trifling compared with the receipts. The returns are sure and immediate, and there is no waiting for a market, or for fattening, as they run loose until late in the fall and at comparatively little extense and are only fed a month or two before being turned off. Look up the matter and turn Story County into the greatest poultry county in the Nation.—(February 5, 1886.)
PREVALENCE OF FIRES.
As usual with every exceptionally cold spell, especially when accompanied by a high wind, as has been the case during the intense cold which has marked the past six weeks, fires occurred with extraordinary frequency during the time the cold and storm lasted, and many of these, we regret to say, were of farm buildings, stock and other property. The question of fires is, perhaps, more serious to farmers than to any other class in the community. The means of relief are the least accessible, and the amount at stake, usually involves the farmer's almost entire property.—There is no other man, according to the business methods of to-day, whose entire property is exposed to destruction by a single fire, yet this is the case with the farmer whose dwelling, outbuildings, granary, and its contents, live stock and farm implements are all exposed to the same conflagration. Many times a farmer finds himself, as a result of a fire, bereft of all he possessed except his land, the consequence being a heavy mortgage and years of trouble and anxiety, unless indeed he carry a full line of insurance. This is rarely the case, and even then the insurance only indemnifies for the cash loss, even when they pay it and promptly, which in many cases is not the fact, and nothing can repair the loss of time involved in putting up new buildings and collecting a new herd. As the winter goes on the danger grows, owing to the continued use of the stoves, the dryness of all interior wood-work in proximity to stoves, pipes, etc. We speak these words of warning not as alarmists, but hoping to induce greater care in the use of lanterns and lamps, the careful examination of stoves and pipes, and the immediate rectification of any arrangement, dictated, perhaps, by temporary convenience; but attended with even the slightest risk of fire. We have frequently seen in many farm houses arrangements of stoves and stove pipes which were a constant menace of fire, and becoming more and more hazardous as each succeeding week of winter passed by, and rendering the danger positively imminent whenever a cold wind storm caused the stove to be run at its full capacity. in such cases the old adage of "a stitch in time," etc., is imminently applicable. See to these matters and take advantage of the first mild spell to thoroughly over haul your stoves and stove-pipes. —(February 5, 1886.)