636 
September 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
is the coarse fodder. He would prefer to have no hay 
but clover, but grows some Timothy. The meadows 
are plowed up when they run out, and reseeded—the 
favorite seeding grain crop beiDg mixed oats at-d 
wheat, which is mostly cut green and fed in the stable. 
This comes in just before green corn—about July 1. 
A good deal of green corn is fed in the stables besides 
what goes into the silo. There are usually 40 acres of 
corn fodder and five or six in turnips. 
Summing the Matter Up. 
That is the story of “certified milk.” There is no 
dream or fancy about it, but a plain statement of fact. 
The farm is at Caldwell, N. J., where anybody can see 
it. Mr. Francisco has nothing to hide. “Certified 
milk” is a reality. 
What is the lesson we learn from all this ? Selling 
water is a good 'Way to make a price out of a cheap 
article, but selling blood beats it. We told two weeks 
ago what we mean by “ blood.” It is pedigree and 
guarantee. The “blood” in “ certified milk” means 
the faith that the doctors have that Mr. Francisco is 
living up to every line of the contract that we have 
printed. There is a demand everywhere for this 
“ blood.” In every town aDd village there are people 
who are willing to pay for quality. Why do you not 
take steps to satisfy these “ blood” thirsty folks by 
taking pains to satisfy them that there is pedigree in 
the food you have to sell? Put these articles on 
“certified milk” before the leading doctors of your 
town or city and see if they will not cooperate with 
you in just such a scheme. n w. c. 
(Under this heading we propose to print questions that seem to call 
for a variety of answers. We ask all who have any experiences or 
suggestions to offer to talk Into The R. N.-Y.'S ear at once.) 
How Start the Orchard ?—I intend to set out an 
orchard of 1,000 apple trees next spring; the land is 
now in grass. Would it be advisable to plow it this 
fall, and what crop would be best to put on it in the 
spring ? It is a sandy loam with natural drainage. 
New York. b. w. m. 
Clover in a Vineyard. —I have a vineyard on hard 
clay ground that needs fertilizing. If I sow clover 
and let it grow up and fall down, won’t it be of more 
benefit than cultivation ? Wouldn’t it prevent the 
drought from injuring the vines so much in such a 
dry time as this ? T * c. F. 
Sheridan, Ind. 
Lime on Sandy Soil.— Would the use of lime on a 
sandy ridge for water-melons and musk-melons be 
advisable? If so, how much would be required per 
acre ? I can get a large quantity of refuse lime at the 
kilns here ; would it be a benefit to small fruit land ? 
Hampton, Ill. M> F - 
R. N -Y.—We cannot say. The question is merely 
this: Does the land need lime? Our friend must 
answer that question himself by experimenting. 
Florida Phosphate for Oranges.— I would like to 
ask a question which the experiment station reports 
at hand and a careful perusal of The Rural do not 
answer. The obscure point is the value of natural, 
finely ground, soft Florida phosphates. In a Florida 
grove for two years past I have used the best grade of 
mineral fertilizers and have annually plowed under 
two crops of cow peas. To avoid the great expense of 
the mineral salts, my proposition is this : The cheapest 
form of nitrogen is produced by the cow peas. Prob¬ 
ably the cheapest and certainly a very available form 
of potash is furnished by tobacco stems. The cheapest 
form in which phosphate can be procured is in the 
natural phosphate. Would the last be available 
enough so that by using an inordinate quantity the 
first time—say, a ton of 50 per cent rock to the acre— 
with a suitable amount of tobacco stems before or 
after sowing the cow peas, a successful system of fer¬ 
tilizing -would result? The soil is a dark-brown sand, 
well supplied with humus, considering Florida condi- 
ditions, and producing very high-flavored fruit. In 
considering this matter, it must be borne in mind that 
the orange roots are active 12 months in the year and 
that immediate availability of a fertilizer is of less 
moment than a considerable saving in cost. I would 
like to add that in few Northern towns and villages 
is there a market for the refuse stems of cigar factories 
and the waste from tobacco factories. I use the stems 
as a mulch for bulbs, both winter and summer, but 
what would be superior to them on strawberry beds, 
or as a mulch wherever one is needed ? c. l. m. 
