1883.J 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



153 



germination, niimely, air, moisture, darkness 

 and warmth. The air will circulate freely 

 beneath the edges of the inverted pan ; the 

 atmosphere inside the pan will be quite satu- 

 rated with moisture, for evaporation will con- 

 tinually go on from the surface of tlie inclosed 

 water ; light will be excluded by the inverted 

 pan, and the temperature of a regularly used 

 kitchen will very well suffice to induce germi- 

 nation. 



" A little fresh water should be poured in 

 now and tlien to replace that which evapo- 

 rates, the cover-pan being momentarily re- 

 moved for this purpose. Even in one and the 

 same sample some of the seeds will always 

 germinate before others ; but when the youug 

 shoots of the first to germinate have attained 

 a length of from half an inch to one inch, it 

 may be fairly concluded that all the seeds 

 capable of germinating have done so, and 

 then it is only necessary to couut the number 

 of seeds which have not germinated, and to 

 estimate the percentage of failures. An exact 

 number of seeds need not necessarily be taken, 

 and, indeed, it is fairer to take a spoonful 

 haphazard out of the sample, count these, 

 and place them all in the germinating appa- 

 ratus. Suppose 14.3 seeds have thus been 

 taken, and that 102 of these are found to 

 germinate ; then out of 143 there are 41 fail- 

 ures ; so that we should infer that about 28 

 per cent, of the seeds in the sample would 

 not germinate when sown. A more correct 

 result is obtained by conducting two, or even 

 three, distinct sets of experiments simultane- 

 ously, and striking a mean between the sev- 

 eral results, which, by the way, should not 

 show much variation. 



"The report states that in several samples 

 of seeds of Alopecurus prateusis, the com- 

 mon and useful meadow foxtail grass, a very 

 small percentage — sometimes only one or 

 two — of the seeds were able to germinate. 

 This is attributed to the fact that the seeds 

 were gathered unripe, and in many cases the 

 sample consisted only of empty glumes, so 

 that it was like chaff without any grain. Possi- 

 bly, however, there are still some traders who 

 adopt the pernicious practice of working off 

 their old stock by mixing old seeds with new 

 ones, just as grocers mix their old Barcelona 

 nuts with the new season's arrivals ; and if 

 the old seeds ha,ve lost their vitality the 

 sample is, of course, seriously depreciated. If 

 the practice of determining the germinating 

 power of seeds before sowing were more gen- 

 erally followed we should probably hear less 

 of the plowing up of land on which sown 

 seeds had failed to 'strike.' " 



A IvESSON IN HORSE MANAGEMENT 

 Young man, 1 see you are about to take a 

 drive this morning, and will offer you some 

 advice. Your horse is restive and wants to 

 be off before you are ready ; you may as welj 

 break him of this now as at any time, and 

 hereafter you will find that it has been a half 

 hour well spent. .Just give me the reins, 

 while you put your foot on the step, as if to 

 get in ; the horse makes a move to go ; I 

 tighten the reins and say " whoa." Now put 

 your foot on the step again ; the horse makes 

 another move ; I hold the reins and speak to 

 him again. The lior.se is getting excited. Pat 

 him a little on the neck and talk to him 



soothingly. Put your foot on the step againi 

 and repeat this process until the horse will 

 stand still for you to get in and adjust your- 

 self in your seat and tell him to go. A few 

 such lessons will train him so that he will 

 always wait for orders before starting. 



Now, as your horse has just been fed, drive 

 him a very gentle pace for the first two or 

 three miles, until he warms up and his body 

 becomes lighter. But, before you start, let 

 me show you how to hold the reins. Take 

 them in your left hand, have them of equal 

 length from the bit, and to cross each other in 

 your hand, the oft side resting on your first 

 finger, the other on the fourth finger, the 

 back of the hand upward. Now, in guiding 

 the horse, you have only to use the wrist 

 joint, which will direct him either right or 

 left, as you wish. Keep your hand steady, 

 with a gentle pressure, on the bit— no jerking 

 or switching of the rein. If more speed is 

 wanted, take the whip in your right hand, 

 to be gently used for that purpose ; be careful 

 not to apply it any harder than necessary to 

 briug him up to the required speed. 



Speak to him soothingly, and intimate in 

 the most gentle manner what you want him 

 to do, and he will try to do it. So noble an 

 animal should not be handled so roughly or 

 over-driven. 



When you return have the harness removed 

 at once, and the horse rubbed down witli a 

 wisp of straw or hay. Give him a bite of 

 straw or hay, and let him cool off before being 

 watered or fed. Every one who handles a 

 horse, or has anything to do with one, should 

 in the first place cultivate his acquaintance ; 

 let him know that you are his friend, and 

 prove it to him by your kind treatment ; he 

 needs this to inspire confidence, and when 

 that is gained he is ycur humble servant. 



