470 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
JULY 46 
by Boil there were only about 3,000. The same 
results were shown in a large lot of seeds, of 
the now famous climbing plant, Ampelopsis, 
Yeltchii, and in the finer varieties of clematis. 
The reason is plain: the thin layer of sifted 
moss never bakeB or hardens, holding just the 
right degree of moisture, and has les 6 ten¬ 
dency to generate damp or fungus than any 
other known Bubstance. 
Among beets, Mr. Henderson remarks we 
have the Egyptian, which matures at least 
five days before any other variety, except the 
Old Bassano, which waB too light in color to 
suit; in cabbages, the Early Summer; and in 
cauliflower the Snowball; in celery the Golden 
Dwarf; and the next season is likely to de¬ 
velop a great improvement iu the New White 
Walnut Gelery, a Btout, solid kind, having a 
rich walnut-like flavor, and graceful feather¬ 
like foliage. In lettuce, the Black-seeded 
Simpson and the White Summer Cabbage Let¬ 
tuce now lead all the out-door varieties; in 
muskmelonB, the Hackensack, of which many 
thousands of acres are grown for New York 
market, is almost exclusively planted. In 
peas, a great improvement is developed in the 
dwarf variety known as American Wonder, 
though for a general early crop the Improved 
Daniel O'Rourke is best. Potatoes vary so 
much in different localities that it is difficult 
to say which of the new sorts are most val¬ 
ued. We are very glad to see that Mr. Hen¬ 
derson finds that in the general trade more of 
Beanty of Hebron Is planted than of any other 
of the new sorts. In radishes, the New Round 
Dark Red is now the main favorite, while 
next in order comes the “ White-tipped Tur¬ 
nip." In .spinach, the Savoy and the New 
Thick-leaved, are the best for genet al crop; 
though the Savoy should not be sown in Spring 
a 6 it runs too quickly to seed. Though evety 
year brings out new claimants for favor in to¬ 
matoes, it is Mr. IPs conviction that we have 
not advanced one day in eailiuess (unless in 
such varieties as Key’s Prolific and Little Gem, 
which are of poor quality,) iu 35 years, al¬ 
though we have now many varieties some¬ 
what improved iu quality. CJiutc a number of 
uur market gardeners are now getting to 
grow strawberries in coni unction with their 
vegetable crops, by following the pot layering 
system, by which a crop is obtained in less 
than a year from the time of planting. Mr. 
Henderson has grown for the past six or seven 
years, upwards of an acre of strawberries in 
this manner, alternating them with the vege¬ 
tables. 
The process may be described as follows : 
Just as soon as the fruit is gathered, the bed 6 
are well forked up, and the runners begin to 
grow rapidly, &o that, in the vicinity of New 
York strong pot layers may bo obtaiued by 
the 10th to the 15th of July. These, if then 
planted out, never fail (Lf properly cultivated 
and the runners kept piuehed off,) to give a 
full crop by June of Dext year; uot only a 
full crop, but fiuer fruit than is usually ob¬ 
tained by the other methods, The pots, which 
should not exceed 3 }4 inches in diameter, are 
filled with the soil in which the strawberries 
are growing, and “plunged" or sunk to the 
level of the surface ; the strawberry layer is 
then laid on the pot, being held in its place 
with a small stone; the stone not only serves 
to keep the plant in its place so that its roots 
will strike into the soil of the pot, but it also 
serves to mark where the pot is; for, being 
sunk to the level of the surface, rains wash 
the soil around the pots, so that they could 
not well be seen unless marked by the stone. 
Any good workman, after a little experience, 
will layer 3,000 per day. In 10 or 12 days 
after the strawberry layers have been put 
down, the pots will be filled with roots; they 
are then cut from the parent plant, taken up, 
and placed close together, and shaded and 
watered for a few days before being planted 
out. If so treated, not one plant in a thou¬ 
sand need fail. 
