486 
AMEEIOAS' AaRIOULTURIST. 
[Nov EMBER, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm. 
New Series.—No. 5. 
JOSEPH HARRIS, M. S. 
Ail English gentleman who came over in the 
“Oregon” in less than six and a halfdays, was 
looking at my Northern Spy apples. “If you would 
put them in small pails ” he said, “ and send them 
to Liverpool, I could sell them for you at a good 
price. People do not want to buy a whole barrel 
at a time. But they would gladly buy a pailful. 
Your barrels are worth little or nothing after the 
fruit is out, but the pails would be worth with us 
more than they cost you here. I saw a pail to-day 
used for shipping tobacco that is just the thing.” 
“I am afraid it would not work,” said the Dea¬ 
con. “The apples would have to be pressed, just 
as we now press tliem in the barrels, and in such 
small packages the proportion of apples injured in 
pressing would be much greater than in barrels of 
the piesent size. And besides they tell us that our 
Western New York apples will not sell in England 
because we usfe barrels that do not hold quite as 
many quarts as flour barrels.” 
“ They must be great duffers ” said the English¬ 
man. “ Our apple crop is a failure this year, and 
your apples will be wanted. We have had the, 
grandest crop of strawberries this year I ever knew, 
and they sold as low as a penny a quart. We have 
not learned how to gel them to market in as con¬ 
venient jiackages as you use. Your agricultural 
papers have done great things for American farm¬ 
ers and fruit-growers in many ways, not least in 
recommending more attention to the methods of 
marketing.” 
“That is true,” said I, “ aud while at first 
thought, I vvas inclined to agree wdtli tlie Deacon, 
that we could not use small pails for shipping ap¬ 
ples, I am not sure that the plan will not work. 
We could avoid the crushing the Deacon speaks of 
by using a false-head for pressing down the apples. 
This false-head could be covered on the inside with 
some soft, elastic material that would not bruise 
the apples in pressing. We could fill the pail, as 
we now fill the barrel. Put on tliis false-head with 
the soft lining, press the apples down firm, and 
then take off the pressure, remove the false-head, 
and put on the regular wooden head and nail it 
down or use a hinge strap to hold it in place.” 
“ But,” said the Deacon, “ could they be sent on 
the cars and steamers?”—“Why not,” said the 
Englishman, “you send your lard over in pails, 
and I do not see why you cannot send apples. And, 
as I said before, people would buy them because 
they are easily handled, and because the pails 
would be useful after the fruit was removed.” 
“Do you use our American beef?” asked the Dea¬ 
con, “and how does itcompare with the English?” 
—“ It is the best beef in the world,” said my Eng¬ 
lish friend, “ but I do not buy it. If I should order 
American beef my servants would not touch it. I 
have no doubt our butcher sends it to us occa¬ 
sionally, but he claims to sell only English beef.”— 
“ That proves two things,” said the Doctor, “ first, 
that prejudice is strong, and second, that the beef, 
after its long journey, is sometimes strong also. 
How best to get our cattle and sheep to Europe is 
still an open question. 1 am not sure that the bet¬ 
ter way will not be to send our store steers and 
store sheep, and let them be fattened in England. 
Cattle have been carried by steamer from Boston to 
Liverpool for five dollars each.”—“The English 
market,” said I, “ is worthy of some consideration, 
but our own markets are of ten thousand times 
more consequence to American farmers. Nine- 
tenths of the beef eaten at my table comes from 
the West. Our butchers buy the cattle in Buffalo, 
and I am not sure, quality considered, that I do 
not pay more for beef, here on the farm, than it is 
sold for in Liverpool. Our meat has greatly im¬ 
proved during the last twenty years, but much of 
it is still far from what it should be. Poor meat is 
a costly article.”—“Yes,” said my English friend, 
“judging by the prices you pay for things over 
here, 1 conclude you must all be millionaires.” 
