FEB.48 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
cheaply brought from almost any reasonable 
depth ; a large trough can be placed close-by 
the well and protected on all sides by saw-dust, 
straw, or any other non-freezing substance. 
Fit a cover to the whole top, with a lid or door 
at one end that can be opened to permit the 
stock to drink. B.v having a spout so placed 
that when the trough is full the surplus water 
can run baek into the well or away in a drain 
the mill can l e run pretty nearly all the time 
in severe weather and thus no fear of frost 
need be felt. The better way, however, if the 
well is on higher ground than barn or stables, 
is to adopt the following planBy its side 
build a frost-proof room, aud in this, or in 
some other convenient frost-proof place, erect 
a lank large enough to hold two days' supply 
of water, and from this arrange so as to have 
the troughs always kept full; or, what is still 
better, have water in stables and barns always 
accessible to the stock and kept as far above 
the freezing point as possible. Of course, this 
will cost money'; so does a barn and a house, 
and the whole expense of suitable water ar¬ 
rangements to supply a large farm need not 
be over $200 or •'i'300. and the investment will 
pay a good interest in the increased comfort 
and thrift of stock; in the avoiding of labor of 
boys and men in shoveling snow and in cutting 
open the drinking holes, aud in the saving of 
loads and loads of valuable manure that are 
usually dropped by the road-side or on the ice, 
to be washed away and lost in the Soring floods. 
I have a wind engine, pump, tank and sys¬ 
tem of water pipes, carrying water all over my 
cattle barns, sheep pens, horse barn, into the 
house, besides hydrants in the flower garden, by 
the roadside, in the barn-yard and in the orch¬ 
ards, supplying an abundance of pure water 
for all purposes. It has been running over 
three yeurB, and could easily furnish four or 
five times as much water as it now does, and 
in all that time it has not cost a cent for re¬ 
pairs. Although my cows in Summer run by 
the side of a large stream, they always stop at 
the trough going to aud coming from pasture 
and drink heartily, seeming to like the tank 
water much better than that from the stream. 
My wb ole apparatus in position cost less than 
$350, and i would uot now do without it for 
ten limes that sum. 
It is surprising to me that so few farmers— 
and some of them worth thousands, too—avail 
themselves of this very cheap and reliable 
means of water supply when they cannot but 
know how much of their success with stock de¬ 
pends upou their having plenty of pure water. 
In building barns they often incur more expense 
for a cupola and other extra trimmings than it 
would cost to secure a never-failiDg supply of 
water, I am not opposed to their making their 
barns look finished and nice, but I am opposed 
to their stopping 6hort of securing so neces 
sary a means to their full success in stock 
keeping and stock feeding. There may be, and 
undoubtedly is, a great difference in wind en¬ 
gines, but almost any one is much better than 
none, and will give all the water needed at a 
very inoderatu cost, and will pay over and 
over again in the improved condition of stock 
and in the saving of wear and tear of muscle, 
and patience. To save answering many in¬ 
quiries, l will just sav mine is ihe Iron Tur 
bine, made by Mast, Foos & Co., of Springfield, 
Ohio, and if not the best engine made, it 
is good enough for me. J. S. Woodwokd. 
Jithstrial $m|lcmriits. 
ACME STEEL PULVERIZING HARROW, 
Clod-Crusher and Leveler. 
Thekk are few farm implements 
with the old-fashioned machine. In their 
eager search for improvements in this as in 
other implements, inventors have followed 
various lines of thought and consequently have 
reached various results, differing more or less 
from each other; bat all which have embod¬ 
ied genuine merits have met with popular 
favor, the measure of their excellence being 
guaged by the extent of their favor with the 
public. However strong the claims put forth 
by the inventors and manufacturers of various 
machines, the real test of their economical 
efficiency lies in the degree of appreciation 
they have met with from the public, and judg¬ 
ing by this criterion alone, the Acme Harrow 
now holds a foremost place among such im¬ 
plements. Early last year we described this 
harrow and from a careful examination of its 
construction and the highly complimentary re¬ 
ports made of its efficiency by a large number 
of farmers who had practically tested its mer¬ 
its in various parts of the country, we pre¬ 
dicted a wide popularity and large sale for it. 
