The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1875-03-11
FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.


succeed in making heavy and intense
smoke, rising with difficulty, filling the
intervals between the vine, we would
have a covering which certainly would
preserve them from too great a cooling,
which forms ice, and from the solar rays,
which, melting it spontaneously cause
the disorganization of the tissues. 1t is
not necessary that the covering should
extend far above the vines. 1t is not
only at the surface of the ground, exposed
to the sky, that the ground is frozen-it
is all over. Therefore low cloud has
to be created, enveloping the plant and
acting as we'll by contact as in some re-
spects screen.
This result has been obtained by the
use of wheat straw it burns very slowly,
makes great amount of smoke, and q
very gray smoke which remains nearer
to the ground than the smoke of heavy
oil, and protects the young sprouts better.
For this purpose it is necessary to place
heaps of straw of eight feet diameter at
forty feet distance one from the other.
Moss, dry rubbish, sawdust, and even dry
plants taken from bitches and woods can
be used with the straw. All this is
cheaper than oil, or rather such are ma
terials which can be obtained without
expense. AS soon as the thermometer
descends to the freezing point the heaps
of straw must be ignited. The smoke
rises Immediately to certain height, but
becoming cooled it falls back and covers
the vines as with protecting cloth. The
fires are kept up till the thermometer
mounts above the freezing point.
1t is in this way that the many vine
growers in France saved their grapevines
in April, 1874. They prefer the white
smoke of the straw to the black one of
the oil, and explain it as follows:
l. The white color reflects the solar
rays; the black color lets them pass.
Therefore, the fret is more energetic
obstacle to the radiation.
2. This smoke floats on the ground,
when the other rises like other smoke.
3. This smoke contains much watery
vapor. We know that water absorbs a
great amount of heat in order to evapo-
rate. When it becomes again liquid, it
gives off its latent heat to the vine,
which it covers, warming it in the mean
time, while itprotects it as with screen.
MANUFACTURING IN THE WEST
How to get more for the production of
the Western farm, will be answered sure
ly and practically by building up manu-
factories in the West, and not so certainly
otherwise. Every bushel of our surplus
productions which are shipped to con-
sumers in the East, or to the seaboard
for expectation, costs the Western pro-
ducers a heavy tax for transportation.
Suppose by building up manufacturing
in the West, by which we create com
munity of consumers, we are enabled to
sell large part of our surplus at home (;
thus we save not only transportation on
this, but on the manufactured articles
we use, which at present we ship from
the East. What we need to do is to
manufacture to supply our own neces-
saries, and feed the operatives in the
mills and shops. We have the raw
material in the greatest abundance for
manufacturing, and We produce great
surplus to feed with. We want to take a
more practical, common sense view of
our troubles than we have, and that done
we shall find that the fault lies more at
our own doors than we had suspected.
Every town in the West, suitably located
for some kind of manufacturing, should
hold out every reasonable inducement
for the location of the mills and shops of
the operatives. If in every such town
an additional thousand industrious con-
sumers could thus be located, it would
make home market for many thousand
dollars worth of the farm production.
We want to learn this lesson in the West
as speedily as possible, for herein is a
practical solution of the questions and
troubles which beset us.-Indiana Farmer.
HOME MANUFACTURED is pleasant
to think that our farmers arc beginning
to see the importance of these. There is
no market so good as that which is close
at hand. The agriculture of a State can
never be in prosperous condition, must
inevitably languish if it has large sur
plus which requires to be carried to a far
off market.
CORRELATION OF BEES AND FLOWERS.
The bees, Mr. Darwin says, have solved
a difficult problem. They have made
their cells of proper shape to hold the
greatest possible amount of honey with
the least possible consumption of precious
wax in their construction. No human
workman is skillful enough to do what q
hive-make cells of wax of the true
form. The number Of humble bees in
the country will depend upon the num-
Der of cats. How can that be -? Because the
number of bees is dependent upon the
number of field mice, which eats the
bees. Hence the more cats, the fewer
mice, and the fewer mice, the more bees.
If the whole genus of humble bees be-
came extinct, or very rare, the hearts
ease and red clover would become rare or
would disappear. How is that? Because
bees promote the growth of those flowers.
The visits of bees are necessary to the
fertilization of some kinds of clover, and
almost indispensable to the fertilization
of the hearts ease. In word-no bees,
no seed no seed, no increase of the
flowers. The more visits from the bees,
the more seed from the flower; the more
seed from the flower, the more flowers
from the seeds. Nearly all our orchida-
ceous plants absolutely require the visits
of insects to remove their pollen masses,
and thus to fertilize them. Twenty
heads of unprotected Dutch clover
yielded 1900 seeds. The same number
protected from bees, produced not one
seed one hundred heads of unprotected
clover yielded p, 900 and the same num-
Der pl otected from bees, not seed.
SAVE Your COAL AsHEs.-Too often
it has been said that there is no good
in coal ashes, but chemical examination
gives them the power of absorption
almost equal to charcoal; and if, when
taken from the stove or crate, they are
mingled with the chamber ley of the
house and with the soap wash from the
kitchen, they are found valuable rs
absorbcrs of fertilizing ingredients. APP.
piled after so absorbing the liquids from
the above named they are dug in around
trees or spread upon grass ground, or
used as manure for the garden in the
culture of early carrots, beets, radishes,
ETC., or as tor dressing over the potato
and onion, say in the month of February
or March the advantapes will he appre.