20 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
'January  9 
York  State  Fair  and  illustrated  at  Fig.  11  show  h*s 
good  judgment.  They  were  not  ruined  for  breeding  by 
excessive  feeding  and  each  won  a  premium  over  larger 
specimens  in  its  class.  c.  e.  c. 
Forkfuls  of  Facts. 
Cows  should  have  some  dry  food  that  will  cause  them 
to  chew,  just  as  a  human  being  should  eat  something 
dry  that  will  make  him  use  his  teeth.  Soups  and 
gruels  sustain  health,  but  the  teeth  suffer  without 
work. 
The  Indiana  Station  has  issued  a  good  bulletin  on 
feeding  stuffs,  with  the  valuations  figured  out  to  cor¬ 
respond  with  the  average  prices  in  Indiana.  Among 
other  substances  analyzed  were  the  “  prepared  foods” 
valued  at  $90  to  $110  per  ton.  The  actual  feeding 
values  as  compared  with  bran  were  $15.89  and  $11.97, 
bran  being  worth  $13.  The  station  justly  says: 
Of  course  the  claim  Is  made  that  many  of  these  feeds  have  a  medic¬ 
inal  value  and  in  some  cases  this  iB  doubtless  true.  But  feeders  can¬ 
not  afford  to  pay  transportation  on  a  ton  of  feeding  stuff  for  a  few 
pounds  of  material  having  a  medicinal  value.  Nor  Is  the  indiscriminate 
feeding  of  foods  containing  tonics  of  unknown  quality,  kind  and  quan¬ 
tity  to  be  encouraged. 
This  idea  is  sensible  whether  a  farmer  is  buying  feed, 
fertilizers  or  anything  else. 
Bran  seems  to  be  the  cheapest  grain  food  in  Indiana, 
judging  from  a  comparison  of  the  market  price  with 
the  feeding  value.  The  Station  gives  the  feeding  value 
of  ground  rye  per  ton,  $13.05,  ground  barley  $13.86,  and 
ground  wheat,  $12.80.  The  market  price  per  ton  is 
$30.94  for  the  rye,  $28.08  for  the  barley  and  $30.94  for 
the  wheat.  That  is  to  say,  the  barley,  costing  $8.80 
per  ton  less,  gives  $2. 00  move  feed  than  the  wheat,  or  21 
cents  more  than  the  rye. 
This  well  illustrates  the  value  to  the  feeder  of  know¬ 
ing  something  about  the  chemistry  of  cattle  foods.  In 
this  year  of  good  markets  for  rye  and  wheat,  the  lesson 
is  to  sell  these  grains  and  feed  barley,  or,  better  yet, 
sell  all  three  and  buy  back  bran,  middlings  and  other 
waste  products  that  are  good  for  cattle  but  not  suitable 
for  human  food. 
Table  Scraps. 
The  Barrel  Cart  a  Fertilizer.— The  barrel  cart 
of  which  an  illustration  and  description  appeared  in 
The  Rural  New-Yorker  a  year  or  more  ago,  has 
proved  just  the  thing  to  rid  the  back  door  of  the  regu¬ 
lation  slop  drain  or  the  abominable  cesspool  of  stench 
and  disease  that  is  too  often  allowed  to  exist;  an  enemy 
to  health,  and,  withal,  so  objectionable  to  the  eye  that 
it  is  no  wonder  that  on  this  “darkest”  subject  many 
are  looking  for  the  surest  “  way  out.” 
