THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
OCT. 48 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
Practical Departments : 
Easy Method of Improving the Value of Some 
Farms—(Illustrated ...... 
Moisture-Ketaining Power of Soils—Notes from 
the Rural Grounds—(Illustrated).... 
Jottings at Kirby Homestead—Col. F- D. Curtis. 
Notes from Maplewood Farm—Hector Bertram. 
Notes from Rural Farm. 
Rye, Its Culture, &o.—tV. U.White.-.,.. - 
Alfalfa on the East of the Rocky Mountains— 
N. W. Bliss.. 
Tobacco H. B. B. .. 
Everyday Notes -Samuel Parsons- —... ... 
The Truth About It. Superstitious—F. D. Curtis, 
Extracts from Correspondents' Letters. 
What Others Say.,... . 
Farm Notes—W. A. II.. 
Setting Examples of Art and Taste.. 
Books Recurred. 
Catalogues Received... 
A Contrast— (Illustrated).— ■ . 
A Slight Mistake (V)-L. A. R. 
Bee Hints for October— W. L. M....... ••• 
Profitable Bee-Keeping—D. B, C. 
Raising Angoru Goats... 
French Buhr-StoncGrlBt-Mill.... 
The Beat. Cows for the Dairy—A Jersey Farmer.. 
Town Fair at Manchester, Vt... • • 
661 
661 
662 
682 
602 
662 
CAS 
663 
663 
663 
C6t 
ft it 
ftM 
ftit 
674 
665 
665 
665 
665 
665 
065 
666 
666 
Everywhere: 
Michigan State Pomologlca) Society. 666 
Chapm Hill, N.C. 658 
Ithaca, N.Y.86*1 
Blufftou, Ohio. 8 ft; 
Little Hock, Ark..«« 
Oxford Co., Canada. 6 J« 
Broomo Co., N. Y..... 868 
Brown Co., WIb. 8 *» 
Tompkins Co.. N. Y. .808 
Jefferson Co.. N. Y... 660 
Correction—Washington Co., N. Y. Wio 
Crawfordville, Iowa. 866 
Burr Oak, Iowa. wn 
Poquonoclc Bridge, Ct....... Wn 
Lawrence. Mich.*>* 
Answer's to correspondents: 
Ground Bone, Ac,.667 
Cabbage Fly. 68 * 
How to Rugialer... ....661 
Club Root in Cabbages. 667 
Miscellaneous. 667 
Communications Kocoived. 661 
Editouial Paqei 
The Pig in Agriculture. 668 
Growing Mutton..... 668 
Chanceior Fame aud Fortune. 668 
Milk and Water. 668 
Brevities. . 668 
Domestic Economy: 
Mop-Handle Papers—No. 6 —May Maple.672 
A Question of Facts—Annie L. Jack.672 
Domestic Recipes... 672 
Literary : • 
Poetry. ..6C9. 672, 679 
Autumn Fosblom for Children—(Illustrated)— 669 
A Few Announcements.669 
Social Position of Women in Germany.66 1 
Home Study... 670 
Discarded Daughter—Ellen Hunter.670 
Recent Literature.671 
Magazines.671 
Scientific and Useful.. 871 
Reading tor the Young : 
The Cattle Train —(Illustrated). 674 
Puzzler.... 674 
Sabbath Reading: 
The Trial of Jesus.674 
News of the Week—Herman. 674 
Markets. 673 
Personals. 675 
Wit and Humor. 666 
Advertisements...673,675, 676 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
Address 
RURAL PUBLISHING CO., 
78 Duane Street, New York City. 
SATURDAY OOT. 19, 1878. 
We offered, some time ago, to sell the outs 
uBed in thia Journal for ten cents the square 
inch. Many have requested ns to send proofs 
of our outs. As we have upwards of ten thou¬ 
sand, we could not undertake to do so. Persons 
wishing to purchase, must select from files of 
the Rural New-Yorker. 
THE PIG IN AGRICULTURE. 
The pig has recently been spoken of 
in contempt when compared with our 
other domestic animals. But if we exam¬ 
ine his good qualities at all critically, we 
must award him a high place in our agri¬ 
culture. The American people are 
thought to consume more pork, bacon 
and ham per capita, than any other peo¬ 
ple. The products of the pig are a 
household necessity, and enter into al¬ 
most universal consumption. If we sup¬ 
pose 75 lbs. per capita to be used by 
our people of pig products, including 
lard, then our home consumption amounts 
to at least 3,000,000,000 pounds, worth 
$150,000,000. The pig then holds a con¬ 
spicuous place in the food supply of the 
nation. But when we examine it as a 
factor in our exports, we find it to stand 
at the head, of all our domestic animals. 
