Proceedings of the Fahmers' Club. 579 



the baskets in which fruit is brought from the south. You never see 

 any provision made for ventilation in those baskets. Thousands of 

 bushels of the choicest kind of fruit are brouglit to our market in 

 tight baskets. The subject of ventilation has been over-estimated by 

 fruit dealers. Tlie great want has been cheaj) and strong baskets. 

 And here we have it. When fruit-growers are required to pay from 

 two to four cents for their pint or quart baskets, to be given away, 

 the expense absorbs too much of the profits. 



Pkogressed and Lost Manures. 



G. M. Stebbins, Portland, N. Y. — As I understand it, progressed 

 manures is that which has been through the barn-yard, and the oftener 

 it has been to the fields and back again the more progressed it is. 

 Every plant is a laboratory forming combinations and recombinations 

 which no chemist can follow or detect, and the result is progression. 

 I suppose it would have been impossible to grow our present grains 

 and fruits with pre-adamite fertilizers, and that progressed manures 

 alone, would enable us to go on continually increasing the quality o 

 our crops. Is there so great a danger of all our fertilizers being lost 

 in the sea from the waste of large cities, as we are sometimes told ? 

 Is there more danger of this than that all the water will run away 

 into the sea ? Do not all come back together in the fertilizing showers ? 



How TO Raise Sage. 



Mrs. Sarah Ann Browning, Watertown, Washington county, Ohio. 

 ^-I see through the club report that there is an inquiry from a 

 correspondent who wishes to know how to raise sage. Years ago I 

 had some experience in this plant. I heartil}" give him my experience. 

 Twenty-two years ago I set out three sage roots on a loose sandy soil, 

 thirteen miles, from Little Rock, Ark. Every spring I took them up 

 and split them as much as they could be split (which should never be 

 omitted), and set them out again on the same ground as far as it 

 would go, without plowing any of the ground, merely digging a hole 

 with the spade in rows about two feet apart one way and eighteen 

 inches the other ; every year not putting in less than one pint of hogs' 

 manure to the hill, which had been piled up in the fall and well rotte^ 

 Till the sixth year I manured with cow manure, prepared the same 

 way. That was an uncommon wet year, and I picked, I have for- 

 gotten just how much, but less than half glutted the market. I 

 picked not less than 115 pounds that year, perhaps more. I thought 



