378 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



acknowledgment therefor that shall serve by law as a receipt of payment on 

 account for interest on mortgage? 



Senator Mars: This is no simple or easy question. The legislature is in 

 the main an honest and well intentioned body who desire to do the best 

 thing for the State, but if you would go to Lansing you would find the 

 moneyed interest represented by lobbies and petitions, while the farmers are 

 noticeably silent. Let the grangers see that their views are heard by the 

 legislators, that their wishes are expressed in petitions and by agents. This 

 present law of mortgage taxation is in so far better than what preceded it, 

 but perhaps the California law is better. There mortgages go scot-free and 

 the tax is assessed on the farms, but a double receipt is given in case of a 

 mortgaged farm, one receipt for the value of the mortgaged part and one 

 receipt for the value above the mortgage, and it seems to work well. 



Mr. : My opinion is that our present tax law is worthless. If I own 



but one-half of my farm and a mortgage holder owns the other half, he 

 may live in another State, and there be no way of reaching him except as 

 suggested by Mr. Mars. Even then the lender can stipulate in his bond for 

 the payment of the whole tax by the debtor. 



Question : What would be an average yield of mangel-wurzels? 



Dr. Beal : Five hundred bushels on the average. You might get 1,000 to 

 1,200 bushels in exceptional cases. 



Mr. Strong : We only raise small patches of one-half acre or thereabouts and 

 get perhaps 20 tons per acre. 



Mr. Angevine : Mr. Sweet of Grand Rapids says twelve to twenty-five 

 tons, according to kind and circumstances. 



Question: Does the English sparrow give the cattle lice? 



Prof. Cook: No. 



Senator Mars: In some localities in Kansas, in '57, bats did carry bed 

 bugs from the bark of the cotton wood trees, on which the bed bugs were in 

 immense numbers. 



Prof. Cook : I think Mr. Mars must have mistaken some other insect for 

 bed bugs. 



Mr. Mars: Was Prof. Cook ever in Kansas? 



Prof. Cook : Oh, yes. 



Senator Mars : I remember stopping there at a house, and the man 3aid 

 he had stopped hauling rails because the bed bugs swarmed so. They may 

 not have been bed bugs, but they bit like them and smelled like them.* 



Question : Will Alsike stand drought better than June clover? 



Dr. Beal : No, not as well. 



Question : How about Alfalfa? 



Dr. Beal : We have tried small lots for 15 years, and it wants light soil 

 with open subsoil and stands drought very well indeed. It will not do to 

 sow with other grasses. It is a perennial, takes two or three years to get 

 started and then lasts 15 or 20 years, and must be cut several times a year, 

 and makes as good hay as clover. It would be well in starting it to sow in 

 drills and cultivate at first. 



Lieut. Simpson : It is a splendid forage for horses. 



Question: Should we cultivate corn while earing? 



Senator Mars : It depends on the weather. In dry time cultivate weekly 

 till the grain is well formed. In the west they advocate shallow cultivating. 

 I have no experience on the question of depth. 



