THE RURAb N EC W-YORKER 
361 
The Turkey Buzzard 
It is recognized that about all diseases 
and ills, and surely all plagues and epi¬ 
demics, are caused by specific micro¬ 
organisms sometimes called germs, or 
correctly, bacteria, especially the patho¬ 
genic bacteria—single cell, transparent, 
floating bits of plant life, capable of 
quick multiplication in the media of liv¬ 
ing flesh just suited, you may say, for 
their growth, food, shelter and pleasure—• 
their round of life in existence and pro¬ 
pagation. They clog the organs of the 
animal system. They are approximately, 
internal feeding parasites, and again act¬ 
ing almost like caustic chemicals, they 
inflame, and they break up and eat up 
tissue, bone and blood. 
There are also other disease-causing 
germs, protozoa, very like the former, 
but single cell, motile animal life, more 
active internal parasites operating the 
same kind of despoilment and fatal epi¬ 
demics, and they are bound by the same 
limitation of inability to spread, dissem¬ 
inate directly. These disease-causing or¬ 
ganisms cannot spread from epidemic dis¬ 
trict to district, or from sick man, or 
from sick animal onwards, by their own 
volition, by creeping or flying, nor, by 
floating fissions of themselves or spores, 
eggs, or seeds on the atmosphere or on 
the breath, or in fog, murky air or mias¬ 
ma. The sick must carry it to another 
by contracting, directly start up the in¬ 
fectious contagious disease, or indirect¬ 
ly by fomites, by anything cast out or off 
the sick body. So disease, or really the 
spread of special bacteria which causes 
each disease is accomplished by being 
water-borne, fly-borne, mud-borne, food- 
borne or bedding, clothing, fodder, wag¬ 
on, dog, or bird-borne. Hence the mod¬ 
ern germicidal fumigation or spraying 
and intelligent quarantine, checks and 
stamps out epidemics. 
In the present quarantine methods ef¬ 
fectually annihilating the recent out¬ 
breaks of foot-and-mouth disease, the 
usual measures of killing all diseased and 
contaminated cattle and swine, was fore¬ 
most, but some poultry and all doves 
were slaughtered as well, and crows are 
marked as a danger in dissemination. 
This 1914 epidemic in the United States 
seems to have originated in one instance 
from contagion derived from the south 
temperate zone, and in another around 
the Mexican boundary, where during last 
year 300,000 cattle were driven over to 
this side. This vast region of South 
and Central Ainei’ica and Mexico is the 
habitat, the home of species of vultures 
and buzzards-; and as the “ubiquitous 
and necessary (?) turkey buzzard” is 
freely allowed to be the common sca¬ 
venger there, without let or hindrance, it 
is self announced that cattle diseases are 
buzzard-borne for wide infection any 
year. These birds are protected in flight 
from distant ranges and haciendas, across 
mountains and llanos, whereby they can 
bring the contagion so that the source 
of an outbreak is unknown, and quaran¬ 
tine cannot be kept, even though informa¬ 
tion and usual regulations be sufficient. 
Foot-and-mouth disease there, is a 
menace to cattle raisers here. Cow hides 
from Argentina were being worked up 
in a Michigan tannery. Fattening swine 
had access to the refuse, and became in¬ 
fected with foot-and-mouth disease. The 
sale of this drove of hogs in the Chicago 
stock yards spread abundance of infec¬ 
tion in cars and yards, quickly trans¬ 
mitted further away in numerous States, 
where cattle passed thereto from the 
yards. The presence of the disease seems 
to have at first escaped the attention of 
inspectors, but so it was in Europe a 
few years ago, when a million animals 
died or were condemned. 
A complete quarantine is a drastic 
one. Carelessness, ignorance, protection 
of pets, birds or animals, or favorite 
stock must not interfere. With the 
knowledge of today in full operation, the 
plagues and black death of a few cen¬ 
turies ago, when a quarter of the human 
race and almost all domestic animals per¬ 
ished in Europe, could have been averted. 
