EVAPORATION OF APPLES.

"A GOOD evaporator," says F. Wellhouse, in the Practical Fruitgrower, "may be made by erecting a cheap building 18 feet square and two stories high, with one floor 8 to 10 feet above the ground. This floor is made of slats 11⁄2 inches wide and I inch thick, beveled on lower edge. These slats are laid so as to leave a crack % of an inch wide on top and 1⁄2 inch wide on under side. Stoves or furnaces are put on the ground in the lower story. Two or more holes are cut in the sides, each 2 feet square, near the ground; these are to let in the cold air. Ventilators of still greater capacity should be put in the comb of the roof to let out the heated air. The prepared fruit of 100 bushels of apples is spread out on this floor, and the temperature in the lower room raised to about 150°, and by shoveling or turning the fruit once or twice it is dried in about twenty-four hours.

"Procure paring machines that simply pare. The slicing should be done just before putting into the kiln. Two paring machines and six women ought to pare and trim the fruit as fast as the kiln will dry it, and one active man can tend the fires, the bleacher, slice the fruit, put it in and take it out of the kilns.

"The bleacher is any kind of a tight box to hold the fruit with a pot of burning sulphur in the bottom. This bleaching, as it is called, is done to keep the fruit from turning brown before it is dried. Ten to fifteen minutes over the burning sulphur will hold it.

"Where a business is made of drying five or more of these kilns are joined together, and an elevator is made to bleach the fruit and carry it to the floor above at the same time.

"I cannot here describe the paring machines, bleaching, etc., needed. I cannot now even remember the names of the manufacturers; they should advertize in your paper. One ton of coal should dry 125 bushels of apples, and I bushel of apples should make 5 pounds of dried fruit and 5

pounds of dried cores and parings. The prices with us have ranged from 5 to 14 cents per pound for the dried fruit, and from 12 to 3 cents for parings and cores.

MICROBES IN MILK.

AT a recent meeting of the Medical Society of the County of New York, the chief interest centered in the report of the Milk Commission appointed in January, 1900, consisting of Drs. Henry Dwight Chapin, Abraham Jacobi, W. L. Carr, and Joseph E. Winters.

The report was read by Dr. Chapin, the chairman of the committee. He first spoke of what the committee had done, having made over eight hundred bacteriological tests, thirty visits to farms, many of them more than two hundred miles from the city, and having had two conferences with milk dealers.

"From a chemical point of view," he said, "we found the milk good. Out of twenty samples which we examined, all showed at least 4 per cent., and some 5 per cent., of fat, while the law requires but 3 per cent. So we devoted our attention to the bacteriological conditions of milk and the question as to its proper handling and preservation.

"It has seemed wise to establish a standard of cleanliness for a bacteria standard to which dealers must conform. The standard prescribed by the commission is that the acidity must not be higher than 3 per cent., and that the milk must not contain more than 30,000 germs or bacteria of any kind per cubic centimeter, and that butter fat must reach 2.5 per cent.

"The amount of bacteria in the milk used in the city is something alarming. Out of twenty samples examined on a winter day (November 19), the lowest was 90,000 germs and the highest 2,280,000 germs, while on June 29th, with the thermometer at 90 degrees, out of twenty samples examined, the lowest contained 240,000 germs and the highest 516,000,000 germs per cubic

centimeter. The prevalence of bacteria, to a great extent, arises from the dirt in the milk.

"There are seven conditions on which the amount of bacteria depends-the cleanliness of the barn, condition of the cow, condition of the milker, condition of the utensils, the cooling process, the transportation, and the cleaning of the milk bottles before they are returned."

Aeration, he said, 'is not a success to-day as used by the ordinary farmer. In good hands it might work all right, but in many cases as at present used it resulted in an increase of germs.

The three things which are absolutely necessary to secure milk comparatively free from germs are strict cleanliness, rapid and sufficient cooling, and thorough icing of milk until it reaches the consumers.

In the transportation of milk, ordinary freight cars should not be used, and the ends of the cars should be kept closed, thus preventing the heated air from passing through the car and breeding the germs.

The railroads should be asked to coöperate and furnish refrigerating cars in which the milk could be kept constantly on ice; and after being unloaded it should be re-iced before reaching the dealers.

Safety lies in using the best condensed milk, as it is scientifically prepared at points of production and reaches the consumer free from germs. It is relatively cheaper

than milk as ordinarily delivered.

