THE 
RURAU NEW-YORKER, 
A. National Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Conducted by 
ELBKUT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 84 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, MAY 6. 1882. 
Personal correspondence of a pressing nature may 
be addressed to the Editor at River Edge, Bergen Co., 
New Jersey, for the present season and until further 
notice. 
-♦ ♦ ♦- 
Of fully 150 varieties of strawberries, 
one-half are worthless at the Rural Ex¬ 
periment Grounds, and one-quarter as 
good as killed by grubs, etc. This shows 
the importance of a proper selection of 
kinds for a given soil and climate. 
Mr. Henry Stewart’s '‘Farm Story,” 
announced in the latter part of last year 
as being written for the Rural New- 
Yorker, will commence week after next. 
It will be presented in consecutive num¬ 
bers until completion. 
“Leon” (see “Rays”) reports, and his 
reports are always trustworthy, that Ber¬ 
muda Grass in the climate of Boston, 
Lansing and Chicago, is not hardy. Our 
patch at the Rural Farm is destroyed. 
That this grass was not hardy so far north 
was well surmised, hut was not known. 
“ Leon’s” remarks as to Dalmatian Insect 
Powder (Pyretlmim cinerarsefolium) are 
commended to all readers. 
Wk have now just fifty tests with po¬ 
tatoes—for the most part new kinds not 
yet grown at the Rural Experimental 
Grounds. Some are planted at various 
depths, some with different kinds of fer¬ 
tilizers. some in trenches the w 7 idth of a 
spade, filling in the soil loosely, some in 
narrow drills. We have used of concen¬ 
trated fertilizers a number of different 
kinds varying from $25 to $50 per ton. 
These have been spread upon the seed- I 
pieces; upon soil lightly spread over the 
pieces; near the surface, and broadcast 
upon the surface, all the way from 300 to 
2000 pounds to the acre. 
LEGISLATION FOB THE FARMER. 
We are informed by a friend, who is a 
resident of Maryland, that that State has 
appropriated the magnificent sum of Jive 
dollarft ($5) for the uses of the State Ag¬ 
ricultural Association. A law in force 
compels the Legislature to make an ap¬ 
propriation, and this is the way in which 
the law is obeyed and yet disobeyed, at 
the same time. It is au example of the 
ordinary manner in which the interests of 
agriculture are neglected and ignored by 
the States as well as the United States 
Governments. The leading industry of 
the country is left to look out for itself, 
and, in fact, to bear all the burdens which 
can be heaped upon its overloaded hack. 
Tariff-tinkers propose to admit foreign 
wool free of duty, and yet leave all the 
duties upon woolen goods and upon 
every article used by a farmer, to add 
to his expenses, while his resources 
are to be reduced by destroying one of 
his chief means of income. American 
farmers have to bear the burdens of the 
enormous public debts, national and local; 
they have to foot all the bills for appro¬ 
priations for this and that so-called im- : 
provement; to make good all the public i 
stealings; all the losses; all the grants of 1 
public land; all the pensions; and to pay i 
all the salaries—for the farmer “pays for i 
alland yet agriculture lies prostrate for 1 
every other industry to stand upon, that i 
it may be able to reach for whatever it can < 
get from the public crib. Farmers, think 
of these things! 
-- 
WAR ON THE APPLE-TREE BORER. 
or below the surface of the soil. The 
grubs which issue from those eggs in a 
few days, eat into the bark to which, 
during the first year, they confine them¬ 
selves, going deeper the second. The 
third year the grub changes to a pupa, 
and in the Spring bursts its covering and 
appears as a perfect beetle. It will be 
seen that if the eggs are permitted to 
hatch the wash is useless, for it cannot 
reach or harm the grub which is beneath 
the bark. The grub can then be destroyed 
only by the use of wires or by cut¬ 
ting it out. Many recommend the use of 
tarrtd papers, laths, &c., tiei about the 
stems. But we prefer the wash, which, 
during the past ten years, we have never 
failed to apply twice every year, and we 
have yet to find evidence that it has Dot. 
in every case effectually protected the 
trees against this destructive insect. 
SILK CULTURE IN THE UNITED 
STATES. 
The culture of silk as a home industry 
has not, in the past, been remuneiative 
and, therefore, its pursuit has not been 
general. There was not a sufficient de¬ 
mand in this country for silk-worm co¬ 
coons to be worked up to insure any con¬ 
siderable investment of money in pur¬ 
chasing and setting out mulberry groves, 
and in incurring the various expenses at¬ 
tendant upon silk-worm raising. But the 
present condition of things is greatly en¬ 
couraging. There are now 200' silk mills 
in daily operation, and the demand 
which they create for home-raised co¬ 
coons and silk, is on the. increase. Raw 
silk is worth from $4.00 to $6.00 per 
pound, according to its quality, and co¬ 
coons and floss silk about $1.00 per 
pound. As 200 lull grown mulberrv 
trees will yield annually 30,000 pounds of 
leaves for feeding the’worms, and as 16 
pounds of leaves will produce one pound 
of fresh cocoons worth $1.00, it will be 
seen that the remuneration in this branch 
of the industry is not mean, especially 
when we consider that the labor necessa¬ 
rily devoted to silk-worm raising and co- I 
coon production need not take up more I 
than six or eight weeks of the year, and I 
that the work may be done almost entire- I 
ly by women and children. 
It is to this last point we ask special at¬ 
tention. A generation or more ago farmers’ I 
wives found occupation, outside of their I 
regular household duties, in spinning, I 
weaving, making the clothes for the fami¬ 
ly, etc., etc.; but now these “ home in- I 
dustries” are almost wholly unknown, and I 
the result is a large portion of our well- I 
to-do farmers' wives are Condemned to I 
the routine drudgery of household work, 
or to pass away a portion of the day in 
comparative idleness. Besides this, there 
are many who would bail such an oppor- I 
tunity to help “ pay for the farm,” or I 
lighten the running expenses thereof. 
Yet, of course, no one should enter upon I 
this business without a fair knowledge of 
allots requirements, and without consid¬ 
ering the liabilities to failure as well as I 
the probabilities of success. 
The Woman’s Silk Culture Association 
of the United States, with headquarters I 
in Philadelphia, deserve commendation I 
and substantial encouragement for the I 
work they are attempting—to make silk- I 
culture a profitable home industry. They I 
have already taken steps to establish a I 
filature in that city, which shall afford a 
home market for cocoons, producers to be I 
paid for their cocoons according to the I 
market value of the silk obtained from 
them. Hitherto the great drawback to 
success here has been the absence of I 1 
filatures, so that all the cocoons produced I 1 
here had to be sent to Europe to have the I 1 
fiber wound on bobbins. When a home I 
market is assured for cocoons by the es- I ^ 
tablishment of one or more filatures here, I J 
we have no doubt that many more will I 1 
engage in this new industry. I 1 
husbandry. The passage of a railroad 
through a region without rail or river 
means of transportation, raises the value 
of all the land by affording facilities for 
bringing Implements, stock and supplies 
to work it, as well as for marketing its 
produce, and therefore it is often advis¬ 
able to aid the construction of such roads 
by grants of some part of the section they 
traverse, in order to appreciate the value 
of the whole. But on what grounds of 
justice or public expediency was this enor¬ 
mous excess of land donated to thisgrasp- 
iug organization ? 
This, however, is by no meajisa solitary 
instance of official carelessness, or worse. 
The Sioux City and St. Paul Road was 
entitled to 359,520 acres at most, for 
56 1-6 miles of road, yet 407,910 acres 
were patented to it, although the grant 
ought to have been diminished 57,000 
acres on account of other overlapping 
grants. The Iowa Falls and Sioux City 
Road has received 25,000 acres too much; 
the Winona and St. Peter’s Road an 
excefs of 250,000 acres over the geo¬ 
graphical limits of the grant and nearly 
1,000,000 acres over its actual area. Other 
instances of similar squandering of the 
public domain were mentioned the other 
day by Mr. J. W. Le Barnes, Assistant 
Law Clerk of the General Land Office. 
In many cases the lands to which the com¬ 
panies would be entitled on the comple¬ 
tion of the roads have been withheld from 
“settlement” for years, although Dot a 
stroke of work has ever been done on the 
roads. The grant to the Gulf and Ship 
Island Road, in Mississippi, was made m 
1S5G, and expired in 1866. Not a yard 
of the road has ever been built; nor has 
any land been applied for, but every alter¬ 
nate section of the public land fora breadth 
of 30 miles aud a length of 70 miles along 
the line of the projected road was with¬ 
drawn Jrom settlement in 1860, and has 
ever since remained so. No part of the 
Coosa and Tennessee Railroad, in Ala¬ 
bama, has been built, yet the Company 
has received 67,000 acres. These are only 
a few of the many instances we have col¬ 
lected of the disgracefully loose manner 
in which the General Land Office has been 
in the habit of conducting its business 
with railroads—probably to the profit of 
the officials, certainly to the loss of farm¬ 
ing and stock-raising settlers. There is a 
gross abuse here, and for every gross abuse 
there should be a prompt remedy in “the 
finest Government under the sun.” 