The people then were helpless, supposing 
it was a coup de ciel, a stroke from 
heaven, a power of the air. And I pre¬ 
sume that the buzzards and birds of the 
air did help along the spread of pestil¬ 
ence there. 
But what about the danger now, in 
the United States and Mexico? The crow 
is protected and in the Southern States 
the turkey buzzard is protected, although 
some States have reversed that policy. 
I believe, notably South Carolina, where 
in Charleston, black vultures were so 
plenty and bold they stole meat from 
the butchers’ stalls. In the Southwest I had 
charge of the reduction of about every¬ 
thing brought out of the city for them, 
and they met the wagons on the road. 
In Mexico in times of peace I saw. them 
have full license in the streets of every 
town, for everything castoff, right there, 
including dead rats, cats, and dogs. In 
time of war and starvation it is a horror. 
Here is a realistic letter about the turkey 
buzzard in Vera Cruz, by an English 
traveler, written a little over six years 
ago. So it may be guessed what the 
needs in sanitation were, when Uncle 
Sam’s boys in blue cleaned up and civil¬ 
ized that city last year. Every Mexican 
traveler knows that Uncle Sam is need¬ 
ed in every place there. 
The last few years have made a world 
of difference to Vera Cruz. A decade 
back for three-quarters of the year it 
was plague-ridden. Today, comparative¬ 
ly, it is growing into a health resort. 
Even now sanitation is embryonic. But 
the gods have been good to this evil lit¬ 
tle town. For there are armies of unpaid 
scavengers who parade the streets, doing 
their work so silently and so perfectly 
that the municipality has passed a law 
by which an injury to one of them is a 
special crime and misdemeanor, heavily 
fined. These are the Zopilotes, as the 
Mexicans call the American turkey- 
buzzards—to kill one of which costs the 
murderer at least five dollars. Cadet 
branch of the vulture family, in their 
skinny bald heads, their rusty black 
moth-eaten feathers, their great splotchy 
feet, their torn and ragged wings, hang¬ 
ing loose and low, Nature has given them 
just the dress becoming such birds of hell. 
No! You did not believe birds could be 
so ugly, birds could have such hateful 
eyes, such splay feet, such blotchy beaks. 
They are everywhere; they perch on the 
cathedral towers, on the balconies of 
houses; they ride on the dust-carts, fight 
for the unspeakable in the gutters, tear 
at the rotting fish-head, and settle in 
scores around the carcase of a dog. A 
score of them amble in front of you on 
the pavement, and hop their ungainly, 
sidewise hops as you spurn them, verita¬ 
ble birds of Beelzebub, Lord of Flies. 
But Vera Cruz has good reason to thank 
heaven for her flying dust bins, and as 
they peer sideways at you out of their 
blinking rheumous eyes they seem to 
know it. “We don’t fear you passerby.” 
You could imagine them saying (though 
one of the uncanniest facts about these 
awful birds is that they have no cry; 
they are as silent as the dead they filch 
and feast on). “We are an essential 
part of this earth-hell; we are the devil’s 
bailiffs.” You see the birds in other 
Mexican towns and cities; you see them 
in Yucatan perched on the walls of ha¬ 
ciendas or in the woods wrenching at the 
hide of a rotting cow, but they never 
seem to personify evil as at Vera Cruz. 
And there is evil there! There is vice in 
the air. Round the town clings an in¬ 
describable haunting sense of sin—sin 
which is swinish and foul—not the daz¬ 
zling vice of a Semiramis court, but a 
drink-sodden fetid sin clinging to the 
town like the noisome smell of a charnel 
house. Not that you see it. “There 
ain’t no Ten Commandments” at Vera 
Cruz, but you don’t see them broken; 
you simply feel they don’t exist. Per¬ 
haps we do the “the New City of the 
True Cross” injustice. We simply re¬ 
cord our impressions. “Peradventure 
there be seven good men in Vera Cruz.” 
