country, and will yield an abundance of eggs and chickens for consumption and sale annually. The profits of keeping fowls in a practicable, ordinary way may be demonstrated by the following statement, calculated for a period of two years:

To 30 heads of fowls, at 75 cents per pair

To allow 8 to die in two years and be replaced at 75 cents per pair

To 48 bushels of feed, at 50 cents

By 506 chickens hatched, less 100 died, say, 406 raised, at 20 cents
By manure saved in two years

By 30 head of fowls, at 75 cents per pair .

II 25 $139 00

“Thus, thirty heads of fowls will pay a clear profit of $88.85 in two years, or an average of $1.48 each annually. Good specimens of the breeds named will produce annually about sixty to seventy eggs each. The settings should average thirteen, and of these about eleven will hatch. The extension of poultry-raising should in every way be encouraged, as it increases the supply of good food at a very reduced cost."

Turkeys are also a source of profit near villages and large towns. Where land is plenty, as at the West, it pays well to give poultry a tolerably wide range, accustoming them to come home at night to roost and be fed. They will make havoc with the grasshoppers and locusts, and prevent losses from these pests. They fatten easily, although they require care when they are young. They always command a good price, and as Mrs. Gage says of the fowls, it costs no more, pound for pound, to raise them than it does pork, and they will bring three or four times the price.

Ducks and geese are also profitable where there is water. The latter especially have a triple value, for their eggs, their flesh and their feathers, which are plucked from the living bird, once or twice a year. This is a large business now in some parts of Texas, and is conducted on an extended scale. Pigeons are easily raised, especially in the vicinity of towns; they are very prolific, and the young pigeons or squabs command high prices.

The raising of poultry in the West is attended with some risks, as they have many enemies, Foxes, coyotes, raccoons, weasels, ground-hogs, and other four-footed marauders, and the whole tribe of hawks, owls and vultures, are ready to pounce upon the helpless fowls.

But a still more formidable enemy is the so-called "chicken cholera," a disease which has made sad havoc in the poultryyards of all parts of the country. Many farmers have lost hundreds of fowls, and where a flock are attacked from twenty-five to ninety per cent. die. Ducks, geese and turkeys are as subject to it as hens and chickens. The disease is contagious and goes through an entire flock when one or two are affected. The symptoms are: at first, the fowl begins to mope around, sometimes seeming to have a full crop, but oftener an empty one; it will not eat, but drinks often, and seems to be very thirsty; the comb and wattles become a dark red, nearly a black color; the droppings are at first of a pale green color, then dark green and yellow, but grow thinner, clearer and more liquid with each evacuation, till utterly weakened and prostrate, in the course of from twelve to forty-eight hours the fowl dies, usually with great appearance of agony. Many times they will use their last remaining strength to crawl or flutter away under bushes or a fence to die. The liver is always found to be diseased. They sometimes have an appearance of fatness, but this is due to dropsical effusion. The discharges and the flesh of the fowls have a most offensive odor.

That the cause of this disease, like that of the so-called "hog cholera," was a germ or organism of a contagious nature, and capable of the most rapid propagation, was discovered in France

PROF. PASTEUR'S DISCOVERIES.

477

by M. Moritz, of Upper Alsatia, and M. Toussaint, of Alfort, French veterinary surgeons, in 1878 and 1879. Sig. Peroncito, a veterinary surgeon of Turin, also corroborated their investigations. It was reserved, however, for M. Pasteur, the eminent French physiologist and chemist, to apply the knowledge already obtained on this point to practical use. In a paper "on virulent diseases, and especially on the disease commonly called chicken. cholera," read before the Academie des Sciences, February 9th, 1880, and translated and published here by P. Casamayer, Ph. D., in the "Journal of the American Chemical Society," Prof. Pasteur details the results of his experiments carried on for many months with this specific poisonous germ, by which he has demonstrated that its virulence may be greatly diminished, and that if the chickens are inoculated with this modified germinal poison their sickness will be slight and they will be perfectly protected from the original disease. In a word he has applied Jenner's principle of vaccination to the chicken cholera. The processes by which this may be accomplished are so simple and the results so satisfactory that we presume it will be largely practised where there is danger of the prevalence of chicken cholera.