A few years ago we did not put up our 
hams and bacon to suit English taste, 
and our average export of these articles 
amounted in money to only $6,000,000 
annually. But after studying the taste 
of our principal customer, and getting 
the assistance of some English houses in 
putting up the goods, our exports of hog 
products rose in 1872 to $21,000,000. 
During the fiscal year 1876 these exports 
were as follows : 
Live Hogs. $679,042 
Bacon and Hams. 89,664,456 
Pork. 6,744,022 
Lard. 22,429,485 
Lard oil. 149,156 
Total. 868,666,161 
In 1877 these products reached the 
sum of $82,352,222, an increase of over 
thirteen millions in a single year. But 
the items of the last fiscal year, ending 
June 30, 1878, were the following : 
Live Hogs.... $267,259 
Bacon and Rams.61,760,205 
Lard. 80.014,023 
Pork....... 4,913,046 
Lard oil. 
Total.$87,939,673 
Now, the entire cattle products export¬ 
ed the same year amounted to $49,338,- 
029 ; and this includes all our meat trade 
and dairy products, the latter being 
$18,162,487; bo that the exports of our 
dairy products, amount to but tittle more 
than one-fifth as much as those of our 
pig products, and the whole cattle ex¬ 
ports only amount to 66-100 of the pig 
exports. These export, figures of pig 
products show what we may do in a few 
years more. They have doubled in less 
than ten years, and we may reasonably 
expect them to reach $125,000,000 during 
the next ten years. We have ample re¬ 
sources for growing and fattening pigs in 
unlimited numbers and can supply the 
demand however much it may increase. 
Aud since we can produce pork, bacon 
and hams cheaper than any other coun¬ 
try, we are likely to have the command 
of the markets. 
The pig is found to produce a pound of 
product from less food than either cattle 
or sheep, and therefore is the most eco¬ 
nomical machine to manufacture our 
great corn crop into marketable meat. 
Our people are becoming wiser every 
year, and exporting less, proportionately, 
of the raw material and more of con¬ 
densed product. If it takes seven pounds 
of corn, on an average, to make a pound 
of pork, as is no doubt the case, the far¬ 
mer begins to 6ee the great economy of 
exporting one pound of pork, bacon or 
ham, instead of seven pounds of corn. 
The difference in cost of freight makes a 
fine profit, of itself; besides the pound of 
meat is usually worth more than seven 
pounds of corn in the foreign market. 
The production of pork should be en¬ 
couraged on the further consideration 
that it carries off lesB of the valuable 
constituents of the soil than beef. The 
fat pig contains only three-fourths as 
much mineral matter per cwt. as the fat 
steer, and only two-fifths as muoh nitro¬ 
gen per cwt. And therefore the produc¬ 
tion of a ton of pork on the farm will 
carry off only a little more tban half the 
fertility carried off by a ton of beef ; be¬ 
sides a ton of beef will require nearly 
fifty per cent, more food to produce it. 
This gives, in round numbers, the com¬ 
parative effect of producing pork and 
beef. 
It is thus evident that the pig should 
have a high place in our agriculture; 
should be fostered in every way—his 
capabilities studied and pushed—Ins dis¬ 
eases carefully noted and prevented, for 
he is the most profitable meat-producing 
animal on the farm. The pig is an ex¬ 
cellent adjunct to the dairy, turning all 
the refuse milk, and even whey into 
cash. As he is king of our meat exports, 
so let us treat lum with great considera¬ 
tion. 
-- » ♦- 
GROWING MUTTON. 
Agrioulture in the United States seems 
to be developing, growing in all its de¬ 
partments. No country has equal re¬ 
sources for the expansion of its agricul¬ 
ture, and none more urgent inducements. 
With immense tracts of land well adapted 
to the growth of wool and mutton, we im¬ 
ported, for the ten years including 
1870, an average of fifty million pounds 
of wool per year, at an average cost of 
$7,959,546 per annum ; and for the next 
five years, including 1875, 74,000,000 
pounds per year, at a cost of $15,146,716; 
but for the past three years, the impor¬ 
tations of wool have fallen to 45,037,702 
pounds, at an annual cost of $7,922,625 ; 
and this notwithstanding our increase in 
population. 
Our importations of woolen goods for 
the five years ending with 1875, average 
$47,595,397; and during the past three 
years the average has fallen to $28,047,- 
293. The statistician of the Department 
of Agriculture makes the whole importa¬ 
tion lor 55 years, from 1820 to 1875, of 
woolen goods, amount in the aggregate, 
to $1,165,542,084, or $21,191,674 per 
year. Thus it will be seen that the value 
of the yearly imports of those goods for 
the past three years has been but little 
more than that of the average annual im¬ 
ports for the whole period, which shows 
that our sheep industry is getting into a 
healthy state. 