Thei'e are probably many score more, 
but one cannot help wishing the streets 
did not smell so rancid, and the buzzards 
were thereby less in evidence. 
Thus ends Channing Arnold’s vivid de¬ 
scription of the turkey buzzard, and its 
habits, and of conditions—far above the 
worst. It is an exhibition of the con¬ 
stant danger associated with these birds 
as cattle plague carriers. 
New York. w. L. devereaux. 
Experience In Butter-Making.—I 
get many praises for my butter and wish 
I had many more pounds to sell. I let 
the last cream in the cream bowl get 36 
hours old. I let my cream reach the tem¬ 
perature of 65 degrees. One gets more 
butter and it comes quicker. It comes 
soft, but drain the buttermilk out and 
let butter stand in cold water about 10 
minutes. After working out the butter¬ 
milk I put to every pound of butter 1% 
ounce of salt and one teaspoonful of gran¬ 
ulated sugar. The sugar takes out the 
raw taste that the salt gives. A dairy 
thermometer pay in many ways. 
A. E. w. 
Pat, who was left-handed, was being 
sworn in as a witness in the west side 
court of Denver, Colo. “Hold up your 
right hand,” said the judge. Up went 
Pat’s left hand. “Hold up your right 
hand,” commanded the judge, sternly. 
“Sure and I am, yer honor,” declared 
Pat. “Me right hand’s on me left-hand 
side.”—The Advance. 
[ DAIRY CATTXjE 
East River Grade Holsteins For Sale 
100 Extra high grade Holstein cows served 
to come fresh in Aug . Sept, and Oct. 
Served to Reg. bulls. They are milking 
good now. Come and see them milked. 
Reg. bulls ready for use. 
JOHN B. WEBSTER, 
Dept. Y, Cortland, N. Y. Belt Phone 14. F. S. 
Cpot Farm Holsteins 
L f 7 registered lieifer calves, 1 to 7 months old, 
2 from 20-lb. dams, 1 from 16-lb. heifer. Bal¬ 
ance from well-bred dams, from A. R. O. sires. 
Price, $700. 10 registered bull calves, 1 to 6 
months old, $35 to $00 each. 25 registered cows. 
10 of them A. R. ().—$150 up. 12 high-grade year¬ 
lings, 12 2-year olds, 4 cows, *40 a head for the lot, 
% Holstein heifer and bull calves, $15 each. Ex¬ 
press paid to your station in lots of 5 of the calves. 
REAGAN BROS., - Tully, N. Y. 
26 pounds of Butter 
in seven days 
is the average of dam and sire's dam of Holstein- 
Friesian bull calf which I will sell for $100. Calf is 
five months old, splendid form, nicely marked, and 
warranted to please. Others all the way down to $25. 
LAUREL FARM 
J. Grant Morse, - Hamilton, N. Y. 
Registered Holstein-Friesian Cows 
for sale to settle estate of Irvin F. Wilcox, Cam¬ 
den, N.Y. Ages as follows: One. 8-yrs.; two, 7-yre.; 
one, 6-yrs.; one,5-yrs.: six,4-yrs.: five,3-yrs • two, 
2-yrs. Milking now or due to freshen. Also 8 neifer 
calves and three bull calves. Description, photos, 
S edigrees and prices on request, 
tobert E. Wilcox, Court House, Rochester, N. Y. 
Registered Holstein Heifer ^ViZif: 
Most productive blood lines. F. H. WOOD, Cortland, N Y. 
HOLSTEIN-FRIESIAN 
BULL CALVES 
seven months old. Sire, Changeling 
Abberkerk Prince, a butter-fat bull, A. R. 
O. dams. Send for prices and pedigroes. 
C. M. ROYCE, - - Berkshire, N. Y. 
Ontario Dekol Freeman 
superb Holstein bull, born Sept. 21, 1914; sire, 35.61 
lb. bull; dam, A. R. O. heifer, tine breeding; price, 
for quick sale, $200. Send for pedigree. No disease 
in our locality. Cloverdale Farm, Charlotte. N. Y- 
SPRINGDALE FARMS 
Holsteins. 300 fancy cows and heifers to select 
from. F. F. Saunders & Son, Cortland, N.Y. 
