1882 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
359 
plete its own changes. What occurs with this 
caterpillar of the potato or tomato, takes place with 
■other caterpillars, and the supposed eggs of the 
Army-worm are the cocoons of its parasite. Were 
it not that we are aided in our fight against de¬ 
structive insects by other insects, we should fare 
poorly. Whenever a caterpillar, of any kind, is 
found with these supposed eggs upon it, do not 
■destroy it. Whatever mischief it can do, in its 
disabled condition, will be more than offset by 
the benefit that may result from the parasite. 
The swindling fraternity know- 
that farmers especially, are too busy 
at this season to even look at their 
circulars, and so they are less active; 
or, many of them at least have gone 
to the larger Watering Places and 
; Summer Resorts to ply their vocation, with varia¬ 
tions, among a different class of victims. There are 
several operators in the agricultural districts with 
some new-fangled attachments to harvesting and 
• other implements, but our readers are too much 
-engaged to stop to furnish particulars. 
The Peach-Growing Districts. 
A few years ago, at harvest time, we were in the 
peach-growing counties of Delaware and Maryland, 
and saw how the growers were daily visited by those 
who professed to offer special advantages to ship¬ 
pers of peaches, and made all sorts of tempting 
offers and promises. On coming to the city, we 
found that these parties were not known among 
the regular commission dealers, not even having a 
place of business. They do a sort of side-walk 
trade, and when wanted cannot be found. We ad¬ 
vise peach-growers to stick to well-known com¬ 
mission men, and not trust to transient fellows, 
mo matter how large a commission they may offer. 
Gambling in Grain. 
A year or more ago we showed up the bogus 
stock-brokers who offered great inducements to 
persons at a distance, to engage through them in 
operations on Wall Street. There are parties in 
•Chicago who are constantly offering similar induce¬ 
ments to engage in gambling on the price of grain. 
A subscriber in Ohio sends us the circulars of one 
-of these, which proposes to form 
“Mutual Investment Clubs,” 
and asks if it will be safe for him to invest. In 
Texas they have an adage, “ Never play at a game 
you do not understand.” We have read through 
these circulars carefully, and fail to understand 
them. The concern professes to operate clubs, 
and asks people to subscribe for shares at $10 
up to $1,000, offering a very large profit, in some 
cases as much as $5.10 on a $10-share in less than 
two months. We can only say that Chicago is a 
very wide-awake business place, and were there any 
such profits possible or probable, there would be 
no need of sending to Ohio farmers to solicit sub¬ 
scriptions. Any scheme that offers such profits 
need not go a-begging outside of Chicago, or any 
other business place, and all the money expended 
on circulars, reports of “ The Profits of Club 13,” 
and the rest of it, might be saved. 
Medical Matters. 
As usual, a large share of our inquiries relate to 
these. Here comes from Iowa an inquiry from “ A 
Subscriber” about a “Metaphysical University.” 
We had often seen a sign bearing that legend on a 
house in a street not far from our office, and had 
often wondered what it could be. For an obscure 
brick tenement to call itself a University was odd 
enough, but to be a “ Metaphysical University,” was 
quite beyond our comprehension. “ Metaphysical ’ ’ 
is a big sounding name, but if one looks it up in the 
Dictionary, he will not get a very satisfactory defini¬ 
tion. He will find, in brief, that metaphysics is the 
science of the mind. Our Ohio friend’s wife was 
■troubled, not as to her mind, but as to her body, 
■and he writes that as this metaphysical shop has 
drawn from his wife about $150, and the investment 
has not done her the slightest good, he wishes us 
to save other poor unfortunate victims by exposing 
The Metaphysical University 
as a humbug. We should think that its ridiculous 
name would proclaim it as such ; but there are 
people everywhere who need to be assured that 
those shops who advertise themselves at a distance 
as “Universities,” “Colleges,” “Institutes,” and 
the like, as located in New York City, when found 
will be obscure buildings upon some side street. 
A correspondent sends a paper published in a 
Western city which contains a displayed advertise¬ 
ment a column long, 
Of an Entirely New “Trust Company.” 
It proposes an “ innovation ” upon the old style 
of doing business, and claims to give “an oppor¬ 
tunity to realize a Handsome Dividend on a com¬ 
paratively small sum in a very short time.” All 
that we thus far know of this Trust Company is 
from this advertisement, and we can only say to the 
friend who asks about investing in it, that this is of 
a character to suggest the exercise of great caution. 
There is altogether too much flourish of trumpets 
and too many vague generalities, to impress one 
favorably. We should take nothing on “trust,” even 
in this “ Trust Company,” but examine carefully. 
An Electric Chair 
is the latest thing in the way of electricity. Of 
course this is, according to its inventor, the only 
real medium for applying electricity. He heads his 
advertisement with “Edison Outdone,” in large 
letters, which shows him to be a modest man. He 
says : “ We have established ourself in Indianapolis 
as the original, genuine, and only true, sovereign, 
electrical cure for the most vile, loathsome, and life- 
destroying diseases that afflict humanity”—which 
is rather the reverse of complimentary to the inhab¬ 
itants of that prosperous city. Whether this elec¬ 
tric furniture is for family use, or only for the 
“ doctor’s ” office, the advertisement does’nt say. 
Gambling: With Needles. 
In an old-fashioned game with pins, money could 
be lost and won, and now we have needles made 
the medium or reason for a lottery or distribution, 
as we take it to be. The circular says that any per¬ 
son paying $1.00 for 10 papers of the needles, “ will 
receive also one of the articles named below.” 
These articles are sewing machines at $65, pianos 
at $300, gold watches at $65, and other valuable 
articles ; but there are also 5,000 steel engravings, 
valued at $1.00 each, and the chances are that “ one 
of the articles ” will be one of these engravings. If 
these steel engravings are valued at only $1.00 for 
advertising purposes, what can be the real value ? 
