vMO.] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



55 



surgeon's attendance, had tlie horse laid up 

 three months, and it was not well yut. He 

 Uiought the vreseTit value of the horse might 

 1 '(• $50 for orilinary work when fully recovered, 

 I iioiiKh lie could only get an offer of S.'iO. Ili.s 

 fulher-in-Uiw, Dr. "Jucoh l!cit;ard, of 0^'le 

 county, llliiiciis, has a half mile of harbed 

 fence, and tliounh not entirely satisfied with 

 it, does not condemn it. 



IT. L. Haven, of Travis county, Texas, 

 writes us: "As to the injury of livestock, 

 which seems to be tlie great obj('ction to 

 barbed wire here, my own experience is that 

 the danger is not of great extent. I liave 

 had no serions accideuls. Only one horse 

 has scratched itself, though I have i)ut into 

 the pasture horses that liad never s en a wire 

 fence. But it is best to be careful and not 

 crowd ahiinals towards these barbed wires 

 until they learn where tliey are. Barbed wire 

 will be a great boon to Texas, enabling us to 

 put into cultivation large tracts of land that 

 woultl have lain idle without it.'"— Anicrinm 

 AtjricnUurial. 



PLEURO-PNEUMONIA. 



At a stated meeting of the Philadelphia 

 Society for the Promotion of Agricul- 

 ture, Dr. J. W. Gadsden read a paper 

 on " Pleuro-pneumonia and its Suppression.'" 

 It is stated that the disease is better known 

 as; '-The Lung Plague of Cattle." It is a 

 malignant fever introduced into the system 

 of a healthy animal by contagion. It is a 

 sjiecilic disease, different from all other dis- 

 eases of man or l)east, not influenced by ex- 

 posure to inclement weather, bad ventilation, 

 changes of tenii)erature, &c., which might 

 cause ordinary iutlaramation of the lungs. It 

 is tlie most destructive of all cattle disea.se 

 becau.se it is tlie most insidious. It has a 

 period of incubation which is variable and 

 there is often an interval of from one to two 

 months from tlie reception of the contagion 

 to the first general symptom of the disease. 

 The usual time, however, that it remains 

 latent in the system appears to be from ten 

 days to two months. In many cases this 

 disease creeps im very slowly, the only symp- 

 tom being a slight cough but of a peculiar 

 character. 



Dr. Gadsden maintained that this disease 

 never originated in this country, but spreads 

 asthe result of contagion ; therefore it can be 

 prevented. In winter, wlieii tlie cattle are 

 confined to the stables, and but little commu- 

 nication with other herds takes jilace, this 

 malady diminishes in severity. Virginia 

 supplies a large number of the cattle sold at 

 the Baltimore cattle markets. Up to No- 

 vemljer 1st the special of the governor quaran- 

 tined 27 herds, which included 408 animals. 



Dr. Gadsden examined cattle with this 

 di.sease in the .States of Kew York, Pennsyl- 

 vania and Virginia, and has no hesitation in 

 declaring the disease there prevailing to be 

 the same which occasioned such losses in 

 England. It is quite time our people had 

 awakened to the importance of this subject, 

 for Canada is now endeavoring to secure the 

 cattle trade of the country. In Philadelphia 

 alone the Philadeljihia Steanishi]) Company 

 had made arrangements last spring to ship 

 700 head of live cattle per week in England, 

 but the entire trade is now stopped by reason 

 of the embargo. 



The (piestion is how can we get rid of this 

 disease V Cert;iinly not by the pennywise 

 and pound-foolish method of cheai> inspectors. 

 Cheap terms with the nnfortunate owners of 

 diseased cattle, promising them S5 a piece 

 when they could get $'20 by selling them to a 

 dealer, and allowing the cattle markets, rail- 

 way stations and ferries bringing cattle from 

 other States to be unguarded. Baltimore has 

 been sending us about 400 per week, and it is 

 estimated there are from one hundred to one 

 hundred and fifty diseased cattle in its 

 vicinity. Maryland has no law to prevent 

 the sale of such animals. 



