282 
THE  RURAL  NEW-YORKER. 
April  30 
from  each  sore,  it  is  wiped  up  with  camels’  hair  brushes 
and  transferred  to  “  tubes”  or  “  points”  for  preserva¬ 
tion.  This  operation  of  gathering  the  virus  from  a 
single  cow  may  take  fully  three  hours,  the  product 
varying  from  500  to  1,000  “  points.’  The  capacity 
of  the  establishment  is  estimated  at  100,000  points  per 
day. 
The  stables  where  the  heifers  are  confined  and 
where  the  operations  are  carried  on,  are  models  of 
convenience  and  cleanliness.  The  main  building  is 
156  feet  long  by  28  feet  wide,  with  three  wings  40 
feet  long  at  right  angles.  The  floor  space  is  15,900 
square  feet.  The  stables  are  all  heated  by  steam, 
lighted  by  gas  at  night,  fitted  throughout  with  speak¬ 
ing  tubes,  and  possess  complete  arrangements  for 
drainage  and  ventilation.  They  are  finished  in  oiled 
hard  wood.  The  floors  are  of  cement  and  plank,  the 
latter  being  painted  each  year.  There  is  running 
water  in  each  stable,  and  all  the  arrangements  for 
feeding  are  most  complete.  They  are  perfectly  clean 
and  inodorous.  This  is  secured  in  a  great  measure 
by  the  use  of  German  peat  moss  as  a  bedding  material, 
which  I)r.  Alexander  praises  highly  for  its  absorbing 
and  deodorizing  qualities.  For  tying  the  animals, 
chains  and  revolving  stanchions  have  both  been  tried. 
The  present  preference  is  for  the  latter,  as  the  ani¬ 
mals  seem  to  thrive  in  them  decidedly  better  than 
when  tied  with  chains.  The  farm  has  its  own  gas  and 
water  works.  Over  the  stables  are  feed  rooms,  lux¬ 
urious  offices  and  capacious  rooms  for  packing  and 
shipping  the  virus  or  lymph  to  all  portions  of  the 
world,  for  the  Alexander  product  goes  to  South 
America,  China,  Europe,  Africa  and  the  isles  of  the  sea. 
Different  countries  require  the  virus  in  different 
forms,  hence  there  are  ivory  “points,”  “quills,” 
“tablets,”  “crusts”  and  “tubes”  of  differ¬ 
ent  patterns.  The  points  are  thin  pieces 
of  ivory,  about  1  inch  long  by  one-fourth 
of  an  inch  in  width,  lance-sliaped,  and  50 
of  these  are  placed  together  in  a  clamp. 
After  the  crusts  of  the  vesicles  have 
been  well  sponged,  and  have  been  removed 
with  the  handle  of  a  scalpel,  and  the 
vesicles  thoroughly  cleansed,  as  a  surgeon  A 
would  clean  a  wound,  to  prevent  any  im-  #1 
pure  or  foreign  matter  from  resting  <  n 
them,  in  a  few  minutes  the  lymph  begins  /OsL 
to  exude  like  drops  of  perspiration.  It 
is  then  taken  up  with  camels’  hair  pen¬ 
cils  and  placed  on  the  “  points.”  After 
the  lymph  has  become  dry,  the  points  are  ^  A 
recoated  from  a  second  animal,  treated 
as  the  other,  thus  hermetically  sealing  ,g  jh* 
the  first  lymph,  with  the  advantage  of  an 
addition  of  the  vaccine  of  a  second  animal. 
From  the  operating  room  the  points  are  •Sr 
sent  to  the  packing  room  above,  on  ele¬ 
vators.  They  are  placed  in  bottles  con¬ 
taining  2,500  points  each,  and  set  in  a 
refrigerator  until  shipped,  which  is  always  within  10 
days  of  their  manufacture.  For  shipment,  ten  points 
are  placed  in  a  small  vial.  These  are  boxed,  and  the 
boxes  packed  in  dozens  and  grosses,  and  they  are  gen¬ 
erally  shipped  by  mail,  often  on  the  day  they  come 
from  the  operating  room. 
The  establishment  is  freely  opened  to  inspection. 
