3S0 
MAY 28 
THE RURAL 
NEW-YORKER. 
most all grasses in nutritive properties. It is 
almost ineradicable, and many suppose it will 
extirpate clover. This is a ureal mistake. I 
have seen pastures where both have been flour¬ 
ishing for over 30 years and both were In un¬ 
impaired vigor. I have no doubt that they 
will coexist until the end of lime on the same 
aod. I know of well-authenticated instances 
• where clover has lived over 40 years without 
having been re-seeded. I think it will bear 
three crops «<f seed in a year ; certainly two. 
The first is considerable, and this explains the 
presence of much young and tender clover 
when the crop which bore the seed has become 
tough and woody. This not only insures a 
perpetual stand, but a greater fertilization of 
soil, as well as a fresh pasture. It is doubtless 
the explanation of the fact that clover, under 
good treatment, never uquires rc-seeding. 
I might give illustrations without number of 
how long clover will “ run" without rt -seeding, 
even where cultivated crops have been raised 
for several years in succession. I will only meL- 
tion two, where crops of corn or cotton were 
raised, in the one case for seven consecutive 
years and iu the other for nine, on a clover sod, 
a >d then a good stand was obtained without 
re-seediDg. I give an instance of this sort. 
Clover was seeded with oats. In June the oats 
were cut and the stubble pastured. In the Fall 
the ground was again sowed to oats, which 
were again cut and ibe stubble again pastured 
This plan was followed for 11 years consecu- 
t v. ly. The clover was never re-seeded. At 
the end of that time the stand < f clover was 
unimpaired. It is atuezing how well clover 
will succeed in an indifferently -prepared soil. 
N Jibing is moie common here than to sow it 
on ihe ground where corn has been planted. 
It yields all that could be desired in most cases, 
particularly when sown in October. It is con¬ 
sidered a gr at chance 10 have a good Bermuda 
Bod upon which to seed it. It is sown on the 
ground, with no preparation of soil and no 
work after seeding. 1 have been sowing some 
80 acres of Bermuda sod, part of ihe sod being 
30 y<-ars or more old. I did not begin until the 
middle of February and I have not finished 
yet. I expect to fence part of it and cut at 
1-ast four tons per acre iu the two mowings I 
shall get this Satnnaer and next Fall. and. may¬ 
be, three. Oa ihe remainder I 6ball soon 
turn stock and graze it unremittingly, and the 
wotk is done for all time. I never expect to 
have to re-sei d it. It is quite common to sow 
clover in Spriug and turn stock on it at once, 
and never take them off. 
I have known clover sown iu the Fall to be 
cut twice the next Summer, the mowrags being 
only six weeks apart. A« high as 9 COO pounds 
of hay per acre have been cut at one mowing. 
If aDy one doubts tbie. let him ask Dr. D. B. 
Phares. Professor of B >tany at the Agricul¬ 
tural and Mechanical College, Siarkvllle, Miss., 
who has done it, and be admits that he has 
been surpassed. It grows very commonly four 
feet high in good soil, aDd 1 have known it in 
one instance nearly six feet. Of course, it 
does not stand up when so high- Two crops 
of hay may almost always be counted on ; oc¬ 
casionally three. It ought to be eown in Oc¬ 
tober, as it then gets the be6t of the weeds, 
which ofteu interfere if it is sown in the 
Spring. Muy, however, sow it in February ; 
but this is risky, as a freeze sometimes kills the 
young plant. An October seeding I have never 
known to fail- More seed seems to oe re¬ 
quired here than at the North. It may be 
owing to the fact that we lose some by our in¬ 
different preparation of the soil. A lushel to 
Bix acres is little enough, as it is generally 
sown. 
The prairie soil of East Mississippi and 
West Alabama is particularly fine. I have 
never seen any < qual to it. It is a deep, black, 
rich soil, very close and limy. The rain-fall 
doubtless contributes greatly to the woudei- 
ful success of the grasses, as there are about 
60 inches of rain-fall per annum, and it is dis¬ 
tributed throughout the year. In some of the 
Summer m mtbB there are from seven to nine 
inches of rain-fall. 
Clover hay will sell at from $ 15 to $20 per 
ton, and one gentleman in the prairies of East 
Mipsisslppi is preparing to bale it. 
Mobile Co,, Ala. M. B. Hillyard. 
-- 
Propagating Choice Fotatoe*. 
Years 8go when the Early Rose Potatoes 
were first sent out, a neighbor who had raised 
them the year before, brought me seven quite 
Btnall tubers to start with. In his presence I 
cut each eye out, leaving with each a lair pro¬ 
portion of the potato. Then I cut each eye 
through the center in one, two, three and four 
different directions, according to size, so as to 
make of each eye two, four, six and eight dif¬ 
ferent pieces, each shaped like a pyramid and 
having a skin surface of about one-fourth of 
an inch. These I planted about a foot apart 
in good soil and harvested two bushels of po¬ 
tatoes, with a good proportion of large ones, 
after cooking a uiess or two to try them Each 
piece of the eyes grew. While preparing the 
Beed my neighbor remarked, “I would plant 
one at least in the usual way, as none of tU£g§> 
will grow,” hinting, I suppose, that no future 
generosity would be wasted on a fellow who 
slashed into such costly potatoes in that way. 
I have since let him have seed potatoes from 
the product of that donation. A. C. 8. 
-♦ - 
The Winter Wheat Chop op Illinois, 
according to reports made to ihe State De¬ 
partment of Agriculture down to May 8. prom¬ 
ises 69 per cent, of an average crop in the 
Northern Division of 23 counties; 62 per cent 
of an average crop In the Central Division of 
38 counties, and 77 per cent, of an average 
crop in the Southern Division of 41 counties. 
This condition, although discouraging, is not 
so bad as predicted by several Western paperr, 
and the large acreage sowed to Spring wheat 
will doubtless, partially at least, make up for 
the Winter wheat area that has been plowed 
up, and the poor condition of some of the 
growing Winter wheat. 
Jarm tfrottom 
WORTHLESS COMPOUNDS OF NITROGEN 
IN SOME COMMERCIAL FERTILIZERS. 
PBOFESSOB F H. STOBEK. 
The precept can hardly be too often en¬ 
forced that in buying mixtures of commercial 
fertilizers the farmer must be on his guard 
lest inferior or even worthless kinds of nitro¬ 
gen compounds be imposed upon him aB if th* y 
were the best. It is an easy matter, for exam¬ 
ple. to dose many of tbe mixtures known as 
“ammoniated superphosphates" in such a man 
ner that, while they show a high percentage of 
nitrogen on chemical analysis, they may leally 
be worth nothing whatever as nitrogenized 
manures, because the nitrogen contained in 
them and exhibited by analysis may be iu such 
forms that it is inert, undecomposable in the 
soil, and practically worthless as a plant-food. 
To take an extreme instance. coa’-Just con¬ 
tains more or less nitrogen, and so do peat aud 
bog-uiud, and it would be practicable to in¬ 
corporate a cerlain proportion of these mate¬ 
rials with ai y dark-colored superphosphate; 
though the risk of fraud from the use of these 
particular substandee caDnot be great since the 
proportion of nitrogen contained in them is. 
comparatively speaking, 6mall. But with 
leather the case is different. Heie is a sub¬ 
stance containing five or six per cent of nitro¬ 
gen, or sometimes even more, whieb, when 
properly incorporated with a superphosphate, 
might appreciably increase the proportion of 
nitrogen to be indicated by analysis without 
adding anything to the fertilizing power of the 
material. 
Chemists have often called attention to the 
possibility of this particular kind of lraud. but 
Lhe general feeling eecrns to have been that a 
supposed d faculty in reducing the leather to 
powder would greatly hinder, or even wholly 
prevent, its being used iu this way. There 
is, however, no great difficultly in reduc¬ 
ing leather to powder. As every one 
knows who has happened, to leave his boots 
too near the fire, leather quickly becomes 
brittle and friable when it is heated somewhat 
strongly, and after having been thus super¬ 
heated. or almost charred, it admits of being 
ground to meal. Moreover, there is already in 
tbe market, and to be had at an exnemely low 
price, a kind of leathei-scrap which is dry and 
brittle enough, as it stands, to be ground to 
powder without need of any preliminary heat¬ 
ing. This product is a residue obtained by 
certain manufacturers wbo make a business 
of extracting from ordinary leather scraps the 
oil and grease which have been put into the 
leather in the processes of currying and black¬ 
ing it. To recover this grease tbe scraps are 
boiled and steamed at a heat high enough to 
melt the fatty matters, and they are then sub¬ 
jected to pressure powerful enough to rqueeze 
out both the water and tbe melted grease. 
There is good reason to believe that the dark, 
friable residue wbich comes from the presses is 
sometimes used in the manufacture of com¬ 
mercial fertilizers. It is evident that it might 
readily be used to this end, particularly in the 
process of manufacture employed at some 
works, where fish scrap, acid and phosphates 
are churned together, and it would probably 
be uo easy matter to detect the adulteration of 
fertilizers prepared iu ibis particular way. 
Since the pressed leather scrap above de¬ 
scribed may be bought at rather Icbb than a 
sixth of ihe price it could readily be sold for 
in the form of superphosphates, there is all the 
more reason for the buyer of fertil.zerB to be 
on his guard against it. The chemists who are 
chitfly occupied with the analysis of fertilizers 
will do well meanwhile In trying to devise 
some means of detecting this particular form 
of adulteration. 
The real leBBon taught by the risk of adul¬ 
terations such as the foregoing, seems plain 
enough ; namely, that the farmer had in gen¬ 
eral much better buy neparatelj each particular 
kind of fertilizer which he may happen to 
need. He will commonly do well to avoid all 
mixed preparations. If any one wishes to use 
a superphosphate, for example, let him buy 
that material by itself, in tbe form of “plain” 
superphosphate of lime; and if be wishes to 
use fish-scrap or oil-cake in cor junction with 
the superphosphate, let lheBe things be bought 
as such, so lhat he may know just what he is 
doing. The risk of adulteration would in this 
way he greatly diminished, inasmuch as there 
would be ranch less profit and considerably 
more dfflculty in trying to conceal lhe leathei- 
scrap in either of these materials than in am¬ 
moniated superphosphate or other mixed fer¬ 
tilizer of high price and no characteristic ap¬ 
pearance. As a rule, materials thus bought 
separately should cost less than those upon 
which the manufacturer has e >• nt time and 
labor iu the processes of mixing. They may 
be spread upon the land one after the other or 
mixid immediately before use, it mixing be 
deemed advisable. Tbe shoveling together of 
harmless powder is neither a complex nor a 
difficult operation. It is quite within the pow¬ 
ers of even the stupidest laborer. 
——- * • »- 
Foul 8eeds in Wheat Bran. — I recently 
bought some Western wheat bran which was 
litei ally full of foul seeds, evidently the screen¬ 
ings of the wheat. In a single ounce, taken 
at random from the stock, I counted 97 
seeds besides many broken ones. A portion 
of tbe excrements of the animals to which the 
bran was fed. was washed, and hundreds of the 
seeds were found to be apparently wholly un¬ 
impaired in vitality. The increase of wetds 
of new and old varieties has caused in this 
section much distrust of grass, clover aud 
other seeds ; but this experience suggests that 
the mischief is due largely to the culpable 
practice of lhe millers of putting the screen¬ 
ings into tbe bran. If they must utilize the 
weed seeds, they should be compelled to grind 
them before putting them into the Led 
Georgia. Vt M O 8. Eliss. 
®tif Ijtriisman. 
NOTES BY A STOCKMAN. 
The Alphea Jerseys bid fair to rival the his¬ 
tory of the Duchess family of Short-horns. By 
judicious puffing through the papers, and by 
extraordinary claims for heretofore uuheard 
of butter production, this straiu has become 
notorious. And the effect of this notoriety is 
to put money in the purses of speculators in 
this strain of Jersey stock. The owner of an 
Alphea bull or heifer mt y count his thousands 
as good as in his puise. Never before, per¬ 
haps. has so much momy been paid on the 
stieugih of the mere unsupported statement of 
a hired man whose interest is to please his 
employer, as in these purchases. There is 
perhaps nothiug objectionable in it all ; the 
money is as well on the ** Wing" as in the pock¬ 
et. mid whether Alma Farm pays it and Maple- 
shade takes it, all is one to the speculator who 
never had a thousand dollars to invest in an 
Alphea calf. Truly, this is a revival of tbe 
worship of ihe golden calf when a little yeai- 
old brings $900 and another $1 258 50, precise¬ 
ly to a cent. How accurately mu t her value 
have been gauged to figure so close as to 50 
cents ! 
So long as this speculation is confined to 
wealthy persons, no harm is done. It amuses 
them and hurts nobody. But no farmer or 
dairyman should be tempted to take a hand in 
this business, because it will not pay him, even 
shonld every claim made for these animals be 
justified by the actual facts. 
Bot- —there is always a “ but”—did Eurotas 
ever make 778 pounds aud one ounce of but¬ 
ter (again a circumstantial and particular ac¬ 
count to a dot), within 365 days aud between 
two calves. I venture to 6ay lhat this question 
will be always as uncertain as that regarding 
the person who struck William Patterson. 
Just now there is a dispute going on as to 
whether sheep or cattle are the most profitable 
fora firmer to keep. In discussing such a 
question as this, tbe advocates on each side 
only seek to support their own views, and no 
one should be misled by tbe figures they show. 
One man says be made $54 on 10 sheep in one 
year. I have done better tbau that on five 
times as many. But to infer that if 10 sheep 
pay $54 in one year, a thousand will pay $5 400, 
would be vety unsafe. A small flock is pro¬ 
portionately more profitable tbau a large one, 
no doubt, but no 11 jck ever paid more than 50 
per cent clear profit on its coBt, in a year, ex¬ 
cept under specially favorable circumstances. 
But that should satisfy any reasonable man. I 
think it iB safe to believe that a man who un¬ 
derstands well the management of sheep and 
devotes bis attention to a flock, can realize a 
profit of 50 per cent, on his investment, not 
counting the interest on the cost of his land 
unless it is very cheap indeed. No man can 
keep sheep exclusively for wool and mutton 
alone on land costing $100 an acre. He may 
make a profit on the Bheep, charging them, no 
rent of land; and that will be fair because the 
sheep are a sort of “ saving bag" into which 
odds and ends that would be wasted are 
gathered. • 
WnEREapereou designs to devote himself 
to sheep-keeping alone, he must go West where 
the range is practically free and where a home¬ 
stead for winter occupation and to be cultiva¬ 
ted for winter feeding can be procured for $10 
an acre. A homestead of 160 acres would sus¬ 
tain 2,000 sheep upon corn, millet and other 
feeding crops with rye sown among the corn 
for Winter pasture, and with a free range in 
the Summer. And a flock thus kept should 
pay one dollar a head clear profit; or, if the 
wool is made to pay all expenses, the increase, 
which should be 75 per cent., would be equal 
to a profit of more than 50 per cent, on the 
value of the flock. 
No herd of cattle kept entirely for increase 
ever did or ever can do this; simply because it 
requires too much labor in the management, 
in proportion to ibe capital and the income, 
and it does not pay two dividends as a flock 
does, viz., a fleece and a lamb every year. 
Even where cattle are grtzid without any cost 
for land, as in soma localities on the great 
plains, there are many deductions to be made 
for losses and expeuses, which greatly redace 
the profile. Tne dairy is. after all, the most 
profitable branch of cattle keeping. Oae needs 
no figures to show it. He can do better; he 
can show land constantly improving in char¬ 
acter; a herd constantly increasing in num¬ 
ber and value; a farmer always with money 
in his pocket, and the lightest labor of all farm 
work. 
Some Eastern New Jersey farmers may 
“ point with pride” to their success with fat 
p : gs. They show every year how it pays to 
manufacture raw products into finished articles 
when it is wtll done. A pound of cotton worth 
15 cents is made into cloth worth 50 cents A 
pound of iron worth a cent is made into nails 
worth five cents ; and into steel watch springs 
worth hundreds of dollars. A bushel of corn 
worth 50 ceutBis made iuto por*. worth 80 cents 
by these New Jerseymen, not to count a quan¬ 
tity of valuable manure left. The following are 
the particulars concerning these J-irsry pig-: 
Mr. Southard’S 29 pigs ranged from 057 to (455 pounds. 
Mr. Harrison’s*! pigs averaged 76? pounds. 
Mr. Carter’s 20 pigs averaged 766JS poundB. 
Mr. Harrison led his pigs aud 30 bead of cat¬ 
tle on 50 acres of corn aud had l 000 bushels 
left in the crib. At 50 cents a bushel the corn 
would have been worth $1 600. His pigs alone 
brought this sum and tbe feeding of 30 cattle 
and the 1 000 bushels In the crib were tbe pn fit. 
For several years past there has been a vigor¬ 
ous contest iu Burlington County, N. J., to 
raite Lhe heaviest pigs, and this is a sample of 
the result. It is worth making a note of. 
“ Nothing succeeds like success.” When a 
man makes a conspicuous success like this his 
neighbors begin to strive to beat him. Per¬ 
il tps one succeeds, and this gives piquancy 
and interest to thestruggle, which is continued 
from year to year; first one takeB the lead and 
then the other, and so the contestants perse¬ 
vere and persist, aud perseverance and persist¬ 
ence in keeping any kind of live stock are indis¬ 
pensable to success. Those succeed who slick 
to their chosen business; those fail who are ever 
changing. *• Unstable as water they cannot ex¬ 
cel.” And I would just here emphasize this 
note, that if a man desires to have a profitable 
flock or herd, he must make it his life’s busi¬ 
ness to cultivate it. (Jhoose well; and choose 
for better or worse; but slick to it and it will 
always be better and never worse. 
-- 
Large Sale of Jersey*. 
During the paBt week a large auction sale of 
Jersey cattle took place in this cny. Ou Tues¬ 
day, May 17. 64 head were sold for tbe aggre¬ 
gate sum of $18 505—an average of $289 14. 
The following iB a list of the highesi-prlced 
animals sold, with the names of buyers aLd 
prices r— 
Loda, 799. cow. 12 years; William Simpson, Now . 
York and New Hudson .S3,000 00 
Queen of the Farm, 0,069, cow, 6 years ; John I. 
Hoby, Flatnfield, N,J.... L 300 uo 
Malita. 6,169, cow, :t years, aud heifer calf ; 1. 
A. HitvtMutjvfcr, Now York .. 1,300 00 
Daisy Maul ol' Bloomllelil, H,®2, eow.3 years; 
T. A. Haveiueyer, New York. .. 1.200 Oil 
Hohokus5 6*61. null, 1 year; 1’. K. Gobrl ....... 1.000 DO 
Pliryiiette, 9,u80, heifer, 2 years; 1’. H, uolicl.... 675 <0 
lierotl's Rosebud, eow, 4 years; Edwin Dana.. 660 UO 
Leda, Bold for Mr. A. B Darling, is a pure 
Alphea cow, aud brought the highest price 
ever paid for a Jei Bey cow, though her sou, 
Polonius, was sold for $4 500 on the 5 h iust. 
8he is now in calf by Duke of Darlington, son 
of the famous butter cow Eurotas. Her pur¬ 
chaser, Mr. W. Simpson, now owns all the 
pure Alphea cows. Queen of the Farm is an 
imported cow. 
The sale was concluded on Wednesday, when 
64 animals were sold for $18 717 50. which gave 
an averuge ol $292 46. The ftliowing is a list 
of the highest-priced animals sold, with the 
nameB of tbe buyers and prices:— 
Satin, 10,329. heifer, 3 years; X. A. Uavemeyer.$2.050 00 
Petroueila, 8,(419, heifer, 2 > eara; Moulton Bros. 2.160 00 
Favorite’s May, 8,602, heller, 2 years: T. A. 
Aluvcmeycr.. w 
