SEPT.4© 
622 
esteemed by the farmers. But the writer 
urges that, for the community at large, no 
real advantage is gained by the cultivation of 
the English wheats, since, when considered as 
food for the support of human beings, they are 
vastly less efficient than the ordinary native 
wheats of the region. The English wheats, 
he goes on to say, have a preponderance of 
starch; their gluten is comparatively small in 
quantity, and poor in quality; and the flour 
made from them is ill fitted for making bread. 
Taken by itself, the flom* is really not fit for 
baker’s use, being much more suitable for the 
starch factory. The only way that the baker 
can use such flour is by mixing small quanti¬ 
ties of it with a largo proportion of flour pre¬ 
pared from wheats rich in gluten, and, even 
then, he is apt to complain that the mixture 
of flours does not bake well. In case it should 
come to pass that no other variety of wheat 
beside the rough English were grown in a 
given locality, it would lie absolutely neces¬ 
sary to import hard wheat from abroad in 
order to make good bread. 
But, in fact, the German millers will not buy 
the English wheat at all after they have once 
made acquaintance with it; or, if they buy it, 
they do so at a greatly reduced price. Some 
of it is, consequently, sold to starch-makers; 
but for the. most part it has hitherto been 
worked off by mixing it with other kinds of 
wheat, to be sold to distant markets—to the 
great detriment, a-s the writer urges, of solid 
business and to the positive injury of those 
funnel's who continue to grow the native va¬ 
rieties, since their product shares the doubt 
which has been cast upon the grain of then- 
neighborhood. This system of admixture had 
attained such proportions that the directors 
VELVET CHAFF—FROM LIFE—FIG. 452. 
of the Produce Exchange at Hamburg decided, 
some months since, to exclude bearded English 
wheat from their market. Since the first of 
June last past it can no longer be offered for 
sale there. The writer concludes by urging 
his readers to exert their utmost influence to 
prevent the further spread of the English 
wheat into other German provinces, 
The article in question is interesting as illu.r 
trating the feelings of persons looking at the 
matter from a limited point of view. The 
small-way millers, and the statesmen even, of 
a little German Duchy will naturally view the 
question according to the limitations which 
hamper them. The American farmer, on the 
contrary, works in a wider field. His pro¬ 
ducts are sought for by a great variety of 
consumers, and put to manifold uses. He will 
naturally continue to grow those varieties of 
wheat which bast suit his royal pleasure. For 
him, the question is absolutely one of market 
price— Ag determined not by the wants of bis 
immediate neighborhood alone but by those 
of the entire world. If he can find his profit 
in growing soft wheat he will undoubtedly 
continue to do so, no matter what millers may 
say or what the relative proportions of starch 
and gluten may be. And the miller, for his 
part, will, of course, buy those kinds of wheat 
he wishes for, and he will buy them in the 
pluces where they can be got most advanta¬ 
geously. 
-- 
RYE TO THE RESCUE. 
B. F. JOHNSON. 
A small portion only of the regular readers 
of the Rural New-Yorker can be brought 
to understand the magnitude of the drought of 
this Summer in the West and South; nor 
would it be easy to afford them a correct con¬ 
ception of the disasters wrought by the com¬ 
bined forces of the Hessian Fly, the chinch bug 
and drought to Winter and Spring wheat and 
Indian com. I suppose five hundred million 
bushels less for the three would bo scarcely 
too high an estimate. But in the Winter 
wheat belt, where wheat is the leading cereal 
and the main crop of the country, the work of 
destruction of the chinch bug is not ut an end 
for this year; for he will surely continue his 
ravages on the newly sown wheat just as soon 
as the green blades appear above ground, un¬ 
less copious rains fall, which are quite out of 
the question for months to come. In view of 
tills fact I have thought it advisable to use the 
columns of the Rura l, which is widely circu¬ 
lated through this region, to state some im- 
poi*tant facts in respect to Winter rye, and 
tell how it may be made to come to the rescue 
and partially supply the place which wheat 
would fill under ordinary circumstances. 
