PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 159 



Victorij was wrongly named, if the originator thought he had 

 obtained success. 



Welcome, one of Mr. R. Prince's seedlings, proves a sorry sort 

 for cultivation with Mr. Cavanach. 



Hooker's Seedling is one of the best he grows. 



Dr. Hallock exhibited a plant (Wilson's), taken up this morning 

 from his garden at Milton, Ulster county, N. Y., seventy miles up 

 the Hudson, to show with what vigor strawberries grow at that 

 place. The bed was planted in August, and highly fertilized with 

 wood ashes, and now generally exhibits an average of sixteen fruit 

 stalks to the plant. This one has twenty, fully loaded with 

 berries. 



Professor Nash inquired if it would answer to manure and turn 

 sod for planting strawberries. Mr. Cavanach said that he had 

 tried that plan this A^ear, and found his plants making such a 

 miserable growth, that he intends to dig up the ground and make 

 a new plantation. 



Coal-Tar as a Disinfectant. 



Mr. J. H. Tompkins, Grand Rapids, Mich., urges upon the 

 attention of all persons the importance of coal-tar as a disinfectant. 

 A small quantity added to the contents of a privy, renders it so 

 inodorous that it may be emptied and mixed with soil and formed 

 into a valuable gruano w^ithout beinsj offensive to the workmen. 



Mr. George Bartlett. — There is a most important article in the 

 last number of the London Chemical JSFews, by William Crooks, 

 its editor, who was one of the government commission to make 

 experiments and discoveries to prevent the spread of rinderpest 

 in England. Chemists and physicians were generally in favor of 

 the use of chlorine and ozone as disinfectants. It is now well 

 established that chlorine substances are deodorizers and not disin- 

 fectants, and that preparations derived from coal-tar are not only 

 deodorizers but disinfectants and destroyers of the virus of epi- 

 demic diseases, such as rinderpest and small-pox. The theory 

 now pretty well proved is that this virus is a germ analagous in 

 character to the yeast plant and similar substances, which have a 

 wonderful power of reproduction from minute germs. The dis- 

 tinction between a deodorizer and a disinfectant, is this: the first 

 destroys odor, the last destro3^s or prevents infection. Odor is 

 usually harmless, though it often has coupled with it an infectious 

 virus which produces disease. 



