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2d? the furrow, - e o On the Farm. ’ CONCERNING POTATOES. Itisconbeldled by most man who can well versed in the raising of potatOes that there is one certain sort of the tuber that. rwill do better than any. other in any given locality and it ought to be the endeavor of every practical farmer to get the most out of his ground whether in the may of roots or grain. The potato that will do best in any district or soil' is’lhe one that is brought to perfectllon 11] that soil itself, and hence any'farm- or raising any large quantity of poâ€" tatoes will do well to form a sub-vari- eiy, bred and perfected under the conditions prevailing on his land. To this kind Olf potato is not so hard as might be expected though the mate ter of selection many Occupy several years. '- Some of the best known varieties of the potato have been obtained by butting one of! the eyes from apo- tato of one kind. and then insert- ing it in awhble. tuber of some other kind, the two potatoes chosen for the trial‘being representatives of the sorts that have done best on the land for which the new stock is wanted. The eye that is to growr ought to (be cut from the potato, with quite a large pointed piece of the tuber atâ€" tached and it ought then to be in- serted in the mother tube tightly fitâ€" ting into ahole of the same shape prepared to receive it. The eyesd on the mother tuber ought then to be destroyed and the planting done. The tubers that grow. from seed of this sort will have all the benefits to] be derived from crossing and will partake of the gualitiee of the two parents. The best that grow from such seed may be selected to be planted again, and this process being repeated for some generatidns will ireSult in the evolution of asubâ€"variety admirably adapted to the immediate soil condi- tions of the ground in which it. was formed. ' . There is nothing new about this plan, but any farmer who inclines to experiment for practical purposes may in his way breed asubâ€"variety of potato for himself and may per- haps succeed in evolving one that 'will bring him alarge sum of money, THE SPECIALâ€"PURPOSE CO'W. The man who keeps alarge herd of cows for the'p-urpose ofmaking but- ter needs acow from astrain that has for many generations been bred and fed for that purpose and in that he would seldom fail to find either the Jersey or the Guennsey to meet his requirements, the only trouble with the latter being to find them at a price. low enouth to meet thesize of his pocketbook. If they were as comâ€" monly offered for shade and at as low prices as good Jerseys, we are in- clineld to think we would prefer the Guernsey both for the butter-dairy and the poor man’s cow. But the man who keeps his herd to sell milk where the amount of butter fat in. it is not to be.u.factcr in the price will do Well to look for the Alys‘hire or the Holstein blood. For light soils and scanty hillside pastures, we would prefer the Ayshire, but upon rich pasâ€" tures, where feed was abundant and .plenty of grain could be had, we should incline toward the larger and ha'ndsomer Holstein. We do not mean to say there are not good milking strains or good butterâ€"making strains among the Shorthorn, or good but- tei.‘ makers amongst the Ayrshires and Holsteins, for we know there are, but we would not feel sure of obbain- ing agood beef animal from it Hereâ€" ford, an Angus or aShorlhorn, which are specialâ€"purpose breeds for beef. "SPEED THE I’LO.\V..” Many farmers are very impatient to start the pilorw: in the spring. As soon' as the snow disappears and they find afew dry spots in the highway, the plow is brought out and started The soil being cold and wet, iha upâ€" turned furrow presents a smooth glossy appearance, and if future heavy freezing does not occur it will bake hard and firm, requiring several, har- rouvings to put it into a proper con- dition for a seed bed. Not only is this extra labor required, but the sell at plowing is so soft that the horses at each stop sink almost to the bottom This is very 11n- jurious and most of these early plow- about the room. ditiony Perhaps there is some adâ€" vantage in marking out lands in a field that is naturally. wet and heavy as the furrows thus