Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1878-07-04
AGRICULTURE.

alone prevents people in every part of
the world from using many edibles
highly priced by those equally civilized
elsewhere.-Druggisfs Circular.
TARRED PAPER FOR HEN-HoUsEs.- A
gentleman writing 10 the Poultry World
says: I" read your recommendation to
use tarred paper as a preventive for
lice in poultry-houses, and your request
to those interested TO report. [ have
lined my buildings throughout with it
for two years, putting it between every
piece of board or timber, and even into
my nests, and so far have not seen a
louise about. had hen-house over
run with lice two years ago, but upon
lining it with tarred paper, they disap-
peared and have not been seen since"
As a general thing farmers do not
pay that attention TO the cultivation of
the mind and the development of their
social faculties that they should. Too
many of them have an idea that educa-
! ton belongs to the professional classes,
and that farm aTs should not take time
to advance beyond the narrow boundary
/ Of their own domain in search of wis
! dom and knowledge. 1t is no sign that
| because / am farmer [ need not know
anything of history, biography, affairs
/ of government and the sciences. In
deed there is no other class has greater
opportunities for the cultivation of the
mind in its broadest sense than the agri-
cultural class. No class possesses great
er chances for unalloyed happiness
Exchange.
We have two kinds Of shepherd dogs
/ in this country, the American and Col
lie. The points of a Collie are these:
! The head resembles that of wolf, being
rather conical, tapering gradually to
sharp nose, with a long jaw. A foxy
and intelligent look, wide, large ears,
which are pendant and a little feathered.
Eyes have a sort of flashing and miss
nothing" look, always on the alert
Neck long and we'll furnished
with apron and rutfle; shoulders fine
and deep: chest we'll let down; legs
straight and full Of muscle; cat-like feet;
! a good broad back; STILES we'll developed;
tail feathered and not carried over the
back; coat long and straight, why to the
touch. Color varies, but black and tan
prevails, the tan pale.-PracticaI Fdrn1er.
! FREQUENT STIRRING OF THE SOIL.-TO
keep the hoe busy between now and
haying is to more than half insure the
success of the crop. The young plant
needs all the nutriment the soil con-
tains in its vicinity to appropriate to
its own uses, that it may be what it
should be, fully developed. AS with
the animal. so with the plant; if it is
but half fed, it is but half bred, and
must necessarily be puny and worth
less. Weeds, of all kinds, are rapid and
greedy eaters of the plant food contain
/ ed in both soil and atmosphere, and
will soon outstrip the hardest Of do
mesticated plants. But it is no use to
explain it. 1t can only be the 'Old
story" told over again, for all under
stand it. But the question Is, will we
act up to our understanding If we do,
and keep dO1O7l the aUedS, not only between
now and haying, but after haying, we
shall, in a great measure, compensate
! for not having manure enough on that
"other acre." by saving all the nutri-
ment there is for the growing crop
And not only this, we shall be gaining
ground. 1t will not be so hard next
year to keep the weeds down, if we do
well at it this year, But keeping down
the weeds is not the only way in which
we get benefit from frequent stirring Of
| the soil. In dry weather it is exceeding
| ly beneficial to stir the soil about plants,
because of the fact that the soil is thus
put in a condition for absorbing moist
ure from the atmosphere; and the
more frequently it is stirred, the better
| in such time. But little fresh dirt is
invigorating to plant life at almost any
PERIOD and hope we shall all see the
beneficial policy of keeping the hoe
! busy.-A. p. Reed IN Name Farmer.
Digestion IN THE HORsE.-The horses
stomach has a capacity of only about
sixteen quarts, while that of the OK has
two hundred and fifty. In the intes-
tines this proportion is reversed, the
horse having capacity of one hundred
and ninety quarts, against one hundred
of the OK. The OK and most other ami
mails have gall-bladder for the reten-
ton of part of the bile secreted during
digestion; the horse has none, and the
bile flows directly into the intestine as
fast as secreted. This construction Of
the digestive apparatus indicates that
the horse was formed to eat slowly and
digest continually bulky and innutri-
cious food. When fed on hay it passes
very rapidly through the stomach into
the intestine. The horse can eat but
about five pounds of hay in an hour,
which is charged, during mastication,
with four times its weight of saliva.
Now the stomach. to digest well, will
contain but about ten quarts, and when
the animal eats one-third Of his daily
rations. or seven pounds, in one and
one-half hours, he has swallowed, at
least, two stomach's full of hay and sail
va, one of these having passed to the
intestine. Observation has shown that
the food is passed to the intestine by the
stomach in the order in which it is re-
ceived if we feed q horse six quarts of
oats it will just fill his stomach, and if,
as soon as he finishes this, we feed him
the above ration of seven pounds of
hay, he will eat sufficient in three quar-
tiers of an hour to have forced the oats
entirely out of the stomach into the in
| testine AS it is the office of the stom-
ach to digest the nitrOgenOus parts of
| the food, and as a stomach full of oats
contains four or five times as much of
these as the same amount of hay, it is
certain that either the stomach must
secrete the gastric juice FIVE times as fast
which is hardly possible, or it must re-
tain this food five times as long. By
| feeding the oats first it can only be re-
tanned long enough for the proper d.
gestion of hay, consequently it seems
logical, when feeding concentrated food
J