sary to effect a cure. As a cheap disinfectant for the germs, we know of nothing better than a dilute solution of sulphuric acid and water; eight to ten ounces of acid to as many gallons of water. It may be sprinkled over the floors and roosts from a common watering-pot, and may be applied to the sides and roof of the building by whitewash brushes. Hot whitewash thoroughly applied is also an excellent and inexpensive disinfectant. It should be carefully rubbed into all crevices and joints in the wood-work. All excrements should be carefully removed so that the fowls cannot come in contact with them. All places reached by the fowls should be carefully disinfected. Another cheap application is a solution of copperas and water, but to be of much value it will require a careful application, and should be repeated every few days until the disease disappears. Upon the authority of Koch, bichloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate is one of the best destroyers of infectious germs, but its use in the poultry-house is dangerous, as it is a well-known poison. Koch states that he has found that if it is applied in a solution in water in the proportion of one in from one thousand to five thousand, it will destroy the spore, or germ, of disease in a very few moments, and that he considers it to be the best for all cases of disease produced by germs. It has been claimed by some that very small but repeated doses of dilute carbolic acid will cure even bad cases, but practice has not yet proven that there is any reliable remedy. Koch has proven that inoculation, with the properly reduced virus of the disease, will give immunity from its attack, and that it is accompanied with very little risk of loss. The reports of the National Department of Agriculture state that solutions of carbolic acid in the proportion of three fourths of one per cent. very soon destroyed the spores in chicken cholera, and effectually prevented their further formation.

As a means of preventing the loss as much as possible, cleanliness in the houses and grounds is a very important adjunct, and, if carefully attended to, may do much to prevent serious outbreaks; cooked food is also an assistant in diminishing its ravages; camphor in the drinking water is regarded as important by many; charcoal mixed with soft food is also considered to be, not only a preventive, but also a cure, by many. In all cases prevention is better than cure; be careful to get fowls only from healthy stock, and introduce no new stock into the yard without knowing where it came from; if possible, test the efficacy of inoculation for yourself.

corn.

LIVER DISEASE. Of this disease, Mr. Beale writes as follows: "There can be no doubt that liver disease is hereditary, but it can also be induced chiefly by feeding on too rich foods and by improper conditions of life. I am firmly convinced that the great increase of liver disease in this country of late years has been due greatly to the use of maize, or Indian This grain, strong as it is in the fat-producing elements, is far too rich for poultry-feeding, causing the development of internal fat, which is in itself an incentive of disease. For this reason, I am strongly opposed to the free use of this grain. The symptoms of liver disease are a moping about on the part of the birds, an irregular appetite, and there is generally a yellowish hue on the comb, face, and wattles. The best treatment is to give some aperient medicine, preceded by a couple of grains of calomel every other day. The homoeopathic tincture of podophyllum is also a most useful remedy for this complaint, and can be used after the first dose of the aperient and calomel. It is hardly necessary to say that all rich food must be abandoned at once, and the fowls put on the plainest diet, the healthy as well as the affected fowls."

By far the greater majority of diseases in the digestive organs of poultry are due to improper management as to food or cleanliness. Filthy houses breed disease and increase the liability to loss from any and all contagious diseases. Other things being equal, an outbreak of cholera is always attended with more loss among fowls in dirty houses, or where they roost in exposed places. Sudden changes from dry to green food are responsible for many diseases. The fowls, after several days' or weeks' confinement in the house, are turned out and allowed to gorge themselves with green food; they become " 'crop-bound," lose flesh from excessive looseness of the bowels; and in other ways suffer from the change. On the other hand, fowls which have been running over the farm should not be penned up and deprived of all green food suddenly, or constipation will give more or less trouble; all changes in food should be made as gradually as possible.

It has been found that fowls confined in close coops will not fatten or increase much in weight after the first ten days or two weeks, and confinement is ascribed as the cause, but is much more likely due to the fact that the supply of gravel has been exhaused, and the food is not properly prepared for digestion. Regular supplies of gravel should be given to all fowls which have not free access to the bare ground; if they have the opportunity, they will obtain the necessary amount themselves, but if their natural supply is cut off, a substitute should be given to them.

DAIRY FARMING-THE COST OF BUTTER.

After the reading of an essay on "Dairy Farming in Northern Pennsylvania" at the Towanda meeting of the Board, the following discussion took place:

Dr. E. HARVEY of Delaware. I think that the farmer of the eastern portion of the United States will not much longer have to dread the competition of the Western States. The lands will cease to be cheaper in the West, the new lands will all be taken up and settled, the time will come when they will be no cheaper than here, and we may look for this at no very distant day. It is a question of time, and possibly of a very short time, when the cities of the West, the great manufacturing industries, will grow and become larger, and thus there will be as much demand for farm produce there as here. And in this way the rivalry between the two sections will cease. This competition of farm products will then diminish. First, The land will increase in value and the population will become larger in the West than it is now, and I, therefore, think that we will not much longer have to dread the present state of affairs. Our present condition is incident to the rapid settlement of the new land in the West; these lands are now mainly occupied, and in less than ten years they will be out of the market. We are now in a transitory state. There was a time when it was thought that the woodland in the vicinity of Philadelphia must increase very much in value. Some purchased large tracts of woodland, thinking that it must always have a constant increase in value if near tide-water; the discovery of coal and the possibility of the cheap transportation of timber from the interior and northern counties of our State was not forseen. This was one step in the transition; railroads were constructed, and I well remember the first operation in railroads near Philadelphia. The objection then made upon the part of the farmers was that

by doing away with the use of horses they would ruin the market for oats and corn as feed, that the sale of oats would be interfered with and it would cease to be a profitable crop, that everything raised on the farm would suffer by the construction of railroads, that the price of horses would be very much decreased; yet, notwithstanding this the price of horses has steadily increased. In fact, with every improvement in the country each individual product improves. This has been the case notwithstanding the competition with the cheap lands of the West, and I would, therefore, think that when the lands of the West increase in value, as they necessarily must do, we will gradually hear less and less of Western competition in farm products.

