AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1862, 11 February 1880, Page 3

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

MB HTTMBBB OP EGOS A HEN MAT HAT. The ovarium of a hen is believed to contain 600 ovules or eggs, and a hen cannot compass more than that number of eggs in her lifetime —particularly if she is killed before she gets through with her contract. It takes about nine years for a hen to hand over for domestic use the 600 eggs she starts business with, and she carries out her contract, aa far as can be ascertained, as under. Hens are naturally reticent, and except when they have laid an egg they say little about their own concerns :—First year after birth, 16 to 20 ; second, 100 to 120 ; third, 120 to 135 ; fourth, 100 to 115 5 fifth, 60 to 80; sixth, 50 to 60 ; seventh, 35 to 40 ; eighth, 15 to 30; ninth, 1 to 10. After the fourth or fifth year it does not pay to keep a hen [for laying, and as it would bo inconvenient and expensive to use a circular saw for carving her, she will hardly do for the table after that »ge. Remember that horses and cattle, young and old, kept in stables and not allowed full liberty during the day, should bo regularly cleaned. In this the brush must be the principal cleansing instrument. The curry comb is of no value except to loosen the scurf and dust. In using it should be laid flat, and worked lightly in circles rather than forward and back. The scurf once loosened, brush with a quick stroke, cleaning the bristles by passing them lightly over the teeth of the curry comb between strokes. To clean an animal quickly, perfectly, and without giving it pain is a fine art that should be studied more than it is.

It is not good luck that makes good crops, but it is good wort. Some farmers always have good crops, good stock, and get good prices. It is because whatever they put their band to they do well. They have clean fields, good fences, and do good ploughing, cultivating and seeding. They farm with brains as well as hands. If other farmers would imitate their examples, they would have better crops. Success does not depend so much upon good luck as it does upon good work.—“ Chautauqua Farmer.” The editor of the “ Estate Roll,” in a vigorous letter, points out how much money is wasted on food yielding but little nutriment,and how large a proportion of foreigners’ nrofit might be reduced by an altered plan of -iba '.e production. To briefly sum up the advice given in this letter we should say—Eat brown broad instead of white; when the family is large grind your own wheat in a band mill; eat more oatmeal; eat more beans, pease, artichoke, maize, and rice ; eat more fish and lees meat; and let farmers produce more butter and cheese, more honey, more poultry, more vegetables than they now do. From another source we learn that for foreign onions alone England pays yearly close «n half a million sterling.