Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 March 1870 — USEFUL AND SUGGESTIVE. [ARTICLE]

USEFUL AND SUGGESTIVE.

It is true wisdom to speak but little of the injuries you have received or the good deeds you have done. Mice become a great nuisance sometimes in and about farm building*. A novel method to destroy them I* to saturate a piece of cotton with chloroform and put it in a bafrel with some grain.” People who are troubled with sleeplessness, should secure a good bed, sufficient exercise to get tired, fresh, and not too warm air, a lightly loaded stomach, and an easy conscience. The different grains produce, when ripe, nearly the following quantities of meal, or household flour anil bread per bushel, viz: Wheat, II weighing 60 the-flour, *8; bread, 64. Rye. If weighing... 64 Via-flour, «; bread, 66. Barley. If weighing.4S Ibi— flour, 874; broad. 60. Oat*, if weighing. ..40 tba—flour, Siq ; bread, 30. A Correspondent of the Kain« Farmer has a new use for cats. He says: “My way to cure a sulky steer that lies down when you first yoke him, is to take a cat and let her put her paws on the end of the steer’s nose, and, if necessary, hold her rather hard. My word for it, ha will be on his legs quick.” Mr. Quinby, of Irondequoit, said at the Rochester Farmers’ Club recently that during the past three years he has drawn 10,000 bushels of leached ashes on his farm and spread them at the rate of 200 or 300 bushels per acre, and has threshed forty acres. He thinks the application lias doubled his wheat crop. His land is light; had seen ashes applied to heavy clay land with little benefit. Etiquette is the art of behaving yourself. Manners not only make the man, but the woman, too, what they ought to be—ladies and gentlemen—whether they roll through life in their carriages, or trudge along the pavement in the lowly Blucher. True gentility is the exercise of a due regard tor the feelings of your neighbors, and etiquette is the essence of gentility. To purify glycerine which has been for some time in use, add ten pounds of iron filings to every 100 pounds of the impure liquid; occasionally shake it and stir up the iron. In the course of a few weeks a black gelatinous mass will collect on the bottom of the vessel, and the supernatant liquid will become perfectly clear, and can be evaporated to remove any excess of water that may have been added to it. In France they have a somewhat novel method of treating tomato plants, which produces fruit of an excellent quality, whiah ripens early. The gardeners cut off the stems of the plants down to the first cluster of flowers which appears on them, thus forcing the sap into the buds below; and this is deme five times successively. By this means the plants become stout dwarf tmshes, not over eighteen inches high, and they are kept ereet in rows by sticks or strings. Edwin L. Gage, of Deßuyter, N. Y., gives the following remedy for eye-lashes of sheep growing in their eyes: “ Take a long darning needle, threaded with cotton wrapping yarn—run the needle through the iotetop close to the skin just forward of the eyes, and then back just back of the eyes, inclosing a strip of wool about an inch in width; take oil the needle, tie the two ends of the yarn in a single knot, draw it up till the upper lids are raised sufficiently to clear the eyes of the hair, fasten with another knot, and the work is done. A writer in the Ma»»aehuKtt» Plowman gives the following method of cleansing pork barrels:—“Chemistry famishes an agent in the permanganate of potassa, which fully meets this want. A pint of the permanganate turned into the most nasty, filthy cider, beer, or pork barrel, and rinsed about a few minutes, will entirely .dgcfijnpose all fungoid growths and fermenting matter, and render the cask as sweet as those that are new. The onlyway to remove immediately the odor of carbolic acid from the hands, is to immerse them in the liquid permanganate.” The Country Gentleman says of tarring seed corn;—“lf the coating with tar is done there will be no difficulty. The process consists essentially in giving each grain a fine thin varnish of tar, which may be varied by first heating the corn with hot water, pouring it off, and then applying the tar at the rate of half a pint or a pint to the bushel of seed, and stirring rapidly and thoroughly. Some dry powder, as ashes, plaster, sifted coalashes, etc., will prevent all sticking together. If the tar is applied too copiously, or on dry seed, the result will be less favorable?’ '- - ; ’ 1 Knife ob Shear* fob Pbunihg.—On“ all plants where it is desirable that the wound should heal over, a..sharp knife should be used in pruning. With grape vines it make* but little or no difference whether a smooth cut is made or not, as all the wood left beyond the last bud remaining on the shoot dies, whether cut with knife or shears. This is also true with many specie* of ornamental shrubs, such as Syringa, Deutzia, and, in fact, all' plants that have a large pith in the young stems. Shears are the most convenient implement with which to prune vines, and may be used without danger of doing any damage, even if they do not make as clean a cut as a knife.— Hearth and Home. A Turkish receipt for a cement used to fasten diamonds and other precious stone* to metallic surfaces, and which is said to unite even surfaces of polished steel, although exposed to moisture, is as follows: “ Dissolve five or six bits of gum mastic, each of the size of a large pea, in as much spirits of wine as will suffice to render it liquid. In another vessel, dissolve in brandy as much isinglass, previously softened in water, as will make a twoounce vial of strong glue, adding two small bits of gum ammoniac, which must be rubbed until dissolved. Then mix the whole with heat. Keep in a vial closfely stopped. When it is to be used, set the vial in boiling water.”