they are said to taste precisely like fresh eggs. It promises to become an important industry and evidently will not require an expensive plant.

Remove the Dead Shoots. Professor Hyane, of the State University of California, and Professor George Hus. mann, of Napa, both advise that when vines have been frosted the frosted shoots

should be either cut or broken off prompt ly. The reserve buds will then push out and often make a fair crop. If the frozen shoots are left, the frozen sap sours the wood and injures the vine.

In an ad

A Killing Committee. mirable paper read before the Knox County (Ill.) farmer's institute by James H. Coolidge, Jr., and full of practical suggestions, he says:

"It has been suggested that there ought to be in every community a killing committee, whose duty it would be to make an annual round and order all unprofitable COWS killed. That would include all cows which do not produce 200 pounds of butter in a year or its equivalent in milk. I think I can conscientiously commend that suggestion."

Never use fresh manure on onion ground just previous to planting. It will give you a weed crop too quickly.

Wide tires on your wagons will make lighter draft for your teams and will improve rather than injure the roads.

The little scratching hen adds to the wealth of the country every year in eggs as much as the output of both iron and wool-$135,000,000.

The fruit raiser who provides for the production of his own home supplies of all kinds of farm and garden produce will be the more independent.

Alfalfa should not be planted in an orchard. The roots go deeper than those of fruit trees, and the growth will be retarded if the trees are not killed.

Getting the corn ground ready is one of the big jobs in the corn states each year, and it has to be well done every time if good results are to be expected.

If sheep are dipped a few weeks after shearing, it will more than compensate the cost by an improvement in the weight and quality of the wool, and in the better health and comfort of the animals.

Cut alfalfa just after it has completed the full bloom and before it has begun to turn yellow near the ground. Irrigate just before cutting and harrow immediately after if you wish to get quick recovery and perhaps cut an extra crop in the season.

According to the American Cultivator forty million eggs are use by the calico print works each year, photographic establishments use millions of dozens, and wine clarifiers call for over ten million dozens. The demand from these sources increases faster than the table demand. They are used by book binders, kid glove manufacturers, and for finishing fine leather.

If you starve your land it will starve

you.

Frequent cultivation helps out irriga

tion.

The rougher the surface the longer the road.

Poor roads cost most and are worthless always.

Stunt a calf and it becomes a poor investment.

Adversity may bring blessings, though disguised.

A manly man meets and overcomes difficulties.

It is the attractive goods that command best prices.

Fruit is one of the best medicines, and the cheapest.

Do your best and you need not fear consequences.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything.

Many start all right but do not hold out as they begin.

A single weed may furnish seed to stock a farm. Don't let it.

Fruit growing is not a business to be undertaken by mossbacks.

Turn the soil early in the fall and plant it early in the spring.

If you send inferior stuff to market you cannot hope for high prices.

You can't live long enough to learn all there is to know about farming.

If you cannot know but one thing it is better to know that thoroughly.

It is one thing to know what ought to be done, and quite another to do it.

The best machine for the conversion of corn into money, is a well-bred hog. Think-Can you tell why there are so many gray horses and no gray colts?

Buy shoes at the close of the day when your feet are at their maximum size.

It is not good sense to breed a class of animals for which there is no demand.

Flowers, in doors and out, are the most attractive of all forms of ornamentation. Those who loaf at the store and whittle are not the fellows who raise good crops.

The little things that farmers cannot find time to do are sometimes most important.

The alfalfa farmer of the west makes many blades of grass grow where one grew before.

Diversified crops, careful attention, patience and perseverance contribute to success in farming.

Save it all and make the most of the farm manure; it is an important resource; to waste it is criminal.

It is the food it eats that keeps the animal warm. If fed in the open air it takes so much the more fuel.

A farmer cannot know too much about his farm, and he ought also to know something about the markets.

It takes a very conscientious man to hold to the straight and narrow path when the pocket nerve is involved.

It is not a prudent farmer who wastes the feed in winter which it has cost so much labor in summer to produce.

Rotation of crops is one of the best preventives against the spread of the various pests and worms that feed on different farm products.

It is a patent fact that reading farmers are as a rule the prosperous ones. Reading stimulates thought, and the more a farmer thinks, the bigger his crops will be.

Your grandfather might have been a good man and your father before you, but times now and then are different. It is the present to which you must adapt yourself.

Andrew Carnegie, speaking to the Cornell students advised them that the wise man would put all his eggs in one basket and then watch the basket; in other words adopt a specialty and get to understand the one thing perfectly.

A NEW machine for making cans turns out 120 a minute, or 72,000 every ten hours, with one man and five boys to attend it. The cost is but a trifle in addition to the first cost of the tin.

ELECTRIC locomotives have shown themselves to be fifty-five per cent cheaper in coal consumption than steam locomotives.

TESLA claims that his phosphorescent light is so closely a duplicate of sunlight that it can scarcely be distinguished from

It possesses all the health-giving qualities and drives away dampness. The light is already an acomplished fact.

A NEW JERSEY man raising vegetables for the New York market has spent $25,000 in electric culture and facilities, and it is said he has increased his production from 40 to 60 per cent.

THE latest design for a fire extinguisher is a quadricycle, or two tandems coupled together. They carry the extinguishing liquid and a supply of hose between the two and are operated, including the run to the fire by four men. It can beat a horse outfit getting there.