On our broad plains, sheep must be 
kept almost wholly for their wool. Here 
the capital invested in land is exceedingly 
small, and the cost of the business con¬ 
sists in the cost of the initiatory flook 
and the wages of herders. And as it 
needs but one herder to 600 or even 1,000 
sheep, the expense is not large, and a low 
price of wool will afford ample margin for 
profit. In this way we produce many 
millions of pounds of cheap wool in Col¬ 
orado, Nebraska, California and Texas. 
This is all needed, and its growth should 
be encouraged as long as these conditions 
continue ; but we require a large increase 
in the production of wool in the older 
States, in order to supply our manufac¬ 
tories, and it has become a well settled 
fact that sheep husbandry cannot be made 
profitable on high-priced lands, if kept 
simply for the wool. This is undertaking 
to carry on an industry and throw away 
half of its legitimate earnings. Under 
favorable conditions the mutton will pro¬ 
duce as muoh income as the wool. Eng¬ 
land, on a territory only about equal to 
the State of New York, carries eighteen 
millions of sheep, and the United King¬ 
dom, with 122,000 square miles, carries a 
few more sheep than all the United 
States. But upon her expensive lands 
sheep husbandry is developed in all its 
branches. Nothing goes to waste. Bake- 
well and those who have followed him, 
hava developed several breeds of mutton 
sheep, that mature early and produce 
mutton of the highest quality, heavy 
weight, and lambs that bring $10 or 
more each, when six months old. The 
wool, as an item of profit, is secondary to 
the mutton. But a heavy, fat carcass, is 
always accompanied with a heavy fleece. 
To obtain the mutton there is no curtail¬ 
ment of the wool. 
The older States must now renew their 
sheep farming on similar principles to 
those adopted in England. We may not, 
at once, put into operation her admirable 
system of turnip culture, but we have 
large amounts of surplus grain of the 
best quality, for feeding sheep. We ex¬ 
port annually about three hundred mil¬ 
lion pounds of oil-cake which Great 
Britain uses to perfect her mutton and 
beef, and enrich her soil. This should 
all be used at home, and will produce 
more value to export in meat, besides 
adding largely to the fertility of our de¬ 
pleted soil. Our great crop—Indian 
corn—is almost too rich in carbonaceous 
food, too heating to the animal system to 
be fed alone, but when mingled with a 
small proportion of oil-oake, it. produces 
rapid fattening of sheep, and keeps them 
in excellent health. Then, we have a 
great resource in decorticated cotton 
seed-cake. This may be produced in 
very large quantities. These oil-cakes 
should be used chiefly for the increase of 
oil and albuminoid elements in food. 
The grasses are our great reliance for 
growing mutton as well as beef, and a 
proper system of farming will produce 
these in all our early settled States. 
-■*-*•-*•- 
A CHANCE FOE FAME AND FORTUNE. 
What a blessing it would be if some 
means were devised by which the farmers 
of the country might learn beforehand the 
area devoted in every district to each par¬ 
ticular kind of crop! It is among the 
possibilities of the enlightened and sys¬ 
tematized agriculture of the future that 
information of this kind will be within 
the reaoh of every inquirer. In those 
days it will, as a rule, be due to one’s 
own folly if he finds any particular pro¬ 
duct a cirug on his hands on account of 
an overstocked market. Now-a-days, 
however, a loss of this kind is often an in¬ 
evitable misfortune even to the most 
prudent and far-sighted farmer or horti¬ 
culturist. Last year potatoes were un- 
profitably superabundant in many sec¬ 
tions, and this year again tomatoes are 
too plentiful for profit in not a few plaoeB. 
In the neighborhood of this oity the crop 
has been so heavy aud the prices conse¬ 
quently bo low that, in mauy instances, it 
has not paid to pick and market them and 
they have been allowed to rot on the vines. 
This excessive supply is the more dis¬ 
astrous owing to the perishable nature of 
the fruit and its unfitness for exportation. 
Our surplus 6tock of potatoes and of 
most other farm products, cau be sent to 
a profitable market in other countries, 
but all our tomatoes must be used or 
wasted at borne. 
A large demand for this kind of pro¬ 
duce has arisen of late years across the 
Atlantic, and the demand is yearly in¬ 
creasing very disproportionately to the 
supply. There are very few articles that 
could be more profitably shipped to Lon¬ 
don than a consignment of tomatoes, if 
such a consignment could be made with 
safety. In view of the great popularity 
which this product has attained among ns 
within the last half century, it is fair to 
suppose that a wider acquaintance with 
its merits among our trans-atlantio cous¬ 
ins and other Europeans, would be at¬ 
tended with a similar result, and conse¬ 
quently that American-grown tomatoes 
would there constantly find a highly pro¬ 
fitable market. To insure this very de¬ 
sirable end, all that is needed is a variety 
that can be safely exported. One of the 
straightest roads to fortune is to find out 
some unsatisfied need of society, and 
then to devise the means of supplying 
what is lacking. Here we point out to 
our friends juBt such a need, and invite 
the skillful aud enterprising horticultur¬ 
ists among them to compete for the fame 
and fortune that must come from satisfy¬ 
ing it. In view of the vast improvements 
which have of late years been made in the 
tomato, surely it will not be unsurmount- 
ably difficult to produce a variety suitable 
for shipment. 
