Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1881 — Tanning Sheepskins. [ARTICLE]

Tanning Sheepskins.

To tan sheepskins take two longwooled skins: make strongsudsmsing hot water; when oold, wash the skins In it, carefully squeezing them between the hands to get the dirt out of the wool; then wash the soap out with clean cold water. Now dissolve alum and salt, each half a pound,with a little hot water, sufficient to cover the skins, and let them soak in It over night, or twelve hours; then hang over a wall to drain. When well drained, spread or stretch carefully ovei: a board to dry. Whop a lftlle damp, oqq ounce each of saltpetre and alum, (pulverized,) and sprinkle the flesh side of each skin rubbing It well; then lay the flesh fthd hftng them ip the shade far two or three days,‘turning the underside uppermost every day until perfectly dry. Then scrape the flesh side 9 hIHPt knjfato ipmeye any remaining scraps of desh ;*rim °£ pr l^ ting P? lnte . «w»4 rpb the flesh Bl sLTi th J w, P ice or rottenstone, and with the hands. —Country Gentleman.

Lord Dufferin has published a paper on the Irish land question in which he strongly condemns the system of “fair rents, free sales, and fixity of tenure.” HeTsaysthe sale of tenant interests has a tendency to to saddle holdings perpetually with double rents, and the system, if adopted, would only encourage a new set of agitators to dispossess landlords of the remaining vestiges of their rights. He favors a system copied from that adopted at tne enfranchisement of the Russian serfs, and recommends the encouragement of emigration to Manitoba. Mrs. Harriet N. Cooper, a colored woman, died at Cealtenham, one of the suDurbs of St. Louis, on new year’s day, aged 115 years. She weighed 400 pounds. Mrs. Cooper was the mother of twenty-flve»chil-dren, the youngest of whom is sixtytwo years old. Her husband is 101 years old and is still living.