A CHAPTER ON POULTRY-HOUSES.

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and they can hardly fail to do well. The question of light was answered when we spoke of the perforated zinc windows. If the houses must be shut up close at night on account of the rats, let there be enough of them: it is easy to cover them in very cold weather.-Field.

FENCES.

If you take to making fences, it may be as well to know something roughly of the woods usually adopted for the purpose. First, we take the whitethorn, which will suit any soil except a dry gravel, and even that in a wet year. It is raised from seeds or plants, but plants are the quickest way; the seeds lying two years in the ground before they spring, though they grow fast after two or three years. Haws put in a hair bag and soaked in water all winter, then sown in February or March, will come up first year, and will grow better so than any other way. Where sets are scarce, when you fell your underwood, or rather the year before, sow haws and sloes, and you will get lots of plants. The root of whitethorn makes capital boxes and combs. Many being finely veined when they attain to size, are valuable to turners and cabinet makers. This might amuse as well as pay the owner of many a rugged property, which, now given up to the rabbit, the pheasant, and the brood-mare pony, might be so made to yield a better profit. The late Sir James Graham, with characteristic intelligence, had the small wood on his estate, which "used formerly to be burnt to get it out of the way," cut up into bobbins for the Manchester thread manufacturers. "For this purpose beech, hazel, alder, birch, and ash coppice, are all suitable, and are now sold, where the trade is fully established, at ls. per cubic foot. At a sale lately in that district, coppice of this description brought £30 an acre, free of all expense of labour, to the owner of the land; and in about fourteen years more, the same coppice will be again ready to cut."-(Caird's English Agriculture, 1850, 1851). Blackthorn is apt to run into the ground, and is not so certain of growing; but the bushes are best adapted, and more lasting, to mend dead fences with; cattle don't crop it so much. It grows in the same soil as the whitethorn, but the richer the mould the better it thrives. Some interplant, but not too thickly, privet, with a view at once to the relief that evergreen gives the eye in winter, and the shelter it affords when other bushes are stripped bare. Holly is slow to start, but makes amends when once up by its thickness, strength, height, and chevaux-de-frise character. Plant in a moist season, autumn or spring, and shade with haulm or straw till they begin to sprout. If any seem to perish, cut them close to the soil, and they will spring up from the very ground. The furze, too-for the sight of a sea of whose golden blogsoms upon an English common Linnæus fell thankful on his knees when trained, makes an excellent fence. It is apt to grow thin at the bottom, the lower spines withering and falldure for a crown. Hence has it long been used as a cover for ing off with the growth of the bush, which reserves its verthe fox, or a verandah to the rabbit burrows. It has been used lately, chopped and bruised, as food for horses. It requires the admixture of salt, or it will bring off their hair. For garden partition, the dwarfed elm makes an elegant and close fence, as does the beech too, which, moreover, has the further claim upon our consideration that it always looks clothed, the old brown leaves adhering until gently supplanted need not write. The nurseryman, now-a-days, prints in his by the new. Of the laurel, yew, espalier, fruit trees, &c., I circular directions so clear, that you will not have the difficulty when known, that the shrewd old Mortimer and his associates in acquainting yourself with your need, or of supplying it had.-Notes on Fields and Cattle, by the Rev. W. Holt Beever.

There are a few main rules which we must always bear in mind with respect to housing our poultry. Let the houses be large enough, lofty enough, and not over-crowded. We should allow as much space for poultry as one house, measuring six feet square and seven feet high, to every eight adult fowls, family of ducks, or of larger birds, or large brood of chickens, and the same proportion of space if more are to be housed together. We should never keep different kinds of poultry together, unless in the free range of a large farmyard, and never, under any circumstances, house two kinds together. So the hen-house has good ventilation, it matters little of what it is built. A building of rough board, with windows of perforated zinc, to give plenty of air, so placed as not to throw a draught upon the fowls as they sit at roost, is as good as any other. A correspondent has just written to us: "Will you, or some of your readers, give me directions for building a fowls' house for about thirty hens and half-a-dozen ducks? It must be rat-proof, for I have just had eleven Aylesbury ducklings killed in one night. I should be glad to know the best material aspect, position of nests, light, &c. (SUBSCRIBER.)" The rough boards, which would be good build ing material under ordinary circumstances, must be changed in " Subscriber's case, and in the case of all persons whose premises are, like his, infested with those terrible pests of the poultry yard-rats. The house might be made of brick; half a brick thick, as it is technically called, would give strength enough. Some localities supply rough stone, which might come cheaper, and would make good walls. It this be considered too expensive for the full height of wall, a depth of two or three feet from the ground would exclude a the rats, and the upper part of the house might be made of board. We have found the best material for the roof a layer of the cheapest kind of board (which, however, should be kept until it is seasoned) covered with patent asphalted felt, the price of which is, we think, 8d. per yard, thirty-two inches wide. We will consider the nests next, before the flooring, because the bottom of the nests should be left unfloored. As good nests as any may be made by dividing off a strip, about sixteen inches wide, from one side of the henhouse, with a narrow strip of wood, and separating this into nests with partitions too high for hens to peep over when in the nests. The remainder of the floor of the house may be laid down as follows: The foundation being dug out to the depth of a foot or two, make a good firm foundation with rubble or any convenient commodity of the kind, well rammed down, and spread over it with a bricklayer's trowel a smooth surface of a composition made of lime, sand, and cinder-ash, well worked together. Most handy working-men know how to lay a floor like this. Some may consider it a drawback that the hens will destroy it in course of time; but we reckon this among its merits. It furnishes the fowls with endless amusement when they stand most in need of it; it can be replaced at very small expense; and a new floor every now and then, with thorough lime-washing, is as good as a new house for the fowls. Many good judges prefer a flooring of earth only; but we have found that this becomes tainted, and that houses so floored are apt to get infested with chickens' creepers. We like to have such a text as "Subscriber's " letter to follow, because, while we have the pleasure of serving one, we have also the pleasure of knowing that what suits one suits many, and we have from time to time had many questions on making poultry-houses. If "Subscriber," and others circumstanced as he is with regard to the rats, are unwilling to go to the expense of a brick or stone wall or high foundation, the enemy may be kept at bay by gas-tarring a wooden house often enough. Rule to follow: Always give a new coat before the last is quite dry-namely, once a month, or not so often. We have never heard of rats win their way into a house made of asphalted felt, stretched on a framework of wood, which must likewise be kept tarred. The drawback to this is that fowls will soil their plumage. By all means divide the ducks from the fowls, and do not overcrowd the houses.

For aspect, the south; facing the sweet south is decidedly best. Give the fowls also a shrubbery or open shed alongside of the house, so that it too may face the south, offering them a warm place in which to seek shelter, bask, and roll,

RELATIVE VALUE OF FOOD FOR MILCH COWS. -Several French and German chemists estimate the relative value of several descriptions of food for milch cows as follows: That 100lb. of good hay are worth 200lb. of potatoes; 460lb. of beet-root, with the leaves; 350lb. of Siberian cabbage ; 250lb. of beet-root, without the leaves; 250lb. carrots; 80lb. of clover hay, Spanish trefoil, or vetches; 50lb. of oilcake or colza; 250lb. of pea straw and vetches; 300lb. of barley or oat straw; 400lb. of rye or wheat straw; 25lb. of peas, beans, or vetch seed; 50lb. of oats; or 500lb. of green trefoil, Spanish trefoil, or vetches.

MORE LIGHT UNDERGROUND.

