THE RURAL HEW-YORMIR. 
JULY IS 
4^6 
the real one. Shoddy sells well enough if it 
be carefully made, and so the makers of 
counterfeit butter and cheese do flourish, 
Dairymen who make inferior butter and 
cheese, no matter how real the goods may be, 
are out of the running entirely. If only the 
palate of the public be suited, it matters not 
if the article be real or pretended, so that 
careless dairymen can hardly ‘ make ends 
meet and tie.” But one thing is clear: the 
makers of really first-class cheese and butter 
can hold their own and will hold their own 
against all the nefarious stuff that is made in 
any and in every country. A weeding out 
process is going on, and goods which are mere 
simulations will take the place so long occu¬ 
pied by the products of milk that was spoilt. 
If, then, the oleomargarine business, the melt¬ 
ed tallow and lard and other less creditable 
things shall result in bringing about a 
thorough reform in dairy methods, we shall 
have reason after all to be grateful to men for 
whom at present few of us entertain feeliogs 
that approach to respect or affection. But let 
the public have fair protection, let them 
kuow what they buy; then the dairymen will 
win—if they want to, and if they don’t the 
fault is their own. 
THE TRUTH ABOUT IT. 
[The object of articles tinder this heading Is not so 
much to deal with “humbugs” as with the many un¬ 
conscious errors that creep Into the methods of dally 
country routine life.—E ds.1 
THE TRUTH ABOUT MILKING. 
I HAVE been much impressed by the re¬ 
marks of a “ Farmer's Wife” page 206 in re¬ 
gard to farm work and milking. Farmer’s 
Wife certainly has reason to complain of the 
labor of farm life if her statement is true as 
regards the manner of milking, viz: “ every 
morning all the Summer in the wet grass." 
Such a way of milking is decidedly disagree¬ 
able and laborious and ought to be a subject 
of complaint by every farmer’s wife, because 
it is quite unnecessary and there is an easier 
way. The method represent ad is very com¬ 
mon I know. I see farmers and their wives 
and daughters doing it around the neighbor¬ 
hood continually. I read more papers than 
the Rural and I see the same complaint 
made in them. I have read of cow's being 
broken to stand to be milked in pastures and 
yards, and of the trouble of following them 
about all over the mud and manure and at 
last of the cow, tired of the job, kicking up her 
heels and oversetting both the pail and the 
milker. And then “ clubs are trumps,” un¬ 
less perhaps the trick is taken with a spade 
that is handy lying around and hearts are 
heavy and sad. And all this is very common, 
if not very general. But why should it be so? 
I am a man and a farmer and milk six cows 
regular!y and sometimes 10 when it is not con¬ 
venient to have help, and I can persuade my 
wife to let me do it all; but I don’t milk in 
the wet grass nor in the yard, nor do I have 
the cows running about. That is all extra 
labor and I want to prove it, because it is no 
use saying a thing is so, to any lady, she is 
so apt to think her way cannot be mended. 
Then in the first place let us go over the work 
that has to be done when the cows are milked 
iu the wet grass. Whether they are far off or 
near by one must go to them and carry the 
pails, and when the milking is done the milk 
has to be carried home. Next, this tramp is 
very inconvenient anyhow the business is 
fixed; one gets wet, and if the pails are filled 
one person cannot carry and two must go. 
Where there are more cows perhaps three 
must go. Third the risk to health is a very 
serious one. Wet feet and clothes about this 
work have caused more than one woman’s 
death, and it is safe to say that hundreds of 
farmers’ wives every year suffer, if they don’t 
die outright, from colds taken in this manner. 
Again, when flies are troublesome the labor is 
increased very much and the annoyances are 
multiplied greatly, I have seen cows milked 
with smoke and smudges made all about to 
drive the flies away, and that is positively 
cruel to the milkers, if they are women. 
Now let us consider another way. The 
cows are brought home to be milked and put 
in a rough shed at the side of the yard or in 
any convenient place, and tied up. If they 
should get then a little handful of corn meal 
and bran they will run to their places and 
are fastened by slipping a slip noose of light 
rope over their horns and they are ready for 
business; so far there has been no more labor 
than in going to the cows and one person can 
bring them home if there are 20 instead of 
four or six. Then the milking is done near 
home agreeably and comfortably, and in the 
dry instead of in the wet, and the milk can 
be taken home with very little trouble. The 
cows are then taken back to the pasture or 
the field and that is no more labor than 
coming home from the field with the milk and 
not so much, audit is much more convenient 
than carrying the milk home. Now will a 
farmer’s wife not believe this very easily? 
