This section is from the book "Wrinkles And Recipes, Compiled From The Scientific American", by Park Benjamin. Also available from Amazon: Wrinkles and Recipes, Compiled From The Scientific American.
Sour milk, after protracted exposure to the sun. develops a poisonous quality, sufficient to cause disease and death to pigs fed thereon.
Place the pans in cold water, which will protect the milk from the acid until the cream has time to rise. For cream to rise readily on milk, set in cold water; the atmo' sphere in the room should be warmer than the water. There will as much cream rise on milk set in cold water in one hour as there will on milk not set in water in 24 hours.
Never allow dead animals to decay about a pasture, or any where near a barn or other localities inhabited by the milch-cows. The carrion odor is sure to affect the milk.
A simple method of determining the quantity of cream in any sample of milk consists in agitating the milk in a graduated glass tube with its bulk of ether for 4 or 5 minutes. Add alcohol in volume equal to that of the milk, and shake for 5 minutes. Place the tube vertically and allow it to rest for a brief period, when the oily matter will rise to the surface so that its amount may be read off on the scale and the percentage easily computed.
A fire started in the dairy is an excellent preventive. This should be done even in the hottest weather. The object is to remove the damp, moist, heavy air, which is injurious to the milk.
Give the cow no turnips for two or three hours before milking. It is better to feed only the centre of the turnip, cutting off the top and bottom. A tablespoonful of nitre; dissolved in as much water as it will take to a gallon of milk, placed in the pail before milking, is said to remove the taste of the vegetable.
(1.) A bellows with a rubber hose reaching near the bottom will soon blow out the gas. (2.) Let down a large bucket, draw up and empty the gas as if it were water. (3.) Pour down water; do this when a person falls to the bottom from inhaling the gas. (4.) Let down an umbrella spread, and pull up quickly several times in succession.
Orchard or tent caterpillars leave their rings of eggs on the young twigs. If these are cut off with a clipping pole, it will prevent in every instance a large nest of caterpillars, and be much more easily done than after the latter have grown.
All red flowers are greatly benefited by covering the earth in their pots with about an inch of pulverized charcoal. The colors (both red and violet) are rendered extremely brilliant. Yellow flowers are not affected in any way by charcoal.
The best food for this purpose is Indian meal and milk.
 
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