- 
HIGH PRICE OF BEEF. 
THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE AND 
THE RAILROADS. 
Scores of our subscribers ask us every 
year how to prevent the depredations of 
the Round-headed Apple Tree Borer. Now 
is the time to use the ounce of prevention. 
Make a thin white-wash and add to it 
flowers of sulphur—a gill to a pailful—a 
pint of soft soap and a small quantity of 
crude carbolic acid — a tablespoonful. 
Then add enough lamp-black and dark- 
colored mineral paint-powder to imitate 
the color of the bark, and apply this wash 
with a brush or swab to the stems of the 
trees, allowing it to penetrate the soil an 
inch below the surface. This wash is dis¬ 
tasteful to the female borer, which appears 
while apple trees are in bloom, depositing 
its eggs on the stems of apples, quinces, 
hawthorns and others, just a little above 
T he Cedar Rapids and Missouri River 
Railroad has a total length of 271.6 miles, 
as certified by the Governor of the State. 
As an aid iu its construction, it received 
a land grant of six sections, or 3,840 seres, 
per mile, making a total of 1,042,944 
acres. This area was diminished, how¬ 
ever, to the extent of about 25 per cent., 
by overlapping grants of other roads, 60 
that the amount the road was fairly enti¬ 
tled to was 785,000 acres, yet the amount 
actually certified and patented was 1,141,- 
690 acres, or 98,746 acres more than the 
area covered by the original grant aud over 
350,000 acres more than the road could 
rightfully claim. The public lands of the 
nation belong to its citizens, and espe¬ 
cially to those of them whose vocation I 
has to do with the various branches of • 
All over the country consumers are 
loud in their complaints of the extraordi¬ 
narily high prices of beef. In the cities 
the laboring classes are stinted almost as 
much as the shop keepers of Europe ; 
while even pretty-well-to-do people feel 
anxious about the size of their butchers’ 
bills. The restaurants are putting up the 
price or cutting down the size of their 
dishes, and the bourding-house keepers 
are proving to their boarders that there 
are cuts of beef even more leathery than 
those they have been accustomed to. What 
are the causes of the recent rise in beef ? 
There are several of them. The terrible 
Winter of 1880—’81 was very destructive 
to cattle on the great Western ranges— 
fully 15 per cent of all the herds, it is 
estimated, perished. The loss fell chiefly 
on young animals that were unable to 
bear the bitter exposure; and these are 
the kind that are fed in the States in the 
Fall and marketed in late Winter and 
Spring. Growers, too, in view of the 
comparative scarcity of marketable ani¬ 
mals, are holding their stock for prices 
that will make good past losses. A heavy 
loss of beeves was also sustained by the 
floods along the Missouri last year and 
along the Mississippi and its tributaries 
I this Spring. Moreover, the enormous im¬ 
migration to the trans-Mistissippi States 
and Territories has created an unusually 
large demand for cattle to stock new 
farms. 
Then again, owing to the good prices 
for beeves last year an unusually large 
number were killed for home consump¬ 
tion, canning and export in carcass, so 
that very many animals that, under ordi¬ 
nary circumstances, would have been kept 
over till this season, were sold from six to 
nine moDths ago, thus diminishing the 
available supply now. The demand for 
canning purposes is also increasing, several 
fresh factories having lately started here 
and there, two of them in Chicago. The 
transatlantic exports of cattle, alive and 
dressed, have a strong influence upon prices 
and of late weeks, owing in some meas¬ 
ure to the very low rates of ocean freight, 
these exports have been largely increasing, 
amounting now, it is estimated, to about 
10,000 head per week. Another cause of 
high prices entirely due to consumers 
1 themselves, is the determination of nearly 
r all to secure prime pieces. Hotels, restau- 
e rants and private families, even those of 
r clerks and mechanics, all want prime ribs 
s and porterhouse steaks. Now, in a beef 
s ‘ critter,’ there are only two rib-pieces 
- and two loins—about 200 pounds, or one- 
8 sixth of the whole carcass—that can be 
7 utilized for fine cuts. The advance in 
o price is chiefly in this class of meat, while 
f in reality many of the coarser parts, prop- 
- crly cooked, would be nearly as palatable 
and just as nutr.tious. 