And then see the advantages of it. The cow 
are trained and not broken; they are made 
gentle by this treatment and how much more 
gentle the farmer and the farmer’s wife be¬ 
come through the absence of the irritation and 
anger caused by the frequent unruliness of 
the cows and the miserable annoyances of the 
inconvenient methods that are common. 
Management saves much labor and more 
worry. It is worry that kills more than 
work. When farm work goes easily and is 
well managed it is not so hard as some be¬ 
lieve, and many make it. The head saves the 
hands, and head-work pays far better than 
hand work because it enables the hands to 
do much more work than they could do if the 
head did not thiuk and plan and find easier 
ways of doing things. This is all the differ¬ 
ence there is between the help and the em¬ 
ployer. No employer will leave her or his 
help to do the work just as the hired man 
or girl sees fit. The employer’s head lays 
out, lightens and makes more useful and ef¬ 
fective the work of the help; and the farmer 
who does his own work and the fanner’s wife 
too will find much relief through thoughtful 
and careful arrangement of their work. Farm 
work can be done by six o’clock if the farmers 
will do it. How much this relieves the wife 
and housekeeper I If six o’clock ia the supper 
hour and supper is on the table and eaten at 
that hour, there will often be long, pleasant 
and restful evenings and duriug these one 
may find some poetry even in farm life. I 
suppose by poetry is meant something that i 3 
pleasant and agreeable, and encourages pleas¬ 
ant and agreeable thoughts and ideas, Well 
there is a good deal of that in farm life, and 
if it is only brought out of it many a one will 
be greatly surprised to find how mach of it 
there is. Why should a farmer work himself 
to death any more than a hired man will do? 
Let farm work and farm housekeeping be con¬ 
trolled by set times and rules, and plans 
strictly followed and it will be greatly eased, 
and if there is one greater “truth about farm 
work and milking ” than I have tried to point 
out, well, I want to know it. Farmer. 
Butter Records of Holsteins. 
We have during the past Winter and Spring 
tested a number of our Holstein cows and 
heifers for butter, and when the various cir¬ 
cumstances attending the trials are taken into 
consideration, we feel especially gratified with 
the result. We trust readers of the Rural 
will bear in mind, when examining these rec 
ords, that most of these heifers came in very 
young, soon after coming out of quarantine 
and before they were acclimated; also that 
the tests were made in Winter on Winter 
feed—corn fodder not cut, long hay and grain 
feed of bran and ground oats, with not over a 
quart of com meal per day, a feed not calcu¬ 
lated to produce butter. We give below a 
summary of the tests to date: 
Pounds. Oz. 
Jannek, S yrs. old, tested last season, 19 15 
JEgis, 8 years old, tested in Februa¬ 
ry, four months after calving..... 15 8 
Topaz, 4 years old. 13 3% 
Rarity. 4 years old. 12 13 
Netberiand Princess, before she was 
3 years old.. 14 4 
Ditto, ditto, at 3 years old. 14 113 ^ 
Oriana, before she was 3 years old.. 13 3\6 
Frolicsome, ditto. 13 .. 
Meadow Lily, ditto.12 io 
Carlotta, ditto. 12 1 
Clothilde, ditto. 12 3 V 
Isadore, 23 months old. 10 I 3 Q 
Meadow Maid, ditto. 9 41 ? 
Careno, 2 years old. 9 7 ' 
Amazon, 3 ditto. 9 514 
Cat&lpa, 2 ditto. 8 1416 
Bernstein, 2 ditto. 8 12 
Kitty, 22 months old. 8 H}4 
Marjori, 28 months old. 8 1314 
Mistletoe, 23 ditto. 8 5 
A few of these were tested for four days and 
others for eight days, but we have given the 
rate per week in order to have them all uni¬ 
form. We think the majority of Rural read¬ 
ers will agree, considering the very young age 
of these heifers, and the fact that they are not 
yet fully acclimated, and that records were 
made on Winter feed, that they are very re¬ 
markable. Our cow, “Netherland Queen,” 
has just closