m off nicely and put on
three or four inches of fresh earth. Dirt floors should be dug up the
depth of one foot. Wash your windows (if you have any in your house, and
if not you ought to have them), so that the fowls can see daylight, and
in bad weather they will enjoy the confinement of the poultry houses
much better. Wash off the roosts with kerosene oil at least once a week.
Take every nest box and wash inside and out, and put in clean straw,
sprinkling upon it some sulphur or loose tobacco. Observe these rules,
and your fowls will do better and keep healthier. We find this good
advice floating about and do not know its source. The hints are worth
remembering.

* * * * *

THE THROAT.--"_Brown's Bronchial Troches_" act directly on the organs
of the voice. They have an extraordinary effect in all disorders of the
throat.

* * * * *

THE APIARY

[Illustration]

KEEP BEES.

The beginning of the new year is a general time of settling accounts and
making resolutions for the future. The head of many a family is overcast
with gloom as he ascertains the true state of his affairs, and perceives
how little he has to show from the past year of toil. His family may
have been industrious in a general way, and yet been consumers only, and
not producers. We knew a farmer's family where there were three
daughters just budding into womanhood. On inquiring of the mother what
she had to sell to clothe her daughters with, she answered, Not a thing.
Have you no butter, eggs, fowls, honey, or bees-wax to sell from this
good farm? No, nothing. These girls were not idle! Oh no. They pounded
the organ, and the result was music as sweet as filing a saw; crocheted,
darned lace, and helped mother. When their father went to town they
asked him to bring them a pair of shoes, a bustle, or a necktie, with no
thought or care. And all the while the neighbors said "he was hard run."

There are few farmers' families that are so situated that they can not
care for a few colonies of bees. They not only need the sweets they
gather, but these industrious insects help to fertilize the bloom of
their orchards and meadows. Nature has appointed this insect, and it
alone, to do this work for her.

Honey can be used in many ways as a substitute for sugar--in canning
fruit, making cookies, and for other culinary purposes.

We would advise all those contemplating bee-keeping to sta