SANTA BARBARA, California, is trying a new form of street paving for which it has all the materials at hand. They have an asphalt mixer that uses wet sand. A crusher, on the other side of an oil-burning engine, crushes the rock from the beach. A compound of crude and refined asphaltum is spread one and a half inches thick, and while it is hot a coating of crushed rock and sand is spread over and rolled in, making a total thickness of two and a half inches.

BOTH Edison and Tesla have been closely engaged in studying the Roentgen X-ray discoveries with the result of adding many important discoveries to the original. By the "fluorescent screen" Edison succeeded in getting astonishing results without increasing the electric intensity, saving time in exposure and producing results which might be seen by the naked eye. His inventions are along the practical line, and it is announced that his discoveries will not be patented, but are given for the free use

of the public. Tesla has worked in the direction of increasing the electric intensity. Where others have used voltage recoined in thousands or hundreds of thousands, he has used millions. His object was to secure vast power in the vacuum tubes and he has succeeded. A news telegram tells of his accomplishments in these astonishing statements:

"The skeleton of one of his assistants, who stood at a distance of five or six feet from the tube, which was giving off rays, was seen plainly. But that was not all. Tesla has finally perfected the X-ray tube to such an extent that he saw completely through skeleton as well as flesh. One of his assistants held a brass plate in front of his chest, moving it up and down. The X-ray had penetrated the body, and through the fluorescent screen Tesla could distinctly see the brass plate as it moved. A NEW Machine which bids fair to revo

lutionize the cigar-making industry is reported from Binghamton, N. Y. Machines are said to be on exhibition in operation there now, which are turning out smoothly bunched and neatly wrapped cigars at the rate of three thousand per day for each machine. This is about three times as many as an expert can roll when using moulds. The machine is of about the size and appearance of a sewing machine and is as easily operated. The essential mechanism consists of a metal

plate, a traveling rubber belt and two rubber rollers. The plate has a beveled or warped surface of varying sections, on which cigars of all the approved shapes can be made by a simple adjustment of a clamp. A "bunch" of tobacco is inserted between the rollers and the traveling band. At the same time a wrapper is fed upon the plate and automatically guided around the bunch. The tucking" and "pasting" are done while the next are being rolled, so that two cigars are in process of manufacture at the same time. It is estimated that with these machines all shapes and qualities of cigars can be made at a labor cost of thirty cents per thousand.New Ideas.

66

IRRIGATION IN CENTRAL KANSAS.

BY A. C. ROMIG.

TO irrigate or not to irrigate; that is the

question that has engaged the attention of many farmers in Central Kansas for the last twelve months.

In location we are occupying debatable ground; it is not definitely settled whether we are arid or humid.

From 1892 to 1896 we were decidedly arid; but now that the rains have come we think we are humid; and the hesitating farmer has decided to postpone his irrigation schemes indefinitely. He has a conviction imprisoned in his brain, that in the cycle of years, we have passed the period of drought, and are entered upon the threshold of a series of wet and prosperous seasons; that the dread calamity of hot winds and crop failures are at an end, irrigation unnecessary, superfluous, and an expensive luxury.

The buoyant hopefulness and simple faith of the average Kansan is sublime.

Too

But the true advocate of intensive farming is not so optimistic, and is not so easily swerved from his purpose by doubtful promise of better seasons ahead. often in the history of her existense has the great Sunflower State, in emulation of Macbeth's witches, "paltered with us in a double sense, has kept the word of promise to the ear and broken it to the hope." The wary irrigator is not deceived; profiting from his experience of 1895, he is pressing steadily onward to

But our people are learning a better thrift, by study of the Orient, where irrigation has been in successful practice for four thousand years, and where no drop of water is permitted to run to waste.

Central Kansans are becoming interested and much is being accomplished in this direction through individual effort by the construction of ponds and basins on the farm.

All over the plains of Kansas there are low-lying flats or gentle gradients, where an indifferent dam, easily and cheaply constructed for temporary use, may serve the purpose of flooding a considerable area of ground, and hold the water imprisoned until absorbed by the soil and well out of the way of plow and seed.

This system of irrigation was in vogue on the river Nile two thousand years ago, and was practiced in a small way in Central Kansas in the winter of 1894-95, and in every instance the result was not only highly satisfactory and the crops phenomenal, but it was a revelation of possibilities within the reach of every farmer however poor.

There is thrift in the conservation of storm waters.

IRRIGATION ON THE SOUTH PLATTE,

1896.

There is a phase of irrigation, however, upon which we may all agree, the value and importance of impounded storm waters stored for future use or for immediate service in flooding the ground for the plow and seeding; in our prodigal waste of this valuable element we imitate the North American Indian, whose chief concern upon receiving his quota of rations at the agency, is to get rid of them in the most expeditious

manner.

Springs, Neb., the towns being only a few miles distant either way from the state line, are a number of irrigation pumping plants and also considerable land under ditches.

Starting from Julesburg and going down the valley the first irrigated farm reached is that of F. M. Johnson. Mr. Johnson has paid for his windmills, made a good living and now has about five acres covered with a young orchard and small fruits.

The T. V. ranch owned by Omaha