Nothing  is  kept  a  secret;  nothing  is  patented.  The 
proprietor  holds  his  business  solely  through  the  excel¬ 
lence  of  his  products.  During  the  past  year,  only  one 
point  in  912  has  been  reported  inert,  while  in  the 
past  it  was  thought  hardly  possible  to  attain  such  great 
success. 
As  a  farmer  outside  his  vaccine  business,  Dr.  Alex¬ 
ander  is  an  enthusiastic  grower  of  tobacco,  in  which 
specialty  he  is  doing  well,  claiming  to  make  a  good  in¬ 
terest  on  lands  which  have  cost  him  over  $500  per  acre. 
He  is  also  a  successful  grower  of  peaches  and  small 
fruits. 
It  should  have  been  remarked  that  smallpox  scares 
may  be  expected  about  once  in  1 8  months  or  two  years, 
and  while  the  fright  lasts,  immense  sales  of  the  virus 
are  made.  The  establishment  now  has  stabling  room 
for  300  head  of  stock,  and  all  the  material  to  meet  the 
most  urgent  demands.  [dr.]  geo.  g.  groff. 
Insects  in  the  Soil  as  a  Source  of 
Organic  Nitrogen. 
A  farmer  who  is  a  farmer  has  to  do  all  sorts  of  jobs, 
and  some  of  them  he  is  not  likely  to  be  very  fond  of  ; 
but  if  he  uses  his  brains  he  will  always  find  instruc¬ 
tion  in  his  work.  I  have  never  had  enough  money  to 
be  a  “fancy  farmer,”  and  although  I  like  money  I  am 
not  sorry  for  the  fact.  I  can  look  back  and  see  a  good 
many  places  where  the  lack  of  money  has  been  an  ad¬ 
vantage  to  me;  as  well  as  other  places  where  the  money 
in  hand  has  prevented  a  profitable  study  of  facts  likely 
to  have  been  of  greater  value  than  the  cash. 
I  do  not  know'  that  this  introduction  is  going  to  be 
very  apropos  to  what  I  am  about  to  say.  I  have  re¬ 
cently  been  reading  a  very  interesting  article  on  ants, 
and  this  recalled  to  me  some  thoughts  that  occurred  to 
me  last  fall  while  I  was  engaged  in  picking  up  loose 
stones  from  the  surface  of  a  mowing  field.  Most  of 
them  were  thin  and  flat,  of  a  slaty  or  schistose  char¬ 
acter,  and  I  was  astonished  to  notice  the  millions  of 
ants  under  them,  in  all  stages  of  growth.  The  scared 
workers  rushed  excitedly  about,  when  their  shelter 
was  removed,  each  endeavoring  to  save  one  of  the 
many  larvae  which  had  apparently  been  brought  to  the 
surface  beneath  the  stone  for  the  benefit  of  the  warmth 
afforded  by  the  autumn  sunshine.  These  stones  were 
quite  abundant,  and  had  been  pressed  into  the  ground 
level  with  the  surface  by  the  heavy  roller  which  had 
been  used .  when  the  field  was  “seeded  down.”  But 
the  experience  of  the  haying  season  had  shown 
not  only  that  they  covered  altogether  too  much 
ground  that  should  have  produced  spears  of  grass, 
but  also  that  the  feet  of  the  team  would  loosen  and 
throw  them  into  the  cutters  of  the  mower,  to  the  seri¬ 
ous  injury  of  the  latter.  In  the  course  of  the  long, 
warm  autumn,  extending  quite  to  the  middle  of  De¬ 
cember,  I  had  the  opportunity  of  piling  up  a  good 
many  of  them;  and  all  that  time  I  was  wondering  at 
the  worlds  of  animal  life  sheltered  beneath  them.  Not 
only  ants,  but  many  of  other  species,  millipeds, 
earthworms,  and  dozens  of  other  kinds,  either  in  the 
larval  form,  or  as  perfect  insects,  were  clustered  be¬ 
neath  the  stones;  and  it  only  took  a  little  of  the  dig¬ 
ging  resorted  to,  to  loosen  some  of  the  larger  frag¬ 
ments,  to  show  that  this  swarming  life  was  by  no 
means  confined  to  the  immediate  surface. 
