GLEANINGS.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 342, 27 July 1878, Page 2

GLEANINGS.

(From the Canterbury Times'). According to a Prairie Fanner correspondent, extracted or strained honey, boiled gently and skimmed till it sends np no more scum, will keep fresh and clear without candying, and may be safely consumed, oven by those persons who cannot eat new honey without injurious effects. The necessity for an abundant supply of pure ail for cows, is shown by the following calculation. A cow consuming six pounds of carbon in its daily food, for respiratory purposes, would require 956 cubic feet of atmospheric air. Spain has more sheep in proportion to her population, than any country in Europe. Next comes England, then Denmark, Ronmania, and Hungary. Saxony, Belgium, and Switzerland have the least. Sprigs of tansy mixed with hay, or broken np with oats, are recommended to cure hots in horses. Should the horse decline to eat the herb, it may be forced to drink the tea made from it. Mr Pollard, a farmer near Penzance, bad an extraordinary egg laid by one of bis geese, as follows:—The egg was Ji inches long, ami 9 in circumference; he cracked the shell, and found that it contained two yolks, and a perfect egg inside that again, of ordinary size. He has put the egg under a goose to hatch.

TLoomiiistcr, on I'crn 3 ? ci ewe gave birth to two lambs. A few days after, her supply of milk stopped, and on March 21 she gave birth to another lamb. —Exeter Gaseite.

Mr M £ Adam, a Scotch farmer, who emigrated to America years ago, has afforded fair trials to test the value of shorthorns and Ayrshires as milkers. He kept 6-1 of each breed on exactly the same condition, both herds being firstclass of their respective breeds,- and with the following results for the month of June last: Ayrshire, 61 cows—6s,3Bolbs of milk ; cheese, 612-llbs; ratio, 10.17; daily average, of milk per cow, 331b ; cheese, b. Shorthorns, 61 cows—--52,6801’0s milk ;■ cheese, 47971bs ; ratio, 10.98; daily average of milk per cow; 271b; cheese, 2.7-15lb. An experienced farmer says :—“ How strangely we overlook the value of the liquid excrement of our animals. The cow, under ordinary feeding, furnishes in a y-ar twenty thousand pounds of solid excrement, and about eight thousand pomuls of liquid. The comparative money value of the two is but slightly in favour of the solid. This statement has been verified as truth, over and over again.”

If the'milk is sold, all the mineral and nitrogenous constitnenfs of the milk are lost to the soil, except the indigestible and nnassimilated portions of the cow's food, together with the constant waste of her system, and this return of food to the soil does not exceed one-third of the food eaten by a vigorous and large yielding cow. Hence, two-thirds of what the cow consumes is carried off and lost.. The man who makes wheat a leading crop, by studying to lessen the cost of production, by experience in the best methods of preparing the soil, the use of manure, and the cultivation of the crop, can raise wheat cheaper than his neighbours, and though selling it at the same price, will realise a profit, when they barely escape a loss.