THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, April 3, 1830. 
15 
, Extract of letter addressed to my solicitors by the Crystal 
Palace Company’s legal advisers. “ And we trust that Mr. 
Horry will, on reconsideration, abandon Iris intention of bringing 
au action for so trifling a matter, and which can only result in 
the recovery of nominal damages; and in this expectation, &c” 
Thus “Moderation” gave a version of his own, evidently to 
bring forward a point also, all his own, “your readers will judge 
with what motives.” I am sorry to trouble you thus far upon 
this subject, but it is difficult to understand how facts can be 
so perverted.—W. J. IIoery, Islington. 
OUR LARGE BRONZE TURKEYS — HOW WE 
RAISE THEM. 
Our first object is to secure large, strong and well-formed 
birds; we prefer a male that has seen two winters, and of not 
less than 30 lbs. 'weight—we bred from one last season weighing 
39 lbs. We also 'prefer old hens; true the young hens lay 
earlier, but their young are. not so strong or as large as from 
old hens. Hens of from fifteen to twenty pounds aro to be 
preferred. As the time of laying approaches, we turn a few 
ilour-barrels on the side, with one head out; in these we make 
a nest with leaves, and a few tobacco-stems (as lice do not im¬ 
prove Turkeys), cover the barrel with a few boughs—put into 
each nest one or two hen’s eggs—and leave the Turkeys to de- 
; posit theirs, which they will generally do—we remove the eggs 
[ each day until the Turkey inclines to sit, then place twenty eggs 
in the nest, drive two stakes at the mouth of the barrel, and close 
it at night with a piece of lattice work, made of laths, to prevent 
the entrance of night-walkers. The first day after hatching we 
do not feed the young, or allow the mother to leave the nest 
the first day. On the second day, instead of cooping the mother, 
we coop the young in a pen made by nailing on to four pieces 
of posts three by three and eighteen inches long, boards of 
from fourteen to sixteen feet long. This gives a pen from 
fourteen to sixteen feet square, and eighteen inches high, that 
can be easily moved, as it should be, as often as once in four or 
five days, especially in warm weather, or the Turkeys will become 
sickly. 
For the first week we feed mostly with boiled eggs chopped 
fine enough for the poults to swallow easily, and with fish-worms 
cut or broken into small pieces—the latter give more strength, 
and cause them to grow faster than any other food we have 
given when young. After the first week we feed on curd made by 
pouring boiling water on the bonney-clabber, [sour milk,] 
turning off the whey. We also feed with corn meal ground 
very coarse, and wet with thick, sour milk, to which we add a 
little coarse sand to prevent crop bake, with which many young 
Turkeys die when fed on meal. As soon as they are able to fly 
over their pen, we allow them to range with the mother in good 
weather, feeding them a little, morning and evening, if insects 
aro not plenty—we think buckwheat, the best grain to feed with 
after they aro of sufficient size to eat it, as it gives larger size 
to the Turkeys ; but grasshoppers are better, and when they are 
plentiful no other food is necessary. In stormy weather when 
the Turkeys arc small we drive them into our shed, or barn- 
cellar, where they are sheltered from the cold, the floor being 
covered with fine litter—this we think better than a coop, 
as it gives the young more room, and they are less likely to get 
crushed by the foot of the mother—we dislike cooping Turkeys 
with young any way. If any get chilled we give them warmth 
in a basket by the stove, covered with cotton, and give them a 
fish-worm or two, and in an hour they are smart again. We 
once tried pepper on two patients, but as both died within five 
minutes after, we concluded the Thomsonian system was not 
good for Turkeys, and have not tried it since. By judicious 
crossing with other flocks, and the above treatment, our Turkeys 
have remained healthy, and have never had gapes or any other 
diseases .—(American Country Gentleman .) 
BEES AND THOSE WHO HAVE WRITTEN 
ABOUT THEM. 
(Continued from page 389, Vol. XXIII.) 
Bees, probably, are natives of this island, for there is no time 
of which we have a record in which their honey was not here 
abundantly—so abundantly as to form the basis of their chief 
inspiring beverages,—mead and metheglin. 
Whether in those Pruidical times bees were merely wild, or 
whether they were so far domesticated as to be collected in hives 
around the British huts, we Jiave no information. If they were 
not so domesticated by the Britons, this would soon be accom¬ 
plished by their Roman conquerors, and it is quite certain that 
their Anglo-Saxon successors were bee-masters. 
So generally were bees kept by them, that by the laws of King 
Ina, it was ordered that every “ ten hides of land shall furnish 
ten vessels of honey,” as rent to their lord.— (Wilkin's Leges 
Saxonicee, 25.) Honey was thus in request because from it was 
formed their most! usual inebriating drinks. Pigment was a 
sweet, odoriferous liquor, made of honey, wine, and spices ; moral 
was made of honey, and the juice of mulberries; hut mead and 
metheglin were honey and water fermented, and so potent that 
the monks, always prone to potations as well as prayers, had 
their quaffings restricted by the rules of the founders of their 
monasteries,—rules not unfrequently broken or they are much 
belibelled. Thus, King Ethelwold allowed the monks of his 
monastery, on their festivals, at dinner a sextarium of mead be¬ 
tween six, and the same quantity at supper between twelve of the 
brethren.— (Turner's Anglo-Saxons, iii., 38.) 
As to how bees were managed in those days we have no in¬ 
formation, for we have no writer who dwells upon this subject, 
until we come to the year 1539. In that year. Sir Anthony 
Eitzherbert, of whom a memoir will be found in our sixth volume, 
page 121, published his “ Boko of Husbandry,” and in it is a 
pithy chapter of which the following is a literal copy :— 
“ Of bees is lyttell charge, but good attendaunce at the tyme 
that they shall cast the swarme, it is conuenient, that the hyue 
be set in a garden, or an orchyarde, where as they may be kepte 
from the northe wynde, and the moutlie of the hyue towarde the 
sonne. And in June and July, they do most eommonlye caste, 
and they wolde liaue some lowe trees nyghe vnto them before the 
hyue that the swarme maye lyglit vpon, and whan the swarme is 
knytte, take a hyue, and splente it within with three or foure 
splentes, that the bees maye knytte their combes thereto, and 
annoynte the splentes, and the sydes of the hyue, with a lyttell 
honye. And if thou liaue no honye, take swete creame, and than 
set a stole or a forme nyghe vnto the swarme, and laye a elene 
washen shete there vpon the stole, and thanne holde the smallc ende 
of the hyue downewarde, and shake the bees in to the hyue, and 
shortely sette it vppon the stole, and turne vppe the corners of the 
shete ouer the hyue, and to leue one place open, that the bees 
may come in and out: but thou may st not fight nor strvue with 
theym for noo cause, and to laye nettyls vppon the bowe?, where 
as they were knytte, to dryue them from that place, and too 
watche them all that daye, that they go not away, and at nyght, 
whan al be goone vp into the hyue, take it away, and set it where 
it shall stande, and take awaye thy shete, and liaue claye tempered 
to laye aboute it vppon the horde or stone, where it shall stande, 
that noo wynde comme in, but the horde is better and warmer. 
And to leaue an hole open on the south syde, of three inches 
brode, and an inche of lieyghto, for the bees to conic in and out. 
And than to make a couerynge of wheate Btrawe or rye strawe, to 
couer and house the hyue about, and set the hyue two fote or 
more from the erthe vpon stakes, soo that a mouse can not come 
to it, and also neyther beastes nor swyne. And if a swarme be 
caste late in the yere, they wolde be fedde with honnye in 
wynter, and layde vppon a tliynne narowe horde, or a thynne 
sclatte or leade, put it into the hyue, and an other thynne borde 
wolde be set before euery liyues mouthe, that no wynde come in, 
and to have foure or fyue lyttell nyckes made on the nether syde, 
that a bee maye comme out, or go in, and so fastened, that the 
wynde blowe it not downe, and to take it vp whan he wyll. And 
that hyue that is fedde, to stoppe the mouthe cleane, that other 
bees come not in, for if they doo, they wyll fyglite, and ley 11 eche 
other. And beware, that noo waspes come in to the hyue, for 
they wyll kyl the bees, and cate the honny. And also there is a 
bee called a drone, and she is greatter than another bee, and they 
wyll eate the honny, and gather nothynge; and therefore they 
wolde be kylde, and it is a sayenge, that she hath loste her 
stynge, and than she wyl not labour as the other do.”— G. 
(To he continued.) 
BEES: THEIR LARYM1 SPINNING COCOONS. 
Acting on the principle that “ seeing is believing,” I have 
never doubted the fact that cocoons were spun by the lame of 
the bee. I now learn from Mr. Wighton in last week’s Cottage 
Gardener that the lame are “ too tightly fixed in their cells to 
turn round and spin cocoons,” and, of course, forthwith dis- 
