9 
m 
directly over the celery, letting the ends rest 
on the laths lying across the rows, leaving the 
laths about their width apart. This gives 
the celery a partial shade and helps it won¬ 
derfully in starting. A. Wakefield. 
Oneida Co., N. Y. 
NOTES FROM THE RURAL GROUNDS. 
Mr. Marvin’s New Grapes. 
In the American Pomologieal Society’s re¬ 
port on new grapes, an abstract of which I 
find in the Ruhal of Oct. 21), after giving a 
partial list of the exhibits—including six of 
my own, among them Centennial, and Sharon 
—I find this remark: “ All these varieties 
show indications of foreigu parentage ?” As 
far as my own exhibit is concerned, I can 
pasitively say there is not a particle of foreign 
parentage in them; they are pure native 
grapes every one of them. To show this, I in¬ 
vite the committee and any interested botan¬ 
ist or horticulturist to call upon me next 
year, to inspect my vines, and I will convince 
them of the wrong that has been done me. I 
—to say nothing of any other—was a very dif¬ 
ferent thing from what it is now, and can see 
in this one portion of the farmer’s toil a strik¬ 
ing example of the vast improvement made in 
the details of agriculture within little more 
than half a century. I have a plain recollec¬ 
tion of seeing the thrasher at work with his 
flail on a floor made after the old Roman plan, 
as told by Columella, of clay beaten down and 
toughened with oil. At the end of the week’s 
flailing he had an assistant to turn the fan—a 
rickety thing about five feet long with four 
wings or sails to which four old bags were 
hung, which went flying and flopping around 
Now, if Dr. M. G. Ellzey is a real doeto 
that is, a doctor of medicine and surgery, he 
ought to kuow something about anatomy; and 
yet he says, or is reported to say, “There is 
neither anatomical nor physiological connec¬ 
tion between the hair on the perineum of the 
cow and her lacteal glands.” Now, a real 
doctor should know that the same important 
artery which supplies the lacteal glands with 
blood, supplies also the capillary vessels which 
nourish the skin and hair of the perineum, 
and that if the circulation of the one is large¬ 
ly developed, the arteries with the veins are, 
as we know they are, largely developed in 
some cows, there is both nn anatomical and 
physiological connection between the udder 
and the escutcheon, or the hair on the peri¬ 
neum. Now, J would like to say to Dr. M. G. 
Ellzey that these reported remarks are utter 
foolishness. Why should persons and doctors 
lie ever casting slurs upon our agricultural 
colleges? What agricultural colleges have 
model farms and a choice of fattening stock 
to study “handling ’’ upon ? and wLat, sort of a 
description of a carcass does this doctor sup¬ 
pose to bo an intelligible one? Does lie want 
to hear about “ the thick crops,” the “full 
bosom,” the “ sweet, delicious handling,” the 
“ wealth of hair,” and all the other slang and 
absurdity of some of the English amateurs of 
live stock, introduced here? 
Here comes our jolly butcher who knows 
all about stock and carries a pocket edition 
about him of what he knows, and he grabs a 
handful of skin which folds loosely in his 
grasp and slides and slips over the soft, mel¬ 
low, thick, deep, unctuous and elastic coating 
of fat under it, and he pokes his three fingers 
deep into the yielding hide and then ho knows 
that there is meat there and plenty of fat mar¬ 
bled and interlarded with it. 
But he shakes his head when he comes 
across a beast whose hide seems to be drawn 
tight over the ribs and stretched until it is as 
thin as a drum head, and he knows that al¬ 
though there may be fat there it lies by itself 
and the meat will have none of that marbling 
which makes it so juicy and tender and melt¬ 
ing in the mouth, and which pleases the 
butcher because it cuts up without waste and 
every ounce of fat is meat and not tallow. 
Handling? Well I should smile to think 
what those jolly old Short-horn men c half or 
three-quarters of a century ago w< have 
thought and have done had it been w 1 pered 
to them that at a fat cattle show to be held at 
Chicago in 1881, it wasgoiugto be determined 
what handling indicates. There would have 
been some profane remarks about Chicago and 
other matters and things, no doubt. 
What is the use of beiug a giant if one does 
not use the strength of a giant? And what is 
the use of having a pair of Norman or Per- 
cheron or Norman-Pereheron—or whatever 
else they may be—horses weighing more than 
two tons and keeping them drawing a plow 
that makes but one furrow. With a pair of 
those monstrous and powerful horses the prai¬ 
rie farms should use gang plows having at 
least two, if not three, shares, and so do the 
work of two or three pair of small horses. 
