3i0 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
JUNE 21 
pliea nearly all his wants except those of the 
inner and the onter man. He builds his cot¬ 
tage with the timber; heats his rooms with it; 
makes his household utensils and agricultural 
implements of the same material, while his shoes 
and mats for bed-clothes and door covering aro 
made from the inner bark of the lime tree, and 
many other trees serve for him a multitude of 
different purposes. 
It must be ages, however, before the increase 
of population throughout the country will make 
any serious inroads on the vast area of forest 
lands, thousands of miles of which have-never 
been seen by human eye. Despite the fact that 
Itussia numbers a population of about 85,685,- 
000, the ratio of inhabitants to the square mile 
is only 50 in European and one in Asiatic Russia, 
while iu recent years the average increase has 
been at the rate of 1 % per cent, per annum, 
iet it may be that the destruction the necessi¬ 
ties of so vast a multitude would not effect for 
centuries, the improvident wastefulness of a 
part of it may accomplish in as many decades. 
Jam Soptrs. 
JOTTINGS AT KIRBY HOMESTEAD. 
COL. F. D. CHBTX9. 
If the buyers of wool were not so arbitrary 
and unreasonable in the rule to shrink one-third 
for unwashed wool, sheep would not be sub¬ 
jected to the fright and injury caused by wash¬ 
ing. As the custom now is, all unwashed 
wools are shrunk one-third in the weight. Buy¬ 
ers in this section of the country—and they 
have the same rule in New York—pay as much 
per pound for tho unwashed as for the washed 
wool, but in the weight they reduce the former 
one-third. This Is without any reference to tho 
amount of dirt or the kind of wool. So long as 
this rule is enforced, farmers will wash their 
sheep, but if the wool should be graded accord¬ 
ing to its actual condition of more or less of dint, 
* and the price be made accordingly, but few 
farmers would wash their sheep, as it is a dirty 
job and risky, too, for the health of the washers; 
for they are apt to catch cold from the exposure. 
Sheep often get smothered when huddled to¬ 
gether and crowded in the pen by tho water. We 
have known two dead ones to be taken out at 
a time, trampled upon and smothered. It used 
to make but little difference how much or little 
wool was washed. If it had only been dipped in 
the water, it went all the same. This was when 
wool was high, but now when wool is low, buy¬ 
ers are more part icular and disposed to push rules 
to the utmost and make old customs into arbi¬ 
trary requirements. As long as this is so, we 
must wash the sheep, however disagreeable it 
may be or we shall lose too much. 
The washing should be done with care and 
with as little pulling and hauling of the sheep as 
possible. A careful man should hand the sheep 
to the washer who, being stationed in the water, 
can float tho animal easily, and by holding the 
head against his breast, can use both handB to 
squeeze the w ool and loosen the dirt. A current 
of water is the best, as it helps the washer to 
got the dirt out. The best place we ever knew 
of was bebiud a water-wheel where the swift 
currents sent from the wheel did the work effec¬ 
tually. It is hurtful to sheep to hold them ud. 
der a column of falling water, as it dulls them. 
The least danger to tho sheep is to float them in 
a running stream, as the water will not be so 
cold and the animal cannot struggle to harm 
itself. If sheep are driven to the stream during 
the heat of the day, they should be allowed to 
cool off before being taken into the water. Tub 
washing ia good, if a stream, can be kept run¬ 
ning in and ont all of the time, otherwise the 
water will become so foul that the wool will not be 
cleansed. Sheep will always struggle more in a 
tub than in a stream, and they always handle beat 
when their feet cannot touch anything. 
To catch a sheep by the wool and throw it into 
the water is an outrage, aB the slcio is made soro 
by pulling tho roots of the wool, and then the 
animal is nearly suffocated by tho unnatural till¬ 
ing of the nostrils and windpipe with water. 
A sheep should be caught by the hind legs or 
around the neck, and then no pain is caused or 
harm done. The water ought to bo squeezed 
out of the wool at the edge of the washing place 
to reduce weight, so that the sheep can walk 
home easier and dryout sooner. After washing, 
sheep should run from ten days to two weeks to 
give time to get thoroughly dry and for the oil 
to start out, which improves the handling and 
condition of tho fleece. 
Eight cents per head was the price we paid last 
year for shearing. This year we expect it to be 
at least two cents less. In old times, four cents 
was the price, but sheep and shearers were 
more plentiful then and there was more com¬ 
petition. 
Esquire Davidson says he has greatly benefited 
his oats by rolling them, although they might 
be quite large, several inches high. He thinks 
they will stool out more and the crop will be 
heatier. Regular rules will not always do for 
farmers; they cannot always do just as their 
fathers did, or if they do, they will make mis¬ 
takes, os for instance, on the rolling question. 
A man may say “ My father always rolled his 
oat-ground, and ho had good oats." Yet he 
might have had better oats sometimes if he had 
not rolled them.' This is our case this year. We 
have made a blunder in rolling at the time of 
Bowing ; better have waited until the gronnd 
was drier, or not have rolled at all. Wo must be 
governed more by circumstances than by rules. 
Tho tobacco smoke has saved all of the chick¬ 
ens sick with gapes so far—the one almost dead 
when the remedy was first applied seems cured. 
They have been smoked Bix times. A few live 
coals are put in an old iron pot, and a pinch of 
tobacco placed on them, As soon as the smoko 
begins to rise, the chickens which have previ¬ 
ously been placed in a basket, aro put over tho 
vessel and covered with a cloth. They, or any 
one thus affected, are made to inhale the smoke 
unfcl they tumble over partially insensible, when 
they are removed from the basket. They soon 
revive and the spasms have lessened. 
■--—♦♦♦-- 
VAN’S VIEWS. 
In some ground it is better to roil the grain 
after it ia up, especially if the dry time comes on. 
It is always best if the ground happens to be wet 
or very moist when the grain is sown. Rolling 
after the grain is up, will crack the cnust and 
mellow the surface and will not injur© the crop. 
1 GETTING Off THE TRACK. 
Web* you over on a train to which some ac¬ 
cident happened so that it lost the right of way ? 
I And do you call to mind how, before the acci¬ 
dent, yon were humming along, the freight 
' trains, the w^ay trains and specials standing re- 
t Bpect fully to one side while yon went bounding 
l by ? And how, after your break-down, yon had 
■ first to yield the track to an emigrant train, then 
i to a dirty cattle train, next to a smutty coal or 
ore train, and afterwards to a heavy lumber or 
wheat train. How the countenances of the 
pasasengerH change! How tho very engine 
seems to feel ashamed, and neither the bell nor 
the whistle sounds as it did before! Well, some 
of us, this spring, got in the same fix as that 
train. We had moRt of our grain sowed and 
some of it ditched and ready for business, but 
most of it was left just as it was when wo g it 
through sowing and it began to rain ; and it 
rained one day, aud then it rained the next day, 
and then began the next morning and rained all 
day; then it kept raiuiug steadily for two or 
three days right along; then it stopped, but by 
that time our grain had all the water it conld 
aBk for, and we might as well have had a little 
less. 
We were ont in the rain, and all through the 
intermittent spells with our spades and hoes, 
but it was tedious and unsatisfactory work. 
Many fields were caught unsown, and some are 
just, May 28th, getting in the last or their oats. 
This doesn’t look well, but I don’t know how we 
can bettor ourselves, for we got * ‘ out ” and lost 
the “ right of way," aud hero we are. 
©ne thing that would help us is a large 
double-mold-board plow to clean out our dead 
furrows with, so as to let off the water “ when 
it showersfor “it never rains but it pours,” 
and we need a chance for the water to run off 
napsy. With a few under-drains, and the dead 
furrows well opened, our heavy clays will yield 
us a fa|c return for our labor, and not be the 
curs© Which many consider them. If the plow 
spoke* or by Prof. I. P. Robebts in the Rural 
for May 18th, is made with steel mold-boards, 
and is Sor sale in this country, I think it might 
help us. 
Speaking of under-draining reminds me that 
a neighbor on a clay loam with a heavy clay sub¬ 
soil, iinfls that drains laid through tho low 
places, and above 100 feet apart, dry his laud 
well. Tlio plan generally followed around here, 
is to take a three and a four-inch strip of inch- 
thick lumber and nail them in a \ shape. 
This we use for all laterals leBS than one 
thousand feet; main ditches must be larger. 
For each 16-feet section, lay about four hits of 
board crosswise on the bottom of tho ditch; on 
those place your trough, put a bit or sod over 
the joint, aud pitch in your dirt again. If able, 
I am going to lay some of these drains this sea¬ 
son, and hope, by using my common aud subsoil 
plows, to be able to reduce the cost of doing 
such work to a figure at which a man may feel 
able to go on with the work until the ponds aro 
removed from his meadows and wheat fields. 
We oan all raise good crops in good years. 
In 1875 there were such yields as 80 bushels of 
oats, 42 of wheat, and 69 of barley per acre, and 
we have had 65 bushels of shelled corn per acre. 
But on the off year we raise twenty or thirty 
bushels of oats and teu or twenty of wheat. 
Now, we are told that undor-drainiug will help 
ub on these poor years, and bring up our 
average to where the good years would leave us ; 
if this bo so, under-draining would be a good 
investment. 
Talking with a neighbor, the other day, about 
this, aud looking at two pieces of land lying side 
by side, one drained and the other not, he said : 
“If draining will do the same for all our land 
that it does on this piece, and I see no reason 
why it should not, what fools we are to work 
away on undrained land!” What we lack is 
faith ; we have not faith iu our business; we 
are afraid to run iu debt to try what we consider 
an experiment. Another thing is the high rate 
of interest which we are compelled to pay. Ten 
per cent, is tho going rate in this region. If 
money could bo bad at six or seven per cent, we 
might have courage to borrow enough to enable 
us to go to work. 
Thoro have been many circulars of a kind of 
plow called a mole-plow, sent into this neighbor¬ 
hood and one of my neighbors has one, hut he 
has not used it for some time, so I suppose it is 
not a success though I have heard good reports 
from it in other places ; but candor compels me 
to say these were a long distance from here. 
Brown Co., Wls. 
jicinttifir anb Useful. 
EXPERIMENTS WITH COMMERCIAL 
FERTILIZERS. 
FBOFESSOB Q. O. CALDWELL. 
In an article on agricultural experimentation, 
in a recent number of the Tribune, to some 
parts of which you have taken exception, in a 
kindly way, in the Rdkal of June 8th, the 
faimar was supposed to have in view two main 
objects in experimenting with chemical fertiliz¬ 
ers: 1. To ascertain tor his own benefit 
whether he oau use any of them with profit on 
his own farm; 2. To aid his brother faimers, 
making similar inquiries, by giving to them the 
results of his experience. Tho experiments are 
not made solely, or even chiefly, for the purpose 
of ascertaining which constituent of the fertiliz¬ 
ers his soil stands most in need of, but of learn¬ 
ing whether as a financial operation, it will pay 
to buy one or another of these Bubstauces, at 
the ordinary market prices, to apply to his land ; 
whether in the usual mu of seasons bo will get 
his money back and a little more for profit. 
It is tuy assertion that snch experiments 
should he repeated in order that a farmer may 
safely proceed, on the basis of their results, to 
invest a portion of his limited moans in commer¬ 
cial fertilizers, or may consider his results a 
real addition to the common stock of knowledge 
in regard to the relations between those fertiliz¬ 
ers and nnr soils and crops, to which you take 
more particular exception; and yon ask in 
reference to one of my illustrations of this point, 
drawn from the chemical laboratory, “What 
parallelism is there between determining phos¬ 
phoric acid in a fertilizer in the laboratory and 
ascertaining the effect of superphosphate on 
wheat or any other crop in the field ?” “ Just 
this," I answer, “that each operation is per¬ 
formed for tho purpose of getting a certain 
definite piece of information, that may bo used 
as the basis for a financial operation ; the infor¬ 
mation must therefore be reliable or it is worse 
than useless ; for the chemical part of the com¬ 
parison I might just as well have taken the 
determination of iron, or of gold or silver in an 
ore. If a haBty and ill-fonnded conclusion in 
the laboratory may work great mischief, which 
no one will deny, a similiar conclusion in the 
field may bo attended with similar results. 
It appears to you that in the case of several 
plots side by side treated with different manures, 
all will be affected alike by the weather, no 
matter whether it be favorable, unfavorable or 
indifferent. It appears to me otherwise, and 
that favorable or unfavorable seasons may or 
may not affect the several plots alike. The 
chemical fertilizers ordinarily used contain as 
their only valuable ingredients, phosphoric acid, 
nitrogen and potash, one or two or all of them, 
in forms that differ much iu respect to solubility 
in water; every one of those ingredients must 
be brought into solution before it can enter tho 
plant; and by the greater or Jobs diffusion or 
the solution in the soil, so that the rootlets can 
find this added food wherever they go, tho 
effect of the fertilizer can be increased to a 
greater or loss extent. If the soasoo is unpro- 
pitious on account of a deficiency of raiu, that 
ingredient of the several fertilizers experimented 
With which is moat soluble, aud which with this 
small amount of rain may bo most frbely dis¬ 
tributed in the soil, may produce the largest 
effect on the crop, and, as compared with the 
unmanured crop, may appear to be the host in¬ 
vestment. 
Another season’s trial, with a fair amount of 
rain distributing all the fertilizers more evenly, 
may toll another story; and still a third, with a 
superabundance or rain, may give nearly as good 
a crop on the unmauured plot as on any of the 
others. If the season bo an average one, not 
only as to the amount but also as to the distri¬ 
bution of the rain through the growing season, 
and all the plotB should be t reated alike except 
as to manure, planted together on the same day, 
cultivated on tho same days, aud in the same 
manner, aud any one plot should yield a crop 
largely exceeding the others, the fertilizer 
whiob that plot received might well be added on 
a larger scale to that field the next year; but I 
should still watch it as a continuation of my ex¬ 
periment. Such a clear and decisive answer 
does not, however, come to every experimenter 
who puts this important question to his soils 
the first time, as I think, many a witness 
will testify whelms tried it. 