On account of the sun-baked, compact and 
hardened state of the soil, due to prolonged 
drought and to the excessive heat, it has been 
and will be found impossible to do that break¬ 
ing of the soil and make that fining of its sub¬ 
stance, which are among the essentials in pre¬ 
paring the laud for wheat. Besides, if after 
infinite labor the soil is so prepared and the 
seed sown, there is no security there would be 
moisture enough to gonniuate the grain, or at 
best it would do so only partially, and the 
seed would lie lost. But in case enough rain 
falls to germinate the grain after seeding and 
by the first of October—and for the Winter 
wheat belt, that date is as late as the seeding 
can be deferred with safety to the crop—the 
moment the young wheat blades appear above 
the ground, the chinch bug, which is many¬ 
headed and lives over the entire Winter, will 
fasten upon them and suck the life and juices 
out of the plants. Moreover, there are almost 
certain signs in the heavens of a dry Autumn, 
and if a dry Autumn, along, dry, cold and very 
severe Winter is almost a sure event. In that 
case, the wheat crop if sown early and getting 
a good start and stand, will run great risk of 
severe injury, and if sown late and weakened 
by the chinch bug, the crop will be almost cer¬ 
tainly lost. These are fatalities which hap¬ 
pened to the Winter wheat crops harvested in 
1874, 1875 and 1881, and the crop of 1882 is 
almost sure to suffer in the same way; for it 
has lieeu for a long time observed and recent¬ 
ly clearly proved and demonstrated by Pro¬ 
fessor Thomas, State Entomologist of Hlinois, 
that dry seasons and wet ones in the Winter- 
wheat belt, repeat themselves with more or 
leas regularity every seven years and, there¬ 
fore, that the coming ami going of chinch 
bugs may be calculated and foretold with ac¬ 
curacy to a month. 
But as a. compensation in some measure for 
the failure of Winter wheat, we have a pre¬ 
cious resource in Winter rj o, which, while less 
valuable in many respects than wheat, may 
be justly considered the cereal of greatest im¬ 
portance after wheat and Indian corn. In 
the first place, in respect to the chinch bug, 
rye, like oats, is no favorite with it, and it sel¬ 
dom attacks either when there is hurley, 
wheat or corn near. Besides, and here are 
facts of vast, significance, first, the seeding of 
rye may be deferred in dry seasons with per¬ 
fect safety to late in October, or a month 
later than wheat; and, second, it may be har¬ 
vested from ten days to two weeks earlier and 
thus escape the ravages of the chinch bug, be¬ 
cause he is chilled beyond doing serious dam¬ 
age in the Fall and nolfyet numerous enough 
nor yet ready for serious work in the Spring. 
While rye is impatient of too much moisture 
and will not stand half as much rainfall, over¬ 
flow or soaking of the soil as wheat, it appears 
to be indifferent to Fall and Winter droughts 
and prolonged cold, and never makes so good 
crops os in those dry, cold Winters in which 
the wheat crop is more or loss seriously win¬ 
ter-killed. This is what happened in the cold 
and dry and very snowy Winter of 1874-5, 
when the wheat crop was very badly hurt, as 
the same thing is almost, sure to happen in the 
Winter of 1881-2. While only about two- 
tbirds as much rye is required to seed an aci e 
with it as an equal area of wheat, the cost of 
the former is less than two-thirds of the latter 
but at the same time rye has become so scarce 
that it has risen from 70 cents in 1880 to 91.00 
in 1881, and during the year has been higher 
than wheat, selling for $1.25 at a time the 
latter sold for 30 cents less. 
TELLOW MISSOURI. 
FIG. 453. 
“GOLDEN grains,” 
From life—Fig. 454. 
At this juncture when and after both the 
Winter and Spring wheat crop of 1881 has 
been reduced one or two if not three hundred 
million bushels by drought and insects, and 
when the Fall crop is in very great, danger of 
being largely abandoned by the impoverished 
fanner and lost if sown, ho cares not to risk 
and lose the seed and labor of another crop, 
we have the grand resource of rye offered to 
us, and it seems to be specially the duty of 
such wide-read and influential papers as the 
Rural New-Yorker to bring the fact prom¬ 
inently before the farmers of the country and 
especially those of the valley of the Mississippi. 
Further, it Is the result of twenty-five yearn’ 
observation in the West, that the farmers 
under many and various, if not all, circum¬ 
stances have no such liberal and enlightened 
friends a nd ad visors as the leading spirited and 
active agents of tho'greab railroad lines, and, 
therefore, I ask of you that this matter of 
sowing rye as a substitute for wheat at this 
critical time be brought to their attention, 
that they may, ns they surely will when they 
understand the subject, bring their influence 
to bear upon the matter in hand. 
Champaign Co., D]. 
— - -- 
WHEAT RAISING IN MISSOURI. 
This portion of the State can hardly be 
called a wheat-growing section; still, as a rule, 
every farmer raises enough for his own family, 
from 10 to 20 acres being the average wheat 
area per farm. Care enough, however, is not 
given to preparing or seeding the ground, to 
pruduce good crops—a carelessness that 
causes many failures. I have seen wheat 
sown on corn land without any previous prep¬ 
aration except cutting off the corn. Per¬ 
haps the last plowing received by the com 
would have been about the middle of June, 
after which the laud would remain undisturb¬ 
ed for at least threemonths; then the wheat 
would bo sown on this ground packed hard 
by rain and sun, and a slight stirring of the 
soil, just to cover the seed, would lie the only 
labor bestowed on the seeding. In many 
cases, I’ve seen the weeds and v Crab Grass bo 
SOFT WHEAT IN GERMANY. 
