MOV. 47 
THE BUBAL NEW-YORKER. 
Jot Copits, 
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES. 
BY J. H. HOSKINS. 
I cannot help feeling that it is “ too bad ” for 
Mr. Miner to criticise the Michigan Agricultural 
College bo sharply as lie does in a late issue, 
especially when 1 compare that college with 
others of the same class, and moro especially, 
with that of my own State. While it may well 
bo that the Michigan ins.itntion is not perfect, 
it, at least, shows an honest disposition to till its 
place respectably, and really to work for the 
promotion of agriculture. I fear, however, t hat 
if Mr. Miner's standard of a perfect agricultural 
college is one that can tell “what commercial 
fertilizers can always be applied to crops profit¬ 
ably," he is not likely to be satisfied in this 
world. Fertilizers, however, can bo made to 
contain every element of plant-food that farm¬ 
yard manures contain ; mid they can ho better 
than farm-yard manures in this, that their com¬ 
position can he made uniform. Mr. Miner is, no 
doubt, aware that though farm-yard manure is 
always good, “and is never applied at a loss," yet 
it is never twice alike iu the proportions of its 
condi units. 
I think l’rof. Bear not unfair in citing the 
cases of young doctors and lawyers in compar¬ 
ison with the young farmers turned out by his 
institution. Young men from speeisl educational 
institutions of any kind, if good students, have 
the principles of their profession instilled into 
their minds, and though the medical graduate 
has seen some practical work and done a little, 
and t he same may be said of the law-student, 
yet substantially they are but beginners, and 
difficult cases are not likely to he intrusted to 
them at first. Certainly they are not likely to 
beat their seniors at the start.. It is the same 
with agricultural graduates. They have been 
taught some of the scieutifics of agriculture, 
and a little of the practice. In the former they 
are probably superior, often much superior, to 
the ordinary farmer, hut is it fail to expect them 
to equal him in practical skill, or iu wise judge¬ 
ment that comes of wide and varied experience ? 
Agricultural schools, like other professional 
schools, ought to lay a good foundation for fu¬ 
ture progress, hut to expect them to turn out 
finished farmers seems to me absurd. 
Agricultural co leges sre yet only an ox peri 
meut and one that is being tried under very 
groat disadvantages. If you wish to start a lit¬ 
erary college, there lire plenty of men that have 
been trained to the bu inesa, and know all nltont 
it. Our agricultural colleges have had to train 
their teachers as they w r ent along. Often, I may 
say generally, they have been started with a 
faculty trained in classical and theoretic schools, 
where the applied sciences are unknown. Many 
times they have fallen, not only into the hand- 
of this class, but the faculty has hud a contempt 
for the very things they were set to teach. 
They have not known how, nor have they in 
good faith desired, to establish a genuine indus¬ 
trial college. Hence their work has been a fail¬ 
ure. 
Iu Vermont wo have had even worse luck than 
this. We have three small literary colleges in 
the State, and when it was attempted to estab¬ 
lish a State Industrial College on the basis of 
tbe Government grant, these institutions, in 
great alarm, left no stone unturned to defeat Ibe 
undertaking. They succeeded in delaying it 
until the time in which the grant could be se¬ 
cured had nearly elapsed, and then, by a Hank 
movement, one of them outwitted the others, 
and captured the fund under the promise to es¬ 
tablish an agricultural college as a branch of 
their own. They have not even kept the word 
of promise to the ear. They have simply taken 
the fuiuj to recruit their exhausted exchequer, 
and established only such professorships as com¬ 
pleted their faculty, and put it somewhat on an 
equality with other well endowed literary col¬ 
leges. They have bought no farm, they have 
no garden, they have no professor of agriculture, 
horticulture, or any other practical branch 
of industrial instruction. As au agricultural 
college it is a barefaced fraud, and as a 
matter of course it has never had au agri¬ 
cultural student. Perhaps your readers may- 
ask why the farmers of Vermont have endured 
this for ton years. They have complained, and 
have asked the Leginlatme to investigate, hut 
the truth that possession is nine points of the 
law, has only had one more illustration in this 
case, for the sole result was a white-washing re¬ 
port, lobbied through the legislature, and the 
chief manipulator w as immediately complimented 
bv being made one of the trustees of the institu¬ 
tion. 
With this experience, you can easily under¬ 
stand why-1 dinlike to see an institution that is 
really trying to do good work iu training young 
men to be farmers, hardly criticised in au agri¬ 
cultural paper. Let. us be patient and charit¬ 
able toward all such, and save our ammunition 
for those who neither try nor intend to try to 
honestly earn the' money that pays for their 
bread and butter. 
Newport, Vt., 1877. 
- ♦♦♦ - 
FARMERS GROWING NURSERY STOCK, 
BY W’. ,T. FOW-LER. 
Tbo numerous and successful large nursery 
establishments near Rochester, have naturally 
had their Imitators among the farmers of Mon¬ 
roe County. Farmers have argued (hat if pro¬ 
fessions! nurserymen could pay several hundred 
dollars per acre for land on which to grow trees, 
they, with cheaper land, must make proportion¬ 
ally larger profits. But iu practice their suc¬ 
cess d< pends much more on other considerations 
than the price of land. A crop of trees, even 
on high-priced land, is always worth more than 
the soil it occupies, and with the largo expouse 
of growing trees to marketable ago, more de¬ 
pends upon the coat and abundance of labor than 
on anything else. Some farmers fail in growing 
fruit trees because they cannot get, at any price, 
the help needed, at the time they want it. Left 
uncared for, even a short time, at a critical 
period of growth, the trees can not afterwards 
he profitably cultivated. Near cities, labor is 
always abundant., and generally cheaper than at 
a distance. Thj.-r« are thousands of people who 
will take poorer fare and less w-ages for the priv¬ 
ilege of being always in a crowd. Many of the 
nurserymen, farmers and toed-growers hire wo¬ 
men to work in the fields, in weeding «ud hoeing 
young trees and oilier 6tnall crops. Where such 
advantages ure to bo had, the man whoso crops 
need a great deal of labor can well afford to pay 
what might otherwise Boem an extortionate price 
for land. Still, there are many farmers, remote 
from crow do t cities, who raise from two to twenty 
acres of the leading varieties of nursery stock, 
and find the business a paying one. Prices just 
now are very low-, and as these farmers sell at 
wholesale to largo dealers, they get the lowest 
price of all. This winter they get only iivo to 
eight dollars per hundred for grafted apple trees, 
three to four years old. Even at this, one ot 
them told me ho should continue in the business, 
as it left a small margin above tbo cost of pro¬ 
duction. I suspect that this friend has so sys¬ 
tematized his business I hut he esu always pro¬ 
duce more cheaply than the large cstabiiehments 
Iu this, however, as in most other farm opera¬ 
tions requiring extra care, more d'-pends ou the 
man than on his surroundings. Hom^a-ea will 
make money where Others would inevitably lose. 
There are some advantages in growing nur¬ 
sery stock in connection with general far tiling. 
It furnishes pleasant and profitable employment 
in root, grafting these winter days, when farmers 
have little else to do except unprofitable 
“ chores.” Winter is tbe great expense and 
drawback on all our Northern farming. Beside 
its disagreeablenoss and discomfort, in : - a season 
of constant waste —Luge tires that yield nothing 
hut ashes ; stacks of hay and cribs of grain that 
aro consumed to keep up heat in the live stock 
which throngs the barn-yard. Warm shed-: and 
basement-barns reduce this expense somewhat; 
hut iu most winter-feeding, this year, the chief 
item of profit will ho the manure. Now, ir a 
farmer can get something to do at home t hrough 
the winter mouths that will return him a profit, 
he has solved the problem of successful Northern 
fanning. This friend of mine, above referred 
to, does it by growing nursery stock, and root- 
grlifting apple trees in winter. This is work 
which the large establishments hire done at 
great expense. My friend does it in a time when 
ho would otherwise be doing nothing. He says 
also,that the grafts be sols aro moro sure to gtow 
than any ho can hiro grafted. For the same 
reason he plants the rods in the spring, biriug 
done other farm work where less skill is required. 
Au awkward hand can easily destroy in au hour, 
moro trees than his wages would amount to for 
a whole day. 
I do not know that theso amaleur nursery 
orchards are common with farmers in other sec¬ 
tions. Possibly, in some localities, one or two 
farmers [might engage in the business and sell 
their stock in the neighborhood at much better 
prices than the wholesale dealers can afford to 
pay. That was done here, fifteen—twenty or 
more years ago; but the tree agent penetrates 
to every city and farm house, and the extremely 
high prices which formerly prevailed, can never 
more be expected. 
•-4--S-*- 
AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES AND AGRICUL¬ 
TURE. 
