1873.] 
89 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
industry. Congress had made an appropriation of $15,- 
000 , which had been expended under the direction of 
Prof. S. F. Baird. Shad had been planted in the upper 
waters of the Mississippi, near St. Paul; in the Alle¬ 
ghany, at Salamanca, N. Y.; in the White River, at In¬ 
dianapolis ; and in the Platte, at Denver ; and a demon¬ 
stration had been made that shad would flourish in the 
Mississippi valley, in the appearance of large numbers 
of the fish in the Wachita, near Hot Springs, Arkansas, 
and at Neosho Falls, in Kansas. About 1,500,000 salmon- 
spawn had been taken in the Penobscot, near Bucks- 
port, Maine, 150,000 had been imported from Germany, 
and about 7,000 of the Sacramento Salmon spawn, a 
distinct species, were now hatching at Dr. Slack’s for 
the Susquehanna River. About 750,000 spawn of the 
Whitefish had been taken in Michigan, and a large num¬ 
ber of these were destined for the waters of California. 
An application has been made for an appropriation of 
$30,000 from Congress, which will enable Prof. Baird to 
carry out the enterprises begun. 
The year has been one of very satisfactory progress in 
fish-culture, both with the State Commissioners and the 
private breeders. The following officers were elected : 
President, William Clift; Secretary, A. S. Collins ; Trea¬ 
surer, B. F. Bowles. Executive Committee, Seth Green. 
E. A. Brackett, M. C. Edmonds. The Association ad¬ 
journed to the second Tuesday of February, 1874. 
The Death of Luther Tucker. 
On January 26th, Luther Tucker died at his residence 
in Albany, at the age of 71, being at the time of bis death 
the oldest agricultural editor in the country. Brought up 
as a printer, Mr. Tucker, after a varied experience in his 
early life, settled at Rochester, where in 1826 he started 
the Daily Advertiser, the first paper issued west of Al¬ 
bany. In 1831 he established the Genesee Farmer, 
which was published under various changes of proprie¬ 
tors, but always with Mr. Tucker at its head. The Culti¬ 
vator was established at Albany in 1834, by Judge Buel, 
and upon the death of that gentleman in 1836, Mr. Tucker 
was induced to unite in consolidating the two papers, 
and the result was “ The Cultivator, a consolidation of 
Buel’s Cultivator and the Genesee Farmer.” In 1853 
Mr. Tucker commenced the publication of the Country 
Gentleman as a weekly, and for some years continued 
the Cultivator as a monthly made up of matter selected 
from the weekly. The monthly was at length discontin¬ 
ued, hut Mr. Tucker continued in the eminently suc¬ 
cessful management of the Country Gentleman until the 
time of his death. 
Mr. Tucker was the first publisher of the Horticulturist, . 
of which A. J. Downing was editor, and continued it until 
the death of that gentleman. The editorial care of the 
Country Gentleman will be continued by Mr. Luther H. 
Tucker, who lias long been managing editor. One of our 
associates, who was for a time engaged by Mr. Tucker, 
thus writes of him: 
“ I never knew a man more regular, systematic, and or¬ 
derly. He was always at his desk and always at work. 
Rarely in a hurry, never angry, not easily provoked, he 
was at his office, as at his home, the truthful, upright, 
high-minded, courteous Christian gentleman. 
“ He owes his success' to his good judgment, and great 
industry. He never forgot that he had been poor, and 
his sympathies led him to aid and encourage all young 
men who were struggling upwards under similar discour¬ 
agements. He seems always to have cared less to have 
his own name before the public, than to give prominence 
to the names and works of others. He was ever of a 
modest, retiring disposition. He pushed others forward, 
but kept in the background himself. He wrote little, but 
what he did write was to the point. His great aim in 
life was to publish a good agricultural journal, and make 
it useful to the community. It is probably not too much 
to say that he has prepared more manuscript for the press, 
than any other agricultural editor of this or any other 
country. It was of late years his daily, almost hourly 
work. Manuscript which many an editor would have 
thrown into the waste-paper basket, he put into shape 
and gave tothepublic. In looking over the back volumes 
of the Genesee Farmer, Cultivator, Horticulturist, and 
Country Gentleman, we are impressed with the astonish¬ 
ing amount of work he has been able to do during his 
long and useful life, and to do it so well. The secret oi 
it all is that he was never in a hurry and never idle.” 
The American Eruit-Drier. 
Samples of various dried fruits of rare excel¬ 
lence were recently exhibited at this office. 