E. REEDER of Bucks. From the reading of the essay, I fail to understand what the profits of dairy farming in Northern Pennsylvania are. Quite a number of statistics were given showing the prices received, but these do not represent by any means the profits; the profits are represented by the difference between the actual cost of the product and its market value. I would very much like to hear from the essayist, or from some one present, an estimate of the cost of a quart of milk or a pound of butter.

J. W. INGHAM of Bradford. Mr. Pratt has given us an account of his dairying for seven years; he gives the number of pounds of milk, the value of the food consumed by the cows, and you will find a full and complete statement in the United States Agricultural Report for 1864.

J. I. CARTER Of Chester county. As I have a creamery of my own, I may possibly be able to throw some light upon the question as asked by Mr. Reeder. I know little as to the milk, but as I do not keep any cows but buy all the milk which I use, I am not able to give you its cost of production. I have made a careful calculation as to last year's transaction, and the average in our county runs from fifty to seventy-five dollars of milk product per head. To illustrate it a little plainer, I would say that at one of our late creamery meetings I gave the proceeds of my creamery last year, the number of pounds of butter made and quarts of milk purchased, the average price received for the butter, and the average price paid for milk. As the gentleman has said, figures do not furnish very interesting reading, but I will ask your indulgence while I present them in a condensed form, as follows:

BUTTER ACCOUNT OF LAST YEAR, 1884, AND 1885.

This ran on about in this way: The average price for the year was two and ten thirteenths cents for each quart of milk. The average quantity to each pound was nine and one half quarts. We made during the year seventy-five thousand three hundred and forty pounds.

This might throw a little light on the profit of keeping cows, if you can tell about the quantity your cows will make. These are figures from our books that are reliable.

Perhaps it would be interesting in this connection to show the value of skim milk for hogs-we feed it to our hogs-we keep about one hundred in our dairy. I weighed our hogs on the first of April, when we took an account of stock, and in order to show something about their gain, we weighed them at the end of twenty-six days.

HOG ACCOUNT OF APRIL, 1885, SHOWING THE GROWTH OF HOGS, AND VALUE SKIM-MILK FOR FOOD.

The following lots of hogs gained as follows in twenty-six days: 21 gained 820 or 1 pounds per day.

7 " 155 or

320 or 12%

3

170 or 12%

20

66 280 or 14

The average gain on the sixty-five hogs was one and one fourth pounds per day. The value of gain was four dollars and eighty cents per hundred weight, which equals five cents per day. The increase in value on one hundred head, my present stock, equals five dollars per day, or one hundred and fifty dollars per month. During the month, we received one hundred and forty-two thousand seven hundred and twenty-six pounds of milk. We made butter in that time amounting to five thousand eight hundred and twenty-one pounds. We sold some skim-milk, but had eleven thousand four hundred and thirty-one gallons left for feeding to our stock. Now, if we estimate the value of the product and the gain of the hogs, it leaves the value of the skim-milk at something over one cent per gallon. The hogs were simply fed skim-milk and a little grain, to keep their stomachs in good order.

NOTE BY THE SECRETARY.-All attempts to fix the exact cost of a quart of milk, or, in fact, of any farm product, are met with difficulties which are incident to location and surroundings, and which are constantly varying with these surroundings and the season and animals. A difference in the value of the land, which may occur within a very narrow circle, may very materially affect the data from which the calculation must necessarily be made. The data obtained from a single cow cannot be accepted as a duplication of ten, nor can the result which is obtained from ten cows be taken as a criterion by which the production of twenty-five may be calculated. One of the greatest difficulties which surrounds all attempts to obtain reliable data as to the cost of any farm product is the great difficulty of inducing farmers to place a proper value upon labor; for instance, one of our correspondents gave us, with great apparent certainty, the cost of a pound of butter from his dairy; further inquiry developed the fact that he had made no charge for milking or making the butter, because "the boys and girls (four in number) did all of the work, and received no wages." In many cases, when a fair estimate is arrived at, it is not accepted by practical men, simply because it includes "everything" which goes to make

up the expense. Upon the other hand, much difficulty is also experienced because farmers will not make a fair allowance for products used in the family. One of our dairy correspondents, in giving the cost of a pound of butter, gave no credit for the milk, cream, and butter consumed by his family of seven. As the dairy contained but ten cows, and the family probably consumed the product of almost two of these, it will readily be seen that the data was misleading and not acceptable. In other cases which we might note, no credit was given for a calf from each cow each year, although the calves were kept on the cows until four weeks old, and then sold for veal at a fair price. In another dairy of seven cows, no credit was given for calves, because "the butcher who supplied the family with beef got the calves, and they about paid the annual beef bill." In many cases, no credit was allowed for manure, but all feed and hay was charged upon the other side of the account. In order to arrive at a fair estimate of the cost of a quart of milk, it will be necessary to know all of the conditions under which the milk was produced, and every item upon either side of the account should have due credit. Even with all of this, we will find that the estimates of practical men, owing to differences in management, will vary very much. No item should be considered too small to be taken into account, and every quart of milk used by the family should be fairly credited.

In addition to the data brought out in the discussion, we add the following results from the milk of fourteen dairies, all taken to and sold at one creamery. If to these figures each of our readeas will apply his own data as to annual cost of keeping, work, marketing, &c., he will be able to answer the question from his own stand-point, but even then he will find it difficult to convince his neighbor that the figures so obtained represent the cost of a quart of milk. The figures are as follows: