The Placer herald., 1872-06-22
HOUSE AND FARM.

EDUCATING GnLs. Educating girls for
household duties ought to be considered as
necessary as instruction in reading, writing
and arithmetic, and quite as universal. We
are in our houses more than half of our ex-
itence, and it is the household surroundings
which affect most largely the happiness or
misery of domestic life. If the wife knows
how to "keep house." if she has learned
how to "set table, if she has learned how
things ought to be cooked, how beds should
be made, how carpets should be swept, how
furniture should be busted, how the clothes
should be repaired and knows how purchases
can be made to the best advantage, and
understands the laying in of provisions, how
to make them 90 fartherest and last longest;
if she appreciates the Importance of system,
order, tidiness and the quiet management of
children and servants, then she knows how
to make little heaven at home-how to
win her children from the street; how to
keep her husband from the clubhouse, the
gaming table and the wine-cup. Such
family will be trained to social respectabty,
to business success and TO efficiency and
usefulness in whatever position may be al
loted to them.
1t may be safe to say that not one girl in
ten in our large towns and cities enters into
married life who has learned to bake a loaf
of bread, to purchase a roast, to dust
painting, to sweep a carpet or to cut, fit and
make her own dress. How much the per-
feet knowledge of these things bears upon
the thrift comfort and health of families,
may be conjectured, but not calculated by
figures. 1t would be an immeasurable ad-
vantage TO make a beginning by attaching a
kitchen to every girls school in the nation,
and have lessons given daily in the prepara-
ton of all the ordinary articles of food and
drink for the table; and how to purchase
them in the market to the best advantage,
with the result of a large saving of money,
an increase of comfort and higher health in
every family in the land.-HaUs Journal.
Fro CULTURE IN CAL1FoRNA.-Th climate
of central and southern California is so well
adapted to the production of this favorite
fruit, and such great success has attended
the cultivation of the California varieties, as
far. as tested, that we cheerfully give place
to the following from one Of our exchanges :
"W. ii. Hanie, at a recent meeting Of
the Sacramento Farmers Club, gives his
idea of the cultivation of the fig in Califor
MIA, in the following remarks:
'The white Smyrna fig could be grown and
cured here as well as in Smyrna or any of
the countries of the Mediterranean. They
cannot be imported at less than about twenty
eight cents pound in bulk, and there are
millions of dollars worth sent to the Unite !
States annually. We should and could
tha rkaf nj
would give on an average $50 to 200 pounds
of dried figs a year, and 200 trees could
easily be grown on an acre-making for the
acre 30, 900 pounds, which at ten cents a
pound would give $4,000. On the same
subject j. r. johnson said he had been
raising figs and marketing them number of
years; he had twenty good trees over ten
years old; they averaged him $40 a year
per tree. Fig trees must not be crowded
they do better standing large distances apart
and the limbs trimmed horizontally, cutting
the top of the tree off, They would run in
this way like a grapevine, and one tree could
be made to cover a quarter of an acre. The
Italians dry their figs on dry sand. This
gives a uniform heat and they don't require
turning, the sand becoming heated. Almonds
and other nuts could be made profitable to
raise, the market being always good for these
kind of nuts"
Zinc LABELS FOR TREES. Buy foot o
sheet zinc, cut it in strips one inch by two
or whatever size is desired, and if the name
of the tree or plant is written on with inl
made of the following ingredients, it will bt
indelible:
"Take of verdigris and sal ammoniac eacl
two drachms, lampblack one drachm, water
four ounces, to be well mixed in mortar
adding the water gradually. 1t mus: be
kept in glass stopped vial. Write on the
zinc with the ink, after shaking it well, with
quill pen; and after it is dry you may ex-
pose it to the weather or bury it in the grount
for years, and it will be as legible as wher
first written"
These are the best labels we know Of
cheap, suitable and durable
PURE water will absorb many unpleasant
odors. A pan full of clean fresh water from
well or spring, placed in room which has
been newly painted, will absorb during the
night so much of the smell of the paint as tC
be totally unfit to drink; bowl of wate
remaining in close sleeping room will also
hubble very unpleasant flavor. Dr. Chan
dler, of the School of Mines, New York, has
found in water which has lain over night ii
lead pipes, sufficient amount of dissolved
lead to produce dangerous illness, if no
death.-Bee Keeper.
ONE of the best and largest orchardsts il
Illinois planted his orchard sixteen feet apar
each way, every alternate row being such as
came into bearing early. When well estab
lished, the early bearing varieties were roo
pruned to throw them into fruit, and befor,
the trees interfered they were grubbed out
leaving the trees standing sixteen feet by
thirty two At about the tenth year from
planting, the alternate trees in the other rows
were forced by the same process to bea