The advance in price to butchers within 
7 the year has been from $15 to $25 per 
. head; now the price of hides, tallow, and 
s other parts of tin? animal that cannot be 
r sold o ver the block to customers (amount- 
s i n g with the oilul to40<®45 pounds out of 
t every 100), have not advanced at the same 
) pace as beef, and accordingly nearly the 
? whole advance has to be put. on the meat, 
7 and mainly on the prime parts of it. In 
; the Eastern markets, too, the recent rise 
i of 15 cents per 100 pounds in freight on 
stock from Chicago, has certainly stimu- 
7 lated the upward movement, 
r W hat is the prospect as to future prices ? 
} Well, from present conditions it is not 
r unlikely that prices will remain near the 
t. present figures (the highest since 1867) 
for four or five weeks longer, when a grad¬ 
ual decline is not improbable. The cattle 
from the Western ranges will be coming 
i into market from the latter part of May. 
1 Distillery - fed cattle arc being pushed 
i rapidly forward, owing to the present high 
i prices, and will go to the butcher some 
weeks earlier than usual. Owing to the 
high price of corn an unusually large 
: number of cattle were kept back for grass- 
feeding, and these will be coming forward 
a few weeks hence. The Texas cattle 
drive (reported to be very large this year) 
will reacli Northern markets towards the 
end of June and the beginning of July, 
and by that time, at latest, prices will most 
likely have sunk nearly to the normal 
level. 
■ --- 
BREVITIES. 
The Pacific Rural Press tells us that the 
V) ashmgton Navel is the crowned king of 
California oranges. How long shall its reign 
he? Who will bring out a better? Royal in 
color, refined in surface, tender in flesh, rich 
in flavor, and a natural reservoir of juice 
Seedless—Supreme! Vive le roil 
A seed may germinate in any damp place 
but ic cannot live unless it is so in contact 
with the soil that the tiny first roots can pen¬ 
etrate it. The best stand of corn we have ever 
bad was rolled with a heavy iron roller after 
the seed was planted. Let us bear this iu mind 
in connection with setting trees. It is not suf¬ 
ficient that the roots be placed in a hole aud the 
soil be thrown in, but the rootlets should be 
placed in contact with their food. 
Last November a committee of eminent 
scientists was appointed by the National 
Academy of Sciences to investigate the merits 
of sorghum as a sugar-producing cane, and 
the committee has just reported that In sugar- 
producing value sorghum is second only to the 
sugar cane of Louisiana and the tropics, and 
that it is well adapted to the various soils and 
climates of the United States. The world 
agrees with the declarations of science, when 
the declarations of science agree with those of 
experience. 
With the advent of mild Spring weather 
the price of butter is everywhere declining. 
Within the last mouth it has dropped 11 to 12 
cents here; nearly the same in Boston and Phila¬ 
delphia; from 12 to 14 cents in Chicago and St 
Louis while iu Elgin, III. the great market 
for Western butter, the fall has been 15 cents 
within a fortnight and over 20 cents since 
February. Very little need, therefore, of 
attributing the fall in the price of butter in 
any tingle place to the introduction of an un¬ 
usually lurge supply of oleomargarine. 
In Congress the House Committee on Pat¬ 
ents has at last agreed on n bill for the pro¬ 
tection of innocent purchaser* of patented ar¬ 
ticles. It provides that- no action for dam¬ 
ages or proceedings in equity shall be sustained 
for the u-e of any patented article or device 
when it shall appear on trial that the defend¬ 
ant purchased rucIi arti -le in open market for 
a valuable consideration. We have long 
urged the justice of such legislation. There 
is a glow of satisfaction even at the tardy 
adoption of a good measure one has earnestly 
advooated—now isn’t there ? 
The English charges of wholesale adultera¬ 
tion of American cotton have been investi¬ 
gated by the Cotton Exchange of this city, 
which declares that the alleged frauds have 
been greatly exaggerated by interested trans¬ 
atlantic brokers and manufacturers. The 
cotton crop of 1880-’81 was, it appeai-R, very 
low in grade and sold at a correspondingly 
low figure, and it is thought that English 
manufacturers, having bought heavily early 
in the Reason, arc now working up Eome of 
this old cotton. Cotton that is sometimes adul¬ 
terated with sand through careless handling, 
is graded low and sold for lower prices than 
clean cotton, and therefore it* inferior quality 
is admitted by sellers, so that buyers cannot 
be cheated. Still, it is allowed that there are 
some grounds for the present agitation, which 
is sure to be of good service in leading to greater 
care in handling cotton and to the introduction 
of improved machinery. The laws of most 
of_ the Cotton States make frauds of this sort 
misdemeanors punishable by heavy penalties, 
and the Cotton Exchanges have rules provid¬ 
ing for the recovery of damages for losses by 
adulteration by sand or other foreign matter. 