ITEMS ABOUT RICE.

A SINGLE grain of rice, planted under favorable conditions of soil and climate, will produce 60 heads, averaging 250 grains to the head. This aggregates 15,000 grains from one grain of planting.

If these 15,000 grains are planted the second season's crop will yield a barrel and a half of rice. Planting the whole of this second crop will require six acres of land, and the third crop will amount to 72 barrels.

Theoretically, this result should be greatly exceeded, since if a single grain yields 15,000 grains the first year, one barrel should produce 15,000 barrels.

We are not quarreling with the facts, but with the statement of the Plaquemine Protector, from which we have copied the "facts."

We leave the Protector to explain the mathematical discrepancy.

Altogether, three-fourths of the world's population subsists chiefly on rice. Rice is by no means an invalid and baby food. Nations that make it their principal dish are capable of the hardest and most sustained physical endurance, as witness the Japanese and Chinese.

One man can cultivate 100 acres of rice, and the average profits per acre from ricegrowing on Louisiana and Texas coast lands is $35. The crop may be planted from March to July, and harvested in August and September. Where irrigation is necessary a six-inch drilled well is sufficient

VISCOGEN is the latest milk adulterant discovered by the inspectors of the State Dairy and Food Department, Minnesota. For some time the department kept getting samples of milk apparently far above the legal standard, which, on being tested, were found to be far below. The cause was a mystery until, by a shrewd piece of detective work, the reason was discovered and a sample of viscogen was obtained.

The stuff is a syrup composed of sugar, lime and water, about the color of water, and is used chiefly to make the milk appear richer than it really is. When viscogen is placed in milk or cream the lactic acid turns the lime in the fluid into a thick white substance, which, assimilating with the milk, gives it an appearance and a taste of great richness. It is possible through its use to

palm off upon customers milk and cream far below standard.

While viscogen is not injurious to health, its use is fraudulent and will be stopped by the Dairy and Food Department.

AN EIGHT DAYS' BATTLE WITH STARVATION WITHIN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE.

McClure's Magazine often prints true stories which are stranger than fiction. Here is one of them: "Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun," by Agustus Bridle and J. K. Macdonald-in the Christmas number. "Charles Bunn, an American, had Arctic geological records of the Canadian Government to bring out to civilization." That is how the story begins. "He brought them," that is how it ends; and when you have finished the story those three concluding words will mean as much to you as any three words you ever read. That mortal combat for eight days with cold, with hunger, and finally with madness, makes as fine a record of human heroism as you will find anywhere in fiction or in fact. On the first day he sprains his ankle, yet he marches, almost barefoot, fifteen miles, over limestone ledge and through frozen slough. The one cartridge in his Winchester snaps when he has a sure shot at a caribou. For five days he wanders drenched to the skin in an Arctic mist-"a wash of water-colored light soaking into the gray clouds from somewhere." When the sun comes out on the sixth day, there come with it the Arctic flies and mosquitoes. He has stripped off half his shirt and a trowser leg for foot wrappings. The flies and mosquitoes camp on his bare neck and legs. "He let them bite and suck; he might as well get used to it." Then come the wolves: they never leave him. The last miles of his journey are done on hands and knees. But he brought the records.

SOME DIETETIC EDICTS.*

From the Pages of a Picardy Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century.

BY DR. H. COULON, OF Toulouse.

"YOUR dinner meats may be poultry, fat hens, capons, partridge, pheasant, plover, woodcock; fat pigeons, lark and thrush, with other small birds living out of water, mutton, veal, kid meat, young hares, young rabbits, and wild goat meat."

NOTES.

Chicken and capon are good,
As are pigeon and turtle dove,
Quail, pheasant and blackbird;

Also teal and partridge we love.
E'en thrush and other birds we enjoy,
Their meats give pleasure without alloy.

-Ecole de Salerno, Ninth Chant.

Poultry and feathered game are very healthful foods and easily digested, and consequently best agree with the sick or convalescents, as well as for persons who cannot tolerate much red meat. White meats, in general, that do not contain much fat (like geese and duck, that are greasy), are moderately nutritious, but easy to digest.

Eggs are better for you than fish, and the eggs should be from young hens, and eggs are good in all ways that they may be cooked except when fried and hard.

And the least hurtful fish for you are sole, red mullet, carp, pickerel, welvers, haddock, mackerel, plaice, salmon, trout, jack pike, perch, sardines, roach, white-bait and crawfish."

