Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1881 — Farm and Workshop Notes. [ARTICLE]

Farm and Workshop Notes.

The lovers of Swiss cheese may be interested in learning that the latest adulteration of that product is made of potatoe starch. Hens, as a rule, lay about an equal number of eggs in their first and second seasons, after which the produce rapidly decreases. In selecting your seed-wheat or seed for a rye crop, weigh>a pint from the bin or sack, and purchase that which weighs the heavier. The melon has been cultivated from time immemorial, and yet there is no other plant known that is so wonderfully variabteln its character. Tfllhd same hill aria from the same seed there will be produced some of the finest, as well as the poorest, specimens. • Both currant and gooseberry bushes are best set in November, or any time after the frost has killed the leaves. They start so very early in spring that it is almost impossible to plough the land and set them in season, and besides we are usually very busy in spring. with other work. According to the best information there are about 4.600,000 sheen in Texas. This will in all probability be, increased during the coming lambing season 20 per cent., bringing the number up to 5,500,000. Valuing them at 20,50 each would make the total valuation of sheep in the State of Texas $13,800,000. Tbe old Cunard steamship,the Persia, in its day the finest vessel afloat, took six tons of coal to carry a ton ot freight across the Atlantic; the Arizona,a new steamer about double the size of the Persia, takes a fifth of a ton.- Changes like this, as well as low land rates, are swamping British farmers with Western grain, The observations of Dumas, Payen. and Boussingault have shown the tact that a cow gives healthy milk in exact proportion to the surplus of food beyond what is necessary for her own maintenance. If tbe annimalis kept on food barely sufficient for proper nourishment the milk produced must be at a loss of animal tissue, with general deterioration of the milk and also of the cow. _