given, although the figures do push them pretty 
hard. 
I have claimed to have done something 
in growing corn myself, and some persons 
have in a sort of high moral way repudi¬ 
ated in t.ho coldest and most unsymputhjzing 
manner the intimation that they were the au¬ 
thors of a statement (made by me) that it was 
easy to grow 100 bushels of corn per acre. But 
as I have done it; and the editor of the Rural 
New-Yorker has done it; and a whole lot of 
farmers’ boys have done it, it must be a very 
modest man who will say that it cannot easily 
be done. But let that pass. What will those 
gentlemen — my 
friend E. W. S. 
and Prof. Rob¬ 
erts—say about 
this com crop of 
117 tons 1,200 
pounds per acre 
grown by Mr. 
Mills? It must, 
of course, have 
been grown, be¬ 
cause he fed it, 
and cattle can¬ 
not fill their bel- 
lips on stories, 
however big and 
inflated they 
may be. A plain 
farmer may re¬ 
alize what this 
crop amounts to 
when we figure 
up that it is 
three - quarters 
of a ton, nearly, 
from a square 
rod of 
square feet, or 
lObf feet square; 
that is, six 
pounds to each 
square foot. But 
Mr. Mills, of 
course, has that 
attribute which 
was possessed by 
the Father of his 
Country when 
he was a. little 
boy and amused 
himself with his 
little hatchet 
among the cher¬ 
ry trees, and so 
we must believe 
this story, unless 
a wicked printer has put a wrong figure in it. 
Now the truth about this ensilage business 
is told by Mr. Lawes so far as regards the val¬ 
ue of the fodder. As regards the yield, every 
farmer cun easily judge for himself; the real 
value of the process is in preserving the fodder 
in a succulent condition without losing any of 
the value of it in drying. Grass is better than 
hay, green oats and com are better than dried 
straw or fodder. Why it should be so, when 
in drying only the water is lost, it is difficult 
to say. But we know it is so. Then if we 
can preserve the green fodder in its fresh con¬ 
dition, even with a loss of some of its nutritive 
value, we gain a good deal. The process is of 
such certain value that persons should not 
be led into disparaging it by these big stories. 
No truth is shamed by' the persons who bring it 
into discredit by exaggeration and vainglori¬ 
ous bouatiug of what they have done or expect 
to do. I believe the process will turn out to 
be the very thing required to make soiling 
cattle fully effective, the whole year round; 
and if so, the key to cheap feeding and rich 
fertilizing of the soil has been found. 
-- 
VARIOUS TOPICS. 
B. F. JOHNSON. 
Perhaps there is no more striking instance 
of how readily agricultural implement makers 
and inventors consult the wants and wishes of 
farmers in respect to new tools and the im¬ 
provement of old ones, than the suddenness 
with which all the self-binding harvester man¬ 
ufacturers threw away their wire attachments 
and adopted those using twine, I have some¬ 
times thought inventors were, after all, the 
first and foremost in improved farm practice, 
for as soon as, and sometimes before, the need 
of new tools and implements has been made 
manifest to a very few only, the inventors had 
them ready at hand. When, in consequence 
of several wet seasons in succession, many 
fields grew up to have a sward of weeds and 
coarse grasses no common single plow could 
master, the sulky or riding plow, capable of 
almost any work, came to the rescue; and 
when the wheat acreage increased beyond 
the power of the farm and surplus labor 
of the country to harvest it, the self-binder 
appeared on the scene- Having witnessed 
till this, I am prepared for the cotton picker 
and the coni shucker, and almost any other 
‘inagined Implement there is a loud call for. 
Referring to the wheat crop of the East, 
which in many places has suffered very much 
from continued heat and drought, as that of 
the Mississippi Valley did from the same 
causes this time last year, it is gratifying to 
be able to report that the continued, and, part 
of the time, copious rains since the 27th of Sep¬ 
tember have brought the crop forward in a 
most gratifying and surprising way. Perhaps 
late seeding has been interfered with and in 
some cases prevented, for it is rare that for 
this latitude (40 degrees) and time (October 14) 
wheat sown after, makes a paying crop. But 
perhaps the most gratifying circumstance to 
be mentioned at this time is the probable con¬ 
siderable, if not general, destruction of the 
chinch bugs, wliich were so incredibly' numer¬ 
ous a few weeks ago that they thickened the 
air, resembling a thin cloud of smoke for three 
or four warm afternoons. If the present mul¬ 
titudes of chinch bugs disappear all of a sud¬ 
den, and from what appears to be insufficient 
causes, it will be repeating nothing more than 
the experience of the past on several occasions 
—whereat we shall heartily rejoice. 
But if the last week in October or the first 
week in November is two or three weeks too 
late to sow wheat in the middle latitudes, it is 
not too late to sow rye, and therefore where 
land has been prepared for wheat and the co¬ 
pious rains have prevented the use of the drill, 
rye can be substituted for wheat with reason¬ 
able certainty of a good crop, when sown as 
late as the last of November. Late in the 
month of March, 1881, I had the opportunity 
to see many'thousand acres of wheat, the very' 
feeble condition of which prefigured the fail¬ 
ure of the crop at harvest; but in every case 
where 1 encountered rye my eyes were re¬ 
lieved and refreshed with a mass of living 
green. To be sure, last Fall was a cold and 
dry one and the Winter very severe, and the 
present Autumn so far, for the West, has been 
warm and wet, but rye is so hardy a cereal it 
is reasonable to suppose its ability to make a 
crop where wheat fails will insure the same 
thing under conditions favorable to wheat. 
There is a constant loud call from the 
South for varieties of what are called rust¬ 
proof wheat and oats. That there should be 
a demand for them is reasonable enough; but 
it is not so that it should be made on the 
North. The Southern States belong to the 
category of warm and dry, if not hot, cli¬ 
mates, and the cereals suited to those sections 
should be from climates of a similar charac¬ 
ter; say the countries lying along the south 
shores of the Mediterranean Sea in Northern 
Africa—Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. 
The cereals, in common with all plants, live 
and develop under a certain range of tempera¬ 
ture, flourishing best at a certain mean. When 
this is exceeded on the one side or the other, 
growth is arrested, fungus in some form ap- 
pears, and the plants die. This is what hap¬ 
pens whore cereals, differentiated to moderate 
temperatures, are exposed to the intense heat 
of the South: the growth of thn plant is ar¬ 
rested, and rust or fungus steps in, and the re¬ 
sult is as we see. 
If the Chief ol’ the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture, in looking about for seeds for distribu¬ 
tion, would keep in mind the needs of the 
South for varieties of wheat, oats, barley and 
rye, and, I may add, Indian corn, suited to 
the peculiar soils and hot Summer seasons, and 
consult the characteristics of the cereal crops 
of the countries named above, it is probable 
some very' valuable, new varieties might be ob¬ 
tained. Many of the wheats of Northern Af¬ 
rica are remarkably hard, flinty and nitro¬ 
genous; others soft and starchy, while all, or 
nearly all, are so tender they will submit to 
nothing like severe frosts. Then there are 
the cereals of the high table lands of Mex¬ 
ico and Central America. Doubtless among 
those might be found many r which would be 
found to be rust-proof iu the South, that is, so 
well endured to a hot climate, that the process 
of growth would go on under a sustained high 
temperature. 
It has been generally supposed that Indian 
corn was so much of a tropical plant that 
Northern varieties, especially those large ones 
of the Mississippi Valley, would stand any 
reasonable amount of heat and drought both 
in the upper and lower cotton belts. But the 
experience of this y ear has corrected this no¬ 
tion, for it is found that in Louisiana the Cre¬ 
ole (that is the native corn) has produced 
fair crops under conditions of heat and drought 
where corn, the product of Northern seed, has 
wholly failed. This admits of the reasonable¬ 
ness of the idea that there are varieties in ex¬ 
istence capable of withstanding an unusual 
amount of drought and that at the same time 
will attain maturity under a comparatively low 
Summer temperature, while there are others, 
which, having acquired the tendency to make 
strong and large root growth, will yield good 
crops on comparatively poor soils. 
PROFESSOR BLOUNT’S WORK AT THE 
COLORADO STATE COLLEGE. 
The interests of agriculture demand careful 
experimentation. Some men, either at their 
own or the State's expense, must give up farm¬ 
ing for profit and devote their best time and 
talent to a work which shall produce its lest 
results for coming generations. Such men de¬ 
serve commendation, inasmuch as what they 
do is done not so much for self and self-inter¬ 
est as for the public ana public interest. 
