Poultry Notes.

Resolved—That the Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society deplores the death of its friend and active member, Dr. John A. Warder of Ohio; that our sincere condolence is extended to his family, and that we recommend to kindred societies throughout the Northwest the planting of memorial trees and groves to commemorate his labors, his achievements, and his philanthropy as a skilled orchardist and forester.

Selection of a Site for a Park.

were squatters of the lowest class living in hovels. The construction of the Central Park, and the opening of the streets in its neighborhood, changed the whole character of the surrounding region. In the ten years succeeding the commencement of work upon the park, the increased valuation of taxable property in the wards immediately adjacent was no less than fifty-four millions of dollars, affording a surplus of three millions after paying the interest on all the city bonds issued for the purchase and construction of the park, a sum sufficient if used as a sinking fund to pay the entire principal and interest of the cost of the park in less time than was required for its construction.

A similar instance of the profitable conversion of a deserted and forbidding region into a rich and elegant quarter of a city, is afforded by the Park des Butte Chaumont in Paris.

It occupies the site of old abandoned slate quarries, the precipitous walls and rough excavations of which have been converted into picturesque scenery by judicious treatment and tasteful planting, so as to give it the appearance of a wild mountain gorge. The result has been that its vicinity has become a rich and elegant quarter, simply because it has been made attractive to the large and constantly growing class who are seeking pleasant residence sites within easy access of their places of business.

These illustrations will suffice to prove the truth of my assertion, that the objects of most essential importance to a city in the creation of a park will be attained by selecting for its location a site which is naturally undesirable or even repulsive and converting it into an attractive quarter, rather than one which combines all the elements of beauty and health, and as a consequence is so desirable for residences, that it can only be had at great cost.

The Illinois State Dairymen’s Association will hold its next annual meeting at Champaign, December 17-19, 1884. Champaign County Agricultural Society has adopted a resolution, pledging aid in getting up a first-class meeting.

REMEMBER that $2.00 pays for The Prairie Farmer one year, and the subscriber gets a copy of The Prairie Farmer County Map of the United States, free! This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country.

Poultry Notes.

What Ails the Pullets?

Dear Fanny Field—Please be kind enough to tell me what ails the pullets? We have fifty or sixty spring pullets hatched in April and May, from which by this time we expected to get eggs plentifully, and it stretches our patience to get only from one to five eggs per day. They have an underground room with only the front exposed, well lighted, and we have fed them till they are fat.

We feed them a warm breakfast of potatoes and bran, or oats ground, with a little pepper occasionally, then an hour or two later oats, and again at night oats or corn, about three times a week. Plaster, coal, and gravel are liberally supplied. They have milk and now and then powdered bones, or refuse meat, cooked.

By an accident a fine one of over four pounds’ weight was killed, and I had supposed she ought to lay as she was one of my earliest, but on investigation I found eggs from a hickory nut down to shot eggs, that were black or dark and hard, and I readily conjectured if the rest were like her it was not strange we had no eggs. Please tell us the cause and cure.

Our fowls are mixed, light and dark Brahmas, Leghorns and everything you would get by changing eggs with the neighbors. We have added Plymouth Rocks of late, having more of them than any other. We save the best Rock roosters each year. It is the more surprising as our fowls usually lay well.

That Duck Farm.

Dear Fanny Field—I have often thought I would write you through our dear old Prairie Farmer, but the old thief, procrastination, stole my time. But reading your description of “A Duck Farm” aroused all the ambition I have, and the editor willing (I not being one of the number knowing your private address) would like to ask a few questions I consider “necessary,” and will promise to abide by the terms given in “Chats with Correspondents” of January 5th, as near as possible.

I don’t wonder the woman owning the “duck farm” wished to withhold her name and whereabouts from the public generally, besides guarding her pen with “well-trained dogs” if she has ducks she can induce to lay 125 or even 100 eggs per season, nine and one third of which will hatch out ducklings that will all live to be grown ducks.

