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A FLOCK OF YOUNG ANGORAS.

that the American goat-owner does not take the trouble to improve and maintain the breed. It is most important that this fact should be recognized, inasmuch as the demand is not for a short, coarse staple, but for long silky fiber. There is a single manufacturer at Sanford, Me., who uses a million pounds of mohair every year, and, for the reason mentioned, he is obliged to import the bulk of it.

To start a flock of Angora goats is not an expensive matter, inasmuch as the thing may be accomplished by purchasing one or two well-bred bucks. They cost fifty dollars apiece; but for does the ordinary, every-day Nannies will serve perfectly well. For the

first two or three generations the fleeces will be inferior, but after that (all males being carefully eliminated) they will begin to bear much longer hair, and pretty soon the entire flock will produce mohair of first-rate quality. It should be explained, however, that the does originally selected must be of the short-haired kind and entirely white. To build up a flock in the manner described ought not to require

more than five or six years.

The only thing to which the Angora goat really objects is wet. Except when a very young kid, it does not mind cold, but it will run miles to avoid a coming rain. Accordingly, suitable shelter, proof against damp, should be provided by the goat-owner. It is said, by the way, that the animals afford in the manner above suggested quite remarkable indications of approaching storms.

At some future day, it may be, we shall import into this country a certain small variety of Angora which is native to Thibet and northern India. It is known as the "shawl goat," and bears in the winter season an under-coat that yields only two or three ounces of a delicate greenish wool. This wool-some of it collected by the natives from bushes by which it has been torn off-is the most precious of all fibers, being the material out of which the Cashmere shawls are made. Ten goats are required to furnish stuff for a single shawl four and a half feet square-the wool being first bleached with rice flour, then spun into thread, and finally woven.

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MILCH GOAT FROM MALTA.

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made. It is thought that they would prove most valuable in the United States, especially to people who are too poor to keep a cow. The milch goat, it may be said, is the poor man's cow. Besides, the milk has certain advantages which highly recommend it, being specially desirable for invalids and for infants. The luxurious "bottle baby" may even take a goat along with him wherever he travels, and thus keep himself supplied with an unvaried diet.

So excellent is goat's milk for infants that already there is a movement to establish goat dairies in the vicinity of large cities, to supply babies with the bottled article. Such milk appears to be free from germs of tuberculosis, and is recommended by physicians for patients suffering from consumption and typhoid fever. But it also furnishes most excellent cheese, and efforts are being made by the government experts to utilize it in this way, in imitation of certain foreign

gives from four to six quarts a day. The preliminary experiments with imported milch goats have been made at the Agricultural College, at Storrs, Conn. From this point small batches of them are being distributed to experiment stations in other States-the idea being that in this way they shall eventually become obtainable by farmers or other persons who want them. It is a line of investigation at once interesting and novel; and this brief description of it ought to be supplemented by reference to efforts which are now being made by a philanthropic lady in Chicago, Mrs. Edward Roby, who is trying to create an American breed of milch goat. She began, a few years ago, with a few specimens of the ordinary suburban variety, and is improving them by scientific propagation-meanwhile supplying many poor people, at cost price, with goats, in order that their babies may be better nourished and safer from scarlet fever

and other maladies which, through infection of the ordinary milk supply are threats to infancy.

The goat has been a much maligned animal in this country, but the people who have been investigating along the lines laid out by the government experts have conceived a wholesome respect for the animal. It is quite likely that a few years will see a strong industry developed as the result of these importations, and instead of figuring only as a stock joke for the funny papers, the goat will undoubtedly make his virtues known. so widely as to command general interest. It requires very little investigation to become convinced that he is very far from a joke, when the relation of the animal to the poor is considered. And one of the strongest hopes of the promoters of goat-raising is that the poorer classes will come soon to recognize the facts and to see their opportunity. In this field, in the meantime, Uncle Sam's workers are again proving their effi

ciency, and this special development has special interest to the city dweller as well as to those who will be likely to take up the industry. For, in the light of recent scandals connected with milk supplies, families who live in the greater cities are eager to learn of anything which promises better conditions. New York and Chicago have both suffered epidemics of sickness chargeable to tainted milk and if the goat can furnish city children with a pure product its future is assured.

A curious use for the longest and finest of the fleeces clipped from Angora goats is in the making of wigs and false hair ornaments of various kinds. Fleeces of this kind, growing sometimes more than 20 inches in length, are easily salable at from $3 to $5 a pound. The fleece of a single doe, owned by a woman in New Mexico, was sold in New York to a manufacturer of wigs and toupees for $43. From the fleece of another goat the owner sold ten pounds for fifty dollars,

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TOP OF THE ABSORPTION TOWERS, SHOWING APPARATUS FOR THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE

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By F. A. Talbot

TARVATION may be averted through the laboratory." Such were the momentous, prophetic words of the eminent scientist, Sir William Crookes, before the annual congress of the British Association in 1898, and he ventured to prophesy also that it would be the combination of chemical research and the hydraulic forces of nature, as exemplified in the numerous water-falls, that would, at no distant time, be used to produce an adequate food-supply for the growing population of the world.

The one great question that has been directing the closest research of the whole scientific world for more than a century past has been the solving of the

problem as to how to meet the growing demand that has resulted from the extensive developments of agriculture, for nitrogenous foods. The population of the globe is rapidly becoming more and more dependent for its vital force upon what the scientists generically term bread-that is, those foodstuffs essentially of a highly nitrogenous character. The existence of all life both animal and plant is absolutely dependent upon a certain number of substances generally known as the aliments, and the presence of nitrogen in some form in these aliments is indispensable. It is the atmosphere which directly or indirectly furnishes to all living things the nitrogen necessary for its life, and it is from the air, moreover, that the two principal

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