Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-03-06
AGRICULTURAL SELECTIONS.

| Enthusiastically We have an inquiry in
regard to using salt as fertilizer. In nearly
all ages and countries salt has been used as
manure. While it acts as feeder to plants,
it performs the office also of solvent, dis
solving, in the fluid state, other substances,
and rendering them available as plant food.
| But it should be used with care, especially in
dry season, or in dry climates, where the
rainfall is deficient 1t should never be ap-
piled directly to plants, although sometimes
1t is applied to cabbage to hasten their head
ing, and render them more solid Prairie
| Farmer.
| BONE DUsT.-Bone dust will doubtless be
beneficial in supplying phosphates or bone
earth, which all grain crops remove from the
soil. 1t will add, at least, in restoring fer
tility. 1t may be sown broadcast with small
grain In the spring, or can De narrowed in
alone. 1t should not be plowed in, for its
tendency is to sink rapidly. The quantity ap-
piled to the acre varies with circumstances
or the opinions of different persons. Ten or
twelve bushels per acre are usually applied,
though a greater quantity is often used. No
definite estimate of increased advantage in
yield of crop thus treated can be given be-
cause of so many contingencies and diverse
conditions in different cases. Prairie Farmer.
| CALoMEL IN ToMAToEs.-An old subscriber
and friend writes us that celebrated French
chemist and physician, who has analysed to-
matoes, declares that they contain all the
elements of calomel, and he has known them
to salivate persons. She wishes our opinion
on this subject, and we have only to say that
this idea has been going the rounds of the
press for more than thirty years. 1t is a
falsehood from beginning TO end. The idea
that they produce salvation may possibly
have originated from the fact that, eaten in
,.S
the fruit seems to irritate those parts of the
mouth with which it comes in contact The
idea that tomatoes cause cancer is another
superstition, the outgrowth of the former
notion that tomatoes were unit to eat.
They cause neither cancer nor salvation, and
may be eaten with IMMUNITY by most per-
sons, and often with great benefit Herald
of Health.
AN ARTIFICIAL MoTHER.-A good arti-
fetal mother for chicks over three weeks old
may be made in the following manner: Drive
two small stakes into the ground, at dis
tauce of from Is inches to three feet, accord
ing to the number of chickens to be brooded.
The stakes should be about "a inches long,
and all but 10 inches should be driven into
the ground. Then nail light piece of wood
of the proper length to the end of each
of the stakes, so as to form the frame work
of miniature tent. Now stretch a large
piece of cloth Ia sack or two are good) across
the ridge pole, pinning the ends down at each
side-exactly as though you were putting up
tent. The two ends will then be open. If
you like, an extra sack may be laid over one
end, so as to prevent a draft, while the other
end should be left open. If this mother +"
be placed on the spot occupied by the one
which was used when the chicks were smaller,
they will readily make the change, and, if
over three weeks old, will thrive as well as if
still furnished with artificial heat This kind
of mother " is inexpensive, and prevents all
sitting or crushing OF the chicks. No more
than seventy-ive OF one hundred chicks
should be kept under one Observation-Disclosures
MIA Poultry News.
MAPLE SUGAR.-Joe Pippin has an old
| fashioned maple sugar camp, on small
| scale, in full blast at the Powder Works.
| He has tapped about dozen small, white
maple trees, and during the prevalence of the
late frosty weather they yielded about 10
gallons of sap daily. From this he has been
manufacturing both syrup and sugar. This
is the first instance we have known of sugar
being manufactured from maple trees in Cali
fornia.-tCourier.