196 
AMEEICAN AGEICULTUEIST. 
[May. 
Delaware Boys at Corn-Raising'. 
A Plan Worthy of Adoption Everywhere. 
We have reported several efforts to awaken 
interest among the boys of single counties, 
such as those of Stillman B. Allen, of Boston, 
in his native county in Maine ; Willis P. Hazard, 
in Westchester, Pa.; and Lawson Valentine, this 
year, in Orange County, N. Y. —Now Professor 
J. A. Reinhart, Ph. D., of Delaware College, with 
the experience of others as a guide, is under¬ 
taking to enlist all the Boys in that State, in a sim¬ 
ilar enterprise, and to allow a wider range for 
successful competition, he has arranged for Tidrly- 
fiveprizes. —With the co-operation of the State De¬ 
partment of Instruction, printed circulars, with 
full particulars, are being sent to all the School 
Teachers in the State, to be announced to all 
scholars, and the Press of the State is co-operating. 
The Prizes are : 1st, $20; 2d, $10; 3d, $7.50; 4th, $5 ; 
5th, $2.50 (all in gold); 0th to 25th (20 prizes) each a 
year’s subscription to American Agriculturist, $1.50 ; 
26th to 35th (10 prizes), Books worth $1, or more 
each, to be selected by the winners from a list to be 
furnished to them. Every successful competitor 
is also to receive a beautiful Certificate from the 
College, suitable for framing, as an honorable and 
permanent record of his work. These thirty-five 
are the “General Delaware College Prizes,” 
and are limited to boys under 18.—Additional to 
these are the “Dean Delaware College Prizes,” 
the Hon. Win. Dean having authorized the College 
to offer cash prizes of $30, $20, and $10, limited to 
young men under 21, and requiring half-acre plots. 
(If the first of the prizes be won by any member of 
Newark Grange, $20 will be added by that Associa¬ 
tion, making it $50.)—Full printed particulars about 
all the Prizes can be obtained by addressing Prof. 
J. A. Reinhart, Newark, Del. As an example to 
others elsewhere, we give a brief outline of the 
plan—not having space for the whole : 
Any Boy, residing in the State, not having reach¬ 
ed his 18tli birthday prior to application, can be¬ 
come a competitor by sending his name and address 
to Prof. Reinhart, before May 15th.—The compet¬ 
ing plot must contain exactly one quarter acre (40 
square rods, or 10,890 square feet). The shape of 
the plot is left to the convenience of the compet¬ 
itor. No rows or hills are to be nearer to the 
border than 12 inches (otherwise some nutriment 
might be drawn through the roots from adjacent 
land). Under this limitation there will be the least 
waste border in the plot nearest square. 5 by 8 
rods is a quarter acre, 0} rods byO rods and 2 i feet, 
or 100 feet wide by 103 °/io feet long, make quarter- 
acre plots very nearly).—The ground may be plowed 
and harrowed for them, but all other work : fertil¬ 
izing, planting, cultivating, topping if done, and 
harvesting, must be done by each competitor 
himself. He is to make his own selection of the 
variety of corn, the fertilizers, mode of culture, in 
hills or drills, frequency of hoeing or cultivating, 
etc. Of course he will gather all the informa¬ 
tion he can by reading, inquiry, etc. This 
attention, investigation, and observation, will be 
worth far more than any prize, to each and 
every boy who enters the contest, and we ad¬ 
vise every Delaware farmer having boys of 8 to 
18 years old, to allot to each boy a plot and encour¬ 
age him to join the company. It will be worth to 
each, in the future, far more than to give him an 
acre of land outright. We suggest, also, to 
promise each boy a certain part of the corn grown 
—at least all he shall produce over an ordinary crop. 
The corn is to be gathered and measured within 
three days of October 18, before or after. The 
measuring of land and crop, harvesting, etc., are 
to be under the supervision of three disinterested 
practical farmers of the vicinity, to bo named or 
approved by Prof. Reinhart. The corn is to be 
weighed on the cob, and 75 lbs. reckoned as a 
bushel. Blanks will be furnished, which are to be 
filled out with all particulars, and sent to the col¬ 
lege by November 1, signed by the competitor and 
the local Committee of three.—75 lbs. of the average 
ears are to be sent to the Agricultural Department 
of the College, or to the R. R. Depot in Newark, Del. 
The exhibition of the corn, and the time of award¬ 
ing Prizes, will be duly announced. The Money 
Prizes will be awarded to no.plot yielding less than 
20 bushels (80 bushels per acre); aud the other 
prizes to no plot yielding less than 171 bushels (70 
bushels per acre). 
Making the Crows Useful. 
W. S. Morgan, Somerset Co., Pa., in view of the 
fact that the corn-planting season is at hand, gives 
his experience, which we commend to those who 
look upon the crow as an enemy. He says : “ For 
the past five seasons, I have, just before I expected 
my corn to come up, sowed on the field about a 
a quart of corn to each acre, and repeated the 
operation as often as necessary, until the corn was 
so large that the crows could not pull it up. If the 
corn is soaked until tender, they prefer picking what 
they want to eat from the surface rather than to pull 
the young plants to get it. The cost of the corn thus 
6own is but a trifle; as a result I have a great 
number of crows almost constantly on my corn 
field, and after they have been satisfied with corn 
they will still pick up all the insects, grubs, and cut 
worms they can find, os a dessert. In raising fifty 
acres of corn since adopting this plan, I have not 
lost a hundred stalks by crows and cut worms 
combined.” 
Climbers and their Supports. 