made act as surâ€" face drains, and if the land ’be nearly level the water is drawn from the surface soil to adistance of several feet upon'eac-h side, and if it can be drained off at the end of the furrows a positive gain will be accomplished. *â€" SPRAYING THE ORCHARD. Hundreds of people who own small orchards would like to spray their tees but are deterred therefrom by the cost of a spraying outfit usually -,recom- mended by writers. For spraying a few trees all the outfit that is neces- sary,’ is a barrel to, mix the p01son in, and asmall sled. One made of two planks four feet long will do. Lay them side by side and, fasten them se- curely together by means of strips of board nailed acr0ss them. Chip off the under side of the front edg- es, set the barrel on it,".1xiix the spray- ing materials, and with one horse draw it into the orcharilwand whereâ€" ever needed. A good. spray~pump for a few trees does not costmuch; a. piece of halfâ€"ince rubber hose about eight feet long, having the spraying end at- tached to alight stick" the same length, will raise the nozzle high enough to spray most’ltrees. If the trees are very large, one can climb Into them, draw up a buckeiful of mix- ture, set it. firmly among the bran- ches and send the spray over the en- tire tree. .â€"_.+_._ YOUR LEASE OF LIFE. Ilow lo Final Out How Many Years You Are Going to Live. An ingenious mathematician main- tains that the number of .years which any one is likely to live may readily be [ascertained by applying the following rule:â€"Subtract from the number 86 the‘age already attained by the per- son and divide the remainder by 2. For example, suppose that we} wish to find out how long a personwho is now 50 years old is likely to live, 86â€"50â€"36; ‘36â€"2â€"18, and 18 yeans is the answer to the question. The same statistician also assures us thatuoultw of every 1,000 persons who are 60 years old only 599 will live to be 70, 120:.to 80, 17 to be 90, and it is doubtful if even: 4. will at. tain to the dignity of centenarians. A critic points out that "these figures may seem very convincing, but that theyca'nnot be accurate in all cases, It may be easy, he explains,“ to show, how long a man of 50 is likely. to live, but applied in the case of amen who is over 86, and hence it cannot be acceptâ€" ed as infallible. A. .4 w SILK FROM A SPIDER WEB. â€" . Folks In fludngascnr Think They Have Found a Valuable New Fibre. One of the most novel exhibits at the Paris Exposition is a complete set of bed hangings manufactured in Mada- gascar from silk obtained from an enormous spider known as the halabe, that is found in great numbers in cer- tain parts of the island. The French have been investigating the value of this fibre at their technical school at Antananarivo and have reached the conclusion that the production of silk from this spider is worthy to become an important industry. . Mr. Nogue, the head bf the school, says that each Spider yields from 300 to 400 yards of silk thread. rAfter the thread has been taken from the spider it is set free ulnld ten-‘d‘iiys later is ready to furnish another supply. The silk is of a brilliant golden color and is finer than that of the silk worm, but its tenacity is remarkable, It can be woven without the least difficulty, â€"+__ THOMAS JOGGED HIS MEMORY. A certain elderly gentleman suffered much from absent-mindedness, and was frequently compelled, to seek the assistance of his servant. Thomas, he would constantly say, I have just been looking for something, and now I can't remember what it is, whereupon the obliging Thomas invariably made suggestions. \Vas it fivour purse, or spectacles, or cheque "fbook, sir? and so on, till he hit on the right object. One night, ‘after the 'old gentleman had retired, the bell rang'for Thomas, and on reaching the 'bed room he found his master rambling restlessly ing his soilizwhfien not inifa proper" conâ€" the rule applied in his case cannot be, Thomas, Thomas, he said, I came up here for somthing, and now I've for- gotten what! Was it to go to bed, sir? suggested his faithful retainer.