If your horse gets frightened at any unusual 

 sight or noise, do not whip him, for if you do 

 he will connect the whipping with the object 

 that alarmed him, and be afraid of it ever 

 after. If he merely shies at an object, give 

 him time to examine it, which, with some 

 encouraging words from the driver, will per- 

 suade him to pass it. You get frightened, 

 too, sometimes, and would not like to be 

 whipped for it— Stock Journal. 



THE CREDIT SYSTEM. 



Since the first issue of the Farmer it has not 

 failed to impress upon the minds of its readers 

 the ruinous and bankrupting tendency of the 

 credit and mortgage systems. There is noth- 

 ing fraught with such damaging results to 

 farmers as buying on credit. It encourages 

 extravagance, frequently destroys confidence 

 and lowers moral worth in men who would 

 otherwise be our best citizens. The man who 

 owes a just debt feels it to be his duty to pro- 

 mise to pay at a certain time. The rust takes 

 his wheat, the drought reduces the yield of 

 corn and cotton ; he contracted debts with the 

 expectation of a full crop. He fails to keep 

 faith with creditors, they become dissatisfied 

 and exacting, .and the poor fanner thus bur- 

 dened, is humiliated by the fact that he is un- 

 able to meet his obligations with his fellow- 

 men. He becomes dissatisfied with himself, 

 out of humor with his creditor, sour with his 

 wife, and cross with his children, and unless 

 he has a full share of moral courage is on the 



road to a life of dependence and serfdom, en- 

 slaving his wife and children when all might 

 be made happy and independent by a due re- 

 gard to economical expenditures. A young 

 man starting out in life should avoid debt as 

 he would avoid a venomous reptile. It will 

 enslave your bodies, destroy your peace of 

 mind, degrade your morals, your wife, your 

 children, and bring a reproach upon the 

 mother that bore you. It will weaken your 

 infiuence as a neighbor and make you less 

 useful as a citizen ; it will tax the very air 

 you breathe, the love you have for your home, 

 your time, your energies, the clothes you 

 wear, the food you eat. It will tax your 

 health, and the medicine that is administered 

 to your disease. It levies a tax upon the 

 chair that supports you at your own table and 

 upon the bed on which you languish and die, 

 and will leave your home, your wife, your 

 children burdened with taxes after you have 

 been laid under the sod. Young man keep 

 out of debt. — lexas Farmer. 



OUR GARDENS. 



One little realizes the nationality of some of 

 the most familiar things in our daily fare ! 

 Who would have said that beans blossomed 

 first within sight of the Sphinx, or that the 

 egg plant, with its purple and white fruit, was 

 found under the African sun, or who ever 

 thought that celery, once known as sinallage, 

 so useful as a winter vegetable, was mimched 

 by many an ancient Druid? From China and 

 Japan the first radishes were introduced in 

 Europe, and Arabia gave us the spinach, 

 while parsley, the prettiest of greens calls 

 Sardinia its native home. Egypt claims the 

 onion for her own ! Asparagus comes from 

 Russia and Poland, while carrots, beets pars- 

 nips and turnips, are all natives of Europe, 

 the former especially growing by the hedge- 

 rows as common weeds. Horseradish, with 

 its little white fiowers, like candytuft, which 

 in Old England is such an accompaniment to 

 roast-beef, may be found by the sides of dishes 

 and other waste places all over Southern 

 Europe. 



Cora and potatoes can claim no foreign 

 pedigree. They have been ours from time 

 immemorial. Very many of the vegetables 

 we grow for our tables are to be found wild. 

 Not so well flavored or so large, to be sure, 

 but the same in all other respects. Along the 

 sea-shore may be seen on many a cliff a small, 

 cabbage-like plant, with a cluster of yellow 

 flowers, but one could not for a moment 

 imagine it was the parent plant of all the 

 difterent kinds of cabbage — kale, cauliflower 

 and sprouts — that have so prominent a ))lace 

 in our gardens I It only shows what cultiva- 

 tion will do. It is not more than a hundred 

 years since this sea-kale was first introduced 

 into the garden from its home in the sand. 

 What you see on the table is only the tender 

 shoot which has been bleached white by keep- 

 ing the plants covered up from the light. 



Turning to the herb-bed, we find there 

 many foreigners growing side by side with 

 the plants. Sweet marjoram is a common 

 flower in a country bouquet in the fall of the 

 year ; and, though we had to bring our peas 

 from abroad, yet the mint, so often cooked 

 with them, may be gathered from many a 

 marsh or river-side, where, in company with 