Green crops cut before seed has begun to 
form, are said not to be much of a burden to the 
land, but to derive their chief subsistence 
from the atmosphere. Now, if ohennsts un¬ 
derstand how far this is true, it would he &n 
excellent subject for one of theso teachers to 
explain through tho Rural, for if unseeded 
grass and other forage do really arrive at 
blooming-time without having extracted any 
large amount of fertility from the soil, it stands 
to reason that if these crops were eaten on the 
land, tho manure and urine from the animals 
that feed on thorn must add to tbo plant-food, 
and thus at once there would be a way to 
renovate all the soil. Explanations on this 
subject- would do a vast deal of good; for, if 
this is true, bow plainly it proves why pastures 
and mowing rim out, in the United States; for 
all the old-fashioned farmers have practised for 
years the mowings of timothy and clover, after 
the sotd has formed, and all of them advocate 
the grazing of grass so as to Jet a great portion 
ripen, die away, and rot on the ground. 
In England pastures are never allowed to be¬ 
come covered with a great bulk of grass, but 
nro gruzed with a variety of stock for the pur¬ 
pose of preventing an accumulation of her¬ 
bage, as it is considered injurious to any good 
sot of grass to have it left in bunches. Highly 
educated men, who, on account of their great 
abilities and practical knowlege of improved 
modern agriculture, have been appointed to 
instruct the rising generation, should not hide 
their lights under a bushel; but should spread 
abroad tho information they have gathered, 
and the discoveries they have made, so that 
the country at largo may be benefited from their 
knowledge. In England there ia one of these 
colleges which was started -10 years ago, and 
formauy years it did very little good; but it 
appears at the present time that many fine 
Cotswold sheep and Berkshire swine find their 
way from it to the United States, so that in 
the breeding of good stock there must ho some 
talent displayed there. Now. which of tho 
colleges in the United states instruct the 
rising youDg men how to breed and manage 
pure breeds that will sell for prices like those 
obtained at Cirencester. As tho writer was 
twenty years in the vicinity of the college, he 
can assure those who think there aro peculiar 
advantages there, that the reverse is the case 
as the soil is light and naturally poor. 
A Working Farmer. 
-♦-*->- 
NOTES FROM MAPLEWOOD FARM. 
BY HECTOR BERTRAM. 
It has beeu raining to-day ; in fact has been 
doing so for the past three days, and the ground 
is filled to overflowing with water, making it im¬ 
possible to resume fall plowing for Severn 1 days, 
especially ou corn stubble. Wo had intended 
turning ours ratUer late this fall, say iu Novem¬ 
ber, calculating to sow with barley iu the spring, 
thinking by the lato plowing to check, in a meaa- 
use, the ravages of those posts of this locality— 
wire-worms. They worked sad havoc iu the corn 
during tho season, and we harvested hut about 
half a crop, whoro wo should have obtained a 
large one. Our neighbor, across the way, had, 
last fall, a piece of old sod, intended for corn in 
the spring, which ho considered would he great¬ 
ly benefited by fall plowing. Accordingly the 
sod w T as turned rather late, and lay, roots ex¬ 
posed, until May, when a heavy shovel culti¬ 
vator was applied, followed by a fine, steel-tooth¬ 
ed harrow. This left the ground in excellent 
condition, and as tho corn was planted early, 
we anticipated a fine growth. The result was 
far from satisfactory. The corn came up yel¬ 
low and sickly, and although tho weatbor was 
warm and moist, most favorable to its rapid 
growth, it seemed to stand inactive for sovoral 
days, and finally shot up spindling and feeble, 
developing Binall stalks ami tiny ears, not nearly 
as good as our own, which w as turned just be- 
fovo planting. Roason: tho ground, like our 
own, was filled with worms, and the late fall 
plowing was a daumgo in this respect: the grass 
roots, their customary food, had become dead 
and rotted by planting time, and they at once 
turned their attention to the corn, perforating 
the grains and obstructing t he vitality of tho 
plants before they could reach the surface; 
whereas, had tho sod been left unturned until 
spring, the roots w'ould have afforded them sus¬ 
tenance until after the corn was welt started. 
Tho only satisfactory plan that wo have yet 
learned for chocking the ravages of these pests, 
is frequent plowing and seeding. Lime would 
undoubtedly prove beneficial, if applied in suf¬ 
ficient quantities; but iu this section lime is so 
high-priced that we common farmers cannot pro¬ 
cure enough to gain any decided success from 
its application. 
Apples are nearly all gathered, save some cal¬ 
culated for cider. It is evident to us that a 
greater quantity of the juice can be obtained 
from tbo same amount of fruit, if pressed du¬ 
ring cool weather, than when extruded earlier. 
A neighbor of ours shows poor policy, we think, 
in the dispooition of his apples alter they are 
gathered. His fruits, this year, were, in the 
main, large and Quo, and of choice varieties; 
yet when gathered they were all deposited under 
a large, open shed, all the different varieties 
mixed together in a heap, some four or five feet 
deep, picked and windfalls together. This ne¬ 
cessitated a speedy removal to some more secure 
place fer winter storage, and much trouble and 
extra time in separating the different sorts, if 
any are sold. In onr opinion it would have been 
a much better plan to take the barrels into tho 
orchard, picking, sorting and barreling tuem at 
the same time, labeling them as soon as the bar¬ 
rels were headed, then storing them in a cool, 
dry place until cold weather really sets in. Fre¬ 
quent handling must be very detrimental to the 
keeping qualities of fruit, and if intended for 
market, it is much better to have fine, bright- 
looking apples, than those that are bruised, 
stained and otherwise contaminated from con¬ 
tact with inferior fruit. Still, the man referred 
to is President, of s. farmers' Club, and should 
he authority on such subjects. 
Our orchard has been very productive, save 
three trees of the King of Tompkins County. 
They are very large, thrifty trees, but have 
never borne but little, and of inferior quality at 
that. We shall soon apply a mixture of salt and 
hmc, equal parts, say a half bushel to a tree, 
scattered about tho roots, and await the result. 
This treatment has been recommended to us as 
very salutary. We shall report consequences. 
Speaking of salt, brings to our mind au in¬ 
stance of its beneficial result, when applied to 
trees. It will be nothing new to < Id Unit rais¬ 
ers. that Quince trees will bear but little, unless 
salted annually. Where we now reside, previous 
to'eur possession of the place, were two Quinces 
of good growth; but they had never borne a 
single specimen previous to our occupation. We 
surmised the cause, and the first fall applied 
about a pint of salt to each, scattering it about 
the tree, on the ground. The result the next 
season wan three fair specimena. The following 
fall we repeated the experiment, and obtained, 
for our trouble, a fair jield of good fruit. Wc 
have applied salt every year since, and have 
never failed of a crop. Salt your Quinco trees 
annually by all moans: they require it even 
more than that best of vegetables, asparagus. 
Last fall wo received, from the Department of 
Agriculture, some cabbage seed, claiming to be 
of the Drumhead Savoy variety, and for once— 
the only time in our experience—they proved 
the same as labeled. Tho seeds were sown early, 
inboxes, and iu June transplanted to tho gar¬ 
den. For some reason—we could never divine 
the cause—the first two settings proved worth¬ 
less, withering and turning brown ; but the 
third time we w T ere successful, and they grow 
rapidly. Tha« young plants were sprinkled, every 
other day, with a solution of copperas and water, 
and no caterpillars appeared until the plants 
were well started; then the depredations of tho 
“varmints" became so great that a complete 
failure of the crop was apprehended. In a num¬ 
ber of tho Rural, we noticed a recommendation 
of “ hot brine ” as most beneficial, and we tried 
the same with most beneficial results. The Li iue 
was made very strong, and so hot that we could 
scarcely bear to immerse our hand, then applied 
with a sprinkler. The leaves looked scorched 
and wilted for a day or two. but tbe caterpillars 
were moro so, and have not troubled ua since. 
That one application was sufficient, and we have 
trimmed heads weighing twenty pounds apiece. 
Speaking of tho Department of Agriculture, 
remiuda ns of tho fact that tho aforesaid Presi¬ 
dent of the Farmers 1 Club received, last spring, 
some seed, purporting to be those of the Cheese 
Pumpkin. When planted, the vines grew luxu¬ 
riantly, and brought forth three distinct varie¬ 
ties—two of Pumpkin and one of Squash ' 
Many farmers, in this vicinity, are holding 
their apples for higher prices—buyers are now f 
paying seventy-five cents—they anticipate a dol¬ 
lar. It has always seemed to us good policy to 
dispose of fruit and vegetables as soon as gath¬ 
ered. especially when fair prices can bo obtained : 
for. if kept back, loss by storage ia generally 
more than sufficient to cat up the difference in 
price, to say nothing of the extra trouble and 
time iu handling. 
Root, scattered over Plum trees when in full 
bloom, has proven very efficacious in checking 
the ravages of the curculio, with us. 
horticultural. 
THE EDUCATING POWER OF HORTI¬ 
CULTURE. 
BY PROFESSOR ELBUIDGE GALE. 
Horticultural pursuits claim an educating 
power measured only by the will of the worker. 
Using the term Horticulture in its popular sense, 
as embracing all that belongs to tbe garden, 
lawn and orchard, we see that it must reach, in 
some way, every home. This iufiuenoe i3 cir- 
cuuiscrioed neither by sex, social position, occu- 
! 
