ApfefliL * HINTS A Sign or I.nck of SUi'l. Abandoned farms are evidences of lack of skill and industry on the part of their former occupants. The fact that some of these farms have been made profitable demonstrates that more farms are abandoned because | of inducements in other directions to individuals who cannot make the farm pay more than for lack of capacity of the soil. Not a CSoocl Footl for Cnvrn. A recent writer says lie fed his cows on pumpkins liberally for some time j : , and they fell off in their milk two or. three quarts per day, each cow, which i was caused by the pumpkin seeds, for j when they were removed and the same quantity of pumpkins fed, the cows in £ creased in their milk to a larger jr amount than they had before given. A satisfying proof that pumpkin /seed will dry up the milk secretion is demonstrated by feeding alternately for a week or two by the t wo methods. When the seeds are allowed an im mediate lessening of thfe milk supply ! follows. While pumpkins are valuable as food for the dairy and constitute a cheap ration, the seeds act adversely and must be removed. Hon;* for Ouick Return*. It has always been my experience that there is a deciilej advantage with hogs over all other stock kept on the farm —the quick returns if good man agement is given. As with all stock, it is essential that a good breed be had. By having well bred animals a quick growth and early maturity can be obtained. If a sow farrows in early spring, say April, late enough not to , endanger losses from cold, in nine months the pigs, with good treatment, can be ready for market. By this time another lot of pigs can be growing. Thus we can sell two lots of pigs in a year from the same sow. This gives a quick return, and at this year's prices, a good one on the money in vested. No other stock will answer as well. The value of the hog to the farmer cannot he questioned.—Mrs. M. A. Speakman, in Orange-Judd Farmer. Careful Cribbing. Care should be taken in cribbing corn to protect it aginst rats. Cribs should be raised from the ground so that the floor can not be gnawed through, and the posts should be so guarded that they cannot be climbed, I know of no better plan than the old one of covering the top of each post with a galvanized iron pan, extending out so that the rats cannot climb around it; strips of galvanized iron inay be nailed around the top of the posts, flaring outward and downward, •# like the eaves of a house, so that the * rat can not pas the obstruction. Cribs should not be near other buildings, and everywhere care should be taken to avoid building rat harbors. The pest of rats does not stop with the mere loss of the grain they consume, although when corn is 50 cents per bushel tills loss Is well nigh intoler able; they visit dwelling and poultry yard, and everything about the farm suffers. All should begin at the be ginning to reduce this nuisance by cribbing the corn so carefully that there will be no encouragement to the rat family.—G. March, in the Epito mist. Failure or SiiccMD. The careless dairyman lias no pos sible excuse for existence. His cans are more than likely to be rinsed in ditch water, it hot water chanced to be convenient, tney may be scalded ever in a week or two. If he makes W butter at home, he does it without a thermometer. The youngest child who can turn the handle or lift the dasher is placed at the churn, and told td remain until he hears the butter milk "slashing round!" This man, If he insists on keeping cows, should take his milk to a creamery and buy his butter there. He is a fossil, not a dairyman. But, if a man can keep his milk clean every day in the year, if he can be interested in the sweetness of his milk cans, if he can be thoroughly con vinced of the virtues of water actual ly at boiling point as the only destruc tion of germs of ill flavor, if he can watch over his cream and control its ripening, and churn with his thermom eter and his understanding as well as with his hands, if he can be enthusi astic over the grain of his butter and keep before his mind's eye the perfect product, rather than the dollars and cents represented by it —then he has 1 found his vocation and is likely to do it credit. —Edith Evans before the Arizona Agricultural Association. Fertile Egg* In Early Spring. If one desires to secure fertile eggs early in the season there are certain precautions to be taken. The hens Shouid be induced to exercise as much as posible. To secure this end there is nothing better than to have abund ant litter and scatter whole grain in it, so as to compel the hens to scratch for their food. The food shouid con tain at least 10 percent and 20 percent would be better, of animal matter. Whether the animal food is ground green hones, beef scraps or animal meat Is not of so much consequence as that animal food be given. Probably if the bones have plenty of lean meat adhering to them, they are the best to /use. • Beef scraps I nave used in prefer ence to other animal foods, because they are always obtainable at reason able prices. Some so called animal 4 meats are apt to be two laxative aiul their use requires more care than most poultrymen are willing to give. If a mash is given for one meal, it should be fed warm, not hot, and the addition of a little sulphur will be found beneficial. The eggs should be gathered regu larly, and frequently if the weather is cold in order to prevent their being chilled. While an egg will endure con siderable cold, yet even a slight chill may prevent it from hatching, and it is always "better to be safe than to be sorry" in such matters. The fresh er the eggs the stronger wil be their fertility. While eggs sometimes will hatch when six weeks or two months old, they are much more likely to hatch If not more than one week old. If they must be kept, their fer tility will tend to be preserved by turning them over every day or two. If eggs are purchased for hatching and come from a distance, they should be unpacked promptly, put in a cool place and allowed to lie undisturbed upon their sides for from 24 to 48 hours, according to the distance they have traveled, before they are placed under a hen or in a incubator. Experi ments have shown that the jarring incidental to travel to some degree dis places tile contents of the eggs and that a period of rest is necessary to secure the proper readjustment of the contents. Neglect to give traveled eggs the requisite rest is probably re sponsible for not a few complaints re garding their being fertile. A rotten egg is one that has been fertile. Not a few complaints are made that the eggs set were infertile because after incubation they were rotten. But their rottenness proves exactly the reverse. An egg which has never been fertilized will be as odorless after three weeks incubation as it was at the start. The sweetness may not prove that it was never fertilized be cause it is possible that fertile eggs may be so injured that the germ never starts to grow, but rottenness proves that there was a germ which began to grow but died during some period of the incubation.