to the taste with rock salt; then set away for several hours for the salt to penetrate the whole and harden a little; then worked with the hands, and in the morning worked again and made into balls as presented.

STATEMENT OF DEAN HOLT.

I present for your inspection 16 pounds of September butter, made in the following manner :—

The milk is strained into well scalded pans, and placed in a cool cellar, to stand from 36 to 48 hours; it is then skimmed into cream cans, and stirred morning and evening. I churn twice a week. When the butter is taken from the churn, it is well washed with cold water; one ounce of rock salt to the ponnd is then added. After standing from 6 to 8 hours, it is worked over and left until the next morning, when it is again worked over into lumps, and put up for the market.

STATEMENT OF MRS. FARNHAM STILES.

I present for your inspection 15 pounds of September butter, made as follows:

The milk is strained into well scalded tin pans, remaining from 24 to 36 hours-according to the weather-then skimmed. The cream is kept in stone jars, and stirred morning and evening. Before churning, the cream is brought to a temperature of 62 degrees; time taken in churning, from 5 to 10 minutes. The butter is then taken out, washed with pure soft water, and salted to the taste; after standing 24 hours in a

cool cellar, it is again thoroughly worked, and made into lumps, as presented.

STATEMENT OF N. W. MOODY

I offer for your inspection three cheeses, made about the 1st of August, in the following manner :—

The milk is set at night in tin pans; in the morning the cream is stirred in and warmed, and the morning's milk added, with half a tea cup full of rennett. In half an hour the curd is formed, when it is broken and left to drain. When sufficiently drained, it is sliced and put in the cellar ; the next day the same process is repeated. The two cards are then put together, with warm water enough to cover them; after remaining fifteen or twenty minutes, they are drained, chopped fine, and salted—half an ounce salt to a pound of cheese, with with a tea-spoonful of salt-petre, well stirred in press thirty-six hours.

STATEMENT OF DANIEL SILLOWAY.

The cheese that I present for your inspection and premium, was made in the following manner, viz :—

I have eight cows. The milk was set as soon as it was drawn from the cows at night, with a suitable quantity of rennet to make the curd, and the same process repeated in the mornthe curds ground in a curd mill, and the night and morning curds put together with a suitable quantity of salt. Pressed gently three hours, and then turned and pressed twelve hours or more. These are three out of sixty made in sixty days.

BREAD AND HONEY.

The Committee on Bread and Honey respectfully report:That there were eleven entries of bread and one of Honey. The Committee were gratified with the spirit manifested by the ladies, in offering for our inspection so many specimens of their skill in the important department of bread; they were particularly pleased with the beautiful loaf, and other specimens offered by Jane Graves, of Andover; they commended themselves to the eye and taste of all, and, we believe, would be hard to beat. We should have been glad to have known the modus operandi of its manufacture; but no statement appeared. And we would here suggest, that hereafter all entries of bread shall be accompanied by a statement describing the process of mixing, kneeding and baking; the Society require a statement in regard to butter, cheese, etc, and why not in regard to the more important article of bread? We can see no benefit to be derived from an exhibition of bread, unless those who are so unfortunate as to be lacking in skill," can go and do likewise." They can look at the beautiful loaves on exhibition, and, with a sigh, express the wish to know how to make such bread; but the information is not to be had. If the statement is given, under a rule of the Society, all the breadmakers in the county may know how to make good bread, We award to Jane Graves, of Andover, for the best speci

men,

To Jennie Charters, of Andover,

"Alice L, Tuck, of Beverly, (eleven years of age,)

$1,50

1.00

75

50

50

50

50

25

25

HONEY.

To E. C. Upton, of Andover, for two boxes honey,

2.00

have seen as many entries We think were a proper in

We should have been pleased to of honey as there were of bread. interest awakened on this subject, our country might exhibit a large amount of honey; we might keep bees enough to visit every flower in the county, so that nothing which contains honey should be allowed "to waste its sweetness on the desert air." There are probably not so many bee-keepers in this county as there were twenty-five years ago; and we may here enquire what has produced this falling off. The principal reason given by those who have abandoned the business is, the depredation of the moth; and this is true not only of this vicinity, but of all the Northern States. Those who have kept bees say to us, "Yes, we used to keep bees, but the moth destroyed one swarm after another till they were all gone; and as we knew no remedy, we thought it was useless to try again.' And besides, our bees did not swarm as they did some years ago, and this, so far as our experience goes, and from all we can learn from others, is true. We know some who have kept bees ten or twelve years, and have had no swarms. Whether this is the result of taking honey from the hive in boxes we cannot say; but we can say that during 15 years' trial we have never had a natural swarm from a hive from which we took honey in boxes. We have sometimes inverted the boxes in the Spring, with a determination to get a swarm instead of honey; but the result is the same; the bees, after filling the body of the hive, have clustered on the outside, and neglected to swarm. And here we would remark that although most writers on bees say that clustering or hanging out is a symptom of swarming, our experience is that it is directly the opposite; for if a hive contains bees enough to throw out a swarm, if they get the habit of hanging out, it indicates that for some reason, unknown to us, they choose to live out of doors in warm weather, and thus reduce the temperature of the hive so as to enable them to stick to the old home. But this non-swarming propensity now presents no objection to bee-keeping, or its increase, as we shall hereafter show. Another objection is, something, we

know not what, is the matter with the hive: our bees neither swarm or make honey, and here is a case in point: We had during the past season two hives exactly alike in size, shape, and color, standing side by side, we judged one to be a little stronger than the other; during the month of June, any pleasant day, bees enough for a swarm were hanging from the front of the strongest hive, and in that hive no honey was put in the boxes; in the other, the bees, " from rise of morn till set of sun," with their merry buzz were filling the boxes with honey.

We are satisfied from experiments that, in this case, all they needed was to stir them up by artificial swarming. One gentleman who is troubled in this way, says he is determined to go back to the "old box hive," and apply sulphur to a part of his bees every year, as his father did. But this is like burning the barn to get rid of the rats. Intelligent beekeepers have argued for many years, that bee-keeping could not be brought to perfection till a hive was invented which would enable the bee-keeper to have control over the bees and combs, and take them from and return them to the hive at his pleasure. Huber (who has thrown more light on the physiology and habits of the bee than all other writers) saw the necessity for such a hive, and he made some advance towards it by constructing a hive with frames fastened together at the back, so as to open and shut like the leaves of a book. But this hive never come into general use, because it was too complicated for the majority of bee-keepers; and thus for the want of a control over the interior of the hive bee-keeping has been abandoned by many persons for various reasons, but by far the larger number on account of the

MOTH.

The moth has been the enemy of the bee for more than one thousand years. Aristotle, Virgil, Columella, and other ancient writers, mention its depredations. It is about sixty years since it first attacked the bee on this continent; it showed itself in the eastern part of Massachusetts in the year 1800, in 1805 it was in Connecticut.