12 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



[January, 



The Tobacco Growers. 



The monthly meeting of the Lancaster County To- 

 bacco Growers' Association was held iuthe Athenaeum 

 on Monday afternoon, January 15. 



In the "absence of President Kendig, Mr. John 

 Brady, of Millersville, was called to the chair. 



The following members were present : John Brady, 

 W. L. Hershey, I. L. I.andis, Peter S. Heist, J. F. 

 Landis, John M. Stehman, Harry Keist, Andrew 



Lane. j, , , 



The following new members were elected : Jacob 

 S. Witmer, A. H. Teager, J. M. Johnston, A. L. 

 Andes, Owen Bricker. 



A large number of visitors, most of them tobacco 

 growers, were present. Among them we noticed 15. 

 L. Hershey, J. Frank Landis, Andrew Landis, 

 Samuel Leupold, Christian Eshenshade, Henry Erb, 

 Michael Landis, Harry Hostetter, Philip Dotesman, 

 Jacob Hyland, George Hyland, Daniel Forry, Henry 

 Keneagy, Jacob Fuhrman, Jacob Snavely, Jacob 

 Freeman, and Andrew K. Peters, of Chester county. 

 The minutes of the last meeting having been read, 

 the secretary read the constitution and by-laws for 

 the information of those present. 



The condition and prospects of the crop being 

 called for, Mr. I. L. Landis, East Hempfield, said 

 there had been no change in his neighborhood since 

 last month. Little or no tobacco had been prepared 

 for market, and he knew of no sales. The farmers 

 were anxiously waiting for a season of dampweather 

 that they could prepare the crop for market. 



Mr. John Bkady, of Millersville, stated that a few 

 sales had been made in his neighborhood. He had 

 heard of one lot that had been sold at HO cents round, 

 another for '.;•-', and another for '.6 round, and another 

 at 20 for wrappers and 5 for tillers. All of these lots 

 were good tobacco and were well prepared, and there- 

 fore sold at good prices. Growers and packers were 

 alike waiting for good weather to prepare the leaf 

 for market, and he thought from the present appear- 

 ance of the weather that they would not have long to 

 wait. 



Mr. A. Lane, of Manheim, said the severity of the 

 winter had kept back the work of preparing for mar- 

 ket. He had heard of no sales since last meeting. 



Mr. W. L. HERSHET,of Landisville,knewof a few 

 lots that had been sold— one at -2%, and another at 

 23% round. The growers were waiting for damp 

 weather to strip and prepare their stock for market. 

 The tobacco in his neighborhood was of fine quality. 

 Mr. I. L. Landis suggested that as the essayist 

 (Mr. Groff) was not present, the subject of his essay, 

 " How should tobacco be stripped, and in how many 

 grades should it be assorted," might be informally 

 discussed at the present meeting. 



The suggestion being agreed to, Mr. Brady said 

 that he thought it unnecessary to assort tobacco in 

 more than two grades, if the crop was good and of 

 uniform growth, but where the growth and quality 

 were irregular, it had better be sorted in three 

 grades, wrappers, seconds and fillers. In handling 

 the tobacco great care should be exercised to avoid 

 tearing or in any way damaging the leaf, and in 

 tying it up care should be taken to sort it in hands of 

 equal weight and length . More money can be got 

 out of it in this way. The dealer that purchased one 

 or two crops from a farmer and found liis tobacco to 

 be properly put up and of good quality, would never 

 afterwards have any trouble in selling it at good 

 prices. Dealers can seldom be deceived, and if de- 

 ceived once, they will have nothing further to do 

 with the deceiver. Mr. Brady said he knew a to- 

 bacco grower (and a preacher at that) who had 

 sorted his tobacco and put all the short and bad 

 hands out of sight in i-anks against the wall, 

 and when the buyer came showed him the good 

 tobacco, which was in the front rank, but the buyer 

 immediatelv reached back and pulled out the bad 

 tobacco by handfuls, to the groat discomfiture of the 

 seller. If there's a bad hand of tobacco in a bale, 

 that is the very one the buyer is apt to pull out, and 

 then, of course, he has no faith in the man that 

 baled it, and will not buy except at a figure so low 

 as to assure him against being cheated. In sorting 

 tobacco honesty is the best policy. In the neighbor- 

 hood of Washington there are growers who are so 

 careful in growing, curing and sorting their tobacco 

 that dealers have entire confidence in them, and buy 

 their tobacco at the highest prices— sometimes with- 

 out even seeing it. 