More than two hundred Norman horses ore 
to be exhibited at the Chicago fair, while at 
the New York State fair only 53 of Norman- 
Pereheron and Clydesdale horses were shown. 
This shows how popular this class of horses 
has become in the West during a few years 
past. But w hat is the use of such big horses 
unless they do a proportionate amount of 
work? And wo have so far heard a good deal 
about the burses, but not so much yet about 
the amount of work they have done. 
The enterprise enlisted in the business of 
importing these French horses is something 
remarkable. Two hundred and ninety head, 
valued at about a quarter of a million dollars, 
imported in one steamer, says a great deal for 
the importer and for the steamer as well. 
It makes some dilTereuce whose ox is gored. 
That old fable will never be worn out so as to 
be laid on the shelf. It is applicable every 
day. Once upon a time those selfish and jeal¬ 
ous English people were hardly pushed by 
some American cattle men who crowded their 
beeves into the English market and raised a 
very hot competition with the native beef. 
And these English people raised the cry of 
pleuro-pneum aJa and stopped the business to 
a considerable extent and so disgruntled the 
Western cattle men. And in course of timo 
some Eastern fanners, who had a lot of calves 
and little feed to spare, sent these little crea¬ 
tures to the West, where there were not 
enough calves to cousuute the abundant fodder. 
This made a serious competition with the West¬ 
ern cattle men who wanted to sell their own 
calves. And so they raised a cry of pleuro¬ 
pneumonia, and charged these poor little calves 
with their parents’ sins, just as the wolf 
charged that little lamb with roiling the water 
before he was bom. 
“All is fair in love and war”—and busi¬ 
ness. And Eastern men should by no means 
get their “ backs up,” but go to work in a 
friendly, business-like manner and do precise- 
The Witch-Hazel 
We do not know that the Witch-Hazel is ever 
spoken of as an ornamental shrub and yet, a 
few days ago, as we were looking at a thicket 
of these plants in full bloom, it occurred to 
us it uiight well bo used with good effect. 
The flowers borne on hardy shrubs, now that 
the leaves are falling and severe frosts have oc- 
curcd, are not to be despised even t hough less 
showy than the most indifferent of those which 
bloom during the Spring or Summer. As shown 
in the illustration, Fig. 51'.), the Witch-Hazel 
flower is peculiar. The four yellow petals are 
less than an inch in length, and less than a 
line in width. But three of these flowers are 
clustered together upon a single flower stalk, 
and the stalks are often close together—so 
that the shrub, after all, makes quite a showy 
appearance. The Witch-Hazel begins to bloom 
just as its leaves are falling and continues in 
bloom long after every leaf has fallen. The 
fruit, however, is not perfected until the next 
Spring and often persists until Fall when the 
shrubs are again in bloom. It may as an or¬ 
namental shrub be considered the opposite of 
the favorite Forsythia viridissima off ered iu 
every nurseryman’s catalogue. This unfolds its 
golden flowers iu the Spring before the leaves 
appear. Hamamelis virgiuiea is its botanical 
name, and it is a close relative of our Liquid- 
ambar or Sweet Gum. It grows from live 
to ten feet high, growing in many parts of the 
country sometimes on hillsides, sometimes 
along streams. Infusion of the leaves is 
thought a valuable medicine in cases of bowel 
complaints and hemorrhages. There are sev¬ 
eral Japan varieties of the Witch-Hazel, but 
the difference, so far as we learn, is chiefly 
in the size of the leaves. 
Those Picotees, etc. 
I want to say how much pleasure I have had 
from the pieoteo Rural seeds. The package 
claimed to contain carnations, but they all 
came up picotees, eight varieties, and they 
are blooming yet as gayly as in August. All 
they lack is fragrance—which the pansy also 
lacks—but oue shouldn’t expect everything. 
Anaximander was so well pleased with the 
Rural Branching Sorghum that he intends to 
have it among his crops next year. The White 
Elephant Potato came very near being en¬ 
tirely swallowed up by a freshet, but divided 
portions stuck in their places and were dug up 
in due time a respectable little crop that is 
stowed away for uext. year’s planting. The 
long drought was unfavorable for the aspara¬ 
gus seeds—there ate one or two dozen plants 
however; so, all in till, we have abundant 
reason to have pleasant and profitable remind¬ 
ers of the Rural New-Yorker for many a 
year to come. While 1 am on the subject, I 
wish also to report concerning the Cuthbert 
Raspberry plants received two years ago from 
the Rural. Both are now large bushes and 
bore well the past Summer. We were de¬ 
lighted with the fruit, it being so much 
larger, firmer and freer from seeds than 
either of our other varieties of red raspberry 
—the Antwerp and Philadelphia. Indeed, it 
seems to be the Mat red raspberry, in every 
respect, that has as yet made its appearance, 
and it seems scarcely worth while to cultivate 
any other. The bushes had only the ordinary 
protection of manure about their toots last 
Winter, which was, as you know, of extreme 
severity, but the canes wore not injured. 
