i Jury, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 99 
PICKLE FOR CURING HAMS OR BACON. 
‘We following pickle has been tried in many ways in large factories and small, 
zas well as in the household, and can be relied upon to give perfect results. It 
as, of course, assumed that the hams or bacon are sweet when put into the 
pickle: 50 Jb. salt, 5 Ib. cane sugar, 5 lb. pure saltpetre, and 5 Ib. food 
antiseptic. Make this up to 20 gallons, and boil and skim till clear. The 
‘flavour may be made more piquant by adding some juniper berries, about 1 Ib., 
and 1 |b. coriander seeds. These may be put ina Savane and allowed to float 
about in the pickle. 
THE AMERICAN WHEAT CROP. 
THERE is every reason to suppose that the wheat crop of the United States this 
season will be one of the peti et grown for some years. American authorities 
admit that even the low condition of winter wheat returned by the Department 
of Agriculture for lst April (77:9 per cent. of a full crop condition) was based 
-on a state of affairs which was not as bad as it became after the reports were 
collected. Moreover, the report does not take account of the area ploughed up, 
which is very large. In Kansas, for example, the State Board of Agriculture 
puts the area ploughed up at 26 per cent. of a crop of 5,500,000 acres, 
and estimates the remainder at only 68 per cent. of a full crop. Again, a 
number of reports from Illinois are to the effect that only one-fourth to one- 
half of an average crop is expected, and one writer says that the area ploughed up 
wlll be fully 75 per cent. of the total sown. Even the Cincinnati Price 
Current, which usually takes a sanguine view of crop prospects, says that its 
correspondence “reflects a condition of affairs with regard to the wheat fields 
‘which is unmistakable in seriousness of injury and wide extent of damage. As 
for spring wheat, it is enough to state that sowing started a month later than 
usual—a very serious disadvantage, considering the shortness of the season of 
growth. Hardly any sowing was done before the middle of April.” 
ANOTHER METHOD OF TANNING SKINS. 
We haye on former occasions given directions for tanning kangaroo, bear, 
opossum, and other skins, but, for the benefit of those who have not had an 
opportunity of seeing those recipes, we give what is said to be a good one, com-. 
municated by a subscriber to the Australian Farm and Home. The season for 
furred skins is now coming on, and doubtless many will be glad to know of a 
cheap and effective method of preserving them. 
Remove the flesh and fat, then wash the skin in solution of sal soda and 
water. Take 4 oz. pulverised alum, 8 oz. salt, 1 quart new milk to 4 gallons 
salt water, 1 pint of prepared starch; stir well, and then put in your fur skins, 
and air them often by hanging them over a stick laid across your tan tub, 
so they will drain the liquor back into the tub; handle occasionally until they 
have been in the solution a day or two. Then remove the skins, and add to 
your liquor a half-teaspoonful of sulphuric acid. Stir this into your liquor 
well. Put the skins back, and steam them well for about one hour; then take 
the skins out, and wring and rinse off in soft luke-warm water, and hang them 
up in a cool place; and when they begin to get white, work and stretch them 
till they are dry. Hides of large animals should remain in the solution longer. 
FELLING TIMBER DURING THE WANING MOON. 
‘Tuts has been generally regarded asan old-world superstition withouta basis of fact. 
In a late paper on “ Modern Gold-mining in the Darien,” Republic of Columbia, 
§.A., presented to the American Institute of Mining Wngineers, Mr. Ernest R. 
Woakes, of Panama, has some notes on this head. He says that the country is 
completely covered with forests; but not 50 per cent. of the trees are fit for 
lumber, and about 25 per cent. are’not even good for firewood. ‘‘ Unless all 
timber is felled in the waning moon,” says Mr. Woakes, “it will commence to rot 
