THE RURAt NEW-YORKER 
863 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK 
DOMESTIC.—The American flag will 
practically disappear from vessels in the 
Pacific Ocean as the result of the decision 
of the directors of the Pacific Mail 
Steamship Company to withdraw the 
company’s big fleet of steamships from 
the transpacific service after November 
2. These ships, it is said, will be driven 
from the Pacific by the burdens put on 
American shipping by the La Follette 
seamen’s law. The law goes into effect 
on November 4. It is also announced 
that the steamship Minnesota, America’s 
greatest freight carrier, will be placed 
under British registry or sold by No¬ 
vember. It was announced. June 11, 
that the Minnesota will steam late in 
July for Vladivostok and Oriental ports 
on her last trip under the American flag. 
Her crew of 200 is made up largely of 
Chinese. To employ an entire English 
speaking crew would increase the operat¬ 
ing expenses $180,000 yearly. 
The number of sailors missing from the 
interned German cruisers Prinz Eitel 
Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm was 
reported, June 13, to be more than 20. 
Men granted the courtesy of shore leave 
fail to report back to the ships. 
Twelve persons are reported to have 
died in the storm which swept over West¬ 
ern Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota 
and Iowa, June 12. Seven persons lost 
their lives near Ferryville, Wis., and five 
near Lansing, Iowa. An eight-mile strip 
east of Ferryville, near the village of 
Seneca, was swept clear, and every farm¬ 
house was wrecked or damaged. Thirty 
persons were injured, several of whom 
are in hospitals in La Crosse in a serious 
condition. 
A great street car strike in Chicago 
began June 14, 14,500 men going out to 
enforce their demand for better working 
Conditions and higher wages. After two 
days of interrupted traffic an arbitration 
agreement was decided on June 16. 
The first of the cases arising under the 
Webb-Kenyon law, the Federal statute 
of the last Congress designed to put a 
stop to the shipment in interstate com¬ 
merce of intoxicants into “dry” territory, 
was decided, June 14, by the United 
States Supreme Court. The conviction 
of the Adams Express Company under 
the statute in one of the courts of Ken¬ 
tucky was reversed by the Supreme 
Court, which did not pass in any way on 
the validity of the statute. The express 
company was convicted of bringing into 
Whitley county from the State of Ten¬ 
nessee a consignment of intoxicating li¬ 
quor. The prosecution was brought un¬ 
der State law, but the Webb-Kenyon law 
was relied upon to defeat a defence in¬ 
terposed on the ground that the shipment 
was a lawful use of the agencies of inter¬ 
state commerce. Justice Day held the 
shipment was not unlawful because even 
under the Webb-Kenyon law the ship¬ 
ment to be unlawful must be for the use 
of the consignee in violation of the laws 
of the State and he pointed out that the 
Court of Appeals of Kentucky had held 
that the consignee of intoxicating liquor 
does not violate the law of Kentucky by 
receiving it for his personal use. 
The State of West Virginia was ad¬ 
judged, June 14, by the Supreme Court 
of the United States to be debtor to the 
State of Virginia, from which she was 
separated by the fortunes of the Civil 
War, to the amount of $12,393,929.28. 
This sum represents interest as well as 
a part of the public debt of the parent 
State of Virginia at the time the separa¬ 
tion was brought out. The interest on 
the debt, which has been running since 
January 1. 1861, amounts to $8,178,307. 
Charles F. Niles of Rochester flew up¬ 
side down with a passenger, June 16, at 
Garden City, L. I., the first time the 
feat has been attempted in this country. 
He looped the loop thus bui'dened, also 
for the first time in this country, with 
a monoplane. The passenger was Ste¬ 
venson Magordon of Chicago, who weighs 
180 pounds. 
It was announced, June 17, that 300 
American marines would be landed in 
Mexico to protect Americans from Yaqui 
Indians. The American colony occupies 
the Yaqui Valley beyond the town of Es- 
paranza. Tabari Bay, where it is 
planned to land the expeditionary force, 
should Governor Maytorena and the Vil- 
lista government fail to protect the col¬ 
onists, is south of Guaymas. An Amer¬ 
ican squadron, under the command of 
Admiral Howard, commander in chief of 
the Pacific fleet, has been ordered thither 
at once. 