In Mr. Hendbbson’s market gardening and 
greenhouse operations he cultivates largely 
nearly every known family of plants, and in 
hiB long experience he has yet to see a fruit, 
flower or vegetable crop, that was not bene¬ 
fited, and nearly in the same degree, by a ju¬ 
dicious application of pure bone du6t. 
PBOBIT8 OB A BLACK WALNUT GbOVE.— We 
find the following in the Chicago Tribune. 
The profits of the grove are greatly exagger¬ 
ated, as will appear to the reader. Still we ad¬ 
vise the planting of the Black-walnut. 
San Antonio, Tex., June 8 .—The smartest 
Texan, and in fact the smartest farmer, 1 have 
ever met, is old Sim Graves, who lives on a 
1 , 000 -acre farm west of Waxahatchie, In Central 
Texas. After Mr. Graves had shown me his 
cattle and cotton, he took me over to see his 
woods. 
“ Well, what of it?” 1 6 aid, as he pointed to 
a ten-acre forest. 
“ What of it ?" Why, them’s Black-walnuts, 
sir. Ten acres of ’em. Planted ’em myself 
ten years ago. See, they’re nine inches 
through. Good.trees, eh ?” 
And sure enough there were ten acres of 
hand-planted black-walnut trees. They stood 
about twelve feet apart, 200 ‘totha acre,—in all 
2,000 trees. 
“Well, how do you get your mosey back ?” 
I asked. 
“Black-walnuts are worth $3.50 a bushel, 
'aint they? I’ll get 400 bushels thi 6 year. 
That’B $1,000. A hundred dollars an acre is 
good rent for land worth $15 an acre, ain’t 
it?" 
“ Well, what else ?” I inquired, growing in¬ 
terested. 
“The trees’’ continued Mr. Graves, “are 
growing an inch a year. When they are twenty 
years old they will be nineteen inches through. 
A black-walnut tree nineteen incheB throngh 
is worth $25. My 2,000 trees ten years from 
now will be worth 850,000. If I don’t want to 
cut them all, I can cut half of them, and then 
raise a bushel of walnuts to the tree,—that is, 
get $2,500 a yea* for the crop. Two hundred 
and fifty dollars an acre is a fair rent for $15 
land, ain’t it?" 
The more I examixe into the possibilities 
and probabilities of ten acres of black-wal¬ 
nut trees, the more astounded I become. 
There is no crop on earth- that will come with¬ 
in fifty miles of it. Calculate it any way you 
mey, ten acres of black-wahiut trees will pay 
$250 annually an acre lor the first forty years. 
Ten acres of black-walnut trees fifty years 
old wonld be worth $100,000. There is no 
fruit that will pay $2.50 a bushel, the market 
price of black-walnuts. Ten acres of black- 
walnut trees, at any age, would always find a 
a market, like a marble quarry or cool wine. 
It could always be Bold. Mr. Gravea Bays he 
has never seen a time since his black-walnut 
forest was twoyeare old when ha couldn’t have 
sold It for more than as many crops of wheat. 
Now, any farmer who has ten acres of over¬ 
flow land on the Illinois bottom can do just 
what this smart Texan has done. He can 
make it worth more than ten acres in the sub¬ 
urbs of Chicago inside of ten years. Any 
Chicago man can buy fifty acres of low, black 
prairie within fifty miles of Chicago at $25 
an acre, plant it to Black-walnut, and make it 
pay him $15,000 a year. (!!) 
1‘hb cheapest, best, easiest put up and strong¬ 
est lightning conductor is copper wire, Bays a 
writer in the If , Y. Tribune. Get at a metal store 
a coil of the length required, and as large a?, or 
larger than, common telegraph wire. Fasten 
one end over your chimney-top, run along the 
ridge and dowD the end of your house, fasten¬ 
ing with common blind-staples driven into the 
wood. Be sure to have the lower end termin¬ 
ate in permanently moist earth or in a well, 
not a cemented cistern. Use ao glass Insula¬ 
tors, patent tips or other humbug nonsense, 
and you will have the cheapest and most pet- 
feet lightning conductor that can be made. 
