178 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[May, 
walls of the stomach, which are somewhat pit¬ 
ted. It is of a tawny color, the body being com¬ 
posed of prominent rings, besides indistinct ones 
at the head and tail. The large rings are edged 
with a frill of short, weak spines. It 
reaches maturity in the spring, and as 
warm weather comes on it loses its 
hold, and is voided with the dung. Into 
this it burrows, penetrating the ground, 
and immediately assumes the pupa con¬ 
dition (tig. 5), contracts in size, and the 
outer surface becomes a hard shell, within 
which the final transformations take place. 
The pupa hatches out into the fly first described. 
We have seen the stomachs of many horses 
said to have died from the hots, and have nev¬ 
er seen evidence of inflammation or other dis¬ 
eased condition caused by them. A correspond¬ 
ent claims that, in a case which he communi¬ 
cates, bots were so numerous that they stopped 
up the “neck of the stomach.” We can hard¬ 
ly credit it. It is often asserted that the walls 
of the stomach are perforated. That they are 
pitted, is true—we have never seen anything 
like perforation. Dr. Liautard, of the N. Y. 
College of Veterinary Surgeons, informs us that 
in all his practice he has never met with but 
one case of death-attributable to bots. In this 
the horse’s stomach was perforated, and the ani¬ 
mal died of peritonitis (inflammation of the bow¬ 
els). He attributes a case of sudden death 
reported by one of our correspondents, and by 
him supposed to be bots, to heart disease. There 
has never been any cure found for bots. There is 
no means of making them disengage their hold 
which will not loosen the horse’s hold on life. 
Milk and molasses with a little ginger in it, is a 
favorite and excellent prescription. It does the 
bots no harm, but is good tonic food for the horse. 
The Grass Pond Cranberry Bog. 
Judging from the letters we receive, our read¬ 
ers are a good deal interested in the cultivation 
of cranberries. Fortunately, there is no imme¬ 
diate danger of an over-production of this crop. 
There is comparatively little land adapted to 
its growth, and the territory, where all the con¬ 
ditions of successful culture are present, is ex¬ 
ceedingly limited. The people who have peat, 
sand, and water, in close proximity and capital 
enough to develop these resources, have a valu¬ 
able property. In a trip to the cranberry plan¬ 
tation of Messrs. A. Sampson & I. Hodges, of 
Providence, R. I., last August, we noticed sev¬ 
eral points in which the treatment differed from 
that of the Cape Cod cultivators, which it will 
be well to add to the observations of Mr. Bunker. 
The Grass Pond plantation is located in Coven¬ 
try, R. I., near Green Station, on the railroad. 
The whole purchase consists of about 700 acres, 
400 of which is the basin of a shallow lake now 
drained. It is only six years ago that the first 
improvements were made, and these in a small 
way. Six hundred dollars were laid out in drain¬ 
ing and sanding about ten acres. The wild 
cranberries are found mostly about the edges of 
the swamp, and the largest crop before the im¬ 
provements was only 15 barrels. Three years 
after, 600 barrels were gathered, which sold for 
$7,200 at the depot. This decided the matter of 
investing capital in the business, and the im¬ 
provements have gone on steadily ever since. 
The stream which runs through the swamp is 
large enough to carry a saw-mill, and is nearly 
a mile long. This has been straightened and 
widened into a canal, which can he used for 
boating the berries from the plantation to the 
curing house, thus saving the expense of teams. 
This canal is the main artery of drainage, and 
narrow ditches discharge their waters into it at 
intervals of about 200 feet. Since the drainage, 
and sanding, the plants have grown wonderfully 
and are extending themselves rapidly towards 
the canal, even where there has been no plant¬ 
ing. The owners have not strictly followed the 
books, but have felt their way cautiously to 
the best methods for their peculiar location. 
Sanding Vines uroN the Grass is not sound 
doctrine on Cape Cod, j'et it works capitally 
here. The reason probably is, that the peat 
here is of quite recent formation, and the surface 
of the drained pond is too poor to favor the 
growth of weeds and bushes. At any rate, lit¬ 
tle else than a poor grass grows. The sand is 
spread upon the ice in the winter about 3 inches 
thick, and during the thaws of spring it is sifted 
down among the roots of the vines, without 
covering the tops. When the water is drawn 
off in the summer, the vines start with the 
greatest luxuriance, and berries generally set 
the first year upon vines that have heretofore 
heen barren, or nearly so. By far the larger 
part of the 80 acres now in vines has been im¬ 
proved in this simple way. It costs about $50 
to sand an acre 3 inches deep. Labor is about 
$2 a day, without board. The sand or gravel is 
found immediately upon the banks of the swamp. 
The edges of the hog are covered with brush 
and trees, and this land is treated in the Cape 
Cod way, that is, skinned, sanded, and planted 
with vines in the hills. There can be no doubt 
that sanding upon grass is the best here, upon 
those parts of the bog where it has been follow¬ 
ed, and, under similar conditions, it would prob¬ 
ably succeed quite as well elsewhere. The 
vines start so vigorously after the application of 
the sand, that they soon choke out the grass 
and take complete possession of the soil. We 
saw acres, treated in this way, covered with the 
most luxuriant growth of vines, and heavily 
loaded with fruit, say from two to three bushels 
to the square rod. Two rods were measured 
last year to ascertain just what the yield was. 
One gave a barrel, and the other lacked about 4 
quarts of a barrel. Tiie standard cranberry 
barrel of the Cape Cod Association, we believe, 
is 104 quarts. Capt. Small will probably shake 
his head at the luxuriance of the vines, and say 
that, this is a bad feature, and skinning and sand¬ 
ing are needed to prevent it. But if the vines 
are all covered with fruit, the larger they are 
the better. Of course it remains to be seen how 
long 3 inches of sand will last. If more is 
needed, a second coating is easily applied, and 
it may prove more economical to apply light 
coatings at intervals, than to give 6 inches at 
once. The cultivation of cranberries is not so 
much a science that we can afford to be dogmatic. 
A Trap for Musk-rats. 
Almost every farmer, with reclaimed land, or 
with cranberry bogs, suffers from the depreda¬ 
tions of musk-rats. Steel traps are good, hut 
the most we can do with them, is to take one 
rat for each trap in a night, if he does not gnaw 
his leg off. A better trap is an old barrel. Sink 
it near the bank of the ditch, where there are 
evidences of the presence of the animals, to the 
level of the ground, and half till it with water. 
Put in a couple of shingles, or light strips of 
board, to float on the water. Place sweet apples 
or carrots cut in small hits in the runs of the 
musk-rats, and toll them to the barrel. Putsev- 
eral pieces upon the floats, inside. The rats will 
jump in after their food, and will not be able to 
get out. Where they are plenty, several musk¬ 
rats may be taken in a night by this simple trap, 
it costs nothing but labor, can be visited at 
one’s convenience, and there is plenty of room 
in it for a dozen or more of the vermin at once. 
The Barberry as a Hedge Plant.—A 
few years ago we gave the experience of those 
who had employed the Barberry as a hedge 
plant and advised its trial; but finding there 
was such difficulty in obtaining seeds, we have 
not of late said much about it. This year we 
notice that the leading seedsmen offer Barberry 
seed in their catalogues, and those who wish to 
make a trial of it can readily do so. It is best to 
first thoroughly soak the seeds and plant as early 
as practicable, in order that the plants may ob¬ 
tain considerable size before hot weather comes. 
Seeds and Seed Sowing 1 . 
Moisture, air and a proper degree of tempera¬ 
ture are essential to the germination of seeds. 
The first aot of the seed, after being placed in 
the ground, is to absorb water; the changes 
which accompany germination cannot take 
place without it. There must be a certain a- 
mount of moisture, but not too much, as this 
would exclude an equally important agent—air, 
without the pressure of which, germination can¬ 
not take place. The temperature varies with 
the kind of seed. Many garden seeds will ger¬ 
minate at 10 degrees above the freezing point, 
while others require still 10 degrees higher, be¬ 
fore they will start at all. We do not, however, 
with tender plants, run the risk of the decay of 
the seeds b}’’ sowing them until the temperature 
of the ground becomes considerably higher than 
the lowest point at which they will germinate. 
Peas may be sown as soon as the frost is out of 
the ground, but Squashes and Melons require 
that the soil be above 60 degrees. These are 
what may be considered the conditions neces¬ 
sary to the germination of the seed —the chemi¬ 
cal conditions. The act of germination—the 
bursting of the seed-coat and the liberation of 
the embryo plant—is accomplished by these, 
hut this embryo plant has then to encounter 
mechanical obstacles before it can become fairly 
established and begin to sustain itself. It should 
be recollected that the whole growth of the 
plant, from the time it bursts the seed-coat until 
its first leaves appear above the surface, is from 
the nourishment contained within the seed it¬ 
self. The young plant has to push in two direc¬ 
tions, its root end is struggling to get down¬ 
ward while the opposite end is seeking the 
light. It is evident that not only the depth at, 
which the seed is placed, hut the character of 
the soil above it will have great influence upon 
the young plant. One great cause of failure 
with seeds, is too deep planting. Small seeds 
placed deep may germinate, but the young plant 
will he unable to reach the surface, the amount 
of nutriment in so small a seed not supplying suf¬ 
ficient material to allow the plant to grow large 
enough to reach so great a distance. The young 
plant perishes and the seedsman is blamed for 
furnishing poor seeds. The other extreme, sow¬ 
ing too shallow may occur, but we think sel¬ 
dom. The chief trouble here is, that the young 
plant beipg so near the surface is liable to be¬ 
come too dry, before the roots are ready to take 
up moisture. The character of the soil above 
the seeds is an important point. It will readily 
be understood that a germinating plant can 
make much easier progress through a light soil, 