Holstein Service Bell^K»a",JS > ^ia K K 
to 16 mo. old.) If yon arc looking for the blood 
which produces world champion cows, write to 
Ira S. Jarvis, Hartwick Seminary, N. Y. Prices moderate 
HOLSTEIN BULL CALVES f&iUZ 
34.09, seven days, 30 days, 134.66. They are extra good 
individuals, all from A. R. O. dams. Write for pedi¬ 
grees and prices. THE YATES FARMS, Orchard Park, .N.Y, 
READY FOR QFRUIftF- pRICES 575 00 ,oS150 00 
ncHui run otnwiuc Registere(1Holsteinan(1 
Jersey Bulls. Splendid individuals with great 
backing. Best blood in the land. Also younger bull 
calves. Write for list. HOMEWOOD FARMS, RYE, N. Y. 
Holstein-Friesian Bull Calves 
offer. THE GAIES HOMESTEAD FARM. Cliitteiianao, N. Y. 
FOR SALE 
Otterkill Farm Ayrshires 
15 young bulls, all ages, and well bred, from import¬ 
ed sire Howies Predominant, imported three years 
ago, who was bred by Robert Wallace Auchenbrain. 
He is also for sale. Prices to suit the buyer. Address 
RUDOLPH HESS, Mgr., Washingtonville, Orange Co. N. Y. 
Three Purebred Guernsey Bulls 
12 to 14 months old; ready for service. They are all 
out of A. It. Cows and are of the very best breeding. 
Prices 011 request. Ardmore Farm, Glen Spey, Sullivan Co., N. Y. 
Purebred Guernsey Bullst ,,,"*; 3 
Mashor’sISequel: dams, qualifying for Advanced 
Register. H. KELLOGG, Derby, New York 
FOR PRODUCTION-K.?.",, 
calves 
sires. 
NOT D0WN- 
Jersey bull 
only, from producing dams and highest type 
R. F. SHANNON, 603 Rensiiaw Bldo-. Pittsburgh, Pa. 
FOB C AI F Registered JERSEY li U LI., 7 months 
IVMI OH LL old, by Karnacks Noble ex. Meadow 
Queen of Allendale. Also two registered JERSEY HEIFERS. 
Effingham Lawrence, Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island 
When you write advertisers mention The R. 
N.-Y. and you’ll get a quick reply and a 
“square deal.” See guarantee editorial page. 
HonsES 
BERCHER0N STALLIONS — Our hobby is quality Buy 
■ from farmers. S.Schoonmaker,Gardiner,N.Y. 
Highland View Stock Farm 
Our barns arc filled with the best Percheron and 
Belgians at the lowest prices. 
0. M. WILSON, Prop., - Kittanning, Pa. 
100 Percheron and Belgian Stallions 
MARES ANI) HOLSTEIN CATTLE. 
Also SHETLAND PONIES. Free circular. 
A. W . GREEN, - Middle field, Ohio 
FOB F~Hraft colts, 3 years old, well broke. 
■ vn Weight 1,300 to 1,500. Mares, $75.00 
up. W. M. WOODWORTH, Cortland, Ohio 
For Sale — A Pair of Grade Percheron Mares 
Weigh, 2800; 7and8years old. Sound, kind and true. 
THE CASKEY FARMS, RichmondvUle, N.Y. 
S jEX EE3? 
Black Faced Highland Sheep for Sale 
Aged ewes and spring lambs. Inquire of JOHN C. 
GALVIN, Manager, Netherwood Farm, New Hamburgh, N. Y. 
sale— 25 Registered Hampshire Ewes, 40 Lambs 
very fine, heavy youngewes. Some State Fair Win¬ 
ners. G. BRONDAGE, Salisbury Mills, Oranoe Co., N Y. 