Fbmalb Farmbbs —We see the following In 
the Vermont Watchman; France has agricul¬ 
tural schools for girls. One of the chief is 
near Rouen, which is said to have been begun 
with a capital of one franc by a sister of charity 
and two little discharged prisoner girls, and to 
be now worth $160,000. This establishment has 
three hundred girls from six to eighteen. The 
farm, entirely cultivated by them, is over four 
hundred acres in extent. Twenty-five sisters 
form the staff of teachers. More than one 
medal of the French Agricultural Society has 
been awarded to thi 6 establishment at Darnetel, 
and the pupils are in great demand all over 
Normandy on account of their skill. They go 
out as stewards, gradeners, farm managers, 
daii y women and laundresses. Each girl has. 
on leaving, an outfit and a email sum of money, 
earned in spare hours. If they want a home 
they can always return to Darnetel, which they 
are taught to regard as home. 
Sweet simplicity sometimes contains the 
sharpest sarcasm. A lawyer said to his client, 
an honest farmer, “ Did you go to your oppo¬ 
nent and try to settle with him?” “I did, 
Your Honor," was the reply. “ And what did 
he 6ay ?” 1 ' Why, sir, he told me to go to the 
devil.” “And what did you do then, sir?” 
“ Then I came straight to you.”—N. Y, Herald. 
.Men are naturally charitable, but 
they have a bad habit of feeling everywhere 
for the poor except in their pocket-books. . . 
. . . The Chicago Tribune says a broad-tire 
wagon draws 25 per cent, lighter than a nar¬ 
row one.Dr. Felix L. Oswald, writ¬ 
ing against meat-eating, especially in hot 
weather, makes the eminently sensible sugges¬ 
tion that “ hot-headed boys can be more effect¬ 
ually cured with cows' milk than with a cow¬ 
hide.’’—N. Y. Tribune. ..... An esteemed 
contemporary asks the following question : Is 
it true, as rumor asserts, that Messrs, Whit¬ 
man and Burrell’s cows were found by several 
visitors during last Winter “ veiy poor, weak, 
and sore-footed and if so, to what extent 
was their feed of ensilage responsible ? .... 
How are the cows of Winning Billerica Bailey ? 
.Mr. Harris Lewis of the Central N. 
Y. Farmers’ Club, says that the Rhode Island 
people who beat the world in johnDycake pre¬ 
fer white com. Others prefer the yellow. . . . ; 
. . . Level culture, we are rather surprised to * 
see was preferred by all. One member pre¬ 
ferred hoeing away from rather than towards 
the drills or even hills. 
(ftogtofra. 
.NOTES FROM SOUTHEASTERN MARYLAND. 
We have often wondered whether any news 
from our little colony wonld be interesting to 
the general public; but during a year's stay 
here we have learned to like this portion of the 
South so well that we are anxious to give a pen 
picture of the place and its prospects to the 
readers of The Rural. First, as to its loca¬ 
tion: 60 miles south of Lewes in Delaware you 
stop at our station on the railroad, called, 
•Girdle Tree Hill. “Hill,"you infer, means an 
elevation, but in this country it is no distin¬ 
guishing term, for there are no hills. Col. 
Mapes, one of the directors who personally su¬ 
perintended the building of the road, told us 
that iu 30 miles there was a decline of only two 
and a-half feet. Snow Hill, eight miles North 
of us, Is the counly seat; Focomoke, seven 
miles southwest, Jb a pleasant, lively town, 
connected by both river and rail with the ship¬ 
ping centers of the South. So you see, this is. 
a very good location for Northern farmers who, 
like ourselves, are disposed to emigrate to. 
other and newer parts of the country. 
