The Lancaster Farmer. 



Dr. S. S. RATHVON, Editor. 



LANCASTER, PA., APRIL, 1881. 



Vol. 2m. No. 4. 



ENSILAGE. 



The nttcMitii>ii of fanners and all who are 

 interi'stcil in the feeding of stock, is called to 

 the reiiuukiiliie artiele headed " Arrareek 

 Fann,"coi)iod fri)m|tho last nuinb(T of "Har- 

 per's Weekly "' into the present issue of the 

 Farmkr. Ilow far the extremely favorable 

 result of the new method of stock feeding 

 there detailed is capable of being-realized by 

 farmers generally who may pursue this plan 

 we will not inidertakc to say, but the subject 

 is certainly deserving of 1he"ir earnest consid- 

 eration. 



THAT'S WHAT ALL SHOULD BE DO- 

 ING. 



Wbat ? Why, lookins| after the noxious in- 

 sects before they deposit their first "batch" 

 of eggs. Every "now and theu " some cor- 

 respondent senis us either the eggs, the larvfe, 

 the pupa, the nest, the cocoon, or the imago 

 of insects, and desires to know what they are, 

 whether they are noxious, and how to destroy 

 them. Only a few days ago a gentleman in 

 South Queen street stated that one day last 

 winter he kicked over a small heap of sawdust, 

 .and found in it about 300 "Lady-birds," and 

 although the thermometer was four degrees 

 below zero tlicy were all alive, or revived 

 shortly after they were placed in a warm 

 room. This don't look much like insects 

 being killed by freezing. Tru6, many of the 

 Lady-birds are innoxious, but our informant 

 did not know to which class these Lady-birds 

 belongetl, but judging from his description,we 

 do not know Init tnat they were of the nox- 

 ious kinds, for on one occasion we took about 

 five' hundred specimens from under a piece of 

 bark-on an old cherry-tree, little more than a 

 foot square, in the month of March, ■which 

 proved to bo the great "Northern Lady-bird," 

 (Epliackna horealis) which is exceedingly inju- 

 rious to melon and pumpkin vines. We 

 would advise people to kill them off, noxious 

 or innoxious, unless they positively know to 

 what tribe they belong, looking for their com- 

 pensation in the fact, that if their insect ene- 

 mies are destroyed, they will not need the as- 

 sistance of their insect friends. Do not place 

 any dependence in the " probability " that 

 insects are very materially injured by the in- 

 tervention of a cold winter. In exceptional 

 cases some of them may be,but all other things 

 being equal, they will pass the winter intact, 

 no matter how cold it is. We have had many 

 cold winters during the past fifty years, and 

 yet, somehow, the succeeding summers, in- 

 sects have l^een as prolific as ever. Most of 

 the insects that survive the winter are fertil- 

 ized females, and if ten of these are destroyed 

 in early spring, it may prevent hundreds later 

 in the season. 



Kill them off! kill them off I That's what 

 every farmer and his boys should be doing 

 now. Give no heed to the fallacious doctrine 

 that the survival of insects of a cold winter is 

 only exceptional, or that only those survive that 

 are protected by a cocoon. Cutworms and 

 potato beetles are not thus protected, and yet 

 they resist an intense degree of cold, and those 

 that pass the winter in the egg state are still 

 more invulnerable to cold. Before the trees 

 and shrubs are olothed in their leafy sheen, 

 the cocoons and follicles inclosing ehrysalids 

 or eggs may be plainly seen, and these should 

 now be removed, if they have not been remov- 

 ed at an earlier period. Examine the black- 

 berry and raspberry canes, the currant and 

 gooseberry bushes, the gr.ape vines and the 

 pea<'h, apple, and pear twigs, and see wheth- 

 er they have insects eggs'on them, or in them, 

 and if so cut them off and destroy them. 

 Only a few days ago we received some apple 

 twigs from Etarrisburg that contained the 



punctures of the " Snowy Tree Cricket," an 

 insect that is rapidly multiplying and becom- 

 ing injurious to the tobacco plant. Although 

 these twigs had .been punctured two summers 

 ago, and the young insects had made their es- 

 cape from them nearly a year ago, yet the 

 same thing may have been done to other twigs 

 last season, and these will hatch out the pres- 

 ent season it they are not destroyed. These 

 eggs are not affected by cold, no matter how 

 intense it is, provided fliev are not immersed 

 in cold freezing water too long. Many of the 

 twigs perforated by these insects die and break 

 off at the point of puncture, but it is not for the 

 damage they do to the trees on which they are 

 found that they are particularly objectionable, 

 but for the damage the mature insects do to 

 other crops, and especially the tobacco and 

 the green grapes. The clustei-s of eggs or of 

 the young larvae of the spring wcb-worms may 

 also be now seen in the forks of the branches, 

 and the bracelet of eggs around the branches, 

 of the "American Lackey moths, " and the 

 cocoons and eggs of the " American Vapor 

 Moths " on the outside of them, should all be 

 destroyed this month if it was not done last 

 month— kill them off I kill them off!! 



A GRAPE DISCUSSION. 



