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THE SOUTHERN WORLD, FEBRUARY 1, 1882. 7 §nt1m L ed §ms. Mushrooms. The mushroom is a very accommodating plant. We have seen them growing in old tubs, in out-of-the-way corners of sheds, in abandoned greenhouses, on shelves in stables, and in every case giving apparently a good and healthful crop. All that is needed for success is a temper ature from 50° degrees to 60° degrees, some fresh horse manure and a little spawn. Hav ing procured wlint fresh horse manure that is needed, mix it well with about one-third of its bulk of good loam, and you are pre pared to make your beds in whatever place you prefer. If you determine to form beds make them narrow—certainly notmore than five feet in breadth and about fifteen inches in height. The material must be made com pact by beating down ns evenly as possible. If undercover, the beds may be made flat an the top, butif in theopen air they should be rounded to sited the rain. After the beds have been made a week, there will be con siderable heat produced by the fermentation of the manure. Bricks of spawn should have been secured previously, and they can be sent every where, postage or expressuge free, at about thirty cents a pound. Break them into pieces as large as walnuts, and insert in the beds just below the surface, about ten inches apart. One pound of spawn is sufficient for a space two by six feet. If there seems to be much heat, do nothing for a week or ten days, un til it somewhat subsides. Then cover the bed with an inch or more of good earth, pressing it down with the back of a spade. It is not likely in a large bed that water will be needed at all; but if the material should appear very dry, water lightly with warm water. In small beds, or pails, or anything of the kind, it is probable water will be needed once or twice. Mushrooms will begin to appear in about six weeks after planting the spawn, and can be gathered for three or four weeks. In gathering, take up the mushroom entire, leaving no stem in the bed, and placing a little earth in the hole made by its removal. When the crop is gathered, cover the bed with a little more earth, beat it down gently and give a pretty good moistening with tepid water, and in about a month more another crop will be produced.—[Vick’s Illustrated. Cellars as Centers of Malaria. Dr. C. R. Agncw, writing from Florida, says: In this State a somewhat new prob lem presents itself, in the fact that all houses should be constructed without ceHnrs, and so raised on underpinning os toaliowaclean sweep of light and air beneath them. Indeed it is a question whether such a mode of con struction should not be adopted everywhere for dwellings. I have for moro than twenty years believed that cellar atmosphere is a most prolific cause of disease and death. I believe that it increases seventy-five per cent, the risk from malarial diseases all over our country. Through this State the native pop ulation, as by an instinct, raise their simple cabins three or four feet abovo the ground, and allow air and light to pervade the space so made beneath the ground-floor. I advise all travelers to avoid those hotels and other domiciles in the South which are not so con structed. Precautions for Health. The prevalence of malarial fever in many sections of the country, is suggestive of pre cautions for the preservation of health. There is no doubt but a large number of severe cases of chills and fever, bilious fever, and other kindred complnints, could be prevented by anticipating the season in the matter of warm clothing. Especially should children be dressed warmly, and required to put on their shoes and stockings, which many of them discard during the very warm weather of summer. It is a curious fact the prevailing complaint of autumn—chills and fever—exactly resembles the weather, cold nights and hot days, and may be the direct result of these. At all events, It is very probable that many cases of chills and of bilious fever might be prevented by warm dressing during the cold nights and early mornings, and by having a little Are in the house, enough to remove the chill and dampness. A lady who has spent several years in a malarial district says that while their neigh bors were, every fall, shaking with chills and taking quinine, (an ounce bottle of which was to be found in nearly every house, and was resorted to upon the least Indispo sition), her family escaped almost entirely by staying in-doors after sundown in the evening and before sunrise in the morning; by putting on extra clothing at these times, and having a little fire tn the house every cool morning and evening and every cool, damp day. It was not necessary to have sufficient Arc to heat the rooms uncomforta bly, but just enough to dry the atmosphere and dispel the morning and evening chilli ness. She believes that this plan enabled them to bid deAnncc to chills and fever. This is a very simple precaution, and cer tainly worth a trial. An ounce of preven tion is wortli a pound of quinine. What la Needed. From the Connecticut Cournnt. The agricultural mind is naturally inde pendent, looking to the ground and the skies for support. Ingrain in it is the thought of propping the State, but never of being supported by it. It is naturally re ligious and its notion of heaven is of a land kept Bowing with milk and honey by good farming. It has many enemies in nature that it knows of, and it can not conceive of any that it don’t know of. That it should be managed and gradually trained to this or that direction from the outside, like an ox, is also inconceivable. That the schooling of its children should be so contrived ns to weaken their hold upon outside affairs is scarcely conceivable by it. In truth the government, or the civilization which does this