June 26.] 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
197 
come in about September, the lettuce will be very valuable ; 
better food for the case, as part diet, cannot be. We should 
advise all allotment men to have a litter of pigs in the early 
autumn; the pigs weaned and off by the end of October; 
the sow will make capital bacon by the middle of February. 
There is always plenty of garbage stuff from allotments or 
cottage gardens, if well farmed, through September and 
October; and an extra pig or tw T o might be obtained, if 
cheap, in the end of August, and sold again, if necessary, as 
soon as the meat runs short; a cottager may thus put an 
j extra pound in his pocket. 
The Manure Hear.— There is more room for improve¬ 
ment, as connected with this, than in anything else. Unless 
this is well husbanded, it is vain to plan schemes of crop¬ 
ping ; it is not science that is wanted so much as a “ stitch 
in time,” a little labour and attention. Ordinary soil is, in 
i our opinion, all that the cottager wants ; the heap covered 
! with this, nowand then, he scarcely needs any other fixer of 
the ammonia, &c. We would have him fix a day, say the 
j last Saturday in every month, on which to apply a coating 
! of soil all over, first rough levelling it, and every opportunity 
j should be seized to add coarse herbage to the pulpy mass. 
1 —R. Errington. 
APIARIAN’S CALENDAR— July. 
By J. H. Payne , Esq., Author of “ The Bee-keeper's Guide.' 
Swarming.— Swarming, generally, has been unusually late 
this season, owing chiefly to the long cold spring; the only 
: genial day, and such an one as bees choose for that purpose, 
i was the 22nd of May: on that day I heard of several 
swarms, but I have scarcely heard of one in this neighbour¬ 
hood since, although the bees have been clustering at the 
entrances of their hives for the last fortnight. It must be 
a very peculiar kind of day to induce a first swarm to 
emigrate; it must be a balmy still day, and something 
besides that I cannot discover, for there may be several days 
to all appearance alike, and upon one of these days every 
body’s bees shall swarm, whilst not another swarm perhaps 
shall be heard of on any other day for some time. This late 
swarming will he a sad disappointment to those who are 
commencing bee-keeping this summer (who, indeed, are not 
a few) ; and I congratulate each one of them, for they will 
find in the management and observation of their bees a 
I constant and increasing source of interest and amusement. 
Premature Swarms, or the whole population of a hive 
leaving it, and alighting at a distance from it, in the usual 
mannerthis generally happens early in May, and I have 
heard of more of it this spring than usual; on the above- 
mentioned 22nd of May, I heard of several: the best plan 
that can be adopted in these cases is to unite the bees to 
another stock, if they should not join one of themselves; 
for if put into a hive they generally leave it or die. The 
cause usually arises from poverty, or the old age of the 
queen. 
Removing Stocks from Old Hives. — Notwithstanding 
what I have already said at page 54 of the present volume, 
I am still applied to by many persons, who have purchased 
stocks either in the autumn or spring, in common straw 
hives, and who are very anxious to remove them into what 
is better suited to their idea of a “ handsome looking bee¬ 
hive now to all these applications, I can only say, as I 
have said already, “ let the bees remain in their old hive; 
let them swarm, and put the swarm into the new one. 
New Ventilator. —I would recommend all the readers of 
The Cottage Gardener that are bee keepers, and that are 
going to the Great Exhibition (and who is not?), to inspect, 
very closely, Mr. Kitchener’s “ventilated passage,” as he calls 
it (Class III. No. 5.), and two glasses of honey-comb, of the 
very finest quality, obtained by its means. It is a very 
ingenious invention, and most effectual in accomplishing 
the end it is intended to answer, as the glasses of honey 
i which accompany it fully prove. In all probability a figure 
1 and description of it will be given in the pages of The 
Cottage Gardener before next season. I have one of 
them, kindly presented to me hy Mr. Kitchener, which I 
shall use as soon as the weather permits and my bees require 
room, and I shall then be able to speak of its utility from 
my own experience. 
