TARR YTO WN LETTERS. 



neatly flattened and sharpened at the points, and 

 with an eye turned at the top of tlie loose pin, while 

 the other pin is fastened in the reel with a shoulder 

 and a riveted nut at the top. These steel pins never 

 break in hard or gravelly ground. Indeed the loose 

 pin is precisely the small bar required to make holes 

 for pea brush and the like. 



When Mrs. Tarryer at last found one of those cast 

 iron reels that was big enough and at all worth the 

 trouble of buying, I was pleased to see her call for 

 a hammer and break the cast-iron pin out of it, but 

 I don't think the dealer knew enough about garden- 

 ing to be ashamed of his league with Satan in it. 

 Still we ought to do what we can for the souls of 

 these dealers, and manufacturers too, who know not 

 what they are about. 



****-)(■** * * 

 The makers of the aforesaid "banding," for 

 looms, don't realize that they are in the way of 

 making the best material for garden lines ; neither 

 will they think that it can easily be stretched and 

 printed in foot marks with some color that is fast 

 and will not rot the cotton, unless they are told. 

 But the ingenious gardener will readily see that 

 here is available matter for a little capital and en- 

 terprise in one of the many sub-manufactures we 

 need to tie the world together. 



In looking over what we sent you for April and 

 May about weeding tools, I am afraid you will think 

 that great concern will run itself ; that is the dan- 

 ger of the best ideas printed. As of prayers in 

 church, we are apt to feel that what is said is done. 

 No. Prayers and print are nothing — worse than 

 nothing — unless they move somebody to work. A 

 curious sequel to the hoe business has come into 

 my hands since those articles were written. We 

 have visited two experiment stations, where sets of 

 those tools have been in use for some years. At 

 one of them all shapes have been valued greatly but 

 used carelessly ; at the other only the bayonet hoes 

 and grass weeders are prized, while the thrust hoes 

 were being ruined by rust. Yet none of these hoes 

 are made or sold, and the art of them is liable to be 

 lost. At the first station there was what was called 

 a "hoe investigation," as follows : 



HOE INVESTIGATION. 

 APRIL 15, 1890, 12 M. 

 I Bayonet hoe in fair order. 

 1 Bayonet hoe (at Prof. B.'s) in 



fair order. 

 I Grass-weeder or Mullein hoe — 

 rusty. 



I 5-inch thrust — very rusty. 

 Should be remodeled in the 

 bow by a good hammersmith. 



HOE INVESTIGATION. 

 APRIL 15, 1890, 4 P. M. 

 I Bayonet hoe in good order. 

 I Bayonet hoe in good order (at 



Prof. B.'s). 

 I Mullein hoe in good order — 



sharp as a razor ! 

 I 5-inch thrust, very rusty and 



cracked— ready to go to the 



machinist's. 



339 



I 6-inch angular thrust— broken 

 in the blade, but a good tool 



yet— shines like a n 's heel. 



I lo-inch angular thrust— clean 

 as a whistle and sharp as vin- 

 egar. 



I 14-inch straight thrust, in per- 

 fect order. 

 I (Mr. R.'s)7-inch straight thrust 



— needs new blade. 

 I lo-inch straight thrust— blade 

 broken and on the way to the 

 machinist's for a new one. 

 Handle on the way to the Di- 

 rectors to be directed.* 

 I 8-inch angular thrust — blade 

 broken, but serviceable and 

 and clean as can be. 

 3 hoes missing. 



All the above, barring the missing ones, hang each on his own peg 

 where the eye of the vicious Director can reach 'em every time 

 g:oes to the laboratory. Sworn to before me, a Notary Public 



I 6-inch angular thrust — broken 



in the blade. 

 I lo-inch angular thrust— rusty. 

 I 14-inch straight thrust — fair 



order. 



I (Mr. R.'s) 7-inch straight thrust 

 — worn out — needs new blade. 



I lo-inch straight thrust — blade 

 broken — needs a new one. 

 Handle broken— skillful wood 

 workman might repair. 



I S-tnch angular thrust— blade 

 broken— needs a new one. 



3 hoes missing. 



he s 



of the State of- 



[SEAL.] 



The above bit of detailed officialism may serve to 

 encourage our friends, the Nationalists. 



***** * * * * 



Mrs. Tarryer insists that I shall say something 

 of the way Grass-botanist Carruthers handles Dr. 

 Fream in the last Quarterly Journal of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society. To me it is a painful inci- 

 dent, but she enjoys it in a way that causes me to 

 fear that women, if they are admitted, will bring 

 rancor and hatred into the scientific arena. She 

 says my fears are nonsense, and even blesses Dr. 

 Fream for the fine example given to our young men 

 of not being too forward with information agreeable 

 to current trade and based on ialse premises. 

 Fream got a lot of local men to send him sods from 

 the famous meadows and pastures of England, 

 which he "tested" in the Agricultural College at 

 Downton, and so "proved" that the major grass of 

 England was rye grass. This was too much. Mrs. 

 Tarryer thought while the story was going the 

 rounds of our agricultural press, that the sods must 

 have come from newly seeded lands. But Carru- 

 thers, at the instigation of the Royal Society, set 

 up hurdles right along side of where Fream's sods 

 were cut, and proved that they were taken from 

 spots of rye grass in said pastures and meadows, 

 and were entirely misleading as average samples of 

 the best English sward. He is more than an ordi- 

 nary botanist — reads the close-grazed sod of pas- 

 tures, and meadows after haying, hke a book, as 

 farmers might if they had the right names for their 

 grasses. Carruthers evidently behoves that the 

 character of the sward of this planet can be deter- 

 mined by good judges with the naked eye. 



From Mrs. Tarryer's point of view, Fream's rye 



* The Director is an expert in woods and metals. — Ed. 