Milwaukee, Wis. 
R. N.-Y.—Dr. E. H. Jenkins of the Connecticut Ex¬ 
periment Station sends us this note about the matter : 
“ I know of no experiments which will answer these 
inquiries and they can be answered only by experi¬ 
ment. My own opinion—only a guess—is that the soft 
phosphates, applied as the inquirer suggests, would do 
as well as any form of phosphoric acid he could use 
for cow peas.” We hope to obtain fuller information 
from some of our Florida readers. 
A NEW EARLY GRAPE—THE SUPERB. 
A few bunches of this grape were sent to us August 
5 by the or'ginator, A. F. Rice, Griswold ville, Ga., 
from seed of the Eumelan set out in 1880, near South 
Weymouth, Mass. The claim is made that it is of the 
best quality, a good keeper and shipper, hardy and 
productive. The vine starts late, and the berries ripen 
early —two weeks earlier than the Concord. 
The value of this grape depends upon how it will 
succeed. It closely resembles its parent, the Eumelan, 
which is “worth its weight in gold” in some places, 
and is next to worthless in most other places. 
The bunches sent to us are rather long, slightly 
shouldered. The berries are set together just close 
enough. They are of medium size, black, with blue 
bloom. The quality is excellent, being sweet, rich 
and juicy, like the Eumelan, and even better. The 
flesh is firm, meaty ; the 6kin is tough enough to make 
The Superb Grape. Fig. 212. 
it a good shipper without doubt. It is hard to say too 
much in favor of the quality. The question is, will it 
succeed more generally than its parent ? If not, it is 
worth a trial merely where the Eumelan succeeds. If 
it is adapted to general culture, and as early as repre¬ 
sented, it is worth a trial everywhere that grapes 
will succeed. 
What They Say. 
Trimming Sweet Potatoes. —I have trimmed my 
sweet potato vines for a number of years. Results : 
larger tubers, better flavor and a more satisfactory 
yield and the best of food for milch cows. This is in 
reply to query on page 592. e. r. shaukland. 
Louisiana. 
A Strawberry* Insect. —The insect which eats the 
leaves of B. W. O’s strawberry plants (page 596) may 
be the Black Paria—Paria aterrima. This is a little 
brownish or black beetle, say, half as large as an 
apple seed, which riddles the leaves with small holes 
as if a charge of small shot had passed through them. 
The pests eat principally at night and in the day time 
may be found under the loose earth at the foot of the 
plants. When numerous, they are a serious pest. 
The larvas live at the base of the plant and in this 
State may be known by some other name. Perhaps it 
is identical with the crown-borer, as suggested in The 
Rural. I do not know whether there are two broods 
or only one. Our experiment station advises the use 
of Paris-green in combination with the Bordeaux Mix¬ 
ture. I have used the former alone this season with 
entire success so far. If there is a first brood previous 
to picking, I should not wish to take the risk of using 
Paris-green at that season. Plowing up as soon as the 
first crop is off will help to keep the pests in check. 
Have any readers tried the Bordeaux Mixture for rust 
on strawberries ? J. w. B. 
Salem, Mass. 
Those Old Horses. —My faithful old mare 20 years 
old, is not able to work any more ; but she will not 
be disposed of at aDy price. I have a pair of her colts 
four and six years old, that are able to support her as 
long as she lives, besides the other colts that 1 have 
sold which she has raised for me. I kept her mother 
three years after she could not work, and did not lose 
by it. I think it is a sin and a shame to sell these 
faithful old animals. If we are not able to keep 
them, we should take them to the woods and kill and 
bury them. I think there will b° no sin in that. 
