FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD NOTES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 2867, 27 November 1890, Page 4

FARM, GARDEN AND ORCHARD NOTES.

Quality of Butter. — Chemical analysis cannot determine the comparative quality of different samples of butter, says the Jersey Bulletin. Quality in butter depends on flavour, texture, and colour throe things that do not appear in a chemical analysis. Clip of a Lincoln' Ram. —The purebred Lincoln ram nut-chascd last year from Mr R Wright, Noetum Heath, Lincoln, or Mr Reynell's flock, Kiltyuou. killucan, was found when clipped, that bis fleece weighed 191 lbs. Ho is now threeshear, active and healthy. FELLING TREE* nv D\ NA.HITE. Experiments on felling trees by means of dynamite was recently made in tho presence of military engineers near Compenhagen. Trees of 3ft. in diameter were brought down iu twenty to twenty-fivo minutes, whereas the usual cutting would have occupied over an hour. French Poultry Breeding.—Tho following statistics havo been collected for tho French Department of Agriculture :—Tho income derived by French people who rear fowls, according to octroi and markets returns, is 183,337,100,000 francs, of which, 153, 500,000 francs represent the value of the flesh and 183.600,000, fraucs that of the eggs.

Colts v. Cattle.—We read that in West Virgina farmers are quitting cattle and raising colts instead. " There are five mares bred now to one five years ago," says a correspondent of the Drovers' Journal. It is this tendency that makes the outlook for cattle better. A Preventive qf Mildew upon Plants.—Tako threo pounds each of flowers of sulphur and quicklime. Slake the lime and boil with the sulphur in six gallons of water until i educed to two gallons. Allow this to settle, then pour off the clear liquid and bottle it for use. An old iron pot will answer to boil it in. Mix a gill of this liquid with five gallons of water, and shower upon the plauts as soon as tho mildew appears.

Profit in Jam.—Notwithstanding the laugh raised at the time, many have admitted that Mr Gladstone was not very wido of the mark when he recommended tho making of jam as a profitable industry, and here we have a proof of the correctness of his estimate. Mr Thomas Wood, of Crockenhill, Kent, opened a jam factory on his fruit farm at Swanley a few years ago, and bo is now making the business into a company, with a share capital of £57,00). The accountants who have examined his books made the net profits on the la>t year's trading £11,536. Slaked Lime i'OR Sheep.—Mr Boddy, of Morgan Country, 111., practises a successful method of ridding sheep of grub in the head. He feeds them with shelled corn, on a barn floor, literally strewed with air-slaked liaie. The sheep in eating fill their noses with the lime, which causes violent sneezing, this expelling tho grub. In a few moments the floor will be covered with grubs, which should be destroyed. The use of this remedy occasionally through fall and early winter has rid Mr Boddy's sheep of the pest, as 1 he informs Coleman's Rural World.

Tick Rnhit Cow i-ou the Dairy.— A select cow for u dairy herd should be of medium size, fine iu bone, broad in loin, with wide quarteis and full deep barrel, showiug largo storage capacity. She should not be too small in girth around tho heart, but her wedge shape should be crused by a still more prominent development in the hind quarters, rather than deficiency iu tho vital regions, which could indicate lack of constitution. No auimal needs constitutional vigour and healthy digestion more than a dairy eow, as her profitableness depends on her ability to convert great quantities of course food into milk, lit for man.

Tin-; Assimilation ok Nitrogen by Plants. —A large numbor of experiments have been made in Europe upon the

appropriation of nitrogen by plants, and ihey all show that the free atmospheric nitrogen is employed by leguminous crops such as clovers, poas, lupins, as had been demonstrated by lleliriegel and others. The connection between tho root tubercles of clovers and tho acquisition of nitrogen is also confined. Tho practical inference is that leguminous crops should

appear in the rotation to not only collect nitrogen for the food of stocks, but to add this valuable plants constituent to tho soil for other crops, as fhe grains that need to get their nitrogen from its solublo compounds in tho soil. Fowls ash Fuurr.—-A correspondent of tlic Journal of Horticulture writes

A. few days ago I visited Mr Uraut, market gardener, at liracehiidge, near Lincoln, who has an orchard several acres iu extent. Very little fruit was to be seen, except iu one corner about fifty yards squure. Tho trees there were literally breaking down by tho weight of fruit; this limited space promising a better supply than all the other trees iu the orchard put together. Aud why 'i Because about one hundred fo-.vls had been kept (wired) in that space for tho last two or three years, and it appeal's to me that the poultry in question must have destroyed, or at any rate checked, that destructive post—the caterpillar—in some stages of it development. Frozen Rakbits : A Prospective Industry.—Messrs Neale and West, fishsalesmen and gamedealers, of Cardiff, England, have addressed the following letter to an Australian gentleman :— "There is a very large demand for rabbits in England, and as they are so exceptionally abundant iu Australia, we see no reason why large quantities should not be sent to England frozen, like what is done with the sheep. We manage the cold stores here, where there is room to freeze 70,000 sheep. Are the rabbits abundant within easy reach by rail ? Is there a refrigerator handy to the shipping port where they could he frozen, and at what cost? What do you think we could get the rabbits at per dozen? 1 ' Beneficial Eiteuts of Forests,—At the International Agricultural Congress, which was lately held at Vienna, one of tho first papers read was by M. Prosper Domontzey ' 'On the prevention of torrents and the re-afforesting of mountains," in which ho dcscrihcd at length tho experiences of tho Forest Department of France, of which ho is tho administrator. Ho pointed out the immense; importance of assisting nature iu restoring the forests which the selfishness of niau had destroyed, thus creating a real danger to the public, and urgedforc sters to persevere in their eliorts, notwithstanding tho indilfereuco and opposition which they at present inct with. Another paper by Dr Ernest Ebermayor, of the Munich University,iloult with the hygieuic importance of forests, and summarised the results of a largo number of exact experiments with reference to forost air and noil. Wj;ai,tii in a Swamp. -The farmer who has a muck swamp on his farm has a mine of wealth. Every ton of pure swamp muck, that consists of decayed vegetable matter free from sand, is worth Truiii one to three dollars per tou as it lies on the bank after having been dug two or three months aud drained. Itcontains from one and half to three per cent, of nitrogen, inert and insoluble, it ia true, but made easily available by judicious treatment. At. the price of inert nitrogen iu fertilisers that contained in a toil of good muck is worth from two to six dollars, counting the price at ten cents per pound, Thousands of fanners buy nitrogen in fertilisers at nearly double I hi-; price, when by making a compost of muck they may g"( ft< nt twenty to sixty

pounds of available nitrogen from every

ton of it. The winter season is the best time lor working in u swamp, making, drains, anil getting out the muck.

liiiKianNi; kouMilk.—A point iu the

breeding of cattle for dairy purposes now generally recognised as highly important is the selection of the bull from a j,'ood dairy cow. It will not do to have

a herd of capital milkers and take a bull haphazard, not knom'ing whether his dam fllle' l a twenty-quart can at each end of i.he day or scarcely yielded a pint. In that ca.-:e. if it is so chanced tlmt the bull were bred from a pood dairy strain, the results M ould urobubly bj diilbfiuitury but the

risk of the contrary is too great. Carelessness in regard to the bull's ancestry many go unpunished once or twice, yet if we take the proportain of really good dairy cows and the proportion of bad and indifferent dairy oows, as far an wo can form our estimates by observation, we shall see (if we do observe and record or remember what we observe) that the law which in the long run governs averages and percentages, is very much against the breeder who fails to exercise care upon thia important point of the sire's descent from tho first rate dairy stook. Coupling the fact of the comparative scarcity of dairy cows of the very best class with the fact of tho potency of tho sire's influence in the tramiesion of those properties which made cows good, bad, or middling milkers, and decide tho quality of thoir milk, we are compelled to admit the probability of evil results eventually in the herds for which bulls are obtained without sufficient attention to the dairy properties of their dams, Sujcoss iu such herds is mainly accidental and is likely to be but temporary.