For  many  years  we  have  dispensed  with  the  slop 
drain,  and,  instead,  all  accumulations  have  been  dis¬ 
tributed  over  the  lawn,  garden,  etc.,  in  pails,  necessi¬ 
tating  more  or  less  labor  of  course,  but  we  thought  it 
paid,  but  the  work  can  be  greatly  facilitated  by  placing 
the  barrel  cart  conveniently  near  the  back  door  to  re¬ 
ceive  all  slops,  wash  and  rinse  water  not  designed  for 
feeding  purposes.  The  stuff  is  then  eventually  wheeled 
where  most  needed  for  watering  plants,  shrubs,  etc. , 
or  on  the  lawn,  care  being  taken  to  distribute  it  in 
different  places  from  time  to  time  where  all  will  be 
evaporated  or  utilized  for  plant  growth,  with  no  un¬ 
pleasant  features  attending  it.  This  will  be  an  agree¬ 
able  contrast  to  the  existing  conditions  as  found  con¬ 
nected  with  many  of  our  farm  homes. 
IRVING  D.  COOK. 
Wood  Ashes  and  Peach  Trees  Once  More. — Mr. 
Woodward’s  statement  that  I  “ dodged  the  question” 
is  just  a  little  unfair.  My  first  article  may  not  have 
been  quite  clear,  and  no  doubt  he  understood  me  to 
infer  that  I  hoped  to  make  soft  soap  of  existing  borers, 
which  was  not  my  meaning.  J.  H.  Hale,  of  Connecti¬ 
cut,  has  such  wonderful  success  in  the  culture  of  the 
peach  that  I  wrote  him  asking  his  experience  regard¬ 
ing  the  matter,  and  received  the  following  reply, 
which  I  trust  he  will  pardon  me  for  making  public. 
“  While  wood  ashes  will  sometimes  (the  italics  are  Mr. 
Hale’s)  injure,  even  to  the  point  of  killing  young  peach 
trees,  if  any  considerable  quantity  of  them  are  put 
close  about  the  base  of  the  tree,  I  have  never  known  a 
case  where  trees  more  than  two  years  of  age,  have 
been  injured  even  when  a  peck  or  more  has  been 
mounded  up  against  the  trees.  'I  ou  are  right  in  stating 
that  while  the  ashes  may  not  kill  any  borers  that  may 
be  in  the  trees,  they  do  greatly  aid  in  keeping  them 
out.  Notwithstanding  what  I  have  said  as  to  the  oc¬ 
casional  injury  to  young  trees,  I  will  say  that  all  the 
5,000  trees  in  the  finest  orchard  we  now  own,  were 
banked  with  ashes  in  the  winter  when  they  were  one 
year  old,  and  that  the  100,000  we  are  planting  in  Geor¬ 
gia  this  winter  will  all  have  ashes  put  about  them  as 
soon  as  planted,  for  I  bought  40  tons  of  cotton-hull 
ashes  in  Savannah,  a  few  days  since,  for  that  very  pur¬ 
pose.  I  shall  not,  however,  put  solid  ashes  next  to  the 
tender  bark  of  such  young  trees,  but  shall  have  them 
mixed  with  earth.  After  the  first  year  I  have  no  fear.” 
We  have  never  used  ashes  in  the  nursery  rows,  so  we 
have  escaped  the  danger  which  Mr.  Woodward  seems 
to  think  exists  at  any  time.  Our  trees  are  not  trans¬ 
planted  until  they  are  two  years  old,  and  the  borers 
are  carefully  removed  before  they  are  planted  in  the 
orchard.  In  this  section,  where  ours  is  the  largest 
orchard  for  miles,  the  same  plan  of  planting  two-year- 
old  trees,  one  year  from  the  bud,  prevails.  The  ground 
is  prepared  and  enriched  before  the  year  of  planting 
and  neither  fertilizers  nor  ashes  are  used  the  year  the 
trees  are  set.  After  that  we  use  as  much  of  both  as 
we  can  get.  I  shall  make  a  renewed  test  with  some 
young  trees  next  spring  if  possible,  and  until  then  shall 
not  give  farther  expression  to  my  opinions  and  experi¬ 
ence  in  this  line.  s.  a.  little. 