Take an average of 113 and the ducks will lay 1,808 eggs per season, and she sells $100 worth at $3 per doz. making 400; then she sends 24 doz. to New York, then raises “1,100 ducks on the place,” making in all, 1,788, which, taken from the 1,808 leaves 20 eggs for non-hatchers and dead ducklings. This I call pretty close work.

I have had some little experience with ducks, and I can only get them to lay from sixty to seventy eggs per season, and about one eighth of the eggs don’t hatch (from various causes) and about the same amount of ducklings die. Now if you will be kind enough to reveal the woman’s whereabouts to me I would like to invest if she will warrant them to come up to your figures; also, is the said woman a widow?

Now Miss Fanny (if such you are) please excuse my familiarity. As I have perused your writings with such pleasure, I feel well acquainted, so strike me as hard as you please, but remember there is a hereafter. I have several facts in regard to my fowls for another time providing I gain admission.

From New Hampshire.

Eggs are worth thirty-three cents per dozen here. The hens are not laying nearly as many as they were at this time last year. Can any one tell the reason? Farmers ought to pay more attention to the hens. They do pay, and pay big if properly cared for. Give them hot feed in the morning, consisting of bran, corn meal, beef scraps, a little salt and a little cayenne pepper. Don’t make them drink ice water these cold days. Give them wheat and oats at noon, and whole corn at night. The warmer your house is the more profit you will reap. I don’t care whether your fowls are pure bloods or not, if you take good care of them they will give you eggs. A good neighbor of mine says that his pure Plymouth Rocks do not lay as many eggs as his common “old fashioned” fowls.

The Apiary.

Corn-Silk Protection.

A correspondent of “Gleanings” writes: I winter on the summer stands, and pack them a little differently from most persons. I spread the combs so that eight or nine will fill same space occupied in summer by ten. Then placing sticks crosswise of the frames, to allow a passway for the bees, I spread a cloth above them, and pack on the top of this two or three inches of corn-silks. For packing, these are superior to anything I have yet seen or heard of. They are clean, and excellent non-conductors, and will more readily absorb the moisture than either chaff or saw-dust, and yet remain perfectly dry. They are easily collected by a boy when men are husking in the fields; and when taken off in the spring can be stored away for another winter. Knowing the value of them by experience, I hope that many of our brother bee-keepers will give them a fair trial.

Feeding Back.

The question of “feeding back” honey to bees was discussed at the Michigan State Convention at Flint. W. Z. Hutchinson had had a poor season; but as he had mentioned incidentally that he had practiced “feeding back,” it brought down upon him a shower of questions. In feeding back 1,000 pounds of extracted honey, he had received 800 pounds of comb honey. Had tiered up the cases of sections until they were three or four cases high. Had fed the honey as fast as they would take it. Looked the sections over about once a week, and removed the full ones. Some colonies did much better work than others. After the first trial, selected the best. No honey was coming in at the time of the feeding; did not weigh the hives; weighed only the sections and the amount. He had a friend who had fed back upon exactly the same plan, but his friend had not found it profitable. He thought that to know just how to feed back, at a profit, was not yet positively known.

D. A. Jones: The question of feeding back has but few advocates, for the reason that the majority have failed to make it profitable. To be successful in feeding back there must be no place in the hive in which the bees can store honey, except in the sections. Those hives must be selected that contain the most honey, or else those having but few combs. My plan of feeding is to elevate the hives in front and pour the feed in upon the bottom-board. The bees do not carry the honey out of the hives; they must store it somewhere. Bee-keepers fail to make it pay, because the bees had an empty brood-chamber. Section boxes filled with foundation had been given a colony at 9 A. M.; feeding commenced, and the next day, at evening, the bees had commenced capping some of the sections. Fifty-two pounds of honey was fed, and forty-four pounds of comb honey obtained. To get unfinished sections filled, and at the same time have the honey removed from some other unfinished sections, I put the sections that I wish emptied, over the hive, and the ones that I wish finished, in the main body of the hive, keeping the queen out of them by using perforated zinc.

D. A. Jones: I do not pour it in at the entrance. I pour it down inside the hive at the back.

W. Z. Hutchinson: You speak of using perforated zinc. I should like to know something about that. Do the bees work through it freely? Is there any objection to its use, except its cost? And where is the expense? Is it in the material, or in the preparations?