If the position I have taken, in regard to 
tho necessity of the repetition of experiments, is 
an untenable one, my errror can be exposed by 
showing that when an experiment is repeated, it 
always gives tho same answer every time; evi¬ 
dently the first result is just as good as a dozen, 
then. But the records of repeated experiments 
do not exhibit snch perfect agreement; on the 
contrary, they show in many cases a second 
yesr’s results quite different from the first, and 
there may ho, sometimes, no satisfactory way 
of accounting for tho difference. But whether 
we can explain it or not, which result Bhall be 
taken for our guide in the selection of manures 
for tho second year? One of the results must 
surely mislead us; if the second one was right, 
then wo should have made a serious mistake if 
we had tried the experiment but one year and 
followed the lead indicated by that. The farmer 
who bases extensive operations in commercial 
fertilizers on the results of a stogie year’s experi¬ 
ments on a small scale, cannot, it appears to me, 
be quite sure be ih right, aud he may run risks 
he cannot well afford. 
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’’ is an 
excellent maxim in any business ; but the safer 
the venture the snrer the gain. No one can 
read over the widely different reports, coining 
from different parties, of their experience with 
phosphates and other commercial fertilizers, or 
reports of repeated experiments, without feeling 
that any use of such mauures is, to a greater or 
less extent, a ventnre which, like the cargo sent 
out by a merchant to a distant port, may possi¬ 
bly not yield a profitable return ; and the wise 
farmer should, like the wise merchant, while 
still ready lo run the risk as a legitimate part of 
his business, spare no trouble that he can take 
to inform himself as to the best consignment 
to be made, and tho beat manner of making it. 
I would not, by any moans, discourage ex¬ 
periments with chemical fertilizers, for I con¬ 
sider such work as a very important means of 
agricultural progress, especially in the older 
States; but I whould have the funner value, at 
their just rate, all the agenoies which take part 
in making up his crops, and assure himsolf that 
he does not attribute a given effect to one 
agency, lhafbelonga to another, and that he 
gives the manure credit for no more than its 
due. No one will rejoice more lhau I if the ex¬ 
perience of “ the hundreds of farmers experi¬ 
menting with manures this season in the hopes 
of obtaining practical results at its close,” 
shall show t hat, in general, a single year’s ex¬ 
periments are so Hicicut for the accomplishment 
of the two objoots for which, as I take it, this 
experimentation is carried on. But in order that 
this may be shown, wo must have, besides a 
careful record of it in year's results, a no less 
careful record of tho results of the application 
next yoar of the fertilizers whoso uao is indicated 
as profitable. The question at issue can be 
settled only in such a way as this. We may 
theorize about it, you, Mr. Editor, on one side, 
aud I on tho other, but that will not be enough. 
I hope that tho farmers themselves will step in 
and help us as well as themselves, and send in 
from all sides to your columns and those of 
other agricultural papers, the facts and figures 
for two or three consecutive years, that we need 
to test our theories. 
Cornell University. 
Jam (Knmomjj. 
DELAYS A RE DA NGEROUS. 
There ia no class of people to whom this 
old adage applies with more propriety than to 
farmers. There is a whole page of Bayings of 
similar import. “A stitch in time saves nine,’ 
“ Once dono never forgotton." “ Never put off 
until to-morrow what can be done to-day ' etc, 
all of which are intended to impress the idea 
of punctuality. 
If oue arises iu the morning, confronted by 
tho fact that there are half a dozen things 
awaiting his attention, that must be done be¬ 
fore I he work laid out for the day can be com¬ 
menced, it is at once an annoyance, and a delay 
results probably in carrying over to the next 
day a portion of the task assigned for this and 
making everything go the harder for the fric¬ 
tion. 
The best time to do anything is at the first con¬ 
venient opportunity that offers after the doing 
becomes a necessity. We would not have a 
man leave a hay field, and go a milo or two for 
tools and appliances to replace a broken tooth in 
a rako -but we would havo him replace it before 
the rako was again taken into tho field. A strap 
or a striug may serve to repair a broken har¬ 
ness for the time, but the farmer should no 
mure think of coni inning its use iu an unsafe 
condition than the sailor should think of putting 
to sea fora now voyage with the jury masts he 
had rigged with which to make port after his 
spars had boon carried away by a gale. 
Neither should he neglect to keep close at¬ 
tention to everything about the premises. That 
gate post is au inch from the perpendicu¬ 
lar to-day—not sufficient to attract general 