-- 
MILK AND WATER. 
The frequent exposures of the petty 
cheating practiced by milk dealers who 
are detected in watering milk, give a very 
low, miserable exhibition of human 
weakness. That the paltry gains made 
in this way should be sufficient to induce 
a man to commit so mean an act, is sad 
to contemplate. It. is true that the sup¬ 
posed difficulty of detection adds greatly 
to the temptation; but when the delin¬ 
quent milk-dealer or dairyman supposes 
detection of his mean dishonesty to be 
diffioult, he makes a serious mistake. 
The truth is, there is nothing easier to 
detect tban adulteration of milk. Milk 
is a standard substance of so regular a 
composition that the addition of a small 
portion of water to it or the subtraction 
of a small quantity of cream from it, can 
be detected as easily as the addition of 
water to oil. If this were well known, 
as it should be, by all who handle milk, 
the inducement to become rogues by the 
fake security hitherto felt, would no 
longer operate ; and there would be less 
of this cheating. 
It is a stigma upon farmers generally, 
who arc supposed to be honest by breed¬ 
ing, and to be unused to the ways that 
are dark, whiob are looked for more in 
the city streets than in rural and sylvan 
abodes, that some of them should fall 
into the evil ways of the city dealers and 
practice knavery upon the factorymen. 
“Patrons” the factorymen call them 1 
but from such patronage as that, one 
would wish to be delivered* In a coun¬ 
try paper there was recently published a 
list of “patrons” who were fined for 
watering milk. One of these men was 
fined last year and on this occasion was 
glad to pay $150 to be released. Wise 
man ! he immediately Bold his cows and 
retired from the business of “patroniz¬ 
ing” the “Swiss Creek” factory. The 
whole farming community suffer from 
these delinquencies, “ An honest farm¬ 
er ” is now coming to be used as a sar¬ 
casm ; in irony, rather, for what the 
words purport. Are there no honest 
farmers any more ? Yerily the milk bus¬ 
iness, the fruit business, and the baled 
hay business in which “watering,” and 
“ veneering,” and “ padding ” with oord- 
wood, are so frequently practiced, would 
lead one to suppose that honesty has be¬ 
come an old-time and forgotten virtue. 
But we don’t believe it yet. 
BREVITIES. 
Bank up the celery. 
“ Gather your Rose-buds while you may.” 
Or all the breeds of chiokens we have raised 
this season, the Plymouth Rocks mature and lay 
the earliest. 
“ The brown leaves rustle In the wind, 
And golden Is the oak tree's crown; 
The red beech drops her ripened mast, 
And chestnut’s husks come showering down.’ 
Ir you want a vigorous, quiok-growing, hardy, 
handsome shrub that will flourish in almost any 
soil or situation, for twenty-five cents each, buy 
the California Privet, Ligustrum ovaltfolium. 
Col. Weld kills us that his Dioscorea bata¬ 
tas, which has matured seed, also hears bulhlets 
in the axils, like the male vine, so that nature is 
not so economical m this instance as we gave 
her oredit for being. 
A number of our friends have seut ua plants 
this season by mall, and have then informed us 
of the fact by postal-oard. Sometimes we can¬ 
not tell which plants and postal-cards go 
together. It is the same with specimens sent 
for name. 
Mr. Basset (Frauoe) has been studying for 
“ more than a quarter of a century ” to discover 
a means of obtaining ammonia, at a low price, 
from the nitrogen of the air. Mr. Basset an¬ 
nounces that he has arrived at complete suooess. 
We congratulate Mr. Basset (!) 
pKi.ARooNiuM Distribution.— We would say 
to our lady readers that the last of these orders 
are now being filled and mailed as we go to press. 
Not one was omitted. Those therefore who do 
not receive them will look to the P. O. or to 
imperfect directions. Of all the applications, 
one had no name, ten defective addresses, and 
several we could not make out. 
Not until too late to rectify the oversight, did 
we discover that the sectional drawing explan¬ 
atory of the article under Notes from the Rural 
Grounds, was incorrect in one particular, viz.: 
the draiuage-hole of the inner pot is made to 
extend through the bucket. It would have been 
rather a difficult thing to have made 1 the 
buckets hold water with that hole in the bottom 