--; ' ers would not think of allowing other stock upon the fields when in this condition. The act of plowing obliteâ€" rates the foot marks and they im- agine mno harm is done, but they are greatly mistaken. No farmer ever gained anything in the end by plow- Ahl the very thingâ€"the very thingl Thank you, Thomas. Good night! . > ,_ ' ..,.-.. ll “lll’llllll lll‘l Ills VERY LATEST FROM ALL THE WORLD OVER. Interesting Items About Our Own Country, Great Britain, the United States, and Ali Parts of the Globe, Condensed and Assorted for Easy Reading. CANADA. The Kingston Locomotive Works will be sold by auction on July 10. Hamilton police will receive 14 in- stead of 10 days holidays in future. Hamilton'is making an effort to or- ganize a regiment of Highlanders. Just, 137 new post offices been opened in Canada during March, April and May. _ The T., H. & B. Railway Co. intends to have ten passenger coaches built; for the excursion business. ‘ Kingston firms are shipping an av- erage of 100 tons of hay daily to Boston and Providence, R. I. Prof. Robertson, at Ottawa from Paris, says that Canada’s exhibit is one of the best at the exposition. Proceedings may be taken to dis- qualify two Montreal aldermen for receiving “side” money from the transfer of market stalls. Bracebridge is asking the Govern- ment at Ottawa for aid in the con- struction of a railway from Brace- bridge to Baysville, a village on the Lake of Bays. The two ferry steamersrunning be- tween Ottawa and Hull have been stopped by Government officers, on the ground ‘ charge of them are not properly quali- fled. At Ottawa Alexander McMillan, a Sparks street jeweler, was fined .91 and costs for keeping his place of business open after 7 o'clock in the evening, in violation of the early clos- ing by-law. An appeal will be made with a view to quashing the by-law. ' GREAT BRITAIN. London nestoys have hibited from yelling the latest news. In three weeks London has had 100 suicides and 100 other suspected cases. Creditors of the bankrupt Earl of Yarmouth will get about 50 cents on the dollar. The chief bleaching firm-s in Eng- $45,000,000. London has started an anti-noiseI crusade against 6,000 organ-grinders. and street pianos. Over 7,000 dock labourers at London are on strike. The employers have violated the arrangements regardingl overtime. Queen Victoria has given orders that St. George’s chapel, Windsor1 Castle,- and the Albert Memorial chapel are to be lighted by electricity, 5 On Monday Cambridge Universityl conferred the degree of LL.D., on! Mr. Joseph H. Choate, the United States Ambassador to England, and Prof, John Williams White, of Harward. R. A. Ramsden has been appointed Viceâ€"British Consul at Havana. He is a, son of the late British Consul at Santiago, who remained at his pest and sacrificed his life during the Spanishâ€"American war. UNITED STATES. Chicago’s total debt is $32,688,099. The United States will spend $100,â€" 100,000 in new. warships. ' - A Kokomo, Indiana,'m:in who tried to prove eating an unnecessary hab- it died. ' Scarcity of wheat has caused many of the flour mills of Michigan to close down. . ’ , Oklahoma has a great wheat crop, and farmers worked at the harvest- ing on Sunday. ' Douglas Hiiis‘on and Bruce Pounds killed one another in a street duel in Livingston, near Dallas, Texas. Fifty boys tried to break into a cirâ€" cus at Chicago and were beaten by the employee after a hard battle. The total estimate of area. in cot- ton planted in the United States 'is 25,558,000 acres, an increase of 2,036,- 000 over last year. United States Agricultural de- partment’s report shows. further de- crease of 1,676,000 in acreage of win- ter wheat and 507,000 in spring crop, A check for $50,000 was the golden wedding anniversary gift of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Hinton, of Milwaukee, to the Protestant Home for the Aged in that city. ‘ _ The dlIississippi River is reported at. low water mark, and sawmill men are worried over the prospects of hav- ing their log supply cut off at a time when it. means serious loss to them. " M. Roihstein, general manager of the Imperial Bank of Russm, is ,in “mien-user ’ New Yorke-ml intends to establisha want to excite suspicion, naturally, Russ1a5n bank in the United States, but he always got under the wire a have. that the engineers in, been p-ro- ' Iands of dollars with it. through which Russian disburseâ€" ments, that