The event has justified our predictions; for it 
is now in use all over the country. To the 
fast decreasing number of those who do not 
know its merits we may briefly say that it is 
an efficient pulverizer, clod-crusher and leveler 
combined. As seen in the accompanying cat, 
fig. 1)8, it consists of an adjustable, diagonal 
leveling bar and clod-crusher, permanently at¬ 
tached to the pole, and provided on its rear 
edge with a series of steel coulters. To the 
leveling bar is hinged a tooth bar provided 
with another series of steel coulter teeth, 
curved and beveled to a sharp edge. The pe¬ 
culiar form and arrangement of these coulters 
give great cutting power while at the same 
time they lift and turn the soil which is, in 
turn, subjected to the action of the crusher and 
leveler and to the cutting, lifting and turning ac¬ 
tion of double rows of steel coulters. A seat is 
provided for the driver aud a lever within his 
reach enables him to control the position of 
the crusher ond at the same time to raise or 
depress the coulter so as to regulate the depth 
of the work, which varies from a light surface 
working to a complete pulverization to a 
depth of three or four inches. The machine 
is made of the best materials and in a thor¬ 
oughly workman-like manner; is light, dura¬ 
ble and cheap, and from all we have heard 
with regard to its efficiency, we can strongly 
recommend it to our readers. Full descrip¬ 
tion, etc., will be promptly furnished by the 
manufacturers, Messrs. Nash & Bro .« 22 Col¬ 
lege Place, N. Y. g. a. b. 
Ulisccllaiteous. 
• A Scientific Farmer. 
Oh, my ! what a natural curiosity he’ll be 
some of these days. Now my idea of the scien¬ 
tific farmer of the future—for the tribe does 
not yet exist—is, that he will be a man of com¬ 
mon sense, of an inquiring mind, bound to 
have a reason for everything he does, emi¬ 
nently practical, and great on applying to his 
land and the treatment of his crops, stock, etc., 
etc., the pure aud unadulterated result of his 
scientific knowledge. He will read abstruse 
works by closet philosophers, blow away the 
chaff which always envelopes their ideas, and 
apply the facts to practical use. He will util¬ 
ize their hints and lucubrations far better than 
they could possibly do themselves ; for a 
philosopher, my friend, is a being whose brain 
is in such an 8gitated condition that unless he 
has a “ matter-of fact man ” at his elbow to act 
ACME STEEP PULVERIZING JIARKOW. — FIG. ‘.18. 
are needed in order to prove that a disinfec¬ 
tant is worthy of being used upon food, than 
will serve to teach the anatomist from mixlDg a 
dozen different chemicals, any. or all, of which 
may be poisonous; and he cares but little 
which of them preserves the flesh so long as it 
is preserved to his liking. But in cases where 
the preserved flesh is to be used as food, care¬ 
ful and long-continued research must be made 
with each and every chemical put upon it, in 
order to be sure that it is innocuous. 
One of the plans which have latterly excited 
some attention, viz., the pickling of meat 
with a mixture of boracic acid and alum, 
has been carefully studied in this couutry by 
Endetnami, who fluds that the use of boracic 
acid can hardly be considered as iuvolving auy 
new principle- He esteems it to be merely a 
variation of, and by no means an improvement 
on, the timt-honored method of pickling with 
vinegar. By using other acids instead of thg 
boracic, he obtained the same results that were 
got by means cf it; aud he finds, indeed, that 
the preservative power of the boracic acid 
really depends on its action upon phosphates 
naturally contained in the flesh or other mate¬ 
rial treated with it. It is an acid phosphate 
produced by the action of the boracic acid, 
which is the real preservative agent, and un¬ 
less phosphateB are present the boracic acid 
does little or no good, whence it appears that 
this use of boracic acid is really a roundabout 
way of applyiug acid-phosphates, and in point 
of fact Eudemaun’s best results were reached 
by using phosphoric acid, either by itself or 
admixed with muriatic acid. Many of the 
acids are powerful disinfeciauts, iu that they 
kill the bacteria, whose presence would cause 
decay. By special trials, Eudemauu fouud it 
very difficult to develop bacteria in a fluid that 
contained acid-phosphates, aud on adding one 
part of muriatic acid to G4 pans of a liquid 
clargtd with bacteria the latter were com¬ 
pletely destroyed. The only peculiarity re¬ 
commending the use of boracic acid is its in¬ 
sipid taste and the insipidity of the acid phos¬ 
phates which result from its use. But since 
boracic acid is neither contained normally in 
foods nor in the animal body, the propriety of 
using matters preserved with it continually for 
long periods may well be questionable, although 
experiments have shown that they are harm¬ 
less at first. The lust point well illustrates the 
difficulty of determining offhand whether or 
not a new process of pickling or preserving is 
to be heartily commended. The real test of ex¬ 
cellence is long-continued use, and it is pre¬ 
cisely this kind of evidence which the new 
candidate—no matter how worthy—cannot 
possibly offer. 
