Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 July 1877 — USEFUL AND SUGGESTIVE. [ARTICLE]

USEFUL AND SUGGESTIVE.

The G trdener't Monthly Bays: “No trees, especially evergreens, should have grass permitted to grow around the roots for a year or so after planting. Orsss absorbs moisture, and the tree will probably want all about it for itself." Waterproof Paper —lt may be worth knowihg that by plunging a sheet of paper into an atnmoniacal solution of cop. Cr for an instant, and then passing it tween cylinders and drying it, it is rendered entirely impermeable to water, and may be even boiled in water without disintegrating. Sheets so prepared, if rolled together, become permanently adherent, and acquire the strength of wood.—Exchange. Preserving Wood. —The American Chemist says that a Western farmer discovered many years ago that wood could be made to last longer than iron in the ground. Time and weather, lie says, seem to have no effect on it. The posts can be prepared for less than two cents a fiiece. This is the recipe: Take boiled inseed oil and stir in it pulverized charcoal to the consistency ol paint. Put a coat of this over the timber, and, he adds, there is not a man who will live to see it rot. Scale in Fowls.— Clean up the legs of the fowls by washing with carbolic soap. An ointment made of coal tar and lard, or the various preparations of carbolic acid, applied two or three times, will usually effect a cure. Give the fowls sulphur once a week mixed with their food, and do not neglect to thoroughly clean the whole hennery by washing with lime water or some disinfectant. The disease is not hereditary, but scaly-legged fowls should not be used for setting.

A Good Disinfectant.— One pound of green copperas, dissolved in one quart of water, and poured down a water-closet, will effectually concentrate and destroy the foulest smells. On board ships and steamboats, about hotels and other public places, there is nothing nicer to purify the air. Simple irreen copperas, dissolved in anything under the bed,will render a liespital or other place for the sick free from unpleasant smells. In fish markets,, slaughter hpuses, sinks, and wherever there are offensive gases, dissolve copperas and sprinkle it about, and in a few days the smell will pass away. If a cat, rat or mouse dies alxrnt the house and sends forth an offensive gas, place some dissolved copperas in au open vessel near the place where the nuisance is, and it will purify the atmosphere.— N. T. Herald. Wafers. — Rub a piece of butter the size of a walnut info a pint of sifted flour. Beat the white of an egg to a stiff froth, put a saltspoonful of salt into a very little wrrm milk, and stir both info the flour; mix into a smooth, stiff paste, using enough of the milk to make it of the consistency of pastry. Beat this with the rolling-pin until your patience or your arms give out the longer you beat it the better will be the wafers. Roll out a portion of it as thin as you can get it, cut out with a cake-cutter and roll again. No matter how irregular the shape, so that the wafer be thin. Flour your pans lightly and bake in a hot oven. Bake on the grate of the oven, for if the floor is very hot they may be scorched. They are scarcely browner than milk crackers when done, and should be very brittle. This quantity of dough will make fifty wafers. They are very nice with cheese after dinner, for lunch, or for an invalid with tea or soup. '