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MOORE’S RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
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DO PLANTS GROW IN THE NIGHT. 
The popular teaching j« that plants do not 
grow in the night. This doctrine is accepted, 
1 believe, by vegetable physiologists in gen¬ 
eral. The theory is, that during the day, or 
in the presence of sunlight, the leaves of 
plants absorb or inhale carbonic acid gas, 
analyzing it and appropriating the carbon to 
the structure of the growing plant, while the 
oxygen is expelled again; but in the night, 
in the absence of sunlight, this operation is 
reversed, and the plant really loses instead of 
gaining substance. A little experiment that 
I recently made seems to show that some 
plants, contrary to the common belief, do 
grow in the night. 
I selected a stalk of growing Indian corn 
(Zm ways), about two feet high. Choosing 
tiie center blade, the tip end of which was 
just making its appearance, T set ft stake by 
it and marked its bight at sundown. The 
night was very warm, clear and sultry; the 
moon shone a part of the night. At sunrise 
the blade had grown one and a-half inches. 
The next day was warm but cloudy, with a 
light shower early hi the morning. During 
I lie day it grew one inch. The next, night, 
warm and cloudy; growth one inch. The 
second day, warm and clear; growth one and 
a-half inches. Third night, warm, with thun¬ 
der clouds in the horizon the most of the 
night; growth one and a-half inches, Tlie 
third day was clear and warm till 3 o’clock, 
when a light thunder shower came up; 
growth this day was one inch, it will be 
seen that during tlie three days and nights 
the blade increased in length four inches 
during the night and three and one-half 
inches during the day time, showing a greater 
increase during the night than day. The 
time of measuring in each case was at sun¬ 
rise and sunset. 
I find the opinion quite common among 
oiir farmers that warm nights are necessary 
to make corn grow well, and that it makes a 
large part of its growth in the night. Tlie 
above experiment seems to confirm this idea. 
But if this be true, what becomes of the 
doctrine of tlie absorption and elimination of 
the atmospheric gases during sunshine and 
the reverse during the night, i Are the doc¬ 
tors mistaken, or ure we mistaken in our ob¬ 
servations of the teachings of the plant itself / 
Kokomo, Ind. L. J. Templin. 
-■»■» + — 
is to inform them, by Baying, ‘‘1 must raise 
some money to pay debts, what can you 
give me a bushel for my grain (” That gives 
them to understand that you are obliged to 
sell, uo matter what you get, and they take 
the advantage of you. 
--■ 
PREPARED BANDS FOR SHEAVES.? 
A French correspondent of the Massaclm- 
sets Ploughman, says: —The approach of 
harvest has revived tlie subject of employing 
prepared bands for sheaves; hitherto bands 
were prepared from rye straw, and sold at 
the rate of oOf. per thousand ; they hardly 
served beyond a single harvest and suffered 
from the attacks of rats and mice. The plan 
at present coining into favor is to use bands 
made of tarred cord, with a light wire hook 
at one end and a series of knots at the other 
to bite into it. These sell at the rate of 50 or 
80f. per thousand, hold good for four years 
and, after binding the sheaves, arc used to 
bundle the straw when threshed. A binder 
executes three times more work by having 
the bauds prepared. The hook end is kept 
under Lhe left foot when the slieaf is to be 
tied, the binder, by means of a hand crook in 
light iron, draws the knotted end under the 
band itself and home to tlie hook. 
•--— 
Working Corn in the West.—A Minnesota 
paper says ;—The great evil to the corn crop 
In this part of the West is, farmers will work 
it too much. Of course the weeds must be 
subdued, but the practice of putting a shovel 
plow into the corn field up to the beam, is a 
bad one, especially after it is in the tassel or 
silk. Before that time this kind of a plow 
may be used with profit. The breaking off 
of the roots of corn by plowing lias a tend¬ 
ency to put back the ripening of the crop. 
New roots and fibers have to form, which re¬ 
tards the growth of the ears and grain. 
more than a grass. But the pretty, pinkish, 
coiling stigmas and yellow stamens are even 
now succeeded by small pods thickly clus¬ 
tered at the summit of the tough stalk, each 
containing a large quantity of fine, powdery 
seeds. This is not the only plant popularly 
called a grass which has no affinity with the 
grass family; but the very dark brown 
aspect which it imparts to the meadows 
warrants the use of tlie term “black” in de¬ 
scribing it. Botanically, this is known as 
./miens g&rardi. 
