218 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
wood-shed. The ground plan will be seen in 
fig. 2, attached to that of the front portion of 
the building. There is a hall between the two 
lower rooms with a staircase leading to the 
rooms above. A hall also separates the upper 
i 1 ■ . 
Fig. 2. —PLAN OF GROUND FLOOR. 
rooms. The right-hand lower room is intended 
for the kitchen, in which there is a sink and a 
pump, seen at s , from a cistern under the dairy. 
There is also a sink and pump in the dairy, seen 
at s. The dairy is entered from a door upon 
the covered porch and is provided with a chim¬ 
ney, so that a stove may be used to warm it in 
the winter. It should be placed upon the north 
side of the house. Behind the dairy is the 
wood-shed, having a door connecting it witlj 
the kitchen. Part of the upper hall is parti¬ 
tioned off and made to serve for two closets, 
one for each bedroom. A chimney is built 
upon each side of the hall from the ground up¬ 
wards in which fireplaces may be made in each 
room; these chimneys connect beneath the roof 
and are brought into one stack above it. 
When circumstances require the front to be 
built, it is added to the rear part. This portion 
consists of two rooms below and two above 
with halls and an open staircase which makes 
a turn as it enters the upper hall. The plan 
seen at fig. 3 shows the interior arrangements 
sufficiently without further explanation. The 
elevation of the building is seen at fig. 1. A 
porch runs along the front of the rear building, 
to which a glass door may lead from the front 
parlor. There are leay-windows in each of the 
front rooms and a covered porch protects the 
front door. The size of the building and that 
of each room would of course depend upon the 
taste or necessities of the occupant. The house 
to which this description applies was 36 feet 
by 12, and 16 feet high in the rear part; the 
dairy and wood-shed were 20 feet by 12, and 
9 feet high. The front part of the building 
was 36 by 18 feet, and 20 feet high. But the 
narrowness of the rear portion was a mistake 
and it should have been 18 instead of 12 feet. 
Almost always a person who builds anything 
makes the same mistake, and it is better to 
have too much room than too little both in 
houses and barns. 
Comparative Value of Woolen Waste 
and Guano. —The waste of woolen mills is a 
very valuable fertilizer. Wool contains 17 per 
cent of nitrogen, equal to 20| per cent of am- [ 
monia, which is a larger proportion than most 
of the best guanos contain. But it is slow in 
its action, because the ammonia is undeveloped, 
or what is known as potential, and some years 
elapse before its full effects appear. It is there¬ 
fore a lasting manure and very well 
fitted for permanent meadows. Its 
money value is difficult to fix, because 
it is very rarely sold here as a fertilizer. 
In England it brings in the market 
$25 to $50 a ton, according to its purity 
or freedom from grease and sand; at 
the same time guano sells for $70 a 
ton. It is used as a top dressing upon 
grass, or is plowed in along with the 
clover sod for following crops. The 
liquid waste of a woolen mill should 
be composted with earth or spread upon grass. 
A Hook for Bide Boards. 
--- 
Frequently when drawing manure, stone, 
wood, or such coarse materials, it is not desir¬ 
able to use a good wagon-box, hut rough side 
boards or planks put in its place. Then these 
persist in falling down when they ought to 
stand up, and a person’s temper is tried, and 
HOOK FOR WAGON SIDES. 
very often fails, with the usual results in such 
cases. AH this may be prevented by using this 
simple contrivance. It consists of a ring of 
iron large enough to slip over the stake of the 
wagon-box and has a claw attached to one 
side. When the ring is on the stake the claw 
is placed inside of the plank or side board 
and holds it in position. Both the hook and 
its application are shown in the engraving. 
Root Pnlper. 
The accompanying engraving shows the sec¬ 
tion of a root pulper which is readily and 
cheaply made, and which grinds the roots into | 
pulp very rapidly. It consists of a cylinder of 
hard wood 16 or 20 inches in diameter turned 
exactly round and smooth, and of whatever 
length may be desired. 
This is mounted upon 
gudgeons and armed 
with steel teeth made 
of half-inch square steel. 
The teeth are ground 
to a chisel point and 
are screwed into the cyl¬ 
inder with the bevel of 
the points upwards and 
projecting half an inch. 
This toothed cylinder E00T puppe k. 
is fitted into a box of hard wood plank and 
the box is supported upon a stout frame which 
should be firmly bolted to the barn floor. The 
front of the box is brought snugly up to the 
teeth of the cylinder. The roots are shoveled 
into the box at the top and are rapidly reduced 
to a fine pulp by the action of the sharp chisel 
points; the pulp is thrown out at the bottom 
of the box, where it is received upon an apron 
of plank, and from that it falls upon the floor 
or into baskets placed to receive it. A driving 
pulley is affixed to one of the gudgeons so that 
it may be worked by a belt from a horse-power. 
It is too heavy a machine to be worked by 
hand, although a small machine might be con¬ 
structed upon the same plan if thought profit¬ 
able to do so. 
Raising Ducks. 
It by no means follows, because ducks are a 
water-fowl, that much water is required to 
raise them. Yet this is a very common impres¬ 
sion, and multitudes of farmers and villagers 
deny themselves the enjoyment and profit of a 
flock of ducks because they have no pond or 
stream near the house. It is true that adult 
ducks will get a good deal of their living out 
of a water privilege, if they have one. It is 
not true that water to swim in is essential to 
their profitable keeping. They want some 
range and grass and good fresh water to drink 
every day. Ordinarily, ducks can be profitably 
raised wherever hens can be. They make a 
pleasing variety in the poultry yard, and all 
who have room for them can enjoy them. The 
first thing in raising ducks is to get them out 
of the shell, and for incubation we decidedly 
prefer hens to ducks. They sit more steadily, 
and take much better care of the young. The 
-wetting of the ducks’ eggs daily iu the last two 
weeks of incubation is even more necessary 
than for hens’ eggs. 
In a recent visit to a poultryman who has 
just started in duck-raising, he showed us five 
3 ’oung Pekin ducks and six dead ducks, well 
dried up in the shells, from a sitting of twelve 
eggs. He had not learned the secret of wet¬ 
ting the eggs. This is sometimes done by 
sprinkling water upon them, but we think it 
better to take them from the nest and put them 
in a basin of tepid water about blood-warm. 
This moistens the whole shell without chilling 
the embryo life within. The ducklings out of 
the shell may be allowed to remain upon the 
nest with the hen for a day. The hen may 
then be put upon a grass-plat, under a coop, 
where the ducklings can go in and out at 
pleasure. Or if the hen is allowed liberty, the 
ducklings should be confined in a small pen 
from which they can not escape. A dozen in 
a pen ten feet square is enough, for the first 
two weeks. For water they only want a shal¬ 
low pan—so shallow that they can not sw-im, 
and in which they can wade at pleasure. The 
water should be changed often and kept in 
good drinking condition. For the first food 
nothing is better than the yolk of hard- 
boiled eggs or boiled liver, chopped very 
fine. The food had better all be cooked 
for the first week. It may then gradually 
be changed to coarse scalded Indian meal, 
oatmeal, wheaten grits, or rice, as suits 
the convenience of the feeder. Bread-crumbs 
and sour milk are excellent food, as are angle- 
worms and snails. They are quite as good as 
chickens at devouring insects, and nothing 
seems to harm them but rose-bugs, against 
which they should he jealously guarded. For 
this reason they should he kept away from 
graoe-vines and other plants specially attrac- 
