1897 



GLIvAXINGS IN BKK CUI/rrRE. 



787 



injX and Ihirstinj:; shall be for a half-dollar and 

 the ice-cream that it may ])inchase. 



Aijaiii. we must hold fast to the Christian 

 sabbath, even when it costs us money to do 

 so.* A few days ajro I wanted to cross the 

 State of Ohio. It was j^oinjj: to cost me eii^ht 

 or ten dollars. When I inciuired of our ajrent, 

 " Do you know of any excursion that is likely 

 to come off very .soon in that direction?" he 

 said : 



"Oh I yes, ^Ir. Root, there will be one next 

 Sunday, and you can s^o right down there antl 

 back for four dollars." 



I shook my head, and reminded him that 1 

 did not believe in Sunday excursions. 



"Why, Mr. Root, Sunday excursions are 

 getting to be nowadays a most common thing. 

 All the railroads give special low rates on 

 Simday." 



I can not remember what el.se he said ; but 

 when it occurred to me that it w'as going to 

 co.st me something like a five-dollar bill to re- 

 member the sabbath day to keep it holy, I 

 breathed a sigh. My frien 1 may have thought 

 it was because I felt l>ad aljout losing the five 

 dollars. Bless your heart, no. I never yet 

 lost money in all my Christian life — that is, 

 lost it in the end — by obeying God's law to 

 the be.st of my judgment, and I had no fear I 

 should lose in this case. But I did feel sad 

 and discouraged when I thought of the many 

 Christians who are working perhaps for small 

 pay, whose devotion to and love for the Mas- 

 ter's cause is not quite equal to the cross of 

 paying five dollars more for the privilege of 

 traveling on a week day than it would cost 

 them for going on Sunday. Once more, let 

 me add emphasis to that remark of Bishop 

 Cheny: "If ever this country shall be the 

 sport of revolution, the calamity will be seen 

 to have entered through the rents of sabbath 

 desecration." 





SC.\BBV POTATOES, .\XD HOW TO GET RID OF 



THE INFECTION WHEN IT GETS 



INTO YOUR GROUND. 



This subject has been gone over a good 

 deal, I know, and we have been told again 

 and again how to kill the scab in our seed 

 potatoes with corrosive sublimate. But sup- 

 pose the scab is already in your ground — what 

 then? Well, my impression has been, after 

 reading svery thing I could find on the sub- 

 ject, that there is no very reliable remedy 

 known. The Rural A V?t' - lo/vlvr suggested 

 the application of sulphur. But I put a barrel 

 of sulphur on about two acres of ground, and 



* Please bear in mind, dear friend.s, that a religion 

 that cost.s us nothing, no self-sacrifice or hardship, is 

 good for nothing comparatively. Jesus said, " He that 

 taketh not his cross and followeth after me. is not 

 worthy of me." So do not be troubled or worried 

 even if it does cost you hard >«o«^v right out to remem- 

 ber the sabbath day to keep it holy. 



er was worth a dollar to me. Here is what 

 I found and devoured so greedily, from the 



•A part '^ of this " medicated " two acres produc- 

 ed the scabbiest potatoes I ever saw. This 

 year this part did the same thing again. And 

 another piece, where I plowed tmder crimson 

 clover, produced abt)ut 20 bushels of White 

 Bliss potatoes, and not more than two bushels 

 of the whole lot were fit to be called " firsts," 

 on account of the scab. I began to think I 

 should have to give up raising potatoes— at 

 least on certain portions of my ground. Some 

 years ago T. B. Terry spoiled a piece of his 

 ground — at least he spoiled it for i)otatoes — 

 by giving it a heavy dressing of cow manure. 

 He sorted out all of his scabby potatoes, and 

 fed them to the corvs the year before; and then 

 he had scabby potatoes, and no mistake, where 

 that cow manure was applied. A few days 

 ago I asked him if he had got that piece of 

 ground "cured." He said the way he cured 

 it was by not trying potatoes there since. 

 That was several years ago. Must I give up 

 potato-growing just because my ground is so 

 exceedingly rich with stable manure? So far 

 I have given you the dark side of the matter. 

 Now for some daylight. 



Whenever I plant potatoes after strawberries 

 I get rid of the scab. Is it because we have 

 planted them so late, or because of a heavy 

 growth of foliage on the strawberry -plants? 

 Just at this crisis I got hold of the Ohio Fann- 

 er for Oct. 14. The very first page of that 

 aperw 



found 

 pen of our good friend Alva Agee: 



It is the rule, however, rather than the exception, 

 that our scientific autjiorities in agriculture can help 

 us plain farmers to get at the needed facts, no matter 

 what the local conditions may be. I think that I have 

 a fair illustration of this in one field to-day. Within 

 the last five j-ears two green manurial crops have 

 been plowed" under in this field, and two matured 

 crops of cow-peas. The .soil is in nnich better 

 mechanical condition, and more fertile. But the agri- 

 cultural chemi.sts .say that a green crop, plowed under 

 in warm weather, makes a soil acid, and I find what 

 is. perhaps, proof of a little too much acidity now, by 

 the presence of a sprinkling of sorrel over most the 

 field in the young clover. The soil is in productive 

 condition, and there has never been sorrel to a notice- 

 able extent in this field: but there it is now, and fairly 

 attributable, probably, to the treatment the field ha.s 

 received. 



I have another proof that this late plowing-under of 

 r\e, or other green .stuff, makes the soil acid. We 

 know that potato scab does not thrive in an acid soil. 

 It spreads where .stable manure or lime is used. I 

 have a two-acre lot near the barn that was heavily 

 manured in the past, and has probably grown eight 

 potato crops in the last twelve years. Wheat has too 

 .soft .straw on it, and clover gets killed under the 

 down wheat: .so potatoes .seemed a necessity. Three 

 years ago the scab had finally become so bad in the 

 soil that the field was unfit for the crop. 



.\ friend recommended jilowing under rye to kill 

 the scab germs in the .soil, and the result was a fairly 

 clean crop of tubers. Rye was again .sown the next 

 fall, and plowed under alittle late in the spring. The 

 crop showed that the .soil was being cleansed of this 

 disease : and Director Flagg, of the Rhode Island 

 station, .savs that such results are likely due to the 

 acid condition of the .soil produced by the rye. I do 

 not .say that a green crop, plow'ed under late, will 

 alway.s' kill .seal), as such a crop does not alway.s in- 

 crea.se .sourness of land perceptibly; but I do believe 



*The other part, where the sulphur was applied, 

 gave potatoes comparatively free from scab. The 

 next year my crop of che'^s was on this same grotmd ; 

 and the potatoes were, as I state further along, free 

 from scab. Hut this, as you will observe, does not 

 score any thing positively in favor of the sulphur 

 application. 