The experiments he made upon fertile soils abound with practical suggestions. As with the atmosphere so The farmer who, next to the sailor, seemed to be the with the soil: although four-fifths of its bulk is nimost helpless and exposed of human creatures, has of trogen, plants can appropriate nothing from the atlate years gained considerably in this sense of master-mosphere save a few stray particles of ammonia floatship. While he has been busy in producing food, his friend the chemist has been unremitting in his attention to certain influences which for ever were opposing his efforts. These which were represented as antagonisms, and so impersonated, were discovered rather to be negative than positive influences: influences arising rather out of the indolence of man than such as specially aroused themselves to counteract his inactivity. Sir Humphry Davy, Liebig, Lawes, and Gilbert, have each shown that nothing is wanted to save farmers from the losses to which they have been exposed, but such a knowledge of the agencies around them as shall enable them to work with them, to subject them to their will, and to use them for the production of desired results.

and being more fixed is less likely to be lost than ammoniacal salts, all of which are more or less volatile."

We are scarcely aware how much depends upon carbon, and how mportant it is for a sufficient quantity to remain free to combine with and fix the ammoniacal salts and nitrates in the tissues of the growing plants. Unless it is at liberty to perform this good office, such elements as these may exist to repletion in the soil without benefit to the plant. Carbon, however, serves a thore important purpose still. As food for plants, to whose existence it is essential, it can only become assimilated and combined with oxygen, that is as carbonic acid. Boussingault then details some most interesting experiments suggested by this fact, to find the quantity of carbonic acid which exists in the air of the soil. One set of experiments he devised to prove the quantity of air held by soils of various kinds; another to ascertain the quality of that air. His evidence and substance with regard to the first set is as follows: The average for fair soils may be stated at 400 cubic yards per acre, taken at a depth of 14 inches; the entire volume of the acre taken to this depth is equal to 1,750 cubic yards; so that in such a soil the contained air is about a quarter of the density which it is in the superincumbent atmosphere. Soils very rich in humus and recently manured gave the largest quantity of unfixed air, sands and clays the least. With respect to quality, the experimenter found more carbonic acid in the air of the soil than in the atmosphere. In the latter it is usual to allow 4 parts carbonic acid in 10,000 atmospheric air; but a soil rich in humus contained 974 in 10,000, the soil of a meadow contained 179, and no soil, according to his experience, run short of 100 parts. Striking an average, the air contained in one acre of arable land, 14 inches deep, equalled 1,750 cubic yards; soil manured a year previously contained as much carbonic acid as is found in 9,446 cubic yards of the atmosphere; so that the acre of soil lately manured contains as much as there may be estimated in 60 acres of the atmosphere 14 inches deep.

bonic acid. It is also not irrational to suppose that oxygen, beyond burning the carbon of the organic remains in the soil, unites also with the free hydrogen to be found there, and thus ministers to the wants of the rootlets in the matter of water as well as of carbonic acid. This service is more important than at first it appears to be; since were carbon and oxygen to combine in the presence of the nascent hydrogen-that is to say, were there not sufficient members of the oxygen family to ally with those of the carbon family on the one hand, and the hydrogen family on the other-the unallied members of the hydrogen family, in their single life, might be productive of considerable damage. If that hydrogen can be utilized as water, all is well; but if left alone, it becomes the victim of other bad spirits, and produces such combinations as formic acid, humic acid, and acetic acid, which so acting are destructive of life.

For the agriculturist, there is but one practical conclusion for all this. He will readily infer that the soil, in order to fertility, must contain a notable quantity of organic matter, which the atmosphere, by a process of slow combustion, may transfer into carbonic acid and water, and ultimately into nitrates and ammoniacal salts. "Organic matters, when submitted to the united influence of air, moisture, and a suitable temperature, give rise to carbonic acid and water; and if nitrogenous, to ammonia. When buried in a soil sufficiently open, their combustion is so obvious that, in warm elimates, it may happen at the end of some years that a clean soil, rich in humus, becomes so poor as to be unable to give a crop without the application of manure. Thus mould, humus. and all the last terms of the putrefaction of vegetable substances, are so many sources which emit carbonic acid; and it is beyond doubt that an important part of the efficacy of manures of organic origin ought to be attributed to this remission, whether it be that the acid gas absorbed by the roots runs the course of the organism of the plant, or that, turned into the surrounding atmosphere, the light decomposes it under the influence of the leaves which assimilate the carbon." Before referring to the conclusions deduced from such very easy to regard, therefore, every particle of humus premises, there yet remains one point of special interest in the soil as "a focus from whence carbonic acid gas elucidated by these investigations. In comparing the is constantly emanating" to modify that atmosphere oxygen of the air confined in the soil with that in the which descends from above, and fit it for its mission to atmosphere, it was found that the latter is always defi- the roots which pervade the seed-bed in search of supcient in this busy-body constituent by nearly the same port for the wondrous development of woody fibre, green quantity as goes to combine with carbon to produce car-leaf, tender blossom, and perfected seed.