Then we raise here wheat, oats, corn, sweet 
said Irish potatoes, all sorts of vegetables for 
! market, cane sufficient to furnish molasses for 
: home consumption, and an unlimited quantity 
I of fruit. Little, if any, lye is sown. The only 
crop we have seen or heard of, is a field of 16 
: acres sown by us last'.Fall, and this is very ex¬ 
cellent, the stalks being six feet high and heav¬ 
ily headed. The wheat crop will scarcely aver¬ 
age as well as that of last year, but oats are 
doing better. Last year we lost 16 acres on ac¬ 
count of the drought, but this present crop 
pfoai ises well. Corn, however, iB the princi¬ 
pal product of this section. It iB a common 
estimate of a farmer that he “makes” a cer¬ 
tain amount of com, and there is an exact 
number of hills that furnish what is called " a 
horse till." So far this season this crop prom¬ 
ises well. The weather—one day moist, the 
next warm and bright—is just adapted to its 
growth, as it iB to that of sorghum of which 
every farmer in our section has sufficient 
planted for home use. Whether buckwheat 
will prove a successful crop is still a matter 
of trial. Last year the heavy rains prevented , 
ns from sowing any, but this we tru 6 t will 
prove better, and we can try then for buck¬ 
wheat cakes for tne winter—a luxury which 
we were forced to dispense with last Winter, 
very little beiug for sale in the stores, and that 
at $4 per cwt. 
But nature makes up to ns for the loss of 
many Northern products in the lavish manner j 
iu which she throws fruit of all kinds into otti- 
mouths. Of course, everyone knows this Is a 
great peach country; but no one who is not 
accustomed to it can fail to notice what quan¬ 
tities of smaller fruit grow wild here. We 
have bought all our strawberries for five cents & 
quart at first, and three cents for later berries. 
Now they are about over, and fine large Ox- 
heart cherries are plentiful at 90 cents a bushel. 
You will find gooseberries in all the farm gar¬ 
dens, and they are a full crop; but we see 
very few currants, and do not think them gen¬ 
erally cultivated. 
Raspberries do not grow wild here as at the. 
North, but they take very kindly to our gar¬ 
dens. The running blackberry is everywhere. 
You could scarcely see any ditch banks in the 
time of its blossoming, and in a short time you 
can pick a bushel in “no time.” There will he 
a large crop of whortleberries and they sell 
here readily at $1 a bushel. Thi 6 is not “ap¬ 
ple year ” with us, yet we have a dozen trees 
well filled; last year there were so many dried, 
that you could buy them at retail all Winter 
for four cents per pounds This is the “ peach 
year ” with us, but in thiB climate wherever 
the thermometer remains for 24 hours below 
zero, it kills the buds. And if your memory 
is not at fault, it will need no reminder of the 
fact that last Winter that indicator did not 
stop at zero, but went down the very last 
stairs into the cellar. Within a circle of ten 
miles I know of only two orchards that will 
bear fruit. They stood in so sheltered a po¬ 
sition that the fierce cold did not affect them. 
And then they are old orchards or rather the 
trees are the “ old-fashioned seedlings ” and 
they claim here that these u old-time ” peaches 
are more hardy than the varieties we buy of 
the nurserymen at the present day. 80 much 
for a bit of news from our quiet settlement. 
All of this has been practical description of our 
surroundings ; but there are many things be¬ 
side these inaltei-of-fact ones, of which, had f 
space, 1 should like to write you—of the 
roads, without a hill or a stone, lying among 
woods fragrant with magnolia and honey¬ 
suckle, bright with sunshine and laurel, and 
musical with song of robin and mocking-bird; 
_._ * __ __ , 
of the little hamlets into which they lead you, 
each with its little church and white-washed 
fences and out-buildings, its immense fields of 
corn or wheat smiling to the sun ; of the bay 
on one side of us and old ocean on the other, 
vying each with the other as to the puritv 
of their breezeB which come as God’s blessing, 
unseen but thankfully accepted in long Sum¬ 
mer afternoons. Our twilights are shorter 
than at the North, but when the night settles 
down “ starry and still,” it is so full of beauty 
that you have not missed the “blind man's 
holiday ” of your childhood hours. K. D. t. 
Klej Grange Colony, Worcester Co.. Md. 
-- 
RURAL SPECIAL REPORTS. 
Alabama. 
Anniston, Calhoun Co., June 28.—Acre¬ 
age in wheat 50 per cent, less than us¬ 
ual ; yield very good. Oats 10 per cent, more 
than last year; will make three-fourths of 
crop. Very little rye and no barley. Wheat, 
Blue Straw. Oats, rust-proof and blue. We 
have had an excellent season so far for corn ; 
about the same area was planted as last year, 
but it has been badly neglected for “King 
Cotton.” There are many fields that have not 
as yet been touched, uud the beet part of the 
season is passed. More land has been planted 
in cotton than ever before, and where it has 
been properly worked it looks better thau X 
have before seen it at this time of year. No 
peaches or blackberries. Raspberries and 
strawberries good. Fair crop apples. G. a. s. 
Arizona. 
San Pedbo, Pima Co.. June 23.—This sec¬ 
tion of Arizona has only been settled four or 
five years, and only small quantities of grain 
are raised. Wheat, oats and barley do well, 
but every crop is raised by irrigation. Tim 
is not considered to be a good corn country , 
very little is raised. Orchards are all young. 
My father has about 2,000 treeB of all kinds; 
they were small yearlings and were set out 
two years last Spring. Peaches and plum 
trees are twelve feet high ; other trees do well. 
We have some peaches this year. Grapes and 
strawberries do finely, but other small fruits 
are failures. f. l. 
California. 
Sacbambnto City, 8acrament6 Co., July 4. 
—Wheat and barley are the chief staples of 
this and Lassen counties, and of these there 
will be about half a crop as compared with 
last year’s total yield, as the acreage is less. 
Very little rye or oats is grown here, and com 
is raised only along the river bottoms. Small 
and orchard fruits are fully up to the aver¬ 
age. s. s. H. 
Canada, 
Bubfohd, NorthUeld Center, Onl., July 5.— 
Wheat yields about 14 bushels per acre, some 
pieces art*good hut others are quite thin. The 
usual average lor years has been about 25 
bushels—Clawson, Fultz and a little Scot. 
Barley and oat prospects good ; rye very little 
sown. Peas are good. Corn outlook very 
poor; large quantities have been planted over, 
and even then have not grown. Last year’s 
crop was not very good and it was not well 
cured on account of the rain, much of it failed 
to mature well and therefore the seed must 
have been poor. The supply ot fruit will be 
small; a number of trees are dying, I think 
from the hard Winter. Greenings are suffer¬ 
ing most with me. Peaches not much grown. 
Small fruits have also suffered. Black-cap 
raspberries and black currants will be scarce. 
Strawberries are not so plentiful as they have 
been Borne seasons, but are a fair sample. 
Grapes have also been much injured by the 
Winter, especially the more tender varieties. 
Cherries in all varieties are very scarce; hard¬ 
ly enough for the birdB. The hay crop will 
be good. Clover not having been injured by 
the Winter, has more thau a usually good 
outlook. Potatoes look very well; the Beauty 
of Hebron i6 making a large growth. The 
bugs are not quite so numerous, but there 
will be enough of them by the time for the 
late varieties. D . s , 
Colorado. 
Sedalia, Douglas Co., July 2.—An increased 
acreage of wheat; but the outlook now is dis¬ 
couraging—so dry. The same can be said of 
oats and rye; but little barley is grown. Corn 
looks well, but not much is grown in Colorado 
—nights too cold. All the orchards in this 
State can be counted pn the fingers of one 
hand. All the apples raised in Colorado cost 
a dollar each. Small fruits are on the increase 
and promise well at present. Colorado is not 
a farming State. Mining and stock raising are 
the main industries. u. t. s. 
Dakota Territory. 
Utica, Yankton Co., June 28.—Our Winter 
here was the severest that I have ever exper¬ 
ienced in my life and a greater depth of snow 
fell and stayed on the ground very late, caus¬ 
ing the ground to be very wot when It went off. 
We usually get our email grains sowed by the 
first of April; this year we commenced sowing 
the last of that month, and then were hin¬ 
dered by a very wet May, consequently, our 