Mr. Lee agreed with what had been said as to 

 the importance of using great care in stripping and 

 sorting the leaf. He had been growing tobacco 

 seven years and never separated it in more than two 

 sorts, wrappers and fillers. 



Mr. I. L. LANDrs read an article on stripping and 

 packing tobacco, (recently published in tlie Intelli- 

 gencer,) and commended the rules there laid down 

 to the careful consideration of the members. 



Mr Brady said a neighbor of his, Jacob Warfel, a 

 noted tobacco grower, always planted, cut off, strip- 

 ped and marketed his tobacco at the earliest possible 

 period, and always got good prices. He said he put 

 no less than 200 bushels of lime per acre on his to- 

 bacco lands, and wherever the lime was most plenti- 

 ful the tobacco was the largest. He plowed down 

 the lime with barnyard manure. Other farmers had 

 derived equal advantages from heavy liming. 



John M. Stehman said he thought he had one of 

 the best tobacco farms in the county and he was 

 sure he had one of the best tobacco farmers (E. M. 

 Bricker.) Each succeeding crop was better than the 

 preceding. He thought he was doing pretty well 

 when he got 1.5 and 5 for his crop, but he could 

 now get 30, 15 and 5. He manured heavily; say 

 fifteen four-horse loads of barnyard manure to the 

 acre. His farmer was not only careful in planting, 

 but in cultivating, in cutting, in stripping and in 

 sorting. In cutting and hanging up the leaf, care 

 was taken that it should not be bruised; and in 

 stripping great deliberation was used, not more than 

 four hundred stalks being stripped in a day, and 

 every leaf being carefully examined and sorted, and 

 all defective and worm-eaten leaves being placed by 

 themselvesi 



Mr. Stehman had no reason to doubt that Lan- 

 caster county tobacco would soon rank higher than 

 Connecticut. We have a richer and a deeper soil 

 and we have plenty of manure behind it, while the 

 worn out soil of Connecticut has to depend largely 

 on manufactured fertilizers. 



Mr. Bkadv made mention of a farmer that kept 

 his men at work in the harvest field while he neg- 

 lected his tobacco, and the result was his tobacco 

 was almost worthless. Tobacco should never be 

 laid down after it is cut oflf; it should at once be 

 carefully put upon the scaffold. He had heard that 

 extreme cold weather injured-tobacco, and had been 

 told by a buyer that the present crop would suffer 

 on this account. He thought all tobacco houses 

 should be furnished with a deep and damp cellar, 

 with some water in it, if possible, so that by opening 

 the trap door the tobacco in the shed above would 

 become damp enough to strip at almost any time, 

 without waiting for damp weather. 



Mr. Witmer agreed that great care should be 

 exercised in the growing and curing of tobacco. He 

 had suffered by entrusting to "the girls" the strip- 

 ping of a small lot, and they had made a bad mess of 

 it ; they did not properly assort it ; tied good and 

 bad leaves together and the result was it was not 

 marketable. A neighbor of his, who had tried to 

 raise a little tobacco, neglected it and it was almost 

 eaten up with worms. Mr. Witmer suggested that 

 a local company should be organized to sell the 

 tobacco raised in the county, and thus avoid the 

 great waste of time and money resulting from the 

 employment of eastern buyers. 