Bryn Mawr, Pa. Mary Wager-Fisher. 
-♦♦♦- 
Challenger Lima Beans.-See Page 780. 
We present a sketch of a bunch of the Chal¬ 
lenger Lima Bean offered in the next Free 
Seed and Plant Distribution of the Rural 
New-Yokkr, which was made from a speci¬ 
men sent to us by the farmer with whom this 
variety originated—or rather by the farmer 
who originated the variety, since it is the re¬ 
sult of many years of selection. Our own plot 
of this variety, owing to the drought, per¬ 
haps, quite disappointed our expectations— 
the yield being little in excess of that of well- 
known kinds of this valuable bean. 
have always opposed using the foreign to im¬ 
prove the quality of our native grapes. The 
files of the Rural will bear me out in this. 
[It is true.— Eds.] Indeed I have endeavored 
1 may say to champion the fight against any 
admixture of the two classes. If there has 
been no mistake made in the reporting, I can 
account for this opinion in but one way:— 
Our horticulturists have for so long a time 
been studying the Northern type of our La- 
brusoa grapes, and hybridizing them with the 
foreign, and they have studied the Northern 
type of our JEstivalis grapes, and their grand 
capabilities, aud the Southern type of our La- 
brusca grapes, and their capabilities so little, 
and so casually, that when they see anything 
superior to the Concord type, they are sur¬ 
prised, and immediately jump at a conclusion, 
and attribute the good quality to the foreign 
vines. 
In one sense this is an unconscious tribute to 
the value of my long endeavor to improve our 
native grapes, and I accept it as a compliment 
to their improved quality. But there is another 
view of the matter, that I must also notice. 
I took the pains to attach a card to a cluster 
of each variety exhibited, giving its botan¬ 
ical class. If the committee saw and read 
this card, they thought I was attempting to 
palm off foreign hybrid for native grapes; but 
I cannot believe this to be the case. 1 have 
the utmost, respect for each of the several 
gentlemen composing the committee, and I 
refrain from saying anything further than 
that I consider it simple justice to correct 
this imputation against the value and useful¬ 
ness of my labor. For the committee them¬ 
selves I believe will all cheerfully agree with 
me, that when our native grapes have the 
quality of the foreign hybrids, they are far 
superior to them. D. S. Marvin. 
Watertown, N. Y. 
farm Copies 
A FARMER'S RETROSPECT. 
Many of your gray-haired readers will re¬ 
member how in their boyhood bam-floor work 
as the fan was turned to raise a wind. The 
thrasher poured his thrashed grain out from a 
large wooden band-sieve or shook It through 
a coarser one called a riddle, and bv repeating 
this slow, clumsy, laborious winnowing and 
supplementing it with a skillful whirlingof the 
grain in a sieve too fine to lot it through, he got 
the grain clean enough to measure up for the 
granary and to determine the thrasher’* pay. 
This whirling of the sieve of grain was called 
row ing (pronouned run), and was an art at¬ 
tained by long practice and which only old 
bands could do well. Thrashing machines 
were coming into use, and winnowing ma¬ 
chines, too: but they were great rareties, 
and as they took the whole long Winter’s 
woi’k out of the hands of the poor thrashers 
they were looked upon by them as so many 
dragons threatening to Lake away the only 
means of existence from them and their fam¬ 
ilies, Many barns were set on fire where 
these “cursed inventions” had a place. Now 
iu the same country the machines do all the 
thrashing, requiring but a few men a short 
time, and even the cottages where the thrash¬ 
ers once lived have almost entirely disap¬ 
peared. Their descendants find work in fac¬ 
tories. w. G. w. 
el)C ijen) smart 
NOTES BY A STOCKMAN. 
It is stated that an effort will be made at 
the Chicago Live Stock Exhibition to deter¬ 
mine what “handling” indicates. “Every 
one” was supposed t,o know this years ago, 
who knew anything about stock. Dr. M. G, 
Ellzey, of Washington (a name hitherto un¬ 
known in this connection, I believe), is re¬ 
ported to have said somewhere and somehow, 
that “ it would be a good move in the right 
direction for the agricultural colleges with 
their model farms, if there is any man about 
them who knows how to judge of and describe 
the handling of a beast when alive and how 
to make an intelligible description of the car¬ 
cass when slaughtered." 
The Witch-Hazel —Leaf and Flowers.—Fig. 520. 