Turning now inland, across the unculti¬ 
vated areas given up to the cattvier, the 
bayberry and wild grape vines, wondering 
why land so easily susceptible cf cultivation 
has not been cleared long since, we presently 
reach a field that is giveil up to weeds ; and 
certainly the 
CHARlOCKlCR WHO RADISH 'RAPHANUS RAPHANISTRUMi 
is no improvement upon tlie primitive occu¬ 
pants of the soil. This is one of the worst 
weeds our farmers have to contend with; 
and where once it gets as thoroughly estab¬ 
lished as it has on some farms that, I know it 
is well nigh impossible to eradicate it. A 
tradition, for which 1 will not vouch, says 
that it was formerly sown there by the 
revered proprietor as a plant of great, value. 
However this may be, the rascally boys who 
once worked until midnight sowing it, upon 
a grain field, us a joke, were doing the work 
of the one whom the Scriptures say “ came 
out and sowed tares,” and should have been 
made to smart severely for their sport. Near 
the border ol this field 1 next came across a 
creeping, or rather low-climbing, plant that 
1 had never seen before in bloom. The flow- 
eis were just tlie shape and size of those of 
the cultivated Morning-glory, though of a 
light, pinkish-purple color, not as pretty as 
they. This is known as the 
the tension does not release them from their 
confinement nor allow them to scatter their 
pollen until some insect, or other foreign 
body touches them, when they fly out elasti- 
cnlly, spreading a shower of pollen around. 
A cultivator of rare plants once imported 
this shrub from Eurojie, and in showing his 
collection to a friend reserved it, to the last 
as the greatest rarity of all. The friend, who 
knew that it grew plentifully within two or 
three miles of the place, certainly deserves 
credit for not enlightening him, as he must 
have been so strongly tempted to do. Still 
further on, amongst the meadow grasses, 
grew the 
SILVER WEED <POTENTIUA ANSERIHA , 
a near relative of the common Cinquefoil, 
but a much more striking plant. The pri- 
mately-divided leaves arc all from the root, 
about a foot in length and silvery-scurfy un¬ 
derneath. The flower-stalks are about the 
same hight and crowned with a small, light 
yellow blossom about the size of that of the 
strawberry, which the fruit somewhat re¬ 
sembles in appearance. A taste would doubt¬ 
less have destroyed the illusion, but I did not 
place confidence enough in appearances to 
try it. Along these salt marshes also grew the 
SEA CLUB-RUSH SCIRPUS MARITIMUS 1 , 
with simple flowers like all the sedges, hav¬ 
ing only bristles to represent the floral en¬ 
velopes and packed together in dense, brown 
heads a half-inch or more in length. Three 
or four of these spikes at the summit of a 
culm one or two feet high, and surrounded 
by several grassy leaves, make up the tout 
ensemble of this salt marsh species. But we 
had now reached 
Jmlusii|ial Sfopip. 
A JUNE RAMBLE BY A BOTANIST. 
SOWED CORN. 
Some time ago I made an inquiry through 
the Rural New-Yorker in regard to sow¬ 
ing corn for fodder, tiie manner of sowing, 
the kind to sow and when. I received an 
answer from the editor; also from a sub¬ 
scriber. I acted partly on advice given and 
partly on my own knowledge. Now for the 
result:—I have its fine a piece of fodder corn 
as one could find if he was to search far and 
wide. The corn was common, eight-rowed 
white, and I sowed, on naturally good soil, 
broadcast, without manure. The ground 
was plowed in the spring when I was about 
plowing for field corn, the first of May, and 
laid in that condition until the middle of 
June, when I sowed the seed and harrowed 
well after sowing. 1 could not have taken a 
season that one would have felt the need of 
some such thing for soiling stock as this, on 
account of the dry weather. The pasture is 
nothing here; to see the cattle about feeding 
time marching up for their daily rations does 
one’s heart, good; and the way they punish 
the juicy stalks ol’ corn is a caution. I send 
this as my first experience in raising corn for 
fodder. As long as 1 run a farm I shall man¬ 
age to have a piece of corn sowed for stock. 
I remain a reader of the Rural New-Yorker 
and am thankful for the information gained 
therefrom. Horace Truman. 
-»»» 
WHEN TO SELL GRAIN. 