Mr. a. H. Yeager, of East Lampeter, had grown 

 a little tobacco, but was well aware that he could 

 not compete with the western townships. Manor 

 and Hempfield could get 10 or 15 cents a pound 

 more than Lampeter, though the soil of Lampeter 

 was in no respect inferior. He believed it was be- 

 cause the western townships had learned better how 

 to grow and handle the crop. He was pleased with 

 this association, believing that it would accomplish 

 good work. 



Mr. I. L. Landis recommended great care and 

 strict honesty in assorting and putting up tobacco. 

 He believed our soil was unsurpassed for its growth 

 and all that was now necessary was to attract buy- 

 ers by fair dealing. He had spoken at a former 

 meeting of the advantages which would result from 

 having a fine display of tobacco at the Centennial 

 Exhibition, and he had used his best endeavors to 

 secure such display. He had collected such speci- 

 mens and had at his own expense procured a show 

 case to display them in ; but the exhibit fell far 

 short of what Lancaster county should have shown. 

 And now the question arises, liow shall we bring our 

 tobacco to the attention of the world 1 We may talk 

 about it among ourselves, but there are no buyers 

 here to hear us Very full reports of our proceed- 

 ings are made in the newspapers, but even this is 

 not enough. Having missed the grand chance of 

 making a fine display at the Centennial, should we 

 not make application for sufficient space in the per- 

 manent exhibition soon to open at Philadelphia? 

 Kentucky, with her coarse tobacco, made a display 

 at the exhibition which cost $15,000 or $.0,000. By 

 concert of action Lancaster county can, at a very 

 small cost, make a fine display at the permanent ex- 

 hibition. The space will cost nothing ; there will be 

 no expense except the furnishing the tobacco and 

 the proper cases in which to display it. He pro- 

 posed the appointment of a committee to inquire into 

 the expediency of making the exhibit. 



The chair appointed Messrs. I. L. Landis, John M. 

 Stehman and Peter S. Keist, as said committee. 



Mu. W. L. Hershet presented a hand of very fine 



tobacco leaf, which was much admired by members. 



On motion members were requested to bring 



samples of their tobacco to the next meeting of the 



society. 



On motion the question of stripping and assorting 

 tobacco was Continued for discussion at next meet- 

 ing. 



The chair appointed Mr. Jacob M. Frantz to de- 

 liver an essay before the society at its next staled 

 meeting. ' 



Adjourned. 



The Linnaean Society. 



A state meeting of the Linnaean Society was held on 

 Saturday, the 37th of January, President, Rev. J. S. 

 Stahr, in the chair. Six members present. The 

 minutes of the prexious meeting were read and ap- 

 proved and dues collected. The few donations to 

 the museum were examined. In one bottle a 

 common mouse {Mus musculns) differing from 

 others simply in the absence , of all signs of 

 a tail ; also a beetle allied to the meal-worm 

 beetle, {IphlMnus Pensylvanicnss) , per Mrs. Gibbons. 

 A long and stout specimen of a sugar cane, {Sae- 

 charum Offlcinarmn L) from Mr. Wm.Blickenderfer, 

 grocer, North Queen street, taken from a hogshead 

 of New Orleans sugar. A fine bunch of the heads of ■• 

 the "Clawson White Wheat," and a bottle of the 

 cleaned seed, by the Lancaster County Horticultural 

 Society. A fine fossil ( Terrain-alula risca) from the 

 Miami Valley, per Kev. J. H. Dubbs. 



The American Almanac for 1830, No. 7 of Field and 

 Forest, Patent Office Gazette, an account of the 

 "Buck-shot war" of 1830. Part II of the proceed- 

 ings of the Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia 

 up to September, 1870 ; the 3d annual report of the 

 Zoological Society, of Cincinnati. 



To the historical department five envelopes, con- 

 taining 56 scraps from papers ; also, (omitted in last 

 month's report,) two genuine bank-bills of_^ the 

 Southern Confederacy, one of §20, the other $100, 

 per Mr. Blickenderfer. 



The following papers were read : On the sugar 

 cane and its botanical relations and history, per S. S. 