D. A. Jones: It is in no way detrimental. The bees work through it freely. I see no objection to its use except its cost, and its cost is the preparations. Tin would be no cheaper, for the reason that it comes in smaller sheets, and the waste would be greater.

W. Z. Hutchinson: I have used honey boards the past season made of wood, the slats of which were 5-32 of an inch apart, and they answered every purpose; and are cheaper than zinc.

S. T. Pettitt: I can hardly think the wooden boards would be better than the zinc. It would take some time to make them, while the zinc is all ready, and so lasting.

W. Z. Hutchinson: The wood boards cost only a third as much as the zinc and I prefer them.

Bee Pasturage.

At the late Nebraska Bee-keepers’ Convention Mr. Ballard spoke very highly of dandelion and alsike clover, stating that he had seen four or five bees on one blossom of dandelion, and recommends alsike clover, as it will take root on the prairie.

G. M. Cooper, Beatrice, gave it as his opinion that white clover did not secrete any honey last spring, on account of the cool weather.

P. M. Aldrich said that his bees worked on rape long after frost. No one present had ever seen rape fail.

Mr. Colwell sowed the roadside twice last year, and had a continuous bloom all summer, and late in the fall; puts one peck to the acre on the roadside.

Mr. Hawley has sown rape several times, but the bees only gathered fast enough to build up; he can tell when his bees are gathering rape honey, by the odor.

C. C. Turney, Ceresco, had seen bees work very extensively on the blackberry, both blossom and fruit, and also on parsley.

Wm. Sutton, Elk Creek, saw his bees on raspberry and alsike clover; they did a great deal to stimulate his bees, although the quantity is limited in his locality; they bloom about the middle of June.

The ancient Egyptians of the Nile had floating bee-houses, designed to take advantage of the honey harvest. They were warned when it was time to return home by the depth to which the boat sank in the water under the weight of the cargo of honey. That the bees might not be lost, they were obliged to journey during the night-time.

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Scientific.

The Brilliant Sunsets.

Few of our readers, probably, have failed to note the fact that brilliant sunsets have been unusually frequent since the latter part of November. Now a highly colored sunset is not, in itself, a remarkable phenomenon, and it may occur at any time of the year, and owe its origin to any one of several causes, very simple in themselves, as refraction by the atmosphere of the sun’s rays, which are thrown upon the sky after the orb itself has passed from sight, or a peculiarly humid condition of the upper air, or a remarkable electric condition, such as sometimes precedes a thunder storm. But the late brilliant sunsets do not belong to the category of ordinary phenomena. In the first place, they have not shown gorgeously hued clouds, as in usual sunset displays, but skies of dazzling tints and colors. In the second place, they have been prolonged for weeks, and have been seen, at intervals, over nearly every part of the globe. Evidently, some unusual circumstance must have given rise to these unwonted phenomena, and scientists in both hemispheres have been interested in seeking an answer to the problem. As it seemed very plain that no condition of humidity could account for such remarkable refraction, it was universally concluded that some substance, as dust, must exist in the upper air regions. This being accepted as probable another theory was needed to account for the presence of this dust. The first theory put forward by scientists in this country suggested the hypothesis of meteoric dust.

Meteors are gaseous bodies, which move through space in immense numbers, and in definite orbits. Drawn astray from these orbits by the attraction of the earth, they are set on fire on contact with the atmosphere, this ignition producing the phenomena of shooting stars. The product of this combustion is sometimes heavy enough as to fall rapidly, in the shape of stones, to the earth. More often it is an impalpable substance, which filters slowly down through the air, and is found in the shape of metallic dust, on the summits of snow-covered mountains and in the Arctic regions. About the middle of November the earth passes through a meteor zone—that is, an immense swarm of meteors revolving around the sun—and during this month there are always vastly more shooting stars to be seen than in any other month of the year. The brilliant sunsets being first seen in the latter part of November, their near coincidence in time with an unusual display of brilliant meteors, seemed to substantiate the theory that they were of similar origin. It is known that the telescope reveals immense numbers of these meteors too small to be seen by the naked eye, and it seems very probable that millions more are too small to be seen even with the telescope, mere meteoric dust that can only announce its presence to the eye by its refraction of the sun’s rays as they pass through it. When this dust falls it becomes visible otherwise, perhaps. We have spoken of its appearance on snow-covered hills. Sometimes it appears as a haze or dry fog. At least the appearance of any very remarkable haze, like that which obscured the light of the sun for weeks over Europe, in 1783, is now ascribed by science to the dust of enormous falls of meteors.