aggregate to nearly 810,â€" 000,000 annually, could be affected. GENERAL. Out of 75 plague cases at Cairo. Egypt, 331 have proved fatal. .Thr President of Chill is stricken with paralysis of the brain. Over 2,000 men at the Bell Island mines, near St. Johns, Nfld., are on strike. It is believed that the German Emâ€" peror will soon pay a visit to the Paris Exposition. BAN YBU UUUNT l MINUTE? STORY or A GAMBLER AND or A WATCH ssr IN A RING. Made Thousands of Dollars With Itâ€"llow llc Turned the Laugh on the Scotland Yard Mauiâ€"Hilde n’ Fortune and Ro- tlrcd. "What time is it i” asked a man who was riding with a detective in a cab the other day. , The detective pushed an almost in- visible lever on the side of the set- ting of a large cameo ring that he wore on the third finger of his left hand. Then he placed his left hand at his left ear, and listened for a moment. "Seventeen minutes past three," he replied. , “Now you can go ahead and tell me about that," said the man who was riding with the detective. The man had watched the detective’s method of ascertaining the time with inter- est. "I can see that that big ring of yours is a repeating watch, of course. Let’s have the rest of it.” "This ring and repeating watch combined,” 'said the detective, "be- longed to one of the most notorious of the swagger gang of short card players who used to work'the ocean steamers. He is dead for ten years now,.and as his family are pretty good people, and one of his sons is an officer in the army, I needn’t menâ€" tion his name. He was the cham- lpion of his class though. 1 "This card sharper had this ring I’m wearing made in Switzerland for a purpose. He made many of thous- His game was this way: \Vhen a gang of men on one of the steamers on which he , , lwus a passen or would at to ether [and have combined With acapital of . g g g in the smoking room or card room and lget to betting on the revolutions of the screws, on the weather, on'the day's voyage, on any old thing, he would gently butt it with a crack to the effect that there wasn’t one man out of a hundred that could proper- 1y ' COUNT OFF A MINUTE, that is, that could exactly, or any- thing like exactly, apprehend the passage of sixty'seconds. This would lead to a discussion and the sharper would attempt to prove his statement by referring to the fact that few re- ferees of prize fights are able to count ten seconds over a prostrate fighter with anything like accuracy. Then there'd be more chaw on this point, and finally the sharper would suggest that all hands present chip into a pool, say of $100 each, *the whole bundle to be walked away with by thelman in the pool who could count: the nearest to a‘minute. The crowd never failed to bite. I‘ I "Now if you want to experiment, you let your wife or someone hold a watch for you and you try to count a minute. If you come any nearer than five seconds to the minute withâ€" out plenty of practice you may call yourself a man with a pretty good idea of time. There are few things harder to do than to agree with the second hand of a watch in counting sixty secd'nds. , ’ “\Vell, they’d 'all go into the pool :ind‘some disinterested chap ’ud be brought in to hold the ticker and each man’s count would be set down on a slip of paper. As the man, who suggested the pool, the card shark would modestly wait until they’d all had- their trials" before he essayed to count his minute. ' He'd rest his head in his left hand and watch them amusedly while they tried to make an even-up-minute with the watchâ€" and it never happened that any of ’em' got within better than three sec- onds of it, one way or the other; They were always at leastthat much shy or'that much overdue. “Still leaning his, head in his left hand, then, this crafty, cheerful worker of the steamers would wait for his turn, and then, with this al- most inaudible, but audible enough, bit of a ticker right closet-t0 his ear, he'd wade in and count sixty seconds to the dot, almost. He never did it ex- actly to the dot, because he didn’t winner by a second or so from all the rest of the bunch in the pool. As I say, ' HE WON THOUSANDS at this scheme, and only one of the victims ever-suspected that he had an inside way of keeping tab on his minutes. “He worked the trick once too of- ten. Oddly enough a Scotland Yard man got next to- the gag. Now, Scotland Yard men are as a rule pret- ty obtuse and opaque and a few oth- erthings like that, but this Scotland Yard man was an exception to the rule, and he tumbled to the card sharper's little stall. The Scotland Yard detective was in'a minute-guess: ing pool for a five-pound note himself, and the attitude of the'short card man in counting off his precise sixty seconds struck him as being a bit peculiar. He didn’t say anything right. then,.