 Rathvon, No. 5.56 ; Mr. D. McN. Stauffer gave a de- 

 scription of the mode of cutting the cane, boiling, 

 crushing, and the evaporating process, as witnessed 

 by him in Louisiana. Mr. Rathvon read a paper on 

 tlie locust leaf mining beetle, with a natural locust 

 leaf glued to the paperto illustrate the effects of the 

 insecl— the Europlata S^i.turalis, No. 557. A com- 

 munication of some length, with illustrations (and 

 very interesting) , from Mr. A. F. Berlin, of Reading, 

 Pa., in which he refers to the finding of two kinds of 

 " stone pestles," among ancient tribes of Europe and 

 America, and mentions certain customs, that lead 

 him to think the one kind were only used for crush- 

 ing corn, the other in a species of religious ceremony, 

 wiiich was new to the members present. Rev. Prof. 

 Dubbs also read a letter from Mr. Berlin, in which 

 illustrations are given of the similarity of fishinur im- 

 plements used by the early Scandinavians and North 

 American Indians, as well as other things relating to 

 the stone age, in which he called the attention of the 

 Society to several interesting facts. An illustrated 

 Paper, showing the remarkable delineations of frame 

 work— of agricultural arrangement, surrounded with 

 immense plumes of fern like crystals and scrolls, the 

 skillful work of Jack Frost, on the large plate glass 

 window of Messrs. Rathvon & Fisher's clothing 

 store, northeast corner of North Queen and Orange 

 streets, as witnessed on the morning of January 4, 

 1S77. The straight (or slightly curved) long hori- 

 zontal lines, shaded perspectively, and beset at right 

 angles, like windows or door frames, between them, 

 was a new feature in frost-work, which is often 

 highly ornamental in fern-like leaves ; but this, for 

 its" peculiarity, was truly remarkable, and deemed 

 worthy to be put upon record by a description and 

 drawing, per J. Staufler. 



Mrs. P. E. Gibbons gave a verbal statement of how 

 tho tailless mouse was caught, and how it suggested 

 Darwinian ideas, as it seems to never have had a 

 tail. This led to the mention of other malforma- 

 tions, which had nothing to do with Darwin's no- 

 tions. She also stated that she had arisen early m 

 the morning to notice the late conjunction of the 

 planets. The members present having indulged in 

 their morning naps, confessed to not having wituess- 



A motion was made that Dr. Walter J. Hoffman, 

 of Reading, Pa., be elected a corresponding member 

 of the society. His zeal in natural science and high 

 standing in several societies, was well known, and 

 on motion he was unanimously elected, and notified 

 of the same. The recording secretary was remind- 

 ed to notify members of the arrearages of dues. No 

 further business offering, on motion adjourned to 

 Saturday, February 2i. 



Renew your subscription for The Farmer for 

 1877, as we intend to make it one of the best agricul- 

 tural papers in the comUry. 



Recipe to Cleanse Wool.— Hunt Bros., of the 

 "North Bloomfield custom woolen mill," New York, 

 once gave the following recipe for cleansing wool : 



To two pailfuls of water, add a quart of soft-soap 

 and half a pint of common salt. Heat from 150 to 

 180 degrees— or a little warmer than the hand can 

 bear. Put in all the wool that will stir conveniently, 

 and let it remain fifteen minutes, moving it in the 

 kettle occasionally. Then take it out ; let it drain ; 

 return the drained liquor to the kettle, and add all 

 the water needed. Repeat the process, and occasion- 

 ally add a little soap and salt. After the wool is 

 sufficiently drained, simply rinse it out in cold water, 

 and you will have it white and soft. Never let wool 

 boil in the liquid, as that will fix the gum, render 

 the fibre stiff and gray, and unfit to make soft, flex- 

 ible yarn. Fine wool needs more time in the kettle 

 than coarse. Taggings may be cleansed in the same 

 manner, by clipping off all the hard matter that can- 

 not readily be compressed between the thumb and 

 linger,— .fiwrai New Yorker. 