A correstonoent of the Evening Wiscon¬ 
sin writes I would say to you the one great 
mistake of the farming community is this: 
Tlie practice of contracting debts to be paid 
in Die fall of the year instead of having them 
come due in J one or July, in order to have 
the benefit of fall and spring markets. I find 
a great many of the farmers sell their last 
bushel of grain at one-half or two-thirds its 
value in order to pay their liabilities, and so 
lose the profits, thereby damaging themselves 
and tlie surrounding community by draining 
the country of evei-y dollar, leaving nothing 
to make improvements with. I have noticed 
that the middlemen are fulty aware of your 
obligations, or, if not, the first thing you do 
Not “through a storm of leaden hail,” 
but through thick clouds of rolling dust that 
at times hid from view the road before us, 
did our family party take the six-mile ride 
that brought us to the cool, shaded groves 
that border Mattitude Creek, near where it 
finds its outlet into the Sound, and where the 
fresh, salt breezes sweep across the level 
meadows that alone lie between us and the 
vast, salt ness that glittere and sparkles in the 
summer sunshine with dazzling brightness, a 
half-mile distant. 
The objects we Juad in view were various, 
the mule portion of the party being in pur¬ 
suit of those bivalve mollusks yclept Qua- 
hogs; the Ladies having in view a day in the 
open air and a pic-nic under the trees; and 
the writer being incited by the hope of ob 
taing botanical specimens. Wagons kept 
arriving until our village was pretty well 
represented on the creek by men euougli to 
clean out no small number of tlie aforesaid 
mollusks, and a goodly gathering of tlie fair 
sex in the grove. Doubtless there is enough 
of the doloe far niente in our composition 
for us to have enjoyed reclining there on the 
bank at the foot of a wide-spreading oak, 
simply gazing upon the bright scene before 
us and listening to the voices of the birds and 
tlie babies; but with portfolios and collecting 
box in hand, we speedily sallied forth on our 
ramble, gathering first some specimens of 
the earliest species of 
HAWKWEED HIFRACIUM VEN0SUM-, 
whose bright, golden-yellow flowers were 
now quite abundant, but growing as it does 
in light, sandy soil, tlie withering leaves 
showed how it, felt the drouth of the last six 
weeks. This is rather a delicate - looking 
plant, of the compound family, with a clus¬ 
ter of twenty or thirty flowers in a single 
head having flat, strap-shaped corollas, like 
those of its nea r relative, the common Dan¬ 
delion, but much smaller, the whole bead 
being about a half-inch in diameter. The 
ueariy leafless stem arises from a cluster of 
purple-veined root-leaves to the hight of one 
or two feet, bearing at the summit a very 
loose puuicle of flowers which bloom only in 
the morning and only for a day. Passing 
into the edge of the salt marsh, I pulled some 
of the small rush known as 
BLACK GRASS, 
wliieh covers large areas of our salt meadows 
and makes a valuable hay, much relished by 
stuck in winter, and which is all as carefully 
cut and secured as the best of our cultivated 
grasses. This grows from six inches to one 
and a-half feet in liight, and iu the structure i 
of its minute flowers resembles a lily much * 
WILD MORNING-GLORY CAlYSTEQfA EXPIUM) 
and is common in wet meadows, but not 
often found in dry soil as here. A little 
further on, in a grass field, grew the 
CONE FLOWER 'RUDBECKIA HIRTA>. 
This is a plant two or three feet high, be¬ 
longing, like the common Daisy, to the Com¬ 
posite family, and having heads somewhat 
larger, but with fewer bright yellow rays, 
and a purple center or disk which is cone- 
shaped and like a small sugar-loaf in size. It 
is getting to be a troublesome weed in some 
places, but, unlike most immigrants of that 
kind, it comes from the West instead of the 
Old World, being a native of our Western 
States and having advanced backward in 
clover seed from that region. Although it 
was so early in the season, the blue grass 
that filled one field was even now dead and 
dried up, so severely was the want of rain 
for a month past felt on this dry, sandy soil. 
Still [further on, in a piece of open woods, I 
found a few specimens of a loose-flowered 
CONEX (C. DIGITALIS'. 