T 11 n iQ Ramqfnr^alp ^ ho Mule foot Figs. W rite 
1 unis l\ams lor oaie fo) . book i et of information and 
prices to J. N. McPherson, Scottsville, N. Y. 
| SWINE 
mmnn DlflQ— $16 pair. Pedigreed Buff Leghorn 
uunuu riuo E ggs,$l .50 set. S. Weeks. DeGraff. 0, 
FOR PURE BRED TAMW0RTH SWINE 
write or visit WE8TVIEW STOCK FARM, R. 
F. D. No. 1, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 
OIIELDON FARM REGISTERED DCROCS 
Pigs of botli sex. Bred Sows. Service Boars. 
Best of breeding. C. E. It ARNES, Oxford, N. Y. 
FOR SALE—Berkshires, both sexes. Holstein Bull, 5 
* months old. Golden Wyandotte Eggs, $1 for 15. 
Satisfaction guaranteed. LINGOHOCKEN FARMS. Wycombe. Pi. 
Rgrbohira Piero— Choice ones at a modernte price. 
DBIRSIIlie n & 3 Also a few service boars and bred 
sows. M. H. TAYLOR, West Alexander, Pa 
Discriminating Buyers Satisfied Fann‘Ks&. 
All fashionable families; outstanding individuals. 
Orders for export given especial care. 
R. Y. BUCKLEY, • Woodrow”. Broad Axe. Pa. 
LARGE BERKSHIRES AT HIGHWOOD 
Eight young bred sows, sold by ns to William Riis, 
of Buenos Aires, Argentina, farrowed seventy-one 
live pigs, their first litters; after being on shipboard 
sixty days and traveling 9,000 miles. Selected boars 
and bred SOWS for sale. H. C. & H. B. Harptinliug. Dundee, N.Y. 
SPRINGBANK BERKSHIRES 
10 Bred Gilts for June farrow. 
Service Boars and March pigs. 
J. E. WATSON, - Marbledale, Ct. 
FOR SALE 0.1. C. BOAR 
“ Henry ” No. 41552, farrowed July 29, 1913. In good 
condition. Price, F. O. B. station, $35. 
C. E. HAILEY, - R. 3, Canaan, N. H. 
FOR SALE—Berkshire and 0.1. C. Boars 
from two to twelve months of age. Good breeding. 
Excellent individuals. Prices very reasonable. Write 
for particulars. TARBELL FARMS, Smithville Flats. N. Y. 
f Dogs and 3* , ex*x*©tisi 
REGISTERED AIREDALES 
The standard American dog. Highest, grade only. 
Unqualifiedly guaranteed. Prices, $18 to $30. Semi 
for circular. HI RCH FARMS, Three Tuna, Pa. 
For Sale—Thoroughbred Airedale Puppies 
H. E. SMITH, - E. Cliarlemont, Mass. 
Mou#fnimHlailf|- st - Berllard * Fox Terriers 
newiuunuiantl and Collie Pups for sale. 
Buy where others buy. Money hack if not pleased. 
Poultry catalogue free. EDWIN A. S0UDER, Telford. Pa. 
Fprrplc — Single, pairs and dozen lots. Stamp for 
rciIGi:> p r i ce list. CALVIN JEWELL. Spencer, O. 
OUR NEW HANDY BINDER 
Sides are heavy Book Board, Imitation Leather 
Back and Corners, Cloth Sides, Two Tongues Inside, 
Inside of Cover Neat Lining Paper, Stamped in 
Gold— “Kurai, New-Yorker”— on outside. 
Will hold 52 issues, or more. Sent prepaid 
upon receipt of price, 50c. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
333 West 30th St. New York City 
Keep a can of Zenoleum always handy—it’s the best live 
Stock Profit-Insurance on earth. Its use as a disinfectant and 
germicide insures the destruction of all germs and insects that 
prey on cattle, hogs and sheep. This powerful safe germicide 
kills lice, mites, sheep ^ 
