136 



THE LANCASTER FARMt^R. 



[Septembei- 



stantly exposed to tlie danger of serious loss ; 

 and his interests demand that he shall at once 

 become a close student of the science or 

 sciences that apply to this business. A man 

 who does not understand^is business is at a 

 helpless disadvantage. He may be likened to 

 one who is operating a machine about whose 

 construction he knows nothing. The machine 

 fails to work properly. Numerous possibili- 

 ties of defects suggest themselves to the 

 operator, but in his ignorance he may not 

 even dare to attempt to apply a remedy A 

 macninist is called, and thoroughly .under- 

 standing tlie matter, restores the machine to 

 perfect usefulness by the simple turning of a 

 screw. Ko oue ought to be content to manage 

 a dairy in ignorance of the necessary condi- 

 tions. It is a fact that tons of poor butter are 

 made because the butter-making is done on 

 the hit or miss plan. There are well digested 

 works on the dairy giving the results of close 

 study and extended experiment, and the agri- 

 cultural press gives large space to the dairy 

 interests. Dairymen should avail themselves 

 of the opportunity thus offered to become 

 familiar with the secrets of successful dairy- 

 ing. Tiie age in which we live is eminently a 

 brain age. It is the man who uses his brain 

 that is the successful taan. He will achieve 

 success and become rich, while taking life 

 comparatively easy, when the man who thinks 

 little and works like a slave will get poorer 

 and poorer. Better spend two hours in think- 

 ing and one in manual labor, than to reverse 

 it. — Western Rural. 



"WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE." 



In the August number of Forestry appears 

 an important article on the destruction of 

 American forests by Mr. William Little, of 

 Montreal. The constant drain made upon 

 American forests for white pine — a wood that 

 furnished three-fourths of the building timber 

 in the United States and Canada — has at last, 

 he says, occasioned a scarcity which compels 

 economists to point to a time in the very near 

 future when its total exhaustion may be pre- 

 dicted. The entire supply of white pine now 

 growing in the United States does not exceed 

 80,000,000,000 feet. The annual production 

 of this lumber is not far from 10,000,000,000 

 feet, and tlie demand is rapidly increasing. 



Fatal inroads have already been made into 

 the great pine forests of the Nortli Atlantic 

 region. Its wealth has been lavished with an 

 unsparing liand ; it has been wantonly and 

 stupidly cut as if its resources were endlass ; 

 what has not been sacrificed to the axe has 

 been allowed to perish by fire. The pine of 

 New England and New York has already 

 disappeared. Pennsylvania is nearly stripped 

 of her pine, which oniy a few years ago ap- 

 peared inexhaustible. The Great Northwest- 

 ern pine States — Michigan, Wisconsin and 

 Minnesota — can show only a few scattered re- 

 mains of the noble forests to wliich they own 

 their greatest prosperty, and which not even 

 self-interests has saved from needless destruc- 

 tion. Canada is almost in the same deplor- 

 able condition as the United States as regards 

 its stock of valuable pine timber. 



Notwithstanding the fences of wire, the use 

 of iron in building, the terra cotta and straw 

 lumber, the consumption of wooden lumber 

 increased nearly 50 per cent, in the ten years 



from lft70 to IRSO, the former being 12,755,- 

 54.3,000, and the latter 1S,091,. 356,000 feet, and 

 though it has always been claimed that iron 

 and kimber keep together — cheap lumber 

 accompanying cheap iron — we now find iron 

 so low that producers claim that they are at 

 the lowest rung of the ladder, while lumber 

 has advanced in America in three years fully 

 50 per cent., with every prospect of further 

 increase, and yet we are informed that we are 

 within seven years of the time when tlie sup- 

 plies of white pine and spruce (whicli are, in 

 the North, the great stock of this indispen- 

 sable inMtcrial) must cea.se, and this is not the 

 statement of interested parties, wliich might 

 be open to suspicion, but of those specially 

 employed by the Government of the country 

 to ascertain tlie true condition of the forests. 



OLD MEADOWS. 

 A correspondent has a meadow which pro- 

 duces about a ton of hay per acre. It has 

 been down eight years, and the clover and 

 timothy have died out, and their place is oc- 

 cupied with June grass. He asks whether 

 top-dressing with barnyard manure and re- 

 seediiig will bring it to bear good crops. Top- 

 dressing would improve it very much, but it 

 would doubtless pay better to break it up and 

 reseed fully. It would not be advisable to 

 break it up this spring, as the tenacious roots 

 of the .June grass would not be likely to get 

 thoroughly rotted during oue summer, if, in- 

 deed they were all killed. It would be better 

 to mow it this year and break it up in the fall 

 and next year fallow it, plowing and cultiva- 

 ting often, selecting the driest weather to do 

 the work. This will kill out and rot the June 

 grass roots and enrich the ground for new ser- 

 vice. The seeding will best be done about 

 the middle of August or as soon as the sum- 

 mer drought is about over. The loss of a 

 grain crop, wliile preparing to reseed, will be 

 more than paid for in the improved condition 

 of the soil. Ground which has lain long to 

 grass becomes exhausted of available fertility, 

 and needs thoroughly stirring and aerating to 

 facilitate the solution of undissolved plant 

 food, which lies dormant in the soil, unavail- 

 able and useless, until made available by ex- 

 posure to the air. It is not good policy to let 

 either pasture or meadow lie too long without 

 breaking up and pulverizing the earth anew. 