long, cut its own throat, like a hog swimming. The picture of the old man try ing the virtue of stones on the rude boy in the apple tree might well be put back into tho spelling book. Immigration will help, but can not alone reinforce the State. The minds of our own young people must be bent or broken to agricultural pursuits. The few farmers who have kept strict agri cultural schools all their lives need not be ashamed of receiving help in that direction from revised law. Mechanics have had it for a century. Millions upon millions in treasure and blood have been spent in strengthening our mechanical arm. Tariff- villcs are thriving everywhere, while weeds and grass are growing in the old farm barn yard. But the pendulum which governs human action swings both ways, on a gen eral average, in a long term of years. The people will not take a stone for bread. But no great progress in agriculture, morals or religion can be made until we take our life leases of agricultural land as a sacred trust, and learn to leave our bit of the world as good as we found it. All robbery, dis honesty, inAdelity and wrong is built up from robbing the land. Dark Swine Preferred. Some forty odd years ago, when I Arst began to execute orders given mo by tho Southern planters, they required, with rare exceptions, white swine. I told them tho dark colored would prove the most hardy and thrifty for their hot climate, the same as negroes over white men. But I could at Arst persuade only a few to adopt my opin ion and take Berkshire, Essex or Neapolitan, in preference to Suffolk, Prince Albert,. Yorkshire, Irish Grazier and Chester County—these last Ave being tho popular white pigs of that day. But my Southern friends soon found that all of these Ave were subject to scurf, mange, and other disagree able cutaneous diseases, which the black or dark spotted pigs escaped entirely, and always wore a healthy, clean, glossy hide. Tiio planters then began to change their orders, and in the course of a few years would hardly accept white pigs from the North, of even the Anest breeds, as a gift. In most other parts of the United States, a deep prejudice prevailed against black and dark spotted swine, and a few would breed them. Pork packers were especially op posed to them, because, they said, the skin was dark, and yet this would generally scrape to whlto when they came to dress it. However, time went on, and as breeders gradually found out, North, Enst and West, the same objections to white swine which had taken place at the South, they began rapidly to change the color of their stock, and now few white hogs are found in the Chicago, or other great markets of the West, the general run being on the Berkshire, the Poland China, and Essex. Indeed, so much more favorably are dark-colored swine now considered there, that they have been grad ually breeding out the white spots of the Arst two sorts above, and now they are almost entirely black or very dark brown, like the Essex and Neapolitan. All these swine are very thrifty, and mature early. The Berkshire and Poland China are espe cially hardy—can endure any. extreme of climate, from the coldest to the hottest. The Berkshire is famous for its larger pro portion of tender, lean, juicy meat, and is consequently greatly preferred for smoked hams, shoulders and bacon. Tiie three other sorts cut up choice, clear, fat pork, which is most desirable to salt and barrel. —[A. B. Allen in N. Y. Tribune. Glucose—Its Relation to Health and Adulteration. The apparently popular idea that this arti cle was deleterious and even poisonous, was a pure fallacy, just as it was a fallacy to be lieve that hard water was moro nutritious than soft, or that beef tea, as ordinarily made, was strengthening to the body. Glucose was made principally from corn, or rather from the starch to be found in corn. It wns made by extracting the starch and then sub mitting that starch to tho action of sulphu ric acid. After the chemical action had taken place, the starch being converted into glucoso the acid was neutralized by adding chalk or marble dust to the general com pound, which would then be composed of glucose and sulphate of lime, the latter a per fectly harmless article. But, harmless though the sulphate of lime was, the glucose would not mix with it but remained at the top and could be drawn off. As to the glucoso itself, it was composed of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon—just what cane sugar wns composed of—though in slightly different quantities. The difference between cane sugar and glucose, so far as the hotly wns concerned, was this: Glucose when eaten,went directly into circulation through out the body, givingit Aeshnnd strength, but enne sugar, when enten, had Arst to bo con verted into glucose before it could circulate. In other words, the body demanded glucose, and the chemical acids of the stomach made glucose in large quantities from bread, fruit, and almost every variety of food. But it was claimed by tho alarmists that qunntics of the sulphate of lime were to be found in glucose. This might be true {n some cases, but what of it? Sulphntc of lime wns perfectly harmless, and could bo found in large quantities in all waters used in the manufacture of the great English ales and beers. Anyone who drank a glass of Bass’ or Allsop’s ale took into his system a larger quantity of sulphate of lime than could he found in the same quantity of glucose syrup. Again, it had been claimed that sulphuric acid in a freestate had been found in glucose. Chemists who claimed this did not know their business. In the Arst place, the pres ence of the free acid would injure the appa ratus of the manufacturer to a frightful extent, and would color the glucose and greatly deteriorate from its commercial value Therefore, selAsh motives alone induced the manufacturer to use about twice as much marble dust to neutralize the acid as was really necessary. Tho conclusion was, then, that glucose was very valuableosanutritious article of food, and the time would come or should come, when it would be used for ordi nary purposes instead of sugar. It would cost only three or four, or perhaps two, cents a pound, and was fully half as sweet as cane sugar.