ANDREW M. LAGRANGE. 
Gardening Notes. —Several of my Hubbard squash 
vines wilted as if killed by borers. Having sclit the 
stalks, I was surprised to find none. Inside each near 
the root were several insects resembling winged ants. 
The plants were half eaten away below the surface 
and withered to the roots. The remaining vines were 
saved by using the kerosene emulsion. The same 
remedy was very effective in destroying borers, as 
was also tobacco dust for bugs as recommended by 
Gardening. 
Burpee’s Iceberg lettuce is unsurpassed for family 
use. It grows quickly a large head of the finest 
quality and remains a long time during the hottest 
weather without running to seed. amateur. 
Water on a Wire. —J. H. R., Smock, Pa., will find 
a cheap and easy way of bringing the water from his 
spring illustrated in The R. N.-Y. some years ago by 
D. H. Divine, Lock Sheldrake, N. Y. It was simply a 
No. 9 wire suspended from the house to the spring in 
such a manner that with a small pulley on it and a 
tin pail attached to the latter, the bucket went to the 
spring of itself and dipped out the water ; a small 
copper wire was fastened to the pulley and with a 
windlass it was drawn home. Such an arrangement 
will answer very well in a small way, but if water is 
wanted in large quantities some motive power should 
be used. It would be well to have a steel windmill 
to do the laborious work. T-me is money, and if 14 
rods are traveled for every pail of water used and the 
average is put at 10 pails per day for a family of four 
persons, 160 miles must be traveled in a year to do the 
work and not light work either. B. w. G. 
Liberty, N. Y. 
A Pathmaster Talks. —In a recent issue of The 
Rural I noticed illustrations of some roads, and hav¬ 
ing just finished working the assessment in our dis¬ 
trict, I feel like relieving my mind. 
As a little more than half of the road tax is levied 
on property of non-residents, it is a herculean task 
and makes a man many enemies to get the time 
worked out. Many of the resident landholders will 
not work an hour more than the assessment calls for, 
and I have come to the conclusion that if we ever ex¬ 
pect better roads, roads pleasant to travel on, they 
must come through a money tax and judicious work. 
When farmers pay cash they will expect good 
roads. If I understand the new road law of New 
York State, it only applies to main market and stage 
roads, while the majority of roads leading to the main 
roads are left to take care of themselves in the old 
way, and if farmers can get :o town over them, that 
is about all they care for. 
A NEW YORK STATE PATHMASTER. 
Texas Fever Again. —A series of papers by J. C. 
Senger closed on page 539, claiming to show that ticks 
are the cause of the cattle disease known as Texas 
fever, bloody water, murrain, etc. “ No ticks, no 
Texas fever ” is an assumption so absurd that it ought 
to be called in question. Ticks have nearly disap¬ 
peared from our section, yet I think I have lost cattle 
from this disease, though they had no ticks on them. 
The disease is of recent origin, and owing to it we 
lose more or less cattle nearly every year. For many 
years within my recollection nobody lost an animal in 
the summer months. A few died in the late winter or 
early spring from starvation and neglect, while at the 
same time there were millions of ticks in summer. 
Sixty years ago I, with a colored boy about my age, 
used to drive home my father’s cattle from the forest 
at evening, and the legs of our pants used to be cov¬ 
ered with seed ticks and some of the larger size as 
thick as letters upon a page of a newspaper ; these we 
would brush off with a bunch of pennyroyal. The cows 
were covered with ticks of all sizes, some old enough 
to drop off, on the inside of the legs mainly ; the back 
of the udder was often shingled with the pests. None 
of the beasts died, however, or were ever sick at that 
season. Until about 35 or 40 years ago there was no 
cattle distemper, hog cholera or chicken cholera in our 
section. 
I do not think this cattle disease is infectious, be¬ 
cause, during the late war, 49 large Texas cattle were 
driven by my house in September and turned into a 
field of an adjoining farm to rest; they were fed on 