The Kingston Journal a)wl Weckh/ Freeman, 

 N. Y., come to us with a conspicuously 

 marked article on the subject of Vitiue iden- 

 tity, through which it is alleged that the 

 Hudson and the Prentiss are one and the same 

 variety, although they are offered to the pub- 

 lic as different varieties. Perhaps, in the 

 multiplicity of varieties in the different kinds 

 of fruit, it is not at all astonishing that there 

 should be two claimants to the same variety 

 under different names ; and when such is the 

 case it may be of some importance to the pub- 

 lic to know exactly upon what foundation 

 those claims rest. If both of the claimed va- 

 rieties are equally meritorious, the public can 

 run no risk in patronizing either of them, or 

 both of them, at the same time it cannot be 

 considered honorable for one man to propa- 

 gate and vend as his own, under anew name, 

 a variety that has been the discovery or origi- 

 nation of some other man. When each party 

 with equal zeal claims that he is right and his 

 competitior is wrong, and each with equal 

 persistence proceeds to place his goods on the 

 market, it would seem expedient that those 

 who are expected to patronize them should 

 have some knowledge of the premises they re- 

 spectively occupy ; and it is solely with this 

 view that we place the argument "before our 

 readers, so far as it has been brought to our 

 notice ; and not for the purpose of becoming 

 the special champion of either. We prefer 

 to let the parties in the controversy speak for 

 themselves; and with this view we adduce the 

 following from the journal above named, 

 which, .although snfflciently plausible, is still 

 only exparte testimony. Those of our readers 

 who are practical grape-growers themselves, 

 and are well posted in such matters, will 

 know exactly what use to make of it ; and 

 also whether either of the claimed varieties 

 has any merits worthy of their special con- 

 sideration. In 187(5, Dr. Staman, of Kan.sas, 

 had enumerated over 1500 varieties of apples. 

 It would not be surprising if some of these 

 were identical with others of a different 

 name. 



Editor Freeman : Having waited for 

 nearly six monthes for the proprietors of the 

 Prenti.«3 grape to refute my suspicions that 

 the Hudson and the Prentiss are the same, 

 and being pressed from all quarters to explain, 



receiving letters from the owners of the Pren- 

 tiss teeming with billingsgate, and threatened 

 the last letter one month ago that it the state- 

 ments made before our society in regard to 

 the identity of the twograpes in question were 

 not recanted in one week, he would publish 

 me in our local papers and the leiuling agri- 

 cultural journals of the country. As there 

 lurs been no light thrown on this mystery 

 since it began, and in which thousands of 

 people are pecuniarily interested, I feel that it 

 is a duty to myself and especially to the coun- 

 try to give the facts as I have them, and in 

 doing so this paper will be necessarily 

 lengtliy, as it is a transaction of long dura- 

 tion. 



The Hudson is a Rebecca seedling, no at- 

 tempt at crossing having been made. While 

 in fruit a company of veteran fruit-growers 

 and i)omologists from the Newburg Bay Hor- 

 ticultural Society were invited to visit it at 

 Poughkeepsie. After examining it for an hour 

 or more they consulted privately, and their 

 unanimous advice was to "spend no money on 

 the Hudson " in the way of propagating, as it 

 could never prove valuable, and the following 

 are among the re;isous they gave: First, that 

 it was a seedling of the Rebecca, which is half 

 foreign and tender. Second, the vine was a 

 poor grower and the leaves likely to mildew. 

 Third, cluster too small, skin thi -k and bitter 

 and quite foxy, and that in advertising, a cut 

 of a single cluster would be too small to ap- 

 pear at good advantage, and in \new of the 

 superiority of the Rebecca, they would plant 

 it in preference. 



I then put it out for testing in the hands of 

 about sixty gimtlemen, scattered through 

 many of the states, but the greater portion m 

 central New York; the largest number in one 

 locality was on Crooked Lake, and on the 

 west shore in the Pultney neighborhood there 

 were three, two of which were J. W. Pren- 

 tiss and E. Roff, who had a Hudson and 

 Dutchess vine. 



All who have received my new fruits for 

 testing have signed an article binding them 

 not propagate or sell them or allow others to 

 do so until two years after our first general 

 sale. We have not yet sold a vine of the 

 Hudson. 



There has been two or three cases where I 

 have had reason to complain among all this 

 great number who are testing our new fruits. 

 The first we heard of the matter in question, 

 I was written from Western New Ywrk last 

 spring, that a company of gentlemen had ob- 

 tained specimens of the Prentiss and Hudson, 

 and after close examination h.ad pronounced 

 them identical; this was reiterated from sev- 

 eral other localities during the summer. I 

 holding the Hudson in abey.anee for reason- 

 above named, and at the same time seeing so 

 many encomiums of the Prentiss, and kmw- 

 ing it involved a question of general interest 

 throughout the country, I concluded not to 

 be hasty in any correction I might make. On 

 my return from the state fair Last fall on the 

 second day of our local exhibition at Marl- 

 iKirough, on looking over our collection of 

 grapes I inquired of ray sons why they had 

 two plates of Hudson onjthe table, they replied 

 that "one of them was Prentiss," which had 

 been placed near our collection. Their one- 

 ness in appearance brought to mind the state- 

 ments made from the West during the previ- 

 ous spring and sumtuer. The two plates 

 were examined by many persons during the 

 day. We afterward laid tlie Prentiss and 

 the Hudson before some of the most experi- 

 enced grape growers in this and other .sections 

 of the country. " No difference " w;i8 the 

 universal answer. 



The owner of the Prentiss sent a gentle- 

 man iu western New York a specimen of the 



