85o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
DEC. 5 
A Defense of the Moon. 
B R , Rushvillk, Neb.—I n answer to E. 
O. B’s, Ireland, Ohio, question, “ Has the 
moon any influence on the weather ? ” The 
Rural— on page 689— told him No 1 in a 
way emphatic enough to resurrect his great- 
grand mother. Dear Rural, I rather like 
your plain ways, and guess you are not 
superstitious about Friday; therefore I in¬ 
vite your attention to a little philosophy. 
On a level table place a small drop of 
water; one fourth of an inch from it place 
another five times as large ; connect them 
by a small channel, and the large drop will 
absorb the small one. Matter attracts mat¬ 
ter. The earth is 49 times larger than the 
moon. A rifle ball has force because it has 
motion. The earth moves 19 miles per 
second. Therefore it carries the moon and 
whirls it with ease as an Indian does his 
hatchet; yet the moon attracts the earth a 
little. This is proved by the tides. These 
reinforce ocean currents. Currents affect 
climate. Atmosphere has weight and is 
attracted by the moon. We cannot see the 
effect of lunar attraction on the atmos¬ 
phere, but lunar mirages sometimes oc¬ 
cur, and these could not happen except by 
attraction causing unequal density. We 
know also th>'t the moon only presents one 
side toward the earth, although it revolves 
slowly. This must be caused by unequal 
density of mass or local attraction, probably 
magnetic. We know, too, that the earth’s 
equator is expanded 26 miles, we say by 
equatorial motion, yet the tides press above 
even that. The pole star informs us that 
the earth’s axis gyrates a little, that it 
takes a long time to complete a cj cle—22,000 
years ; hence it is plain that lunar attrac¬ 
tion by drawing a little more at the equator 
than at the poles, holds the earth from wab¬ 
bling, and makes day and night and sum¬ 
mer ana winter come with mathematical 
precision, and that means that the moon 
influences the weather. It is found by dig 
ging (and that is the way to find whdom, 
and not by saj ing “ No I ” because you don’t 
want to be bothered) that the earth is a 
molten mass with a crust, and the moon 
attracts the interior fluid mass as much as 
it does the ocean; perturbations of unequal 
pressure cause the sinking of large strips 
of land, and the sultry, stifling atmosphere 
peculiar to earthquakes. Great tidal waves 
swallow cities. Ah, yes, the moon influences 
the weather. I have said nothing about the 
Influences of moonlight on the weather, 
though a good deal might be said on this 
matter also. 
Counting California Orange Trees. 
J. H. Hale, Connecticut.— Under the 
head of “ Brevities” page 804 in The Rural 
of Nov. 14th, occurs this : “Doctors disagree 
and even statisticians sometimes differ. 
For instance, Mr. Porter’s census found 
only 300,000 orange trees in California, while 
the State Board of Agriculture has found 
4 000,000 of which 1,000,000 are bearing.” 
Now as special agent in cnarge of this in¬ 
vestigation, the results of which have not 
been officially published by the Census 
Office, I wish to correct this misstatement; 
which is no doubt founded upon the state¬ 
ment made by Special Agent Whitehead at 
the recent meeting of the American Pomo- 
logical Society, that there were found up¬ 
wards of 3,000,000 orange trees in Califor¬ 
nia. Some newspaper in publishing the 
paragraph dropped one cipher, hence the 
“300,000.” I have not the exact figures at 
hand here in Georgia ; but they will soon 
be published from the Census Office, and if 
I remember aright will show quite an ex¬ 
cess of 3.000,000. Then it must be remem¬ 
bered that while the census figures show 
the number of trees planted previous to 
Jane 1, 1890, the figures given out by the 
California State Board of Agriculture are 
for all the trees planted down to Septembtr 
1,1891—16 months later than those of the 
census. And having recently made a com¬ 
parison of both sets of figures by counties 
and districts, I was pleased to note that in 
almost every instance the State Board’s 
figures showed just about the increase in 
tach district that the information in the 
census bulletin indicated, therefore instead 
of the “ statisticians disagreeing,” a careful 
student will find a most wonderful agree¬ 
ment, which would indicate that Califor¬ 
nia has a very thorough census of her citrus 
fruit trees, and especially as the two inves¬ 
tigations have each been made entirely 
independent of the other. 
R N.-Y.—The figures were taken from an 
editorial article in the New York World, 
published before any account of Mr. White¬ 
head’s statistics had reached us. There is 
little doubt that the error occurred in the 
way here indicated by Mr. Hale. See the 
figures given by Mr. Whitehead at the meet¬ 
ing of the American Pomological Society, 
in our short-hand report of the convention, 
elsewhere in this issue. 
A New Trick of an Old Enemy. 
S. A. Little, Seneca County, N. Y — 
When picking our apples for barreling this 
year, a great many were found with the 
calyx badly injured by some insect. Exam¬ 
ination showed that the injury was almost 
entirely on the surface; in most cases not 
penetrating farther than half an inch The 
larva when found was a pinkish worm re¬ 
sembling the larva of the codling moth, 
(Carpocapsa pomonella ) A sample of the 
work with one of the workers was sent to 
Prof. Lintner, and he said that though he 
had never seen the codling moth work in 
this manner, he could see no reason for sup¬ 
posing the larva to belong to any other 
species. Some more specimens were sent 
to him at his request with the hope that 
they might develop into perfect insects, 
so that their identity might be proved. In 
most Instances the calyx of the apple is the 
only part injured; but some specimens were 
found where a place as large as a dime was 
bitten and ia others both the calyx and the 
stem end of the apple were injured while 
the center of the fruit was unhurt. Hun¬ 
dreds of dollars’ worth of apples, otherwise 
perfect, have been rejected in Wayne and 
Seneca Counties on account of this small 
marauder. Farmers will be obliged to 
work together in their efforts to expel the 
codling moth before they can reasonably 
expect crops of fine perfect fruit. 