FARM ANI) GARDEN.—The Nation¬ 
al Forward-to-the-Land League has open¬ 
ed its bureau of information in the Labor 
Temple, 14th Sti-eet and Second Avenue. 
A series of lectures will be held at the 
Labor Temple on Wednesday evenings 
throughout the Summer, the lecture, June 
16, being given by John J. Dillon. New 
York State Foods and Markets Commis¬ 
sioner. A meeting will also be held early 
iii July at Cooper Union, at which Dr. 
T. N. Carver, professor of rural econom¬ 
ics at Harvard, will speak. Night class¬ 
es in rural economics and agriculture will 
be organized and held in the Labor Tem¬ 
ple after the 1st of July. Among the 
members of the committee of direction 
are the Rev. Charles F. Taylor, of Green¬ 
wich, Conn.; Dr. P. P. Claxton, Com¬ 
missioner of Education; Dr. E. R. L. 
Gould, president of the City and Subur¬ 
ban Homes Company; Col. E. J. Parker, 
social secretax-y of the Salvation Army; 
Di\ J. C. Day, of the Labor Temple; 
Dr. F. C. Howe. Commissioner of Immi¬ 
gration ; D. J, Meserole, chairman of the 
Brooklyn Unemployment Committee, and 
Mrs. Haviland H. Lund, seci’etaiT of the 
League. 
Seven hundred goats will be turned 
loose in the San Bernardino, Cal., moun¬ 
tains by the Government to keep the fire 
bi-eak stripped of vegetation. The goats 
are the property of a Wilcox. Ariz.. firm 
and are being rented to the Government 
for $20 a month and pasturage. 
A suit which is of statewide import¬ 
ance and involves about two million dol- 
lars was begun, June 14. in the Special 
Sessions Court before Judge Beall, at 
Yonkers, N. Y. It has to do with the 
“net weight” law now in force in this 
State. Armour & Co. are accused by 
John B. Eylers, City Sealer of Weights 
and Measures, of having violated the law 
in selling sides of bacon without the 
net weight marked on them. The Armour 
concern asserts that inasmuch as the ba¬ 
cons were wrapped in papers they are 
not in containers and therefore there has 
been no violation of the law. Armour 
& Co. put out thousands of these pack¬ 
ages during the year and they claim that 
if the court holds that the paper wrap¬ 
per is a “container” it will mean a loss 
of from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 a year 
to them. 
The "Wholesale Seedsmen's League has 
put itself on record as favoring the sale 
of seeds heretofore sold by the bushel as 
a unit of measure, by the hundred pounds 
as a unit of measure, as is done in Cali¬ 
fornia. The adoption of such a unit 
would meet the difficulties of the existing 
legislative enactments of various States 
fixing different weights as the weights 
per bushel of peas, beans, corn and other 
articles. 
Charles E. Douglass, a teaming con- 
ti’actor at Morris Cove, Conn., killed a 
deer recently in his peach orchard, and 
after notifying Fish and Game Commis¬ 
sioner John M. Crampton of the killing 
the commissioner declared that inasmuch 
as the deer was damaging Mr. Douglass’s 
property he was not subject to prosecu¬ 
tion. The deer was skinned and the meat 
distributed to poor families by the game 
commissioner. First Selectman William 
Chidsey of East Haven as well as the 
State game commissioner decided that 
Mr. Douglass was acting within his 
rights under the law. He had previously 
suffered heavy losses through deer. 
Coming Farmers’ Meetings. 
Fourth annual Summer School, under 
auspices of Washington State College, 
Puyallup, Wash.; June 21-.Tuly 30. 
Certified Milk Producers’ Association 
of America, eighth annual convention. At¬ 
lantic City, N. J., June 30-July 1. 
Texas State Florists’ Association, an¬ 
nual convention, Fort Worth. Texas, 
July 6-7. 
International Milk Dealers’ Associa¬ 
tion. San Francisco. July 8-9. 
International Viticulture Congress, 
Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francis¬ 
co, July 12-13. 
National Fertilizer Association, annual 
convention, Hot Springs, Va., July 13-14. 
National Negro Farmers’ Congress, 
San Francisco, July 14-17. 
Ginners’ Association of the Cotton 
Belt, Atlanta. Ga., July 23-24. 
California State Fruit Growers’ Con¬ 
vention, Leland Stanford University, 
July 26-30. 
West Coast Potato Association, Palo 
Alto, Cal., July 30. 
California State Bee Keepers’ Asso¬ 
ciation, San Francisco, Aug. 5-7. 
Society for the Promotion of Agricul¬ 
tural Science, Berkeley, Cal.. Aug. 9-10. 
Highland Horse and Colt Show. High¬ 
land, Md., August 14. 
American Gladiolus Society, Annual 
show, Newport, R. I., August 18. 19, 
1915. 
Warren County Farmers’ Picnic, Bel- 
videre, N. J., August 18. 
New York State Fair, Syracuse, N. Y., 
September 13-18. 
Genesee County Fail 1 , Batavia, N. Y., 
September 21-25. 
Farmers’ National Congress, annual 
meeting, Omaha, Neb., September 2S-Oc- 
tober 1. 
International Dry Farming Congress, 
Denver, Colo., Oct. 4-7. 
Southwestern New York Breeders’ As¬ 
sociation, consignment sale, Randolph, 
N. Y„ Oct. 1. 
Chrysanthemum Society of America, 
annual show, Cleveland, Ohio, November 
10-14, 1915. Special show, San Francis- 
co., Cal. 
Berks Corn Contest, Reading, Pa., 
Dec. 2-4. 
Annual Corn and Gx-ain Show, Tracy, 
Minn., Jan. 3-8, 1916. 
Substitute for Wheat. 
While many of your readers are chas¬ 
ing rainbows looking for a substitute for 
wheat, advise them to substitute oats for 
wheat in the grain rntion, by weight, and 
I think they will be satisfied with re¬ 
sults. We have 350 layers, and when the 
price of wheat soared we substituted oats 
for wheat and received 6,552 eggs in the 
month of April, for which we received 
$136.50. I might also mention that we 
sold 50 White Leghorn broilers at six 
weeks of age, weighing 12 ounces, for 40 
cents each that cost us six cents each, 
including cost of eggs, loss, incubation, 
feed, etc. Have you any Yankees that 
can surpass it? They were sold May 
1st. 
While you folks up there think you 
are paying a high price for feed, I might 
add that our first year here three years 
ago we paid $45 per ton for poor western 
upland hay. Better stay where you are 
and be thankful for a splendid market 
and, yes, even the 35-cent dollar. I wish 
I was there. c. furman smith. 
North Cai’olina. 
Lice on Young Turkeys. 
What will destroy lice on young tur¬ 
keys from three to four days old? 
New York. m. p. 
Rub a little grease, like lard or vase¬ 
line, into the feathers on top of the head 
and neck, about, the vent, and beneath 
the wings of the poults, and treat the 
mother lien or turkey with some lice 
powder, like Persian insect powder. A 
little grease under the mother’s wings 
will also help to keep down the vermin. 
But little is needed for the poults; per¬ 
haps a quantity twice the size of a 
grain of corn for each. m. b. d. 
Loss of Feathers. 
All our cockerels have the feathers off 
theirs necks from the head down half 
way of the neck. Skin is red as fire and 
swollen. I have used sulphur and lard 
but it does not seem to do any good. Let 
me know the cause and how to cure it. 
Chickens and cockerels have a good house 
which is kept clean and well disinfected. 
Delaware. j. k. 
This loss of feathers is probably due 
to the work of the depluming mite; a 
small mite which burrows into the skin 
at the base of the feathers and by its 
irritation and the consequent inflamma¬ 
tion of the skin causes the appearance 
that you describe. Thorough rubbing in 
of some grease, like lard and sulphur, 
will ordinarily kill the mites, and the 
feathei’s will be replaced in time. 
M. B. D. 
Strength of Permanganate of Potash. 
IIow sti’ong is permanganate of potash 
solution in drinking water for chicks, 
also how strong solution to dip heads 
when eyes are discharging from cold? 
New Jersey. h. ii. d. 
The strength of permanganate solution 
recommended by the Maine Experiment 
Station is obtained by dissolving as much 
of the crystals as cold water will take 
up, for a stock solution. One to two 
teaspoonfuls of this stock solution are 
added to each 10 quarts of drinking 
water given the fowls, and no other 
water is given. This is for healtliy fowls, 
and is assumed to act as a preventive of 
intestinal ti’oubles. Such weak solutions 
do not disinfect the water, but simply 
check the growth of disease-producing 
germs in it and are supposed to have the 
same effect in the intestinal tracts of the 
fowls drinking the water. The writer 
confesses to small faith in such solutions, 
even though they are authoritatively re¬ 
commended. It has never been found 
possible to exert any marked disinfect¬ 
ant action within the human intestinal 
tract with even stronger disinfectants 
and it is certainly open to question 
whether a very weak solution of per¬ 
manganate can have any material influ¬ 
ence upon the contents of a fowl’s di¬ 
gestive organs. As a dip for the heads 
of fowls showing evidences of colds, the 
writer would add a small teaspoonful of 
the crystals to a quart of watei\ 
M. B. D. 
The Truth About Squabs. 
I was much pleased to note the article 
on raising pigeons on page 490, because 
heretofore The R. N.-Y. has been, to put 
it mildly, very consei-vative on the sub¬ 
ject of squab breeding. It is a good busi¬ 
ness, pleasant, profitable and particu¬ 
larly adapted to women. 
Now if Mrs. Jackson will kindly show 
some of us old hands how she feeds a pair 
of breeders for 60 cents per year, I, for 
one, will rise up and call her' blessed. I 
have a large plant which pays wages and 
dividends. Feed is bought by the ton, 
and for cash, wherever the best value can 
be obtained. I believe that my feed is 
purchased, on the whole, at a much lower 
price than it can be seeux-ed by a small 
bi’eedex*. For 1914 the cost of feeding in 
my plant was $1,357 per pair, and it will 
surely be $1.40 this year. 
The market prices given in the article 
are those that prevail for less than three 
months of the year. During the x-emaiu- 
ing time prices are much lower, mate- 
rially reducing the average. It is seldom 
that both squabs in the nest weigh alike, 
there being usually two ounces difference 
in their weight, therefore it is impossible 
to have a flock of breeders that produce a 
uniform grade of output, and Homers 
that will produce 10-pound squabs are 
very few and far between. A squab plant 
of Ilomers that will average six pairs of 
marketable squabs per year to each pair 
of breeders, grading eight and nine 
pounds, is a very good plant, and is 
profitable, but this fact added to the error 
in the cost of feeding above noted consid¬ 
erably reduces Mrs. Jackson’s estimate of 
profits. 
There is a class of llomei’s bred for 
points called Show Homers, where $3 per 
pair or more may be obtained for good 
birds, but the demand is very limited and 
hard to find. First-class utility Homers 
for squab breeding are for sale by the 
thousand for $1 to $1.50 per pair, and 
often for less. The supply exceeds the 
demand so the beginner with Homers 
should not bank too much upon the sale 
of breeders. 
I strongly doubt that more than one 
pair of bi’eeders in a thousand ever pro¬ 
duce 12 pairs of marketable squabs in a 
year, and where this has happened I do 
not believe that this rate of pi’oduction 
was ever continued for more than a year. 
I.am not “knocking” the squab business; 
rather, I am a booster, for it has been 
my vocation for many years and the more 
thei’e are in the business the better, be¬ 
cause the demand for squabs will always 
exceed the supply. It seems to me, how¬ 
ever, that there are a number of state¬ 
ments in Mrs. Jackson’s article that are 
a trifle too optimistic and I have mention¬ 
ed two or three to possibly prevent dis¬ 
appointment to some beginner. A. s. 
Connecticut. 
What to Do for Hen Lice. 