—H. S. Babcock, In American Agriculturist. To tlie Ilesruo of Wornout I.untl*. The unproductive pasture and mead, ow lands of New England are in no sense worn out and exhausted; they are not dead, never to be re vived again. Their returns are small, simply because they lack care and attention. Stir them up, get air through them, and then add some available plant food so plant life can get started; they will quickly change from their unproductive condition, giving satisfactory returns. All things considered, New England is one of the best hay-raising sections of the whole country. Much of these lands are giving good farm return with neither artificial feeding nor care. Think vyliat they would surely do were they handled in a business like way. The New Hampshire col lege farm is one of the most vivid ex amples of what skill, science and caro will do in the way of rescuing worn out lands. When the college was moved to Durham, the farm repre sented one of the most depleted and broken-down farms in the whole New England district. But 12 tons of hay were cut that first year; it required some time to produce enough forage for the smal number of animals kept. But what a change in a few brief yeai 1 The past season finds every field on the old farm under cultivation, and newly seeded to grass, and two large barns filled with hay and corn to over flowing, and 80 head of cattle and horses supported, besides a large num ber of hogs. How was this done? By tillage, crop ratation, manures and fertilizers. What was done for the improvement of that farm is possible for every farmer in New England. The first step is tillage, and thorough tillage at that; chemicals and crop rotation will not show their full value unless good tillage is followed. Soil must be stirred up and filled with air. This practice will improve the physical condition of the soil; and changes the unavailable, unassimilable plant food into available plant food. It losens the soil, it puts life in the soil; it makes a comfortable home in which the plant may grow. Then crop rotation adjusts the different plants to the environments of their food. Finally, chemicals supply the needed plant food to get a good and vigorous growth from the beginning. We have found it advisable in bring ing up the New Hampshire College farm to add the following chemicals just before sowing: Muriate of potash 150 pounds, nitrate of soda 100, and acid phosphate 200 pounds per acre. This mixture was scattered broadcast, then harrowed in followed by the crop seed. One favorable season the yield was increased from less than a half ton of hay to the acre to more than three tons. An eight-acre field three years ago was treated in this manner by fall and spring seeding, and the following summer 22 tons of timothy-clover hav were cut. The last summer a trifle less than 24 tons were harvested. Oth er fields were treated in a similar way. In every case the yield has been doubled and trebled by tillage and fer tilization. Does it pay? Nothing pays better than when hay sells for sls and S2O per ton. The expenditure of $lO per acre for labor and fertilizers will be returned in a single year, with a profit of as much as twice what was origin ally spent, and then for four or five years everything is profit, except the cost of harvesting the crop.—Charles W. Burkett, in American Cultivator. The leopard cannot change his spots, but a girl can get rid of freckles. ! i Were Never Defeated * • • • Victorious Gener&.l3 Who Conducted Campaigns Without • ® Reverses. £ It is curious and interesting In read ing the lives of great military com manders to observe among the large number of generals who have held in dependent commands how few have careers of uninterrupted success. A man who can go through a campaign and fight many battles and never suffer a reverse must, indeed, be a command er of the first order. The Duke of Alva, one of the most eminent soldiers of the sixteenth cen tury. never, throughout his long and eventful career, lost a battle. The archbishop of Cologne was struck by Ills efforts to avoid a conflict, having on one occasion urged him to engage the Dutch. "The object of a general," replied Alva, "is not to fight, but to conquer; he fights enough who obtains the victory." Oliver Cromwell, throughout his mil itary career, never lost a battle, though he very nearly sustained a reverse at Dunbar. The Duke of Marlborough affords an excellent example of a successful sol dier. He combined all the qualities necessary for a great commander, and although he fought several battles against the most experienced generals I Chinese Clsuns Fight J If\ vil Trivial Disputes That Sometimes Lead Jo Great Loss cf Life, g Americans in the region around Swa tow, China, have been brought face to face unexpectedly with a curious hin drance to trade in the form of constant fights between clans over the most trivial things. As nearly every Chinese laborer is a member of a clan in that district, the commerce of the twentieth century is stopped every little while by the survivals of a past so ancient that the American commonwealth is an ab surdly young infant compared with tt. The clans are all formed of blood rel atives and are added to systematically by interniariage so that all the mem bers are bound together by tie 3 of rela tionship. Each member pays all he can to the headman of his clan, and the sums obtained In this way are enor mous. Thus the Ur clan recently fought for six months and the total cost of the war was only 13 cents a man, certainly as low a war budget as there is on rec ord. A few months ago two men from two different clans met in a village in the province. One mentioned the other's clan in a disrespectful way. A pretty © -rt- .cßrv--uxL.--.-Bii- -reti. .v-DIA-