The oHicial report on plenro-pneumouia 

 among cattle in the State of New Jersey 

 states that from recent investigation made it 



is evident that the disease was being intro- 

 duced from Penn.sylvania. Four months' in- 

 spection have discovered sixteen lots of dis- 

 eased cattle, containing 217 hea<l, 40 of which 

 were found infectedvvith contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia, and, with the rest, sent back to 

 Philadeli.hia. 



JSIr. Tliomaa J. Edge, Secretary of the 

 Pennsylvania Boaril of Agriculture, staled he 

 had an interview with the governor relative 

 to the diseased herd at Elm station, on the 

 Pennsylvania Uailroad. The governor ex- 

 pressed a desire to co-operate iu anything 

 done according to law. Although the law 

 permits the killing of diseased cattle, there is 

 nothing to permit the killing of cattle not 

 diseased. In one herd in Lehigh county ten 

 animals were found diseased. The governor 

 proposed the animals should be paid for at 

 the time of killing. The only way in which 

 the disease could lie got rid of was to take 

 possession of the herd and treat them as if 

 they belonged to the State. Lven then that 

 might not prevent the disease, as the diseased 

 cattle are constantly arriving from Baltimore. 

 There are scattered all over the State some 

 300 or 400 ofiicial reporters, wliose duty it is 

 to report all cases of diseased cattle. The 

 average price paid for the slaughtered cattle 

 is $10^71. Since March 27, 1-2.S animals have 

 been killed, and the price paid was •If 1,162. 50. 



SUGAR— A GREAT PROBLEM SOLVED. 



A writer, who subscribes himself "W." 

 and dates his letter Washington, March 6, 

 says in the New York Herald: 



From a visit to the agricultural building, 

 this day, the writer returned with the con- 

 viction tlial surely within the next ten years, 

 and probably within the next five years, the 

 production of sugar within the limits of the 

 United States will supply the demands of our 

 50,000,000 of people, and that in this produc- 

 tion not only will there be a gain annually to 

 the wealth of the country ecpial to .f200,000,-, 

 000, but even our Northern border states will 

 become self-supporting. In other words, 

 from recent discoveries made and new pro- 

 cesses applied in the production of sugar from 

 the raw material, our sugar producing belt, 

 from the superior profits of the culture, will 

 within a few years embrace all our territory 

 in which sorghum or Indian corn will come 

 to maturity. 



Colonel Itobert C. Murphy, formerly United 

 States consul general in China, but now en- 

 gaged here in the agricultural department, 

 called the writer's attention to this important 

 subject; first in a reference to the facts jire- 

 seiited iu the interesting agricultural report 

 for 1877 of Commissioner Le Due, and next 

 in an introduction to Professor Collyer, the 

 chemist of the department, the general results 

 of wliose experiments in the production and 

 crystallization of sugar may be ranked in 

 importance with the invention of the cotton 

 gin. 



It appears from the commissioner's report 

 that the .several attempts to make sugar 

 from beets iu this country having been aban- 

 doned as profitless, and "in the attempts of 

 twenty years to make a merchantable sugar 

 from sorghum having failed down to the new 

 processes of 1877, it had become a settled 

 opinion that only from the tropical cane and 

 the sugar maple tree could sugar be in-ofitably 

 made in the United States. But the maple 

 sugar is an inferior article. Our product, 

 some twenty-eight million pounds in 1800, is 

 but a smallitem in the general consumption; 

 and the limited belts of maple groves along 

 our northern border, by the axe and by fire, 

 are fast disappearing. The sugar production 

 frcun the tropical cane in this country is con- 

 fined to a narrow belt bordering the gulf of 

 Mexico. The total production of this striii 

 last year was about 25,000,000 piuinds, while 

 our importations from abroad were 1,741,0.50,- 

 000 pounds of sugar, besides molasses, nielado 

 and other forms of sucrose, being about 

 300,000,000 pounds increase over the imports 

 of the preceding pear. 



