instead of 
the barrels for gathering sap, as given in the article and 
engraving (.Agriculturist, Feb., 1S70), I have a cask, six 
feet long and about 30 inches in diameter. It holds four 
barrels, and this full on a light stone-boat sled makes 
sufficient load for a team on bare ground. It tapers 
slightly towards the front end of the sled, so that when 
the top is level, the sap will drain completely from the 
bottom of the hind end. Here is a large iron faucet, and 
a tin conductor runs the sap down the side-hill into the 
store-troughs. This saves the time and labor of rolling 
the barrels up over the troughs to empty, and keeps all 
dirt and mud from falling into them from the outside of 
the barrels. With these improvements and the apparatus 
and methods described in the articles in February and 
March, 1870, and February, 1871, a ntan can make first-class 
syrup, rain or shine, cold or hot, through the entire season, 
and sell even that made late in the season at $1.50 per 
gallon, when ordinary syrup will hardly bring $1.00. 
Sending Poultry to Exhibitions. 
It lias been customary in this country to send 
fowls and other poultry to the fairs in the same 
coops or cages in which they were to be dis¬ 
played. Exhibitors have been expected to pro¬ 
vide their own exhibition coops, and personally 
to attend to the wants of their poultry. Hap¬ 
pily, we are now on the eve of a great change 
in this respect. The old system was fraught 
with danger to the poultry, and with both in¬ 
convenience and unnecessary expense^ Before 
speaking of a better plan, we allude to some of 
these disadvantages. (1.) If the coops look 
well, are well made and strong, they will be 
quite costly. (2.) They will be liable to be 
broken and otherwise damaged by the careless 
handling of expressmen, railroad men, and car- 