“Wheat,” said the Deacon, “is only worth 
eighty-five cents a bushel to-day, and the millers 
are not anxious to buy.”—“They won’t get my 
wheat at that price,” said the Squire. “ One thing 
is certain, wages must come down or wheat go up.” 
“There were several hundred steerage passen¬ 
gers,” said my English friend, “on the ‘Oregon,’ 
who paid only fifteen dollars each and found. They 
went to church at Queenstown on Sunday morn¬ 
ing, and the next Saturday night were in New 
York, and it would seem in such circumstances 
that, as the Squire says, wages must come down 
nearer the English level. But such will not be the 
case as long as everything is so dear here.” 
My English friend said not a ivord about free- 
trade, but it was easy to see what he was driving 
at. “The argument,” said I, “may apply to 
married men with families, but take a young man 
who can get two hundred dollars a year, including 
board, washing and mending, how do our high 
prices for some things affect him ? If he smokes 
cigars, and attends every pic nic and dance in the 
neighborhood, and drives a horse and buggy, and 
wears shoddy clothes and bogus jewelry, he might 
as well be on the other side of the water. But if 
he will act like a man, he can save money enough 
in a few years to buy a small farm. And in spite 
of what the Squire says, this country needs more 
such men, and is prepared to give them a cordial 
welcome. Mark my word, wages are not going to 
be much lower here, and notwithstanding the low 
price of wheat this year, farmers are not all going 
to the poor-house. Life goes on. Work will not 
cease. People will eat and drink and wear clothes 
and travel and read; they will need doctors and 
lawyers and parsons and school-teachers as much 
now as ever. Let us be more hopeful, and stick 
to the work that our hands find to do. Happy is 
the man who knows his work aud does it.” 
“ W’hat we want,” said the Doctor, “ is not lower 
wages, but more intelligent workmen. The best 
men are the cheapest. Our wheat-growers need 
not be afraid of competition with the cheap labor 
of India. The right kind of agriculture is 'going 
to be more profitable than it has ever been. It will 
require more capital and moi'f* brains, and I am 
happy to believe that capital is yearly becoming 
cheaper and brains more abundant.”—“They are 
both pretty scarce in these diggings,” said the 
Deacon, “ and those who have interest to pay, find 
it no easy matter to get the money.”—“ That is 
true,” said I, “ interest is a great tyrant.” 
“Potatoes ought to be a profitable crop with 
you,” said my English friend. “ A farmer told me 
yesterday, in Rochester, that he got fifty cents a 
bushel for them.”—“ Yes,” I said, “I heard him 
tell you so, and I presume he told the truth. But 
he always gets about ten cents a bushel above the 
market price. He has fine, sandy land, and takes 
great pains with the crop, and has a regular set of 
customers, who pay him an extra price, because 
they know he always has the best potatoes. He has 
grown lich at the business.”—“If it pays to use 
superphosphate on wheat at eighty cents a bushel,” 
said my English visitor, “ it ought to pay you to 
use it on potatoes at fifty cents. It is quite as easy 
with us to grow four hundred bushels of potatoes 
per acre, as forty bushels of wheat.”—“ Perhaps 
so,” I said, “but when I was in England, in 1879, 
the heaviest crop of potatoes on the experimental 
plots at Rothamsted, was only one hundred and 
thirty-nine bushels per acre, and on the unmanured 
plot only thirty and one-third bushels per acre, and 
of these only twenty-one bushels were ‘good.’ 