Had this theory of the cause of the bright sunsets been the true one, however, there should have been unusual displays of shooting stars visible as soon as darkness came on after the sunsets, for meteors are always ignited by the friction of the earth’s atmosphere. As these were not seen, the meteoric dust theory did not gain a very general support, and the opinion of many scientific men was that we must wait for a more probable theory. When it came to be known that these remarkable appearances of color in the sky had been visible from different points of the earth’s surface ever since last September, a theory was offered by Prof. Lockyer, the well-known English astronomer, and the editor of Nature, a leading scientific periodical, which is now generally accepted as solving the problem.

Mr. Lockyer thinks that these remarkable sunset glows are the late, but direct effects of the great volcanic eruptions which occurred in Java, last August. He believes that the enormous volumes of fine volcanic dust thrown out by these eruptions were carried into the upper air, and being borne by prevailing winds around and above the earth, the reflection of the sun’s rays upon them have produced the phenomena witnessed at so many different points.

The adequacy of this supposed cause seems plain, when we remember what a mighty convulsion of nature occurred at Java. Earthquake and eruptions followed one another with such force that they were felt for hundreds of miles distant. Large islands sunk from sight and new land appeared and the entire conformation of the Archipelago in that locality was changed. The great volumes of mud thrown out of the volcano Krakatoa fell in showers for over three hours in localities more than thirty miles away. With volcanic forces at work on this mighty scale, millions of tons of earth must have been hurled into the upper air. Of this the coarse and heavy material would naturally fall at once, but vast clouds of impalpable dust would be borne upward by the heated air, until they reached the region of the upper trade-winds, by which they would be borne westward in the circuit of the globe. Each evening these immense dust clouds would give a novel brilliancy to the skies, by reflecting the light of the setting sun, and during the day an unusual hazy appearance of the sky would probably be perceived.

This hypothesis of Mr. Lockyer was remarkably borne out by facts that actually occurred. The Java eruptions occurred August 26 and 27. On August 28, from the islands in the Indian Sea, near the African coast, Mauritias, Rodriguez, and the Seychelles, very singular sunsets and sunrises were observed, though not directly resembling those seen later, and a strange haze appeared, through which the sun seemed to be white and dim as the moon. On August 31, in the same latitude as these islands, in North Brazil, remarkable sunlight effects were observed, the sun appearing of a deep blue tint; the next evening similar appearances were seen in Venezuela. On September 1, also, a remarkable sunset was reported visible from the Gulf Coast, and one from Trinidad, Spain, at the same date. September 5, another was seen near Honolulu, in the Pacific ocean. This line of strange sunsets ran directly east and west. Another line ran from southeast to northwest, beginning with Ceylon and Madras and ending with England. Following this, the phenomena seemed to spread themselves over the whole portion of the earth’s surface, appearing at various points during four whole months. The points of difference between the earlier and later appearances were closely defined by Mr. Lockyer. At first the coarse particles suspended in the air obscured the sun’s light entirely, as was the case in the neighborhood of Java immediately following the earthquake. These disappearing, the sun seemed white and dim; the dust being still more thinned out, the blue and red molecules caused the appearance of a blue sun, and at last there was just enough of the finest dust left suspended to be carried by the various wind currents hither and thither and produce at the time of the setting of the sun, those singular reflected lights, which, at first almost unnoticed, became, when observed, the wonder of the world.

It may be admitted that there are gaps in the evidence supporting this last hypothesis, but it has the merit of probability, and must be accepted as the best theory of the brilliant sunsets yet offered.

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BEFORE.		AFTER.
BEFORE.		AFTER.