Ripe raisins are very refreshing and digestive, but the seeds should never be swallowed.

Your sauces may be made of the yellow of eggs, with canella and saffron, mixed with wine and powdered chamomile; or a green sauce made of sage and a little canella; and if you use berry juices put in some cinnamon.

Your confections and preserves may be sugared rose leaves, preserved roses, new sweet almond candy, coriander prepared as a confection, melon rind preserved, candied citron melon.

Drink ripe red wine and wines diluted by boiled water. In cold weather put in your wine the first you drink at dinner or supper a teaspoonful of water of sage, or water of rosemary flowers, and when you have colic or a nephresis drink white wine. as the first drink you take at dinner or supper.

Needs a little something to soften it, So mix water with your wine. -School of Salerno.

2. The virtues of sage have been celebrated by Hippocrates, Theophrastus and Dioscorides. The Latin races called sage herba sacra, the sacred herb.

"Cur morietur homo cui salvia crescit in horto."

Why should man die, when he finds any hour

The wondrous sage plant, that glorious flower

That e'er yields its virtues in garden.

bower?

-School of Salerno.

"In order to overthrow the best things," says Dr. Cozin, in his treatise on medicinal

plants, "one only needs to offer their eulogy." Thus, sage, thanks to the praise of the School of Salerno, has been condemned by skepticism and its real merits forgotten.

Sage is essentially a tonic, and enjoys stomachic, cordial, nervine, uterine, corroborant and resolvent properties. It has the power to drive off morbific tumors, to cure paralysis, to stop muscular tremblings, if we are to believe the maxims of the School of Salerno.

"Salvia comfortet nervous, manumque tremorem."

So our author rightly recommends sage for his patients in the treatment of aposthemas.

Enjoy yourself and take amusements often at leisure time, before dinner and supper, in the open air.

NOTES.

I. "Non sit tibi vanum surgere post epules."

It is good to promenade about,
To jump, to dance, and sing;
For every kind of exercise
Will ever good health bring.
-Ecole de Salerno.

THE ancient apothecary was a public a public functionary and a man of honor. In his hands he held the lives of his entire community. He dealt out pills, powders, herbs and extracts much as a conscientious priest deals out spiritual consolation and absolution.

In these latter days his successor, encompassed by the hard lines of unscrupulous competition, has fallen from grace. He feels compelled to resort to every sort of trick,

fails he must dispense his own medicines. This latter is a final and sure resort. Unless dispensing druggists mend their sneaking and dishonest ways this method will be universally adopted by conscientious practitioners. There is no other alternative, and dispensing druggists may as well take warning before it is too late.

make ends meet. The formularies provide him with recipes for all the popular proprietary remedies and he is tempted and fairly compelled in self-defense to manufacture his own substitutes. It saves him an honest (?) penny. He is not sure but that his own is the more genuine and therefore more reliable mixture. It is easy thus to quiet his conscience. The result is that substitution and counter prescribing are as common as drug shops. Possibly not all the druggists are guilty, but the innocent are too obscure to be countable.

But the prescribers are not guiltless. It is to be hoped that only a few by collusion share in the surreptitious profits of the druggist; but many passively acquiesce in the use of his substituted mixtures. "Acetanilid Comp." has seemed to them to take the place of all the "antis" and so of the rest of the list. In some instances no harm has resulted. In others, no doubt, the aim of the physician has been thwarted and his. reputation made to suffer. He must blame himself. He must compel strict adherence to his written prescriptions, and when this

IN the Practitioner for this month Dr. R. Mander Smyth gives a striking account of his personal experience of "galloping consumption" and of the benefits he derived from treatment at Nordrach. That he was in a very desperate condition admits of no doubt; and it is clear that he nearly lost his life from an acute exacerbation of the tuberculous process set up by the over-exertion of the journey; yet as the result of the rest, the open air, and the hypernutrition he made a good "recovery." He says that the moral of his case is not far to seek. The open-air treatment at home had been a failure because the feeding was inadequate, the rest was not absolute-to be out of bed with a temperature indicating activity of the tuberculous process was madness— and, lastly, his room was insufficiently flushed with air. At Nordrach the isolation from sympathetic friends who made. him talk he found an absolute relief. The solid diet and the absolute peace in the open air soon produced an effect on the temperature in spite of the fulminating effect of