Nadir, or under-hiving. — I would very earnestly recom¬ 
mend all persons who are desirous of obtaining fine honey 
from their bees to avoid, even upon the most pressing 
emergency, this—the very worst of all bad management; for 
a stock of bees “ nadir-hived,” becomes at once almost use¬ 
less : they have so much room that they will not swarm, and 
honey and brood are so mixed up in the hive, that its con¬ 
tents are almost valueless. I well remember undertaking a 
journey, about fifty years ago, to see an extensive apiary 
managed on this principle; the bees were in octagon boxes, 
each holding from thirty to forty pounds. The method 
pursued was to have a swarm in one of these boxes,—the 
next year to place a similar box beneath it, and the third 
year to place another box beneath the two already filled; 
and, in the autumn of this year, to take the upper box, which 
was three years old, the combs of which had been the 
receptacles for brood and pollen (much of the latter remain¬ 
ing in them) for three seasons, and which were in colour 
approaching to blackness; whereas the honey-comb We now 
obtain from the tops of the hives is as white, and almost as 
transparent, as the glass wffiich contains it. This is certainly 
a considerable step in advance, but there remains, notwith¬ 
standing, much room for further improvement, for I fully 
agree in the opinion of an aparian friend who resides in my 
own neighbourhood, that the culture of the honey-bee is 
still quite in its infancy. 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE HEN-YARD, &c. 
ON COCHIN-CHINA FOWLS. 
JULY. 
I am induced to speak on the subject of Cochin-China 
fowls, no less by the excellence of the kind, than by the 
extreme difficulty which I have myself experienced in pro¬ 
curing them pure. The descriptions of them to be met with 
in books upon poultry, however good as a general outline, I 
have found insufficient to direct the choice of any person 
unacquainted with their peculiarities, as they are not suffi¬ 
ciently minute. When the queen’s Cochin - China fowls 
began to be talked of, I became anxious to buy some of the 
same kind. Being fond of fowls, I had tried the Spanish and 
Malay, and had found them (especially the former) come 
short of the character often given them for laying and other 
good qualities. When, therefore, I heard of the Cochin- 
China, I determined to have some, and my first attempt 
towards attaining this end, was to apply at Mr. Herring’s 
establishment, in the New Road, to ask if he could procure 
me some eggs. I found that Mr. Herring did not deal in 
fowls, and he told me I should find very great difficulty in 
getting the sort pure. The difficulty which I have found, 
and the disappointments which I have met with, have often 
recalled his words to my memory. I bought eggs at various 
prices, from a shilling upwards, and fowls at a price which 
should have procured me the right sort; but all my early 
adventures ended alike—in disappointment. 
One brood especially I cannot help particularizing, it 
was so very diversified; I wrote to a dealer in Leadenha.il 
Market, whose name I had heard as one of celebrity, and 
desired him to save me a sitting of Cochin-China eggs, 
which I would fetch myself from his place at Chelsea, that 
being more convenient for me than the city. Of these eggs, 
nine in number, the hen broke two; the remaining seven 
produced five chicks. I considered this a good number, 
according to the usual average, and was well contented until 
time (and a very short time too) developed the chicks, and dis¬ 
persed all my unfounded satisfaction. Two of the chickens 
were quite common cocks, with as much tail as usually falls 
to the share of a barn-door fowl; two were pretty good 
half-Malay chickens, one of which might, probably, have 
had a cross of tlio Cochin-China; the fifth more nearly 
resembled the true sort, she was fluffy in the hinder quar¬ 
ters, and had some other Cochin-China points about her, 
but she had a Dorking toe, and a tuft on her head. This 
brood formed one among many similar mischances, until, at 
length, piqued by repeated disappointments, I made a point 
of seeing all the Cochin-China fowls that i could hear of. 
After becoming well acquainted with the characteristics of 
the breed, I possessed myself of a few nice birds, and still 
continued the investigation, during which I, of course, saw 
a great number of good, bad, and mediocre specimens. 