Now  nearly  all  these  creatures  are  short-lived.  The 
worker  ants,  we  are  told,  often  live  only  a  few  days,  or 
at  most  a  few  weeks  or  months.  In  this  30-acre  mow- 
cer  and  Driver  of  an  Afro-American  farmer.  Fig. 
ing  field  there  must  have  been  literally  tons  of  them — 
mostly  water,  no  doubt — but  each  of  them  an  atom  of 
animated  nitrogenous  matter,  continually  being  drawn 
directly  or  indirectly  from  the  atmosphere,  and  then 
added  to  the  substance  of  the  soil.  They  were  un¬ 
doubtedly  fed  from  the  growing  or  dead  vegetation  of 
the  surface,  or  the  humus  of  the  soil ;  and  the  animal- 
ization  of  this  must  have  been  continually  making  it 
“  available,”  as  the  agricultural  chemists  say,  for  the 
growth  _of  crops.  Yet  I  do  not  recollect  ever  to  have 
heard  these  insects  mentioned  as  being  in  this  way  of 
advantage  to  the  farmer  or  the  gardener. 
The  phenomena  of  agricultural  experience  that  are 
unexplained  vastly  outnumber  those  which  are  per¬ 
fectly  understood.  How  often  we  see  a  field  giving  a 
crop  far  better  than  we  had  any  apparent  reason  to 
expect.  These  crops  very  commonly  are  utilized  by 
slack,  careless  farmers  to  prove  that  “  science  ”  is  of 
no  use  in  farming.  The  “  ignorant  ”  man  may  have 
“  better  luck  ”  than  the  painstaking  student  of  agricul¬ 
ture.  I  have  always  been  inclined  to  think  that  the 
reason  for  this  might  be  that  the  “  fancy  farmer”  does 
not  usually  give  that  close,  practical  attention  to  the 
details  of  work,  and  is  also  wanting  in  many  important 
matters  upon  which  even  “ignorant”  fanners  who 
have  spent  their  lives  on  the  land  are  better  posted.  I 
think  that  this  must  be  true  ;  and  in  my  early  ap¬ 
prenticeship  to  farming  I  always  took  care  to  pay  due 
respect  to  experience  among  my  neighbors,  and  to  as¬ 
sume  no  “airs”  of  superior  knowledge  that  would 
lead  them  to  chuckle  over  my  failures.  The  Yankee 
farmer,  even  when  he  cannot  read,  is  not  necessarily 
an  ignoramus ;  and  I  have  sat  at  the  feet  of  many 
plain  men  without  “  learning,”  to  my  very  great  profit. 
In  this  article  I  am  only  aiming  to  draw  attention  to 
a  matter  which  I  am  sure  will  reward  a  good  deal  of 
study.  The  farmer  and  gardener  have  been  generally 
disposed  to  look  upon  nearly  all  insects  as  injurious  to 
their  art,  and  to  seek  their  destruction.  May  it  not  be, 
on  the  contrary,  that  many  of  them  are,  at  least  in¬ 
directly,  of  more  benefit  than  injury?  I  believe  that 
success  generally  attends  well  put  in  and  well  tende 
crops,  in  spite  of  insect  depredations.  I  certainly  have 
noticed  that  crops,  feeble  because  of  poor  seed,  poor 
soil  and  poor  management,  are  the  ones  that  the  in¬ 
sects  harm  the  most.  t.  h.  hoskins. 
The  Interview. 
THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  POTATO  CULTURE. 
The  R.  N.-Y.  Interviewed  as  to  its  Experiments. 
Question.  You  have  been  experimenting  with  pota¬ 
toes  for  15  years  or  more.  As  a  consequence,  do  you 
feel  competent  to  instruct  your  average  potato-grow¬ 
ing  neighbor  ? 
Answer.  Yes,  of  late  years  our  regular  crop  has  far 
exceeded  the  crops  of  our  neighbors. 
Q.  With  a  proportionate  increase  in  the  cost  of  pro¬ 
duction  ? 
A.  With  less  than  a  proportionate  increase  in  the 
cost  of  production. 
Q.  What  new  experiments  do  you  propose  to  try 
this  season  ? 
A.  None. 
Q.  How  is  that  ? 
A.  We  have  tried  all  the  rational  (and  many  irra¬ 
tional)  experiments  we  could  think  of,  again  and  again, 
and  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  continuing  them 
further. 