 Modern science and the best practice agree in 

 maintaining that the quickest and cheapest way 

 to enrich most soils is to thorouglily cultivate 

 and stir them, to hasten the decompositon of 

 mineral matters which serve as plant food. 

 What may be gained by fallowing and the 

 rotteuing of gross- roots will put the meadow 

 in question in splendid condition for crops for 

 a series of years. We would advise keeping 

 this fact in mind while working the soil. 

 Ashes, leached or unleached, make an excel- 

 lent fertilizer for either meadow or pasture if 

 sown upon ground which is naturally dry. 

 They are as valuable for the grain-grower as 

 the dairy man. Leached ashes by the load 

 are worth about twice as much as barnyard 

 manure, and unleached twenty-five cents a 

 busliel. The immediate effect of ashes is not 

 equal to that of manures, but it continues 

 much longer. Coal ashes are cliiefiy useful 

 for their mechanical effect in loosening a com- 

 pact soil. — Chicago Motional Live Stock Journal. 



MORAL INFLUENCES OF THE 

 ORCHARD. 



AVhile there is so much of the practical to 

 demand space in a journal wholly or partly 

 devoted to horticulturists, it is by no means 

 useless to give some attention to what are re- 

 garded as the lighter, and, perhaps, as the 

 more fanciful features of the subject. To 

 tho.se who have watched the influences of 

 horticultural pursuits, however, their moral 

 aspects are by no means fanciful. Horticul- 

 ture has a substantial moral influence upon 

 both the horticulturist and. the community. 

 If there is a person living who ever saw a 

 well-kept bed of strawberries or a grand 

 orchard about the home of a thoroughly bad 

 man, he has the advantage of us. Fine fruit 

 growing and worthlessness of character do 

 not, and cannot, harmonize; and we have seen 

 chatacters that have been polished, and man- 

 ners that have been improved, and morals 

 that liave been strengthened by the preaching 

 and influence of lovely fruit. There is no 

 mistake about this matter. A community is 

 greatly improved by fruit. Go into sections 

 where there is no fruit, and no attempt to 

 grow any, and, unless it is a new community, 

 you will find it anything but pleasant in 

 almost all of its characteristics. But a neigh- 

 borhood that has fine orchards and fruit 

 gardens will be a superior neighborhood in 

 every respect — intelligent, moral, and public 

 spirited. 



There are well defined reasons, too, for 

 some of these results. A fruit eating people 

 are a healthier people than those who are not ; 

 and peoiile will not eat fruit unless it is fit to ■ 

 eat. When it is really fine they cannot resist 

 the temptation to partake.' Hence in a 

 neighborhood of fine fruit growing, the people 

 will be large consumers, good health being 

 thus almost assured, increased intelligence 

 and morality result, for a mind unclogged by 

 a sluggish or feeble physical system is neces- 

 sary to the former, and a stomach unclogged 

 can almost be said to be necessary to the 

 latter. A healthy person has a better chance 

 to be what a human being ought to be, in all 

 respects, than one who is not healthy. No 

 mistake about the matter. Dysp&psia makes 

 some people not only very disagreeable, but it 

 positively makes them wicked. Therefore, in 

 amoral point of view, we believe fruitgrowing 

 of vast utility to the country. — Western Rural. 



VALUE OF COTTON-SEED MEAL. 



I wish to relate an experiment made by a 

 neiijhbor in feeding cotton-seed meal to cows, 

 which, although a small one, yet, owing to its 

 having been made with perfect accuracy, just 

 as'valuable as if, on ever so large a scale. He 

 has but a little land, and only keeps three 

 cows. He was in the habit of giving one- 

 third of a quart niglit and morning of cotton- 

 seed meal to each cow. For a few weeks he 

 got out of this, when the cows immediately 

 fell oft' one and a half pounds of butter per 

 week, and fully one quart per day in milk. 

 He then began feeding cotton-seed meal 

 again, when they immediately came back to 

 their yield of milk and butter. The price he 

 gets for this extra pound and a half, sold in 

 the village near by, is' a little more than tlie 

 cost of the ration of cotton-seed meal he feeds. 

 But this is telling only half the story, for he 