—[Brewers' Journal. High Feeding Moat Profitable. It is an error to assumo that high feeding is too expensive for general practice, os I will endeavor to show by a few examples. In the case of a pair of grade short-horn twins, owned by an Illinois farmer, their food for the Arst six months consisted of sour skim milk, oil meal and grass, which gave as good a growth as whole milk. At six months old the pair weighed 1340 pounds. For the next six months, they were fed out of doors, on grass, corn and hay, and weighed at one year old, 1060 pounds. Attwo years flicy weighed 3305, and at three years, 5500 pounds. Any dairy farmer can feed calves as theso wero fed, and should see that it is for his inter est to give them all they can eat and digest. A Concord, N. H., farmer bought a calf which weighed 160 pounds, at the age of four weeks. He fed it exclusively upon skim milk, until it was nine months old, allowing it of course to graze what it would; during the next three months it got shorts in addi tion to the skim milk. At the end of that time, being one year old, its girth was six feet Ave inches, and its weight 1200 pounds live, dressing 902 pounds,—as much as some four-year olds. These instances show that large calves can be raised without feeding them on new milk; skim milk supplemented with oil meal or corn meal, will effect a rapid growth', and at a cost which will permit a handsome proAt to be realised. Ax Arab proverb: “ All sunshine makes the desert. ” ■ Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together. IVk would willingly have others perfect, and yet wo amend not our own faults. It is easier to And a score of men wise enough to discover the truth, than one in trepid enough in the face of opposition to stand up for it. Look over on the bright side, which is ever the heaven sido of life. This is far bet ter than any medicine. He TnAT docs good to another does good also to himself, not only in the consequence but in the very act; for tho consciousness of well-doing is in itself aniplo reward.— Seneca. Life is a book of which wo lmvo but ono edition. Let each day’s actions, ns they add their pages to the indestructiblo volume, be such ns we shall bo willing to have an assembled world rend. No physician ever weighed out medicino with half so much exactness and care as God weighs out to us every trial; not one grain too much docs ho ever permit to bo put in the scale.—Cecil. Death from a lightning stroke is said to bo absolutely painless. But wo don’t seo how they know. lVc don’t believe any per son who ever died that way hnd a ciianco to tell how it felt.—Boston Post. God’s sweet dews and showers of grace slide off the mountains of pride and fall on the low valleys of humble hearts and mnko - them, pleasant and fertile. No one’s life can possibly be changed after death. To transmute an evil lifo into a good one, or the life of an infernal being to that of an nngcl, is utterly impracticable, beyond tho grave. If you tell your troubles to God, you put them into the grave: they will never rise again when you have committed them to him. If you roll your burden nnywhere else it will roll back again like the stone of Sisyphus.—Spurgeon. Young Hayseed, a knowing young fellow from the country, wns in town the other day and “ put up” at one of tho Arst-clas^e- hotels. After dinner he strolled out to the office, and, picking up a toothpick from the box on the office counter, used it vigorously on a set of tobacco-stained grinders, and then replaced it carefully in tho box, say ing ns he did so: “Some fellers would put that air sliver in their pocket and kerry it away, but their ain’t nothing menn about me, I kin tell you.”—Baltimore Commercial Bulletin. Remember that each day you are casting a healing or a hurting shadow. No man liveth to himself alone. There may be somo poor soul back of you creeping along with fear and trembling amid tho experiences of life—poor, timid and heart-broken. You can not go and creep with him; you can not grope amid the darkness and despair witli him, but you can do ono thing; you can lift up your voice and sing some song of holy conAdence, some sublinto hymn of trust, and God will Aout tho sounds back to that halt ing soul, and he will be cheered and strength ened and saved by your joy. The Keokuk Gate City hns unearthed tho meanest man on record, and locates h'ini at Burlington. Tho story, as tho paper men tioned tells it, is, that while a deaf, dumb and blind hand-orgnnist was sleeping on tho post-office corner, the wretch stole his in strument and substituted a new-fangled churn therefor; and when tho organist awoko ho seized the handles of the chum and ground away for dear life, and when the “shades of night were falling fast,” tho meanest man in the world came around, took his churn, restored the organ to its owner, and carried home four pounds of creamery butter. Men say tho old cathedral pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen, and rough sea-shore. But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory,—that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness; that all their interlacing strength of vaulted stone has its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly fellow ship, and all their changing grace of de pressed or lifted pinnacle owes its cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of (he human souh