Q.  You  fancy  then  that  you  “  know  it  all  ?” 
A.  We  fancy  that  we  do  not  know  what  further  ex¬ 
periments  to  make  with  a  view  to  a  further  economical 
increase  of  crop. 
Q.  For  your  soil  or  for  all  soils  ? 
A.  Among  the  results  of  our  experiments  it  has  been 
found  that  different  soils  require  different  treatment 
Q.  In  all  respects  ? 
A.  No,  in  minor  respects. 
Q.  Then  in  all  essential  respects,  you 
think  you  know  how  to  produce  a  maxi¬ 
mum  crop  of  potatoes  at  a  minimum  cost  ? 
A.  With  the  present  data  for  investiga¬ 
tion,  yes. 
(2.  That  is  saying  a  good  deal  ? 
A.  It  is  simply  saying  that  we  have 
Ik  tried  every  method  of  culture  we  can 
yfev  think  or  hear  of  often  enough  to  have 
■figi  received  what  we  believe  to  be  trustworthy 
answers  to  the  questions  asked.  It  is  per¬ 
haps  more  a  matter  of  belief  than  of  abso¬ 
lute  proof. 
Q.  To  what  do  you  attribute  the  fact 
that  your  crops  are  much  larger  than  those 
of  your  neighbors  ? 
A.  To  the  fact  that  they  do  not  fit  their 
land  properly  and  are  unwilling  to  use 
40,  suitable  fertilizers  in  sufficient  quantity. 
Q.  And  wherein  is  their  fitting  inade¬ 
quate? 
A.  The  surface  soil  alone  is  properly  fitted 
Q.  Hence  it  is  you  favor  your  trench  system? 
A.  Yes.  That  helps  to  fit  the  soil  to  a  depth  of  six 
inches  or  more,  the  same  as  the  surface  soil  is  fitted  by 
harrowing.  It  is  more  important  that  the  soil  in 
which  the  tubers  and  roots  form  and  grow  should  be 
mellow  and  uniform  than  that  the  surface  soil,  in 
which  they  do  not  grow,  should  be  so  prepared. 
Q.  Do  you  prefer  fertilizers  to  farm  manure? 
A.  Yes,  for  the  one  reason  that  farmers  cannot  afford, 
or  think  they  cannot,  to  use  farm  manure  in  sufficient 
quantity  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  potato  during 
every  stage  of  its  growth.  A  maximum  crop  of  pota¬ 
toes  means  an  ample  supply  of  potato  food  and  this 
means  a  richer  soil  than  one  farmer  in  100  has. 
Q.  And  do  you  think  an  ample  supply  of  fertilizers 
can  be  furnished  at  a  less  cost  with  the  same  effect? 
A.  It  can  be  supplied  at  a  less  cost  for  this  year  and 
next,  and  perhaps  a  third  or  fourth.  Of  two  soils 
equally  rich — one  with  fertilizer,  the  other  with  man¬ 
ure — we  should  much  prefer  the  latter. 
Q.  Why? 
A.  Because  it  exists  in  an  equally  soluble  and  less 
caustic  form. 
Q.  What  do  you  mean  by  “  caustic  ?  ” 
A.  Comparing  grape  wine  and  grape  brandy,  the 
latter  is  the  more  caustic  form  of  liquor. 
Q.  Do  you  regard  fertilizers  then  as  stimulants  ? 
A.  Not  at  all  in  the  usual  sense  of  the  word.  All 
foods  in  a  condensed  form  become  stimulants — many 
nutritious  foods  become  poisons  if  sufficiently  con¬ 
centrated. 
Q.  Why  do  not  farmers  use  fertilizers  in  sufficient 
quantity  upon  potatoes  ?  ” 
A.  For  several  reasons.  The  cost  is  startling. 
Again,  many  farmers  use  inferior  fertilizers  because  the 
price  is  low,  which  means  either  that  the  fertilizer  is  low 
in  soluble  plant  food,  or  that  the  food  exists  in  a  form 
regarded  by  the  plant  as  “ persona  non  grata.”*  Farm¬ 
ers  can  not  know  just  what  fertilizers  will  give  them 
*  That  Is,  not  acceptable.  The  term  seems  as  appropriate  In  agrlcul-1 
ture  as  In  diplomacy 