Worden’s  Seckel  Pear. — It  is  a  pity  to  send  out 
this  pear  under  the  name  given  it,  for  it  is  sure  to  be 
confounded  with  the  old  Seckel.  Those  who  sell  trees 
know  better  than  any  one  else  the  tendency  of  the 
average  customer  to  shorten  names.  The  Belle  Lucra¬ 
tive,  Beurre  d’ Anjou,  Doyenne,  Boussock  and  many 
others  have  lost  their  first  names,  and  customers  ask 
for  Lucrative,  Anjou,  Superfin,  Clairgeau,  Boussock, 
Vicar,  Duchess,  Clapp,  etc.  Sometimes  it  is  the  first 
word  and  sometimes  the  second  which  is  dropped,  but 
one  or  the  other  nearly  alvyays  disappears.  As  we 
already  have  a  Seckel  it  is  more  than  likely  that  Wor¬ 
den’s  would  be  dropped,  which  would  then  cause  great 
confusion.  From  what  is  said  of  it  in  The  Rural 
New-Yorker  of  December  19  I  should  think  it  a  good 
pear,  and  so  its  identity  should  not  be  lost,  as  it  seems 
to  me  to  be  likely  to  happen  under  its  present  name.  I 
write  this  entirely  in  the  interest  of  those  who  have 
named  this  pear,  feeling  sure  that  they  will  not  take  it 
amiss,  even  should  they  not  agree  with  me. 
JOSEPH  MEEHAN. 
GOING  AGAINST  SCIENCE. 
Under  the  above  head  I  wrote  to  The  Rural  last 
spring  telling  of  my  intention  to  plant  potatoes  on  the 
same  fields  on  which  I  had  grown  potatoes  in  1890, 
and  where  they  had  rotted  at  a  terrible  rate.  I  said 
that  although  the  scientists  urged  farmers  to  plant  on 
ground  which  had  grown  a  crop  that  had  not  rotted, 
^»id  to  bury  or  destroy  the  rotten  potatoes,  and  burn 
all  their  tops,  I  should  risk  it  and  plant  on  the  same 
soil.  I  did  so,  and  the  result  is  exactly  what  I  supposed 
it  would  be — a  crop  that  did  not  rot,  because  the 
weather  was  not  such  as  to  cause  the  disease.  It  may 
be  that  some  farmers  spent  time  and  labor  in  the  vain 
effort  to  destroy  the  germ  that  causes  rot,  and  planted 
their  potatoes  on  fresh  land  in  the  hope  of  escaping 
the  rot  this  year;  if  so,  I  pity  them,  for  they  lost  time 
and  perhaps  potatoes  from  having  planted  in  a  field 
less  suited  to  the  crop  than  the  rot-infested  field  where 
they  would  have  planted  but  for  the  warning  against  it. 
This  year  I  had  in  potatoes  two  fields,  one  of  1% 
acre  ‘and  the  other  of  four  acres.  Farmers  were  par¬ 
ticularly  cautioned  not  to  plant  seed  potatoes  that  were 
part  of  a  crop  that  had  been  affected  with  the  rot,  and 
to  get  seed  from  sections  where  no  rot  prevailed  last 
year.  On  the  1 M  acre  field  I  planted  fresh  seed — Early 
Rose— not  because  it  was  supposed  to  be  free  from  rot, 
but  because  I  wished  to  plant  that  field  with  an  early 
variety.  The  other  field  was  planted  with  my  own  seed 
— Rural  Blush — kept  in  kilns.  When  the  1890  crop  was 
harvested  we  put  the  tubers  in  a  large  corn  house,  big 
and  little  ones  together,  and  picked  them  over  as  we 
hauled  them  to  market ;  they  continued  to  rot  all  the 
time,  rotting  even  before  the  dealers  who  bought  them 
could  retail  them.  The  small  ones  were  thrown  into  a 
pile  by  themselves  and  when  the  weather  had  become 
too  cold  to  let  them  remain  longer  in  the  corn  house, 
they  were  shoveled  into  a  cart,  dumped  in  long  rows, 
sound  and  rotten  together,  (it  seemed  a  waste  of  time 
and  labor  to  sort  them  over,  as  the  prospect  was  that 
they  would  all  rot  before  spring)  covered  with  straw, 
then  a  few  inches  of  dirt,  and  in  winter  with  fodder. 
