Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1882 — FARMNOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARMNOTES.

THE HORSE IN THE FALL. Farm horses n the fall are often ungratefully neglected. Their hard toil in helping with the hfeavy work _nf the season ones over, when only odd jobs await them, it is too frethemselves on the pastures, often heedbd shelter from the wind get chilled aad<run about in the dark in search of warmth, which they often find only-at the eost or a stumble or fall resulting,often, ih a sprain or a cut that injures or disfigures them for life. ,/Thtq wheprWarm and tired they lie dopn to rest’ what wonder they rise up stiff, spiritless, and not rarely suffering from asevere cold after the heated blood and relaxed sinews Mvahem e*posed.td the blasts « d J roßt < of •» chilly night. When the flwfcjgbjJiiL stonay it is enough to let horses run in the pasture, but night should find them comfortably peaden and fed in the stable. Ingratitude* to our fellowmen is justly considered an odious vice, but is there not often a strong taint of it in the treatment of these noble animals, towhose faithful help ip all kinds of drudgery farmers are deeply indebted for full barnes and comfortable homes. WHAT MANURE LOSES BY HEATING. It is not always true that a pile of manure steaming with heat and smelling strongly is losing amonia. Amonia la a very volatile and pungent gas, and might be known by its peculiar scent, which is freely given off by close, ill, ventilated horse stables, or by the coat of ill- cleaned horses. But it is not often that this peculiar scent escapes from manure heaps; on the contrary it is a more disagreeable odor, similar to that of rotten eggs. This is sulphuretted hydrogen, and not amonia, and occasions no loss to manure except the sulphur. If in making a manure pile some plaster is mixed in, the heap, all the amonia will be caught and held by it, and all the water contained in the manure will also contain a large quantity (700 times its bulk) of it, and will not give it off at a heat that can be raised in a manure pile. If the manure is left, »to heat and get dry and "fire fang,” or slowly burn to a white dry light stuff, the amonia is lost and the manure 'seriously injured.

THE BERKSHIRE HOG. This breed seems to carry away the “sweepstakes” as often as any other, and its ability to do so is due to the perfection to which it has been bred. It has certain peculiar marks, and a breed that unerringly comes true to spots In color is indeed worthy to be Slaoed in the list of thoroughbreds. Tow, we can well understand that a solid Whtte hog, like the Suffolk, Yorkshire bn Chester White, will produce young that are purely white, and that a solid black h >g, like the Essex, will show the same in the litters of pigs; but when It is expected that a nog must impress certain spots on its progeny, and those spots to be exactly on certain parts of the body, we must admit that breeders have been vra> skillful a ith, Berkshires. The breeder has placed a white spot on the forehead of the Berkshire and a white, spot on each foot, like a stocking;. ano there is likewise, a white spot on the tuft of the tail. With tMese Exceptions the body is black. Is it pot wonderful that every pure Berkshire has exactly these marks, with no deviation—no m >re nor an.yTeto-J-hut a true, unerring set of badges or marks are thus fixed, and which act as his types of purity? He is noted fair the find hams he produces in preference to other breeds, and fifty years have been spent in developing hint to his present state of excellence. -1 - How the field cricket feeds on grain is explained by Mr. F. M. Webster, Waterman. 111. t “One morning, after a rainy fijght, as I was passing along the highway, I noticed one of our common field-oricketa working at a kernel of corn that had dropned froth - some farmer’s wagon on the way to market. The rain nad softened the ?rain, and, after watching the insect or some time, I found it was eating the germ of the softened kernel. I watched patiently until the cricket seemed to hpve satisfied its hunger, and found that the germ had all been eaten away. Early, in the Autumn I found them in corn-fields eating the crowns of kernels or ears that had blown to thp ground, something I had always before attributed to mice. The same insbet has annoyed farmers considerably in another manner. Much of the .harvesting is done with self-binding harvesting machines, using chord for binding. Judge of surprise and chagrin of the farmer when, on drawing in his stacks of grain, he finds instead of compactly bound sheaves, only a mass of unbound grain, the bands of cord having been cut in many places by the crickets. European fiewspapers are talking of the possibility of American wheat being eventually driven out of the markets of Europe by grain from Tunis. Land can be bought in Tunis, it is said, for half it costs in the Western States of the American Union, and it is so fertile that it will yield two drops in the year. The quality of the grain, moreover, is equal to that of the much prized Hungariah wheat. England and ■ France aae determined, if possible, to secure* rqore than one source offoreign qupply of wheat. However they doaiqtrealize the enormous The New York crop reports of November 21 indicates that Clawson wheat is the most popular variety sn that State. Out of 189 reports, 149 Indicate a preference for the va-' riety.