It is

F. R. S.

THE AGRICULTURE OF NORWAY.

logue, and the Algerian catalogue; to the Zollverein catalogue, to the colonial catalogues of Canada and Nova Scotia, and of the various Australian colonies, which are all far superior to the meagre official industrial catalogue, both in solid information and in the style of getting up.

Among the benefits resulting from the International Exhibition, not the least will be the large amount of practical statistical and general information connected with the resources, agricultural products, and statistics of various countries that will be diffused. Foreign countries, especially, have gone into this matter with an energy, spirit, and desire to promulgate information Many of these, with other special issues circulated in respecting their several industries which put our own some of the foreign courts, will furnish useful details exertions to shame. While the British catalogue is a for future reference, and upon these we shall draw for bare enumeration of exhibitors and objects, compiled the information of our readers who may not have the in the most terse and useless style, the foreign and facilities of obtaining them, nor be able to avail themcolonial catalogues are, for the most part, full of valu- selves of them in the language in which are published. able recent information, which may be sought for in We take for present notice a synopsis of the vegetable vain elsewhere. In illustration of this, we may point products of Norway, by D. F. C. Schubeler, printed to the admirable catalogues of the Austrian collection at the expense of the Norwegian Government, which (in English), full of valuable statistical and descriptive contains many curious and important facts respecting information; to the French and Belgian catalogues (in the agriculture of a high northern country, about which French); to that of the collective French colonial cata-comparatively little is known.

According to the last census (1855), wheat composed The potato was imported into Norway from Great 1.4 per cent. of the whole corn produce of the country. Britain, about the middle of the last century. It can Of late years, this grain has been more extensively cul- be grown at rather a greater altitude than barley, and tivated. The common, or furrowed, barley is that at many places in Finmark where the latter will not most generally cultivated in Norway; it grows as far ripen. The potato disease, which is so generally prenorth as Finmark, under the 70th parallel of latitude, valent, has not appeared above the 64th parallel of and is found at a greater altitude than any of the other latitude. The field pea most generally cultivated in cereals. Under certain circumstances, barley will ripen Norway is the Pisum arvense. In average summers at the same altitude as that at which the Norway spruce it will ripen as far north as 64 deg., and it has been culfir will flourish; but the yield is uncertain, and cannot tivated and ripened up to 67 deg. 17 min. Varieties of be calculated upon. Of late years, other species and the yellow pea are now and then cultivated, and within varieties of barley have been cultivated with success in the last few years the field cultivation of the blue many places. Barley, a few years ago, composed one- Prussian pea in the southern districts up to 60 deg. 40. fourth of the corn produce of the country. Rye con- min. at least, has proved to be extremely profitable. stitutes nearly 5 per cent. of the produce, and is culti- Pumpkins have been grown out of doors, near Thronvated both as summer and winter corn, the latter, how-dhjem, weighing 40lbs., and seed ripens up to 64 deg. ever, being most general. The most northerly latitude in which it will grow seems to be about 69° 34'.

Oats are the most generally cultivated grain in Norway, composing nearly 56 per cent. of the cereal produce. It is, however, being gradually superseded by the more valuable sorts of grain. Although given to horses, the greatest quantity is employed for human food, partly in a kind of unfermented bread, and partly as porridge eaten with milk. A mixture of barley and oats is also much cultivated, under the name of "mixed corn." It is ground together, and used in the country districts for bread and porridge. Formerly, in years of scarcity in Norway, it was not unusual to mix oat-ripened.

AGRICULTURAL BENEVOLENT