-♦ ♦ »-- 
THE WATER FAMINE AND THE REMEDY. 
All over Western New York hundreds of 
wells aud springs are entirely dried; the ponds 
and streams were never before so very low; 
but, judging from the reports in every paper I 
pick up, ours is no exceptional case; the in¬ 
quiry on every hand is •* What are we goiug to 
do for water?” When we consider that all 
food to be assimilated by the animal system 
must be iu Iht form of liquids, and that at 
least 70 to 75 per cent, of the whole animal is 
water, we shall see that to be healthi, con¬ 
tented and thrifty, a full supply of water is as 
essential to all farm stock as good food. Es¬ 
pecially is this the case in Winter when their 
main supply is dry food, aud it is doubly im¬ 
portant ll we have not an abundance of some 
green tood such as swedes, mangels or car¬ 
rots. However rich aud nutritious the food, 
we must have wuter as the solvent and agent 
for introducing it into the system. 
Although so very important, yet how very 
deficient most farms are iu their water supply ! 
Even in our veiy best farming regions it is no 
very uncommon sight, in connection with a 
fine mansion aud extensive barns costing 
thousands of dollars, to see the stock driven 
to some half-dried pond or stream, often far 
away from the barn, to get a scanty supply of 
half-frozen, dirty water, and this only once in 
24 hours, causing them to fill 
themselves uncomfortably 
with this mixture of water, 
dirt and ice, and to stand on 
tip toe shivering for hours 
before they again get warm 
enough to try to eat This is 
all wrong. No mau who ex¬ 
pects to make his living by 
farming can affoid to so treat 
his stock; better by far sell 
hem aud the food they are 
expected to eat than to try 
to keep them without au 
abundance of pure water. 
But says a farmer sitting uear-by, "If you 
have uot a spring or stream so situated that it 
can be conducted to the barn in pipes, what will 
you do ?” Dig or bore a well sufficiently deep 
that au abnndauce of water may be secured. 
The depth of wells makes but little difference, 
for by u-ing a good force pump attached to a 
wind-mill, water in abundant supply for al¬ 
most'any number of stock can be easily and 
which have been so greatly improved as the 
harrow. What in the youth of an elderly 
man was still a crude contrivance which did 
laboriously and imperfectly its uarrow line of 
work, has since been made by study and skill 
an efficient device for accomplishing easily 
and economically a much wider round of 
farm work than could have been attempted 
as a separator, his ideas and his chaff would 
all scatter to the four wiuds together. Mere 
brute strength alone nowadays will not ex¬ 
tract a living from the land; there must be 
some positive, absolutetruths and facts known, 
and them must be discernment enough in the 
farmer to select and apply them. When that 
is done by any farmer, he becomes scientific. 
This term, at present among the majority a 
term of derision, will some day be the most 
honorable handle to a farmer’s name, and 
“ Sci. Far." will indicate a man who has won 
his honors by cultivating his brain as well as 
his broad acres. S, Rcfus Mason. 
Dodge Co., Neb. 
- - - 
RURAL BRIEFLET3. 
Thus writes our friend Mr. Richard Good¬ 
man : 
‘‘The agricultural community, interested in 
animal portraiture, has become doubly in¬ 
debted to the Rural New Yorker of late. 
Firs^, because of its most prau-ewortby en¬ 
terprise in giving the American public portraits 
of American animals, and, second, because of 
the admirable qualities in these portraits. 
Your artist has shown a power as unusual as 
it is important, of preserving not only the indi¬ 
vidual but the breed characteristics in each 
of his pictures and at the same time making 
them enjoyable works of art. He shows us 
not only a pleasimz, natural, life-like picture of 
a bull, but it can be seeu at a glance whether 
it is a Jersey or a Holstein, or a Durham bu'l, 
and, finally, if the observer is acquainted with 
the particular animal represented, he will im¬ 
mediately know that His ‘‘Ned”or "SirJohn’ 
who stands out on the. page before him. I 
know of no series of animal portraits in which 
th« artist, with Mack aud white Only, has 
marked so distinctly and satisfactorily the race 
the breed and the individual characteristics. 