This is rather thin for Philadelphia. 
A Great Improvement in Cotton. 
The wonders of plant life are by no means con¬ 
fined to the cooler regions of the north, where self- 
pruning grape-vines, strawberries which grow on 
shrubs like raspberries, and peaches that are, by 
being budded (or grafted, we have forgotten which) 
on the French Willow, free from yellows, and all 
other diseases, are offered to the credulous. Now 
that most valuable plant, the Cotton, presents it¬ 
self in new and remarkable forms. In August, 
1881, upon the authority of a United States official, 
we informed our many readers in the cotton-grow¬ 
ing States against a so-called 
“ Worm-Proof Hybrid Cotton,” 
the seeds of which were being sold in Louisiana at 
30 cents each, but less by the dozen. It was claimed 
that this cotton was the result of a hybrid between 
common cotton and “a weed which no worm or 
bug would touch.” On general principles we pro¬ 
nounced this “ Worm-Proof Hybrid Cotton ” to be 
a thing to be avoided. We were threatened by this 
weed and cotton hybridizer with a suit for damages, 
and a lady wrote us a long and very—well, say earn¬ 
est—letter about our being opposed to improvement 
in the South. Thus far we have not been called 
into court for the alleged libel. But this 
“Worm-Proof Hybrid Cotton “is nothing to 
Another “Hybrid Cotton,” 
which is at once so much more hybrid and so much 
more cotton than the Louisiana thing, that that 
should retire from the field at once. A subscriber 
in Texas sends us the circular of this cotton, 
and asks us for information about it. This new 
cotton is not a product of Louisiana, but of Georgia. 
We are told : “ It was produced by hybridization of 
the wild cotton which grows along the low lands and 
banks of the Caloosahatchie river in Florida, with 
the common okra of our vegetable gardens.” The 
cotton and the okra belong to the same natural 
order of plants, and while we can not say that they 
will not hybridize, we do not believe that they will. 
It is likely that cotton has escaped from cultivation 
in some parts of Florida, but why start with this 
half wild plant ? Where is the Caloosahatchie river ? 
It can not be a very important stream, as neither of 
our three Gazetteers mention it. But to this 
Wonderful Cotton Plant, 
the account of which will be so interesting to our 
many readers in the cotton-growing States, that we 
give it in full. This is not from the announcement 
of one who has seeds to sell, but, strangely enough, 
from an editorial in a Georgia paper. We read: 
“ It grows to the hight of two feet and has one 
beautiful bloom at the top, which resembles the 
magnolia flower in appearance, size, and odor. The 
blooms remain white for two days, and then, begin¬ 
ning with a delicate pink, gradually change to a 
dark red, when they drop off, and then appears a 
most wonderful boll. For a week this boll resembles 
that of the ordinary cotton, and then continues to 
grow until it reaches the size of a gallon tin bucket. 
“ The lint then begins to grow, but is held in place 
by the long, okra-like points. When fully matured, 
more of it can be picked by a common hand in one 
day than six hands can pick of ordinary cotton. 
“ The lint has no seed, and hence the ginning is 
dispensed with. The bolls produce from one and 
a half to two pounds of tine, long staple cotton, 
lu the bottom of the boll from four to six seed re¬ 
sembling persimmon seed are found.” 
There you have it! Such wonderful flowers 
which, so to speak, “knock the spots out of” 
either okra or cotton ! But what is the flower to 
the fruit—What are the miserable common bolls to 
one “ the size of a gallon tin bucket!” We always 
like definite descriptions, and are glad that the 
gallon bucket is a “ tin ” one! When one de¬ 
scribes such remarkable plants, he should not go 
too closely into particulars. We are told that 
“The Lint Has No Seed.” 
But in all cotton heretofore known, the lint is an 
appendage to the seed, provided by nature for some 
wise purpose, and none ever before grew, except as 
an attachment to the seed. When we are asked to 
believe that a plant will produce a “gallon tin 
bucket ” full of lint just for the fun of it, we are 
provoked to say, Bosh ! A Georgia paper says : 
“ If what is claimed for it is true, it will paralyze 
the cotton-gin business, and make our planters 
become bonanza kings.” We say to our Georgia 
friends, if you have a gin, keep it in good order, 
and don’t sell it for old iron this year. If you can 
become “ bonanza kings ” by growing this wonder¬ 
ful cotton, do it, but go slow ; try a few seeds first 
—if at all. We have no doubt that improvements 
will be made in the cotton plant, but they will not 
be in “ gallon tin buckets ” of lint without seeds. 
Remarkable Watch Cases. 
Sometimes we get an inside view of things in an 
unexpected manner. There is a chap in a neigh¬ 
boring city who advertises watches very loudly. It 
comes in our way to know that this person, who an¬ 
nounces his watches in such glowing terms, has 
written to a well known manufacturer of watch 
cases, to inquire at what price he can be supplied 
with watch cases, “ not more than 3 K. fine, and 
not more than 1 oz. weight—in fact, just as cheap 
as they can be possibly gotten up.” By the term 
“ 3 K. fine,” it is understood by those in the trade 
that the cases shall contain 3 parts of gold in 84, or 
be one-eighth real gold. An alloy of this kind, hav¬ 
ing the base metal dissolved out of its surface by 
acids, shows a thin superficial film of gold, but 
this will soon wear off, and expose the miserable 
alloy below. Then to read that the cases are to be 
“just as cheap as they can be possibly gotten up,” 
is a wonderful falling off from the description of 
the same cases, when the watches they are to hold 
are advertised for sale all over the country, in any 
paper that will publish the deceptive advertisement. 
