GLEANINGS.

Waikato Times, Volume XV, Issue 1293, 12 October 1880, Page 3

GLEANINGS.

There is no crop so valuable for the renovation of partly exhausted grain lands as clover. As a rule, trees in a warm climate need much more pruning than they do in a cold one. Potatoes raised on land heavily dressed with manure, saturated with urine, or containing a large quantity of fixed ammonia, will certainly be scabby. It is said that au infallible cure for gapes in chickens is to give them as much kerosene oil as they can swallow at one dose. The official statistics of Michigan report the area in orchards 1879 as 229,202 acres in apples, and 10,771 in peaches. A second growth of clover ploughed in with the roots of the strong-growing plant will afford nearly as much fertility to the soil as would the first, and the hay crop and manure gained. A teaspoonful of new warm milk turned down the throat will cure chickens of gapes, dislodging the worms, unless they have eaten through. A" New Harashire fanner, who has raised corn successfully for twenty years, tells a Portsmouth Weekly that he gets two-tbirds less from hills than from drills 3 to 3i feet apart and plants 3 inches distant in the row. An English farmer, ten times previously convicted of cruelty, went away from home a while ago, leaving his cows a whole week without milking, and these poor animals and all the other stock wholly without food. He was fined £2 and costs and ordered to prison for four months. Half a cup of pure haTd-wood ashes 1 finely sifted and mixed with the mash is recommended by a correspondent of the Rural New Yorker as a sure cure for worms in horses — repeating the dose after a day or two, if necessary. The demand for superphosphates has steadily increased in Germany, and especially for those rich in nitrogen, rather than for plain superphosphates containingno nitrogen, and while at first there was a larger consumption of bone meal superphosphate, latWly the cuse is rever&ed, and bone raeal treated with acid is in greater demand, becnuse, doubtless of its quicker action. Mr Coilinson Hall, near Brentwood, j England, who, on thirteen farma of 200 acres each, keeps a dairy for supplyingmilk to the London market, h.is found it worth while to incur the expense of providing facilities for keeping running crater constantly before his cows in stable. A notable example of the profits of sheep husbandry, under good management, is the record of a Kentucky flock, of Messrs E. and C. Brown, of fifteen Cotswold ewes, costing 158 dols in 1866. In ton years, selling wool and male lambs annually, they had realized from wool and sheep 4800 dol«, retaining: the ewes ; in 1877 their sales were 1500 dols, and 900 dols in 1878, leaving in 1879 a flock of 190 sheep worth 2800 dols— over 10,000 dols in twelve years from an original flock of fifteen head. Any treatment that checks the vigour of a plant has a tendency to increase its blooming. A plant propogated by a cutting or layer has not the vigour of the original seedling plant. This is, no doubt, a correct statement of a general law relating to plants, but in many cases the decrease in vigour is inappreciable for, long periods of time ; in others, on the contrary, the effect is very prompt. If the roots of the plants are allowed to become pot-bound, doubtless they would soon commence to bloom. It is not good luck that makes good crops, but it is good work. Some farmers always have good crops, good stock, and get good prices. It is because whatever they put their hands 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 fanners would imitate their examples they would have better crops. Success does not depend so much upon good luck as it does upon good work. Those of the highest quality contain fewer seeds than do the inferior melons. This is generally true of all fruit. A large apple contains fewer seeds than a small one of the same variety ; the luscious pear has fewer seeds, as a rule, than the poorer one ; and the improved grapes have proportionally fewer seeds, as the wild grape from which they have been derived. With desire to a«i9t gentlemen to dispose of, and private buyers to purchase, horses the bom file property of non-dealers, the London Live Stock Journal has opentd a column to advertisements in which no animal can figure that has not been previously examined and pronounced sound and desirable by the vetsrinary adviser who superintends the department. A good idea, if well lived up to,