Never give up a decaying rose bush till you have tried watering it two or three times a week with soot tea. Make the concoction with boiling water, from soot taken from the chimney or stove in which wood is burned. When cold, water the bush with it. When it is used up, pour boiling hot water on the soot a second time. Rose bushes treated in this way will often send out thrifty shoots, the leaves will become large and thick, the blossoms will greatly improve in size and be more richly tinted than before.—D.H. Jacques.
A Clock Collector.
One of those odd geniuses, who spend their lives and means in collecting curious and rare articles, lately died. His name was Sylvester Bonaffon, a retired merchant of Philadelphia. His elaborate collections were sold at auction, and their oddity has attracted general attention. His chief mania was for clocks, which literally covered every portion of available space in his apartments, whether they were placed on chairs, tables, shelves, or hung against the wall. Some of these timepieces were of unique construction. One clock was made to run for 400 days after one winding; another was set in the dashboard of his carriage, and he used Mr. Bonaffon also had an especial fondness for electrical apparatus. His windows were provided with ingenious burglar alarms, his rooms with fire alarms, and he ignited his gas always by electricity. His place of business, his stable, the Continental Hotel where he dined, were all connected with instruments in his room; and he even had perfected arrangements so that he could set at home and send his own messages to California. Besides the clocks and electric apparatus, there was an immense collection of bric-a-brac of every conceivable variety, which was sold at the auction—as is usually the case—at prices much below those paid by its late owner.
Fertilizing Influence of Snow.
Snow is often called the "poor man's manure;" and if it is true that it has any manurial value, the farmer's prospects for the next season are certainly flattering. The body of snow upon the ground in all the Northern and Middle States is very great, and millions of acres of land are covered by it as with a blanket of the whitest wool. It is probable that seldom, perhaps never, has so wide an area of our country been covered as during this month of January, 1877. The question whether snow is capable of affording to lands any of the elements of fertility is one often asked; and in reply, the Boston Journal of Chemistry says that it probably is. The atmosphere holds ammonia and some other nitrogenous products, which are without doubt brought to the soil by snowflakes as well as by rain drops. Experiments both here and abroad would seem to prove the truth of this conclusion.
Rains are not only valuable for the moisture which they supply, but for what they bring to us from the atmosphere. During a thunderstorm nitric acid is produced in considerable quantities; and dissolved in the rain drops to a high degree of attenuation, its effects upon soils are highly salutary, as the nitrogen permeates the entire soil.