But until this method can be more generally made known and adopted, it is certainly best that measures of prevention should be resorted to, and that the roosts and henneries should be kept perfectly free from vermin, by the free use of whitewash and kerosene oil, that no lice or other insects should infest the fowls, and that they should have pure water and perfectly clean feed, with fine gravel, red pepper, and occasionally a little assafoetida put in their water to act as a tonic. Their food should not be exclusively of corn, but meal, bran and other articles should be given a part of the time. They should have no access either to their own droppings, or any manure heaps, especially if any disease prevails among other domestic animals, but should have during the day the range of a large, and if possible, gravelly lot. Another disease which affects fowls very often, and is considerably destructive, though less so than the chicken cholera, is roup. Under this name several distinct diseases, though all affecting the air passage, are included. It is sometimes

analogous to croup, and the fowls die of suffocation; at other times it is only a severe catarrh, and sometimes a contagious one; at still other times it is an inflammation of the lungs or a sort of pleuro-pneumonia. These are all caused primarily by damp and unwholesome temperatures at the roosts, foul air, currents of air, etc. The symptoms are sneezing, mucous discharge from the nostrils, froth in the corners of the eyes, and a tendency to suffocation-stimulating food, red pepper, and bran mash, are as good as any medicines internally, and the external application of a wash of sulphate of iron (copperas), spirits of turpentine or kerosene to the head and throat (taking care that none of it enters the eyes), are the best external remedies. If the mucous discharge is copious and offensive, separate the sick fowls from the rest of the flock, as, at this stage, the disease is contagious. A lump of borax of the size of a chestnut dissolved in one or two quarts of their drinking water, is a very good remedy for the suffocating trouble of the throat.

CHAPTER XI.

SPECIAL CROPS-RICE CORN-PEARL MILLET-OTHER MILLETS-HUNGARIAN GRASS SWEET POTATOES PEA-NUT OR GROUND-NUT THE SUGAR QUESTION ONCE MORE IS NOT CORN WORTH MORE THAN TWENTY CENTS A BUSHEL TO MANUFACTURE INTO SUGAR ?—THE CULTIVATION OF TextilesFLAX, HEMP, RAMIE, JUTE, TAMPICO, TULE, NETTLE, Esparto Grass, the BRAKE OR SWAMP CANE-SOME OF THE CACTI-CULTIVATION OF OILPRODUCING PLANTS-CASTOR BEAN, OLIVE, FLAX, RAPE, HEMP AND COTTON SEED, TAR WEED, SESAME, PEPPERMINT, SPEARMINT, BERGAMOT-CULTIVATION OF NUT-BEARING AND FRUIT-BEARING TREES ANd Shrubs—English WALNUT, BLACK WALNUT, HICKORY-NUT, COMMON CHESTNUT, ITALIAN CHESTNUT, ALMOND, FILBERT, PECAN, HAZEL-NUT, PAWPAW, PERSIMMON, JAPANESE PERSIMMON, POMEGRANATE, MANDRAKE, APRICOT, MEDLAR, ORANGE, LEMON, SHADDOCK, ETC.-ORDINARY FRUITS, APPLES, PEARS, QUINCES, PEACHES, PLUMS, CHERRIES, PRUNES, ETC.-SMALL FRUITS, GRAPES, CURRANTS, GOOSEBERRIES, STRAWBERRIES, RASPBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES, DEWBERRIES, PARTRIDGEBERRIES, WHORTLEBERRIES-EMPLOYMENT FOR PROFESSIONAL MEN, ARTISANS, TRADESMEN, FLORISTS, MARKET-GARDENERS, FACTORY OPERATIVES, ETC.

In previous chapters we have endeavored to place before the settler the results attained by skilful farmers and stock-raisers,

in the ordinary crops and avocations of an agricultural or pastoral life. It now remains for us to show what special crops have proved, or are likely to prove, profitable, when their culture is undertaken under favorable circumstances.

We have already said in our First Part, that above the thirtysecond parallel of north latitude, the best first crops which a settler can raise, on new lands, are wheat or the root crops. But, after the arable land of the farm has been under the plow two or three times, and a rotation of crops seems desirable, it is well for him. to turn his attention to some other crops in addition to his wheat, oats, barley, corn and potatoes, which with proper care he may find, perhaps, more profitable than the staples which he has been cultivating, and must still continue to cultivate on the larger part of his farm.

If he has any cows, kept for dairy purposes, any sheep or swine, he will do well to turn his attention first to forage plants, or to those which, in addition to their value for this purpose, yield some other important product. The different varieties of Sorghum, differing in their time of ripening, in their size and in the amount of saccharine matter they contain, answer an admirable purpose for both these crops. They can be sown early and cut just as the seed ripens, the leaves stripped for forage and the tops either reserved for feeding stock or for sowing, while the stalks can be crushed for the saccharine juice. Indian corn may be made to furnish a triple product in the same way; the leaves. being used for forage, the stalks for sugar and syrup, and the bagasse or dry crushed stalks used for fuel or for paper, the corn preserved for its various uses, not the least profitable of which is now the manufacture of glucose sugar. With such a demand as there now is for corn for this and other purposes, it ought to be worth much more than twenty cents a bushel, at which price it has been sold, for several years past, in Western and Central Kansas, and even within ten or fifteen miles of a railway. There is some dispute in regard to the healthful character of the glucose sugar and syrup, which are now made to the extent of many millions of pounds annually in Chicago, St. Louis, and Buffalo, some contending that as made, it contains free sulphuric acid and other