It is perfectly feasible for a poultry- 
man not to be bothered about hen lice at 
all. The press bulletin from the Storrs 
Experiment Station gives their treat¬ 
ment, which has been very successful. 
A salve or ointment is made by mixing 
equal parts of 50 per cent, mercurial 
ointment with vaseline. Mix it by stir¬ 
ring while cold, don’t heat it. An amount 
of this* mixture as large as a kernel of 
coni is spread around the vent and 
rubbed down into the skin so that the hen 
cannot get any of it off with her beak 
as it is a poison. Two or three applica¬ 
tions a year of this ointment will keep 
a hen practically free from lice. But 
it must not be put on hens that are run¬ 
ning with little chicles. It cost me sev¬ 
eral broods to learn that fact. The 
fumes from the ointment when warmed 
by the heat of the hen’s body, will poison 
the chicks. Lice detest this ointment. 
The “nits” are always fastened to the 
feathers immediately below the vent. It 
is rather difficult to apply the ointment 
to the feathers where the nits ai*e, but 
any kind of grease will kill them. I 
usually take a tin oiler and fill it with 
kerosene and drop a drop of oil on each 
bunch of nits. 
To keep the roosts and nests free from 
lice, I have found nothing better than 
grease of any kind. I have used beef 
tallow, mutton tallow, pork fat, and any 
one answers. Kerosene oil is practically 
useless unless frequently applied, because 
it evaporates so quickly. But any of 
the fats named painted on the roosts 
while hot, will keep lice away for a year 
at least. Examining my roosts that were 
greased more than a year ago, I was un¬ 
able to find a single louse on any of them. 
I also stvab the corners of the nests with 
the hot grease. If hens and roosts are 
allowed to get lousy, then the droppings 
boards become the great bi’eediug place 
for lice. Every joint between the boards 
will be loaded with them. Some careful 
poultrymen use droppings boards in Win¬ 
ter to prevent down drafts and keep the 
hens warmer, but on the advent of warm 
weather take the droppings boax-ds away. 
This I think is a very good practice. 
Thei’e are two different kinds of hen lice 
on fowls. The long-bodied, yellow 
“shaft” louse, which remains on the shaft 
of the feathers, and eats the little scales 
on the feather shafts, does very little 
harm, but I think it is the pai-ent of the 
gray head louse that we find on little 
chicks, because they are identical in 
shape and about the same size. But the 
louse that is usually found near the vent, 
is round-bodied, gray-colored when emp¬ 
ty, but red when filled with blood, and 
leaves the hen just befoi’e daylight and 
hides under the roosts and in cracks and 
crevices. This is the blood suekei’, that 
will sometimes actually kill a setting hen. 
Whether this is the parent of the lit¬ 
tle ixiites that in hot weather infest every 
part of a hen house, I do not know. Why 
does not some scientific investigator ex¬ 
amine into the facts? Surely the sub¬ 
ject is of enough importance to warrant 
the necessary effort and expenditure. 
GEO. A. COSGROVE. 
One of the most elaborate attempts to 
consider the egg may be found in Bulle¬ 
tin 353, from the College of Agriculture 
at Ithaca, N. Y. Beginning with an il¬ 
lustration of the egg-laying organs of the 
hen, and of the structure of a normal 
egg, the conditions affecting the quality 
of eggs, both before and after laying, are 
treated at length. Several excellent full- 
page colored plates show the appearance 
of market eggs before the grader’s candle 
and after they are broken into a saucer. 
The effects of such external conditions 
as heat, cold, very dry and very moist 
atmospheres, and of other common fac¬ 
tors which affect eggs to their detriment 
are both described and illustrated. Dif¬ 
ferent methods of pi’eserving eggs are 
given, and, finally, a considerable num¬ 
ber of suggestions to producers, dealers, 
and consumers are given; these with a 
view to improving the quality of market 
eggs and avoidance of waste. While 
this bulletin will interest consumers, it is 
of special value to those producers who 
wish to possess something more than or¬ 
dinary knowledge of their chief product; 
it is free to residents of New York State. 
m. b. n. 
