At which end should a hoe-handle be the larger? At which end should a pitch-fork be the larger? It is not every farmer that thinks of these things until his attention is called to them. As Mr. J. J. Thomas remarks, the laborer who makes with a common hoe 2,000 strokes every hour should not wield a needless ounce. If any part is heavier than needed even to the amount of half an ounce only, he must lift this needless half ounce 2,000 times every hour. A hoe-handle should be smallest near the hoe and largest near the other end; a pitch-fork handle the reverse. Oughtn’t it? A member of the Oxford (Ohio) Farmers’ Club recently said: We know something how soil was made, if we do not know much. The soils in the forests and untilled lands are better than they were a century ago, or in the days of our fathers; but, alas, it is not so with the soils man has cultivated. He thinks the term “cultivating” means to improve, make better. We may make our soils better, but so few do that that we ought never to use the term “cultivating the soil.” We harass, and torture, and murder, and starve the soil. By withholding more than is meet we rob our best friend. New York Times: Tobacco is a universal insecticide. It kills ticks upon sheep; the troublesome scab insect; its related species which produces mange and itch; lice, fleas, and all other insect parasites which infest and annoy animals; and root-lice, leaf-lice, and all other pests which injure plants. Just at this season an application of fine tobacco dust or snuff may be used effectively to relieve calves and fowls from the vermin which keeps them poor and wretched, and a decoction of tobacco, applied to house or greenhouse plants with a brush, will destroy the pestiferous green fly and all other insects which infest them. The same liquid may also be poured around the roots of house plants that are infested with the small white worms which are the larvæ of a small black fly that may be found in the pots and upon the soil in them.