The editorial remarks on “ soft wheat” in 
the Rural of July 30th, suggest the observa¬ 
tion that it is not among American millers 
only that “there is a growing agitation 
against soft wheat.” I have recently read in 
one of the agricultural periodicals of Germany 
a vigorous protest from an association of mil¬ 
lers against the growing of soft wheat, and I 
could not but remark that there must prob¬ 
ably be a good deal of truth in a prejudice so 
widely spread as this one seems to be. The 
German article was, in fact, couched in terms 
not unlike the expressions of the American 
millers to which the Rural editorial referred, 
The argument was, briefly, that in recent 
years certain rough or bearded varieties of 
white English Winter wheat had been intro¬ 
duced into North Germany and largely 
grown there, especially in districts where 
beets are cultivated for sugar making; and 
that, since these English wheats yield more 
abundantly than the ordinary native varieties, 
they have been a good deal sought after and 
farmers are rapidly getting back to the old 
practice of raising their own bread. Clawson 
is the universal variety which, like the old 
Mediterranean, is hardy and productive but 
of poor quality as compared with other kinds 
now grown. It does not seem to improve by 
continuous growing. When the flour is mix¬ 
ed with that of harder varieties, the bread is 
more palatable, and the flour also improves 
with age. 
Wheat is such an impoi-tant crop in do¬ 
mestic economy and fits so nicely in the rota¬ 
tion of crops that “Wheat Numbers” and the 
discussion of wheat raising are always inter¬ 
esting and must, be profitable. Many farmers 
are deterred from putting in wheat for the 
want of manure in the Autumn, Experience 
has taught that a good Crop can hardly be 
hoped for without it. We have succeeded in 
having an excellent yield by sowing it in good 
season and drawing the manure upon tlie 
field in the Winter and spreading it upon the 
snow. In the Spring all the lumps were 
carefully knocked to pieces and scattered 
evenly over the ground. The after-manuring 
serves the purpose of protecting the plants 
during the Spi'ing thawing and freezing bet¬ 
ter than if it had been harrowed in \vit§* the 
wheat when it was sown. The manure was 
that which was made during the Winter and 
was drawn directly from the stables to the 
field. 
The seeding of clover and Timothy 
sown in the early Spring on this ground was 
the best we ever had. We like the plan of 
turning over a clover sod or an old meadi iw as 
soon as possible after it has been mown, for 
wheat. Our forefathers used to think they 
could not raise wheat without summer-fal¬ 
lowing. They plowed the land early in the 
Spring, kept the sheep on it to keep the grass 
and weeds down, and then plowed it two or 
thred times more. Our plan is a kind of 
senii-summer-fallowing with the advantage of 
an extra crop. A few days after tho ground 
has been plowed it should be thoroughly har¬ 
rowed to fill up the spaces between the fur¬ 
rows and to prevent the grass from growing. 
By the first of September it should be cultiva¬ 
ted and the soil pulverized, and by the middle 
of September cross-plowed. By this time the 
sods will be rotten and the land can be reduc¬ 
ed to a fine tilth and mellowness which fit it 
for wheat. Wheat should never be harrowed 
in, but covered either with a drill or cultiva¬ 
tor. 
We like and attach importance to the plan 
of rolling the ground after it has been pre¬ 
pared for the seed and before the seed has 
been put in. While the soil should be finely 
pulverized, it should not be left in too light 
and huffy a condition. The roots will be strong¬ 
er and the crop will stand the Winter better if 
the soil is made compact and firm. Thorough 
drainage is essential, but wheat vail do well on 
moist soil—much better than rye. The bottom 
lands of the Mohawk River this year have pro¬ 
duced an average of thirty-four bushels to the 
acre without any manure. Under our system 
of putting wheat on sod, a meadow may be re¬ 
newed in one year, which is often desirable. 
The usual practice, however, with our farmers 
is to make wheat the third crop in rotation, 
following oats and corn. When this is done, 
more manure is required than with a sod seed¬ 
bed. The oat stubble should lie plowed under 
as soon as possible after the crop is taken off’, 
while the juices are still in the stubble which 
adds materially to its value in enriching the 
soil. In all casas, manure should be spread 
upon the surface for wheat and a liberal ap¬ 
plication will always pay in strengthening the 
roots for Winter and causing it to stool more 
plentifully. Commercial fertilizers pay as 
well on wheat as on any other crop, if not bet¬ 
ter, by giving it a good start, which is a great 
aid in affording more ample protection for 
Winter. 
professor f. h. storer. 