‘but after the shortâ€"card man had gone out, after gathering up the pool, he mentioned his sus- picions to a couple of other passens gers. When the short-card player returned to the card cabin the Scot- land Yard man, sure that he was right, walked up behind the sharper, who was sitting down, and suddenly grabbed his left wrist, saying: “‘Let’s have an inspection of' that ring l" “The sharper promptly jumped to. his feet and knocked the Scotland Yard man flat. The cat was out of the bag, however, and all the men in the compartment, who’d been in the minute-guessing‘pool called upon the sharper to show up his ring. lVith a very much aggrieved air the shark pulled off the ring on his third fin- ger and threw it on the table, pro- testing in a dignified manner that they had no right to doubt his in- tegrity. W'hen . they'd got through , examining the ring without finding anything unusual about it, he took it back, laid it on the table again, got a hammer and broke it- open. It was just a plain cameo ring, that was all, with no works or anything else inside of it. This sharper was a wise 'gaza- bu in his generatibn, you see, and he had a duplicateâ€"as far as the out-H side wentâ€"of his watch ring along with him for just such an emergency. The Scotland Yard man got the laugh, of course, and the shark was restored to the favor of all the men who’d suspected him on the detective's say lso, and was able to pose before them as an outraged man for the remainder of the voyage. But he never tried the game again. "This short card man quit the steamers and with a competency led a square life for some years pre- vious to his cashing in. V \Vhen he was on his last bed he sent for me -â€"-I’d known him for a long whileâ€"- and handed 'me this ring. Said he didn’t want to leave his children any old thing that had served him in his former lifeof grafting. It's a fine bit of work and is worth about $1,000. I've worn it off and on for a number lof years now. r No," concluded the detective smilling, “I haven’t done any business'with it.” _.___+__._._ ASIA’S GREAT SINKâ€"HOLES. While Asia has the loftiesl; moun~ tains in the world, it also possesses the dcelpclst and (most extensive landvdea pressions, several of them, as is well known, sinking below sea-level, so Lhut if the ocean could flow into them they would be filled to the brim. In the deepest parts of most of them water now stands, forming small seas. Others are destitute of water. Among these is the Lukchun depression in Central Asia, concerning which General "illo writes, in the “Proceedings of the Rus- sian Geographical Society," that in places it sinks as much as 400 feet be- low sea-level. This sinkâ€"hole in the middle of the largest of the continents is also remarkable for its meteorologgic- at features, the yearly amplitudes of. the barometer being greater than are recorded anywhere else on earth. In summer ihc temperature rises to Saba- ran heat, a record of 118 degrees Fa- hrenheit having been obtained in July, while the air is of desert dryness. *_..+___ Pennâ€"I suppose ruined ? Stubbâ€"Not a all. Maroon tells peo- ple there is no hole there. That it is a realistic fox den. the painting was _ DOING li‘lNl‘lLY. How‘s yer daughter gettin’ along in the high school, Rafferty? asked Mr. Dolan. Foine. She kin tell the'niimes iv as many as a hundred words iv foive syllables; she knows the manin’ iv at taste fifty ar'Hl a fB’XV(_:" ‘5‘”‘ “"7 hill even shpell. ._‘.__.__R, .ln “.1- .““n-'~__â€" IV I! I “I. -â€"__'.._. . - «v; fiflMfy?» ‘ A .w _. .. < . .. a..- 'v ' ‘ ‘e . 15:} ‘f ‘ .. .x .‘r- fi). .3... .- ve-s; . ..- u... - u». w seek-m. - . J V. Arv“,\W-v"“\fw-' ‘ _ 5W M. ‘7‘. “WV J , .. _ . i «Mmâ€"uâ€"HAWAW“ “W” m. I if