In  the  spring  when  the  kilns  were  opened,  the  potatoes 
were  an  unpleasant  sight.  Some  of  them  had  to  be 
washed  before  they  could  be  handled  ;  the  larger  part 
had  rotted  and  although  we  wanted  to  plant  whole 
tubers  we  had  to  cut  many  of  them  to  find  out  whether 
they  were  alive  or  not ;  if  they  were  black  inside  we 
rejected  them.  That  was  our  seed  for  the  four-acre 
field  and  the  only  loss  incurred  by  planting  such  seed, 
was  that  some  hills  were  “  missing,”  as  the  seed  had 
been  dead  when  planted  ;  it  looked  all  right,  and  as  I 
have  said,  we  cut  a  good  deal  of  it  to  make  sure  ;  but 
we  should  have  cut  it  all.  This  year  there  was  only 
the  usual  amout  of  rot  when  we  have  what  we  call  a 
sound  crop — a  rotten  tuber  here  and  there,  but  not 
enough  to  cause  a  perceptible  loss. 
Now  did  we  really  “  go  against  science  ?”  I  think 
not ;  we  went  against  what  was  supposed  to  be  science 
on  the  subject,  but  it  was  false.  I  staked  all  upon 
these  facts :  when  the  meteorological  conditions  are 
favorable  to  the  growth  of  the  germs  that  cause  the  rot 
in  potatoes,  the  crop  rots  ;  when  the  conditions  are  not 
favorable,  the  crop  escapes.  Therefore  it  is  utterly  use¬ 
less  to  try  to  kill  the  germs  after  the  crop  is  grown  ; 
for  if  you  could  kill  them  all  (an  impossibility)  and  the 
conditions  the  next  year  should  be  favorable  to  their 
growth  they  would  be  there  all  the  same,  from  some 
source  yet  unknown.  In  1889  we  had  no  rot  and  there 
were  no  germs  to  kill ;  in  1890  there  was  more  rot  than 
I  had  ever  seen  before  ;  the  germs  were  not  killed  and 
yet  we  had  no  rot  this  year.  Does  not  that  prove  my 
conclusions  sound  ?  I  don’t  believe  in  ‘  ‘  going  against 
science  on  the  contrary,  I  believe  the  man  who  does 
so  deliberately  is  a  fool ;  but  I  want  my  science  to  be 
scientific;  then  I  will  gladly  go  with  it.  A.  l.  crosby. 
Let  Farmers  Run  Their  Own  Roads. 
I  have  just  finished  reading  “  Streets  and  Highways 
of  Foreign  Countries,”  sent  me  a  few  days  ago  by  our 
worthy  Secretary  of  State.  The  impression  left  on  my 
mind  is  that  though  our  ‘  ‘  streets  and  highways  ”  are 
not  as  good  as  we  desire,  they  are,  all  things  con¬ 
sidered,  equal  and  even  superior  to  those  of  any  foreign 
country  as  large  as  ours.  The  plans  for  foreign  roads 
are  often  very  good,  but  the  performance  is  bad.  The 
same  is  the  case  with  us.  But  I  find  our  country 
roads,  except  the  turnpikes,  improving  quite  rapidly. 
Wherever  better  roads  give  increased  profit  the  people 
come  to  know  it  and  put  forth  efforts  to  make  better 
highways,  and  their  labors  are  crowned  by  success. 
Many  of  the  roads  are  several  hundred  per  cent  better 
than  they  were  eight  years  ago.  The  toll  roads  do 
not  improve.  The  common  roads  are  feeders  to  them, 
and  so  they  get  larger  incomes  and  reduce  expenses. 