These grass-like sedges are neither conspicu¬ 
ous nor handsome to the ordinary observer, 
but the botanical student finds much to in¬ 
terest him in studying their varying forms 
and degrees of relationship. Emerging from 
the wild woods, where adore are much more 
to my liking than the miscellaneous ones of 
a crowded city, I next crossed a field of 
strawberries of this springs planting; for be 
it recollected we were in Mat lituck, tlie 
“head-center” of the Bmall fruit and mar¬ 
ket-gardening operations of tlie East. This 
heing the case, I was interested to observe 
that the fruit had not been pinched from the 
vines in its earlier stages to promote their 
spreading, but that the plants hung full of 
the large, ripe berries, I “tested” their 
quality, and can bear testimony to their 
toothsomeness. But it would not do to liuger 
here and the upper waters of the creek are 
invitingly near, it is a luxury to wade into 
its sandy margin and feel its cooling effects 
after a long walk through tlie dry and dusty 
uplands. Here it is quite a broad aud pretty 
sheet of water, and on the opposite bank, 
surrounded by forest, is a picturesque cot¬ 
tage owned by a city gentleman, who knows 
how to enjoy such surroundings, judging by 
the rowboats moored at the shore. Passing 
along the grassy margin of the creek, I 
picked up some of the 
WATER PIMPERNEL, OR BROOK WEED, (SAMOLUS VAIER- 
AHDt), 
a little, branching herb a few inches in liight, 
with very small, delicate, white flowers ; 
then, on a sandy bank, I found the first speci¬ 
men of the 
CALICO-BUSH, OR MOUNTAIN LAUREL, CKALMIA LATIFOLIA,) 
I had ever seen in bloom, although it is quite 
a common shrub, growing five to ten feet 
high and literally covered with huge bunches 
of pink-white flowers, each flower an inch in 
diameter. The stamens are confined in little 
pouches of the corolla, so that the filaments 
bend like a bow when the flower opens. Yet 
THE OLD, MOSS-GROWN MILL, 
which deserve* a moment’s notice. It forms 
a part of a very pretty picture with its dam 
stretching across f he marshes, the high cliffs 
on cither side, and the green and brown 
meadows through which the creek meanders 
towards the low cliffs which shut in the view 
in the direction of the Sound beyond it. A 
small 'sloop, which runs as a sort of market 
ferryboat to the Connecticut shore, is tied to 
the dam; but the mil] is still, for the tide is 
not yet quite down, and it is the tide alone 
that is depended upon to move the huge 
water wheat How desirable it is that we 
j should learn to utilize more of this tidal pow¬ 
er that is daily exerted in sufficient quantity 
to do a thousand t imes the labor that is douo 
in the whole world. When wo have foimd 
out how to profitably UBe a small portion of 
the force daily wasted in a single one of our 
coast bays, we shall have done much toward 
economizing our coal supply. Power is here 
in amounts perfectly inexhaustible and prac¬ 
tically infinite; but. who will teach us how to 
make it compete with the steam engine in 
driving the spindles aud the lathes of a thou¬ 
sand mills and factories ? 
But we must not linger here, for it is past 
noon, and, tired and hungry, thirsty and 
perspiring under a cloudy sky with its close 
atmosphere, we scent afar off tlie bounteous 
repast and tlie cool draughts that await us, 
I and press on. The banks along the side of 
tlie marshes become more steep and rocky, 
with a tortuous outline, and were covered 
with a fine tall growth of hickories and other 
trees, forming most beautiful groves which, 
it seemed to me, were now, or soon would be, 
worth far more t han they ever could be after 
they were cleared; and yet the short-sighted 
owners had, at one poiut, commenced de¬ 
stroying them for the sake of obtaining a 
lit tle cord wood. In a region where there 
was no more level land to cultivate and the 
thinness of population rendered its desir¬ 
ability as a pleasure resort questionable, such 
desecration would be more pardonable. But 
here it is simply killing tlie goose that would 
lay golden eggs. In these rocky woods I 
gathered the 
MAPLE-LEAVED WHITE ROD (VILURHUM ALERIFOLIUM), 
whose leaves differ from those of other 
species of Viburnum in beiug larger and 
deeply lobed, resembling much those of the 
Red Maple. It is a small shrub, from three 
to six feet in hight, hearing broad, flat clus¬ 
ters of small, white flowers. Here, too, was 
tlie congenial home of the little 
TWO-LEAVED SMILACIHA (S. LIFOLlAi, 
now just out of bloom, and of some Carices 
of doubtfid species; but, passing on, I soon 
reached tlie camping ground, somewhat dis¬ 
satisfied with having found so little that was 
new in an unexplored locality. When, how¬ 
ever, I was seated on the grassy hill-side at 
the table spread upon the ground, I liad rea¬ 
son to be more than satisfied; for with fresh¬ 
ly-roasted clams, plenty of strawberries, and 
cakes, pies and all the el ee.te.ras that go to 
make up a pic-pic dinner, spread before us, 
with the appetizing sea-breeze blowing over 
us, how could one help forgetting to be 
1 * temperate in all things ? ” Cirsium. 
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