GLEANINGS.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 315, 24 April 1878, Page 4

GLEANINGS.

f From the Canterbury Times. As giving a good idea of the result o! the last harvest in England, it may be mentioned that out of 409 reports on the wheat crop from farmers in different countries, only six recorded yields above the average, 84 were average yields, and 369 were below the average. The Yankee’s motto in respect ofsupplying the “Britisher” with fresh animal food is still “ Onward !” The American Live Stock Journal advises that as the shipping trade in beef and mutton is now well established, attention should be turned to supplying England with dead poultry and eggs, in producing which, it is observed, the United States can compete successfully with Franco. The following method is practised among the best butter-makers of England for hardening or rendering butter firm and solid daring the hot weather : Carbonate of soda and alum are used for the purpose, made into a powder. For 20lbs of butter one teaspoonful of carbonate of soda and one teaspoonful of powdered alum are mingled together at the time of churning, and put into the cream. The effect of this powder is to make the butter come firm and solid, and to give it a clean sweet flavour. It docs not enter into the butter, but its action is upon the cream, and it passes off’with the buttermilk. The ingredients of the powder should not be mingled together until required to be used, or at the time the cream is in the churn ready for churning. A farm hand for harvesting is paid in Central Italy threepence halfpenny a day, and considers himself a lucky man to find employment at that rate. The wheat crop just gathered in the United States is stated to*' be the largest ever obtained in that country. The object of the farmer should be to raise, from a given extent of laud, the largest quantity of the most valuable produce at the least cost, the shortest period of time, and with the least permanent injury to the soil. A correspondent writes as follows : A farmer named Mr William M‘Crackcn, of Campbellficld owns a cow which gave the astonishing quantity of twenty-four quarts of milk in one milking, two hours after it had calved. This is something wonderful, and to own a few of such cows ■would be invaluable, especially at the present price of milk.— Leader.