In  the  Catskill  Mountain  region  great  improvement 
would  arise  from  the  abolition  of  toll  roads.  Cheer  up 
the  farmers  in  regard  to  highways  and  do  not  condemn 
them.  They  now  do  much  more  than  the  villagers 
for  good  roads,  and  the  villagers  are  the  active  grumb¬ 
lers — the  very  men  who  do  all  they  can  to  keep  pros¬ 
perity  from  the  farmer,  socially,  financially  and  politi¬ 
cally.  I  say  this  unhesitatingly  after  50  years  of 
close  observation.  The  villagers  often  talk  very  en¬ 
thusiastically  as  to  how  “to  do  it,”  but  quite  univer¬ 
sally  put  the  doing  on  the  “  lazy  countryman.  ”  All 
farmers  desire  good  roads.  Most  of  them  do  all  they 
can  to  secure  them.  Under  our  present  laws  the  agri¬ 
culturists  will  generally  improve  the  country  roads. 
Change  the  laws  and  the  villagers  will  manage  to  leave 
the  country  roads  in  a  worse  condition  than  they  would 
be  under  the  present  laws  of  New  York  State. 
GEORGE  C.  MOTT. 
No  Fun  in  Corn  Farming. 
In  The  R.  N.-Y.  of  November  21  is  an  article  entitled 
“  Why  Do  Boys  Leave  the  Farm  ?”  The  following  is 
a  conversation  substantially  as  it  occurred  between 
two  farmers  of  this  county,  both  close  to  the  half  cen¬ 
tury  mark  in  years.  One  is  a  Democrat  and  the  other 
a  Republican.  Here  it  is  : 
“Say,  Bill,  do  you  still  think  the  farmers  of  this 
country  are  getting  rich  raising  20-cent  corn  ?  ” 
“  Well,  I  think  they  are  doing  fairly  well.” 
Jim:  “See  here;  let’s  count  ’em  up:  there’s  the 
man  on  the  L - place  ;  he  says  himself  that  if  he 
didn’t  teach  school  winters,  he  couldn’t  pay  his  rent. 
And  although  the  C - boys  are,  all  four  of  them, 
good,  steady,  hard-working  fellows,  not  one  of  them 
has  a  nickel  ahead.” 
Bill :  ‘  ‘  But  there  is  T.  S.  and  Mr.  A.  and  L.  C. 
over  west  there ;  they  have  made  plenty  of  money 
lately.’” 
Jim  :  “  Yes,  but  T.  S.  got  $000  or  $700  from  his  wife’s 
folks  a  year  or  two  ago,  and  Mr.  A. — well  you  know 
his  father  gave  him  a  farm  to  begin  with,  so  he  never 
had  any  interest  to  pay,  and  L.  C.  told  me,  when  he 
came  here  eight  years  ago,  that  he  had  brought  with 
him  $3,000  in  cash,  and  he  can’t  scratch  up  that  much 
now  to  save  his  skin.” 
Bill :  “  Well  I  don’t  know  but  what  you  are  right 
about  those  men.” 
And  so  they  went  on,  but  Bill  could  not  find  a  man 
who  was  making  any  money  raising  corn.  Of  course  a 
few  men  are  making  a  little  ;  but  they  either  have  a 
good  many  boys  nearly  grown  to  work  for  them,  or 
they  brought  in  money  with  them  when  they  came 
here,  or  received  money  from  their  folks ;  for  there  are 
not  more  than  three  or  four  at  the  most  among  about 
350  to  400  farmers  in  this  neighborhood,  who  have 
made  any  money  farming. 
Corn  is  worth  more  than  20  cents  per  bushel  most  of 
the  time  ;  but  I  can  recollect  when  corn  was  15  cents 
per  bushel,  and  also  when  it  was  50  cents  per  bushel, 
but  very  few  had  any  to  sell  at  50  cents. 
One  might  think  from  my  way  of  “  putting  ”  this 
matter  that  money  is  my  sole  object ;  but  although  it 