Apples, peaches, pears, grapes, berries, and corn, 
■which were examined; seemed to have lost little 
except the water which formerly gave them 
plumpness, and a larger proportion of the sweet¬ 
ness and proper flavor was retained than in any 
fruit we had previously seen. On examining 
the method by which such products were ob¬ 
tained, we found it of such simplicity, cheapness, 
and certainty, that its importance to the readers 
of this paper, both fruit-growers and consumers, 
warranted its being brought prominently to their 
notice in these columns. The apparatus, “The 
American Fruit-Drier,” is here illustrated. 
Its essential parts consist of—1st, a box or tube 
( T ), one end of which is supported by brick-work 
{E ); the other end rests on adjustable supports, 
bj r which the box ( T) can be elevated to any de¬ 
sired angle; 2d, slat-bottomed trays {ABC 
D) for receiving the fruit. These trays when 
placed in the box ( T ) rest on cleats, in which 
notches are cut, on which the lower edges of the 
trays rest. Inside the brick-work {E), the heat¬ 
ing apparatus is placed. This may be a wood 
or coal stove, or a steam coil, or other suitable 
heater. When in operation, the heater being 
ready, a tray (A) filled with fruit is introduced at 
the lower end of the box immediately over the 
heater, and the box is closed by shutting the 
hinged covers [F.) The hot air now passes up 
through the fruit, carrying with it a portion of 
its moisture, and finds egress at an opening at 
the upper end of the box. This opening may be 
two flues are made by the continuous line of 
trays. The hot dry air passes along the lower 
flue, and up through the fruit, ready to absorb 
and carry away its moisture; the hot moist air, 
emerging from a tray, passes along abort the 
fruit through the upper flue to the exit. The 
apparatus is patented, but the company owning 
the patent make terms so favorable, that most 
farmers or others having an orchard or fruit- 
yard, will find it profitable to use it in saving 
their surplus fruit. 
Disgusted with Farming. 
A Northern gentleman who bought a cotton 
plantation in Mississippi, writes a private lei ter 
to one of the editors of the American Agricul¬ 
turist, from which we make a few extracts. He 
says: “ I read the Agriculturist with much 
pleasure. You advise farmers to ‘ stick to the 
farm,’ and I have concluded to stick, though I 
am pretty thoroughly disgusted with farming 
and planting generally. ‘My Summer in a 
Garden,’ by Warner, is about my experience. 
You have probably read that article in the Cin¬ 
cinnati Times headed ‘ Agriculture a Fraud.’ 
He says: ‘The fact is, agriculture would demor¬ 
alize a saint. I was almost a saint when I went 
into it. [We doubt whether this is true of our 
THE AMERICAN FRUIT-DRIER. 
protected from dust by a screen of netting. 
By the time another tray of fruit is prepared, 
the first is sufficiently dry to be pushed forward 
one notch by introducing the second tray at the 
lower end. In this way successive trays are in¬ 
troduced, and the preceding trays pushed forward 
until the first one reaches the upper end. By the 
time this is done, in fair drying weather, the fruit 
is ready to be taken out and packed for market. 
The smallest sized apparatus, as usually made, 
will keep two persons employed paring fruit 
ready for the Drier. This is rapid work, and its 
rapidity, and also the excellence of the dried 
fruit when turned out, is due to the arrangement 
of the trays in the box. 
In driers heretofore made, the trays have been 
arranged one above tlie other, so that the hot 
air from, lower trays passed through those above. 
This in its passage became steam, gave the 
fruit a cooked taste, carried away much of the 
aroma, and had little drying power after passing 
through several trays. In the American Drier, 
correspondent,.] I’m a demon now. I’m at 
war with everything. I fight myself out of bed 
at four o’clock when all my better nature tells 
me to lie until seven. I fight myself into the 
garden to work like a brute, when reason and 
instinct tell me to stay in the house and enjoy 
myself like a man. I fight the pigs, the chick¬ 
ens, the moles, the birds, the hugs, the worms— 
everything in which there is the breath of life. 
I fight the docks, Die burdocks, the mulleins, the 
thistles, the grasses, the weeds, the roots—the 
whole vegetable kingdom. I fight the heat, the 
frost, the rain, the hail—in short, I fight the uni¬ 
verse and get whipped in every battle.’ This,” 
continues our correspondent, “is what I have 
been doing for the last six years, and now I have 
a fancy to take a rough-and-tumble fight with a 
Cotswold ram, and shall probably add another 
defeat to the list. Can you tell me where to get 
a good one?” See our advertising columns. 
Farming at the South has its drawbacks as well 
as farming at the North. Better as a rule stay 