In this department of animal portraiture, you 
at present, certainly stand "first, and without 
a second ” in this country, and the foreign ag¬ 
ricultural journals have already much to learn 
from the Rural New-Yorker’. 
Let me lake ibis occasion to express u?y high 
seuse of the value which your paper derives 
from its connection with the Rural Experiment 
Farm It is of course of tenfold value to the 
community having the paper for its mouth¬ 
piece ; and certainly the paper, like the old 
giant Animus, draws new life and streogrh and 
power for good from its frequent and close 
contact with mother earth. The Rural New- 
Yokker occupies a place in the community as 
unique as it is important.”. 
We have received the following letter and 
appended printed circular: 
“ I want to get some of that Chester County 
Mammoth Corn for the Dade. I want yonr 
price also, and one of the largest and longest 
ears. I luclose eiiculars showing-two kinds 
of seeds which I handle; think I can sell your 
corn. Perhaps the Rural Farm might want 
some of tny seed. Please let me hear from 
you. J. A. Fletcher. 
Oneida Co., N. Y. 
The circular, with unimportant parts left out, 
is as follows: 
Cuzco or Giant Flour Corn.— This won¬ 
derful aud famous corn has attracted great 
attention and caused universal wonder, owing 
to its size and qualiiv, the grains bting soft 
and full of flour. The grains In size are 
from three to four times the size of ordinary 
corn and look like small, well-baked crackers. 
This corn is raised by the Indians in the prov¬ 
ince of Cuzco, situated 450 miles from the sea, 
and having an elevation of over 12 000 feet. The 
climate in Winter, which is veiyiong, is severe 
and cold, with heavy snow. The Summers are 
short, cool and temperate. 
The yield of this corn is unquestionably many 
times greater ihan that of any other known 
variety. In the cold latitude of Minnesota it 
is reported that a farmer raised from 20 hills. 
80 pounds of 6belled corn. If such reports are 
true this new variety will soon be very gener¬ 
ally raised in all the corn-producing States and 
stand at the head. This corn is a rapid grower 
iu our warm soils, growlug to the- high;, of 15 
feet, with two fine, well developed ears on 
nearly every stalk, which measure from 12 to 
10 inches in length and from nine to 11 inches 
in circumference after the husks have been 
removed. Notwithstanding its mammoth pro¬ 
portions it matures equally early as ordinary 
dent corn, when planted at the same time, aa 
is reported by those who have seen it grow, 
and it ripens Iu four months from the time 
planted. The grains are a solid of pure flour, 
with a thiu coating of bran. As food for stock 
it is superior to any other varieiy, being soft, 
rich and easily masticated. 
This corn is put up in packages of 50 grains 
each, which will plant 25 hills, four feet apart. 
Two grains are sufficient for each hill. Fifty 
grain* will give a yield of nearly 100 pounds 
of shelled corn. I will send one package by 
mail, posl-paid, to any address on receipt of 
price, $2 50 a package. For special rates and 
terms to agents, as well as for seed, address 
J. A Fletcher, 
We are willing to presume that Mr. Fletcher 
has been deceived—especially as be seems to 
be a reader of the Rusal New-Yorker. He 
must, however, have overlooked what we 
have said respecting this “wonderful and fa¬ 
mous corn,” not only from our own trials 
during two seasons, but from trials made in 
several different parte of the countiy from 
6 eeds which we mailed to friends. If heavy 
stalks are wanted with few leaves—then the 
Cuzco will suit. For grain it is not adapted to 
any part of this country and, indeed, so far as 
we are informed, it produces veiy small ears 
and few of them when cultivated in South 
America. .. 
We have received the following note from 
our respected frieude. Messrs, Smiths & Powel 
of Syracuse, N. Y., touching upon our eDgrav 
mg of the handsome Holstein Bull -Ebbo 
“ We were surprised to see yesterday in your 
paper the cut of “ Ebbo.” We regret that you 
published it, for we consider it a perfect bur 
lesque of the bull, and while no doubt you 
intentions were all right, we consider it a 
damage to ns to have it published, and you 
will remember we a expressly requested you 