It is estimated that the annual consumption 



of sugar in the United States does not exceed 

 forty iiouuds pcrcai)ita, wliile iu England the 

 Consumption is sixty pounds per person. It 

 may be .safely assumed, therefore, that with 

 an abundaul sui>ply of a cheap, pure and 

 wholesome home grown sugar our consump- 

 tion would soon increase to sixty, and per- 

 haps eighty jiounds per capita. At sixty 

 pounds, the English average (the French 

 much higlier,) our fifty millions of people 

 would consume three tliousand million pounds 

 of sugar, which at .seven cents per giouud 

 W(uild be ('(pial to 8210,000,000. But the 

 Crystal I/ake sorghum sugars of Weidner & 

 Co., of Chicago, sold la.st year at ten cents 

 per pound, and at this figure our farmers have 

 now in sorghum and Indian corn the canes 

 from which thev may add annually fully 

 ff200.000,000 to the wefilth of the ouu'lry. 



Two years ago this great desideratum was 

 held to be so far beyond our reach as to be 

 utterly unattainable. Now. with the im- 

 proved and chea]) machinery and chemical 

 jiroccsses employed, the profitable production 

 of sugar from sorghum— and a suiierior mer- 

 cantile sugar, too— is placed within the reach 

 of every f^armer on whose lands .sorghum or 

 Indian corn will grow. Some twenty-three 

 years ago the attention of fhe farmers of the 

 country. North and South, began to lie ac- 

 tively drawn to the growth of sorghum, and 

 several "varieties — African, European and 

 Central American — were widely distributed 

 and cultivated. During the war for tlie 

 Union so general had the cidtivation of this 

 cane become throughout the South that from 

 Virginia to Texas the people of the Confed- 

 erate States for their "sweetening" were 

 reduced almost wholly to sorghum syrup or 

 molas.se8, all attempts to crystallize it having 

 proved futile; hence, since the war, the gen- 

 eral decline in the sorghum culture North 

 and South until the last year, from which we 

 may date the rising of a "big boom" for sor- 

 ghnm, which will push forward our home 

 production of sugar until it is numbered 

 among our exports to England. 



Without troubling you with the tables of 

 figures, the results of the numerous chemical 

 experiments made at the agricultural depart- 

 ment in the crystallization of the juices re- 

 spectively of the Louisiana ribbon sugarcane, 

 a half a do/.(;n varieties of sorghum, and sev- 

 eral kinds of Indian field corn, it is sulhcient 

 here to say that from these experiments tlie 

 general results include the following : 



From the juice of the Louisiana ribbon 

 sugar cane (the choicest variety) the highest 

 lierceutage obtained was : 



Per Cent. 



Sucioec (or true cane sa^ar) - - - IG .50 



From the early arabcr sorshum - - - 17 00 



From the Chinese sorghum - . . 13 90 



From tlie white Lilierian - - - - 1.5 2(5 



From the Hoii'luras 16 10 



From the pearl millet - - - - - 11 30 



And from the samples on exhibition all 

 these sorghum sugars are of excellent quality. 

 The general conclusion, from the numerous 

 chemical examinations made, is that there 

 exists but little ditlereuce between the various 

 kinds of sorghum as sugar producing plants, 

 and that the juice of each of them is, in its 

 full development, nearly as rich in sugar as 

 the best tropical cane produced in this coun- 

 try. Professor Collyer says that from an acre 

 of the Honduras sorghum he has obtained 

 two tons of sugar, and from three other vari- 

 eties, one ton of sugar each. The larger yield 

 from the Honduras plant is mainly attributa- 

 ble to the stage of devcloiimcnt at which the 

 stalks were gathered for the grinding. Now, 

 bearing in mind the fact that sugar and syrup 

 have been made from sorghum by the carload 

 the past sea.son, wliich commanded the high- 

 est market price, and that the ca.sh value per 

 acre above all the costs of its production, is 

 such as to make it a more profitable crop than 

 wheat, Indian corn, tobacco or cotton, it can- 

 not be doubted that, with the diffusion of this 

 information, the cultivation of a field or two 

 of sorghum for its sugar will be generally 

 adopted by the farmers of the country; first. 