THE PROFIT OF GOOD COUNTRY 
ROADS. 
Mr. Isaac B. Potter discusses this ques¬ 
tion in the November Forum in a matter 
of fact, telling way. 
The common roads in either of many 
counties of any State exceed in length the 
aggregate mileage of all the railroads of 
that State, and three of our States can be 
easily selected in which the total length of 
public roads, exclusive of town and city 
streets, is greater than the combined mile¬ 
age of all the railroads in the world. 
Measuring a million miles or more in its 
various ramifications, dissolving in the 
rains of April, baking and pulverizing be¬ 
neath the rays of the midsummer sun, 
drifting and disappearing in the whirlwinds 
of November, and presenting at all times 
but little more than a roughened streak of 
soil to serve as a land highway for the great 
volume of internal traffic, the time seems 
to have come when the American common 
road may rightfully assert itself as the 
most expensive, and by all odds the most 
extravagantly maintained, of all the pub¬ 
lic institutions. To the intelligent for¬ 
eigner who comes to our shores, the Ameri¬ 
can “ system ” of road maintenance is little 
short of ridiculous ; to the thoughtful and 
Inquiring native, it is only a kind of legal¬ 
ized negligence, a relic of feudalism bor¬ 
rowed from England in the old days of gov¬ 
ernmental poverty, and placed in the keep¬ 
ing of the most patient and long suffering 
of our industrial classes, who have been 
gradually led by “the ensnaring wiles of 
custom ” to endure and embrace it. What 
are the pecuniary benefits of good roads f 
It is a national question; for these roads 
are the common care and property of all 
the people, and any effect which grows out 
of their improvement must be found 
directly in the economic condition of the 
persons and property within their widened 
influence. 
No great country can afford to neglect its 
farmers, or to abandon any reasonable 
measure by which the encouragement of 
agriculture is likely to be insured. Yet agri¬ 
culture within the United States, if not 
actually declining, has certainly witnessed 
a long season of depression, and has been 
nowhere spurred to the same conditions of 
increase and thrift that have marked so 
many Industries in the cities and towns. 
To them are accorded all the improvements 
of the age—improvements conceived in self- 
interest, wrought by capital, labeled with 
a price, and displayed In the marts of huck¬ 
stering trade. To them the common road 
appears to be of remote concern. They send 
and receive by the canals, the railroads and 
the steamships; and their finished and 
refined products are carried a thousand 
miles at less price per ton than it costs the 
farmer to move the same weight of crude 
material from his farm to the nearest local 
market. Institute any comparison you 
will, and it seems bound to appear that— 
in spite of his intelligence, toil and sobriety, 
and in the face of an increased consump 
tion and growing market—the American 
farmer is badly handicapped In his indus¬ 
trial race with other branches of society. 
From an economic outlook, the result has 
not been inspiring. In the great State of 
New York, where the value of farm crops 
was exceeded last year by those of only two 
States in the entire Union, the dispropor 
tlon between the wealth of country and 
town has become so marked that the ( ffi- 
cially estimated value of farm lands last 
year was less than eight per cent, and that 
of the incorporated cities and villages more 
than 92 per cent, of the total taxable values 
within the State. The list of abandoned 
farms in many States is growing to such 
length as to excite public comment and in¬ 
vite official inquiry. 
But the public roads, though placed, for 
some obscure reason, within the immediate 
care of the farming population, have a par¬ 
amount importance to the people at large, 
to whom, indeed, they in fact belong. The 
common road, unlike the magnificent rail¬ 
roads and the endless miles of telegraph, is 
an institution of the body politic, and it is 
a sorry comment to say that the government 
has thus far denied to the improvement of 
its public roads the same liberal and intel¬ 
ligent support that it has showered upon 
the schemes of private capital under the 
spurring importunities of an investor’s 
lobby. The great volume of internal trade 
in every State is the common road trade. 
England and Wales, according to recent 
parliamentary returns, are spending up¬ 
wards of £4,000,000 annually in their main¬ 
tenance of an excellent system of macada 
mlzed roads; this sum being exclusive of 
expenses for similar purposes in the Met 
ropolitan district, where they amount to 
an additional sum of £280,000. France 
maintains an admirable system of highway 
management under direction of the General 
Government, and has to-day 130,000 miles of 
hard, smooth roads, kept up by a method of 
continuous repair, which has been shown to 
be the most effective as well as the most 
economical; while the sum of $L 8 , 000.000 an¬ 
nually spent by the French Republic in the 
care of her common roads is productive 
of more immediate and substantial revenue 
—to say nothing of the insured content¬ 
ment of the raral classes—than any other 
public fund devoted to economic ends. In 
Belgium, Baden, Hesse Darmstadt, Italy, 
and other Earopean States, the main roads 
have for years been made and maintained 
at the expense of the General Government, 
and millions of dollars are annually appro- 
(Continued on next page.) 
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