It is hardly necessary to say'to Rural read¬ 
ers that Professor Blount, of Colorado, is one 
of the foremost experimenters of the day in 
agriculture, and the work he is doing for Col¬ 
orado and the country iu general should be 
gratefully recognized. With the necessary' 
working facilities furnished by the State he is 
enabled to carry on a series of experiments as 
to methods, varieties, treatment of soil, etc., 
etc., which are greatly to his credit, and, yet 
more, to the advantage of the State in which 
he lives. His experiments in wheat culture 
have, perhaps, been the most Interesting, as 
they probably' are destined to be the most 
profitable to the farmers of the West. He has 
originated new varieties; has shown that in 
well-prepared land too much seed is sown to 
the acre; that Winter wheats will do well in 
Colorado, and that thorough cultivation is the 
great secret of success in farming. Professor 
Blount expects to perfect 15 new hyiirids, or 
crosses, in wheat next year, and, together with 
the 124 varieties already produced, we may 
expect an interesting report another year. 
Any improvement in variety or cultivation of 
wheat is of great importance to the vast wheat- 
producing sec¬ 
tions of the 
country. In his 
wheat experi¬ 
ments he has 
sown at the rate 
of 50, 40, 30, 20 
and 15 pounds to 
the acre, and he 
concludes that 
30 pounds to the 
acre, when the 
soil is well tilled, 
will produce as 
much grain as 
SO pounds to the 
acre when the 
soil is poorly 
tilled. Here is 
an important 
item, and if it be 
true, as it doubt¬ 
less is, that from 
a-half to three- 
quarters of a 
bushel are wast¬ 
ed, as he says, 
on every acre, 
estimating the 
total acreage to 
wheat at the low 
figure of 32,000,- 
001 acres, in a 
single season 
10,000,000 bush¬ 
els, at the least 
caleul ation 
worth more than 
as many dollars, 
could be saved 
and devoted to a 
better purpose. 
The potato 
blight has been 
claiming Mr. 
Blount's atten¬ 
tion, and it is his opinion that the disease 
first develops itself in the form of a black 
spot at the base of the stalk and that the 
black line extends downward to the root and 
through the potato. He has, in all his in_ 
vestigations, found no insects, anil believes 
they have nothing to do with the blight, but 
the cause is probably atmospherical. He thinks 
a remedy can easily be discovered, though the 
exact cause for the disease it may be difficult 
to determine. His investigations have been 
extended to almost every' crop produced. He 
has grown flax, hemp, jute, and rice success¬ 
fully, and even sweet potatoes have been made 
to produce well. Twenty-one varieties of tame 
grasses are under test, all soi'ts of forest trees 
are being cultivated, new varieties of fruits 
are being originated and tested; in short, he is 
doing a comprehensive and thorough work and 
the results thereof w ill tell. 
Aside from the actual advantage which w r ill 
accrue from his experiments, per se, his posi¬ 
tion as Professor of Experimental Agriculture 
and Mechanic Arts iu the Colorado State Col¬ 
lege enables him to impart such instruction to 
his students as will encourage them to continue 
the work, and they will carry with them into 
their field of labor a practical knowledge of 
how to cultivate the soil, a lofty ambition to 
excel therein, and an ability to combine theory 
and practice iu such proportions as to^bring 
about the best results. Such is a bare outline 
of what Professor Blount is doing to exalt and 
ennoble and render more profitable the voca¬ 
tion of the farmer. 
ficli) Crops, 
RAISING FLAX. 
The beginning of flax culture in Kansas 
dates back to about the year 1870. Previous 
to that time the principal crop of small grain 
had been Fall wheat, but the yield of that 
cereal was so uncertain and the crop was at¬ 
tended with so many failures that its cultiva¬ 
tion gradually' ceased iu this part of the State. 
The introduction of flax supplied the place of 
wheat and the success attending its cultiva¬ 
tion soon led to a rapid increase iu the area 
sown, io it and it now occupies a prominent 
rank in our industries both in regard to a num¬ 
ber of acres sown and remunerative returns for 
the labor expended. 
The soil of our prairies Is a rich, black 