Nine bushels were ‘ small ’.”—“ I suppose the crop 
was injured by drouth,” said the Deacon.—“ It 
certainly was not drouth,” I said, “it was more 
likely to be drowning. The real cause, however, 
in my judgment, was a lack of sunshine. The land 
was clean, and the potatoes looked healthy, but 
there was no vigorous growth such as we see here 
in our bright American sunshine. On plots dressed 
with nitrate of soda and ammonia salts, the vines 
were of a very dark green color.—‘Too much ni¬ 
trogen,’ said Dr. Gilbert. Doubtless that is the 
proper view to take of it, but I should have 
said ‘ too little phosphate and too little sun.’ ” 
Taking the first five years of the experiments, 
1876-1880, the average yield from the plot without 
manure of any kind, was (calling fifty-six pounds a 
bushel) ninety-three bushels per acre. With three 
hundred and ninety-two pounds of superphosphate, 
the average yield was one hundred and forty-seven 
bushels per acre. With three hundred and ninety- 
two pounds of superphosphate,and an ample supply 
of potash, soda, and magnesia in addition, the aver¬ 
age yield was a little less than one hundred and fifty- 
two bushels per acre. With fourteen tons of barn¬ 
yard manure per acre, the yield was one hundred aud 
eighty-seven bushels per acre. With fourteen tons 
of barnyard manure, and three hundred and ninety- 
two pounds of superphosphate, the yield was two 
hundred and twelve and one-half bushels per acre. 
With fourteen tons of barnyai d manure and three 
hundred and ninety-two pounds of superphosphate, 
and five hundred and fifty pounds of nitrate of soda, 
the yield was two hundred and sixty-nine bushels 
per acre. With five hundred and fifty pounds of ni¬ 
trate of soda, three hundred and ninety-two pounds 
of superphosphate, an ample supply of potash, soda, 
and magnesia, but no barn-yard manure, the yield 
was two hundred and ninety-three bushels per acre. 
“It would seem from this,” said the Doctor, 
“ that we could use superphosphate on potatoes 
with considerable profit. Wlien used alone, it gave 
an average increase of fifty-four bushels per acre. 
When used with barnyard manure it gave an aver¬ 
age increase of twenty-five and a half bushels per 
acre. What we should like to know is, how 
much increase it produced when used with nitrate 
of soda ; but the experiment was not made.”—“ I 
can’t understand what you are talking about,” said 
the Deacon, “place the figures side by side.”— 
“The Deacon is right,” said I, “ and whUe the 
Doctor makes the table, let me say that these ex¬ 
periments on potatoes at Rothamsted were com¬ 
menced in 1876. Potatoes have been planted on 
the same land every year since, and the same ma¬ 
nures are used every year unless otherwise stated. 
The field looked to me as not specially well suited 
to potatoes. It was good, strong, loamy laud, full 
of flint-stones. Here we should prefer lighter 
land if we had it, and if not, we should want to 
plow under some clover or manure to lighten up 
the soil. The land was kept scrupulously clean, 
and the plots beautifully laid out. There is an idea 
in this section that we shall ruin our land by using 
superphosphate. It is thought the land will get 
‘ hard ’ and that we must plow under clover or rye 
or straw or buckwheat or manure to lighten it. So 
far as mechanical condition is concerned, these 
experiments at Rothamsted do not seem to confirm 
this idea. If the potatoes have food enough, they 
can dispense with the mechanical effect of the 
barnyard manure.”—“I am glad to hear you say 
that,” said the Doctor, “for I heard you say the 
other day that you believed you had made a mis¬ 
take in not growing more clover, and you are grow¬ 
ing rye to plow under to lighten the land.”— 
“ Never mind that,” said 1, “ we are talking about 
the results at Rothamsted, where there is no guess¬ 
work.”—“The first year of the experiments,” said 
the Doctor, “ the yield was as follows ; 
BUSH. 
No manure. 154 
Superphospliate alone. 242 
Superpliospliate and potash, etc. 247 
And nitrate of soda.[. 
Nitrate of soda alone. 154 
The average yield per acre of the first five years, 
was as follows: 
No manure.. 93 
Nitrale of soda alone. 128 
Superphospliate alone. 147 
“ and potash, etc. 152 
And nitrate of soda.[. 
Superphosphate and nitrate. Not tried. 
The next year, 1881, or the sixth crop in succes¬ 
sion on the same land, the yield was as follows : 
No manure. 
Nitrate of soda alone. 
Superphosphate alone. 
“ and potash, etc., 
And nitrate of soda.[ 
Fourteen tons of barnyard manure 
SIX 
127X 
223 
237 
400 
320 