The use of climbing plants is chiefly confined to 
verandas and porches, and occasionally to cover an 
unsightly fence. They may often be used else¬ 
where with pleasing effect, and probably would 
be more frequent were it not for the trouble of 
providing suitable supports. The old style with 
the delicate and beautiful Cypress Vine, is to place 
a pole 8 or 10 feet high, and run strings from 
wooden pins placed in a circle around it to the top 
of the pole. This, when covered with vines makes 
a pretty pyramid, but it is so formal that one does 
not care for more than one in*a garden. In provid¬ 
ing supports, whatever else they may be, they 
should be 6trong. By the end of summer they are 
covered with a great weight of foliage, and the 
winds are apt to make a wreck of them just when 
the plants are at their best. Common poles will 
become rotten by the end of summer. If locust 
can be had, a piece of this, no matter if crooked, 
can be placed in the ground and a pole of any kind 
spiked to it. In some places, to make a partial 
screen, poles may be set 10 feet or so apart, and a 
strong cord run in festoons from one to the other. 
When such a support is well covered by climbers, 
it is very pleasing. For low climbers, such as the 
hybrid varieties of Clematis, a young red cedar is 
excellent. This should have its branches cut to 
form a pyramid and may be used with the bark on. 
If prepared before hand, the bark may be removed, 
and after the wood is seasoned, it may be painted 
some brownish green color. Such supports will 
last for years, and when covered will not have a 
formal appearance. A support of this kind, cov¬ 
ered with Clematis Jackmannii, in the garden of a 
neighboring friend, was worth going far to see. 
Compacting the Soil. 
“ How is it,” once asked a young friend of us, 
“ that every cutting you touch will grow, while 
only a small part of mine succeed?”—We were 
both amateur gardeners and as neighbors, indulged 
in a friendly rivalry. We gave him the secret of 
our “touch,” which was, to always press the soil 
firmly around the cuttings; after this he had no 
cause to complain of failure. This matter of 
bringing the soil in close contact not only with 
cuttings, but with rooted plants and seeds, is of the 
greatest importance, and its neglect is a frequent 
source of failure. If the soil is left loosely around 
a cutting or around a seed, the minute root in 
either case, as it pushes, may fail to come in con¬ 
tact with the needed moist soil and perish for the 
want of it. When ripe wood cuttings, such as 
those of the currant are set out in the open ground,, 
and one lot have the earth thoroughly pressed 
against their lower portion, even pounded down to 
make sure, every one will grow. If this is neglected 
more or less will fail. So in setting out plants, 
such as those of cabbage, celery, etc. The market 
gardeners make sure that the soil shall be brought 
close to the roots, by going along the row and 
pressing it firmly to the plant with the feet. In an 
article we printed a few years ago, Mr. Peter Hen¬ 
derson showed that success with raising his crop 
of celery plants was due to the fact that, after 
sowing the seed he had the whole surface of the 
soil of the bed well patted down with the back of 
the spade. The end is accomplished on a large 
scale by the use of a roller, but in small beds the 
spade is an excellent substitute. In setting out 
trees or shrubs, the more carefully the soil is filled 
in aud worked in among the roots, and firmly 
pressed—not stamped down, with the foot, the 
greater the chances of success. Even in laying 
turf or sods, the roots of the grass should be 
brought in close contact with the soil by the use of 
a “ beater,” a piece of heavy plank with a handle, 
or by beating down with the back of the 6pade. 
Protest against Using “Foreign Names.” 
Every now and then we receive a protest of which 
the following, just at hand, is a fair sample : “ I do 
wish our American Agriculturist, which aims to 
supply information for the common people, who 
are not educated in foreign languages, and which 
usually does it so well, would not cling to the 
use of foreign names. It harffly ever speaks of a 
common plant or flower without attaching to it 
(generally in parenthesis), some foreign name, often 
a jaw-breaking one. For example, in describing the 
common plant “ Burning Bush,” on page 21, why 
call it also ‘ Euonymus latifolius' ? It always seems 
to me like an effort to show off one’s learning, and 
on a par with the doctors who write their prescrip¬ 
tion in Latin or Greek, and hieroglyphics, though 
I suppose in this case it is done to keep the knowl¬ 
edge to themselves, or perhaps to mystify their 
patients into paying for much learning, and paying 
a large price for a simple medicine. Why only 
yesterday a Doctor was called to see a member of 
my family suffering from bowel complaint—and he 
gave us a prescription to the druggist which read : 
[J Rubios villosus Rad. decoct. ? viii.— Scrib. coch. 
mag. aa hora.'— Out of curiosity, I asked the drug 
clerk what this meant, and as near as I understood 
it, in plain English it would read : ‘ Send 8 ounces 
of Blackberry-root tea or decoction and write: 
take a tablespoonful each hour 
A little examination will show that the above 
criticism has no just foundation. There are a 
number of intelligent civilized nations who speak 
and write entirely different languages, and each 
one of which is making advances in useful know¬ 
ledge and science—notably the English, German, 
French, Italian, and Spanish. And what one learns 
or discovers soon becomes available to all the 
others. But the words in describing even the 
most common things, are scarcely ever the same 
in any two languages. For example what we call 
the “potato,” the German calls “kartoffel,” and 
the Frenchman calls “pomme de terre.”—It is 
therefore of great importance to have and use 
some one language only among all civilized nations, 
for the description of objects, scientific terms, 
plants, medicines, diseases, etc., so that all will get 
the same idea from the words used. Take this 
illustration : When on a health tour in Europe our 
supply of a particular medicine of great import¬ 
ance was exhausted. But having the home phy¬ 
sician’s prescriptions written out in the scientific 
language used by physicians the world over, we laid 
it on the table of an Italian druggist in Rome who 
did not know a word of our language. He, with¬ 
out a moment’s hesitation, put up the medicine just 
as it was done at home. The same thing occurred 
in Berlin and in Paris. 
The discoveries in Germany, in Italy, in France, 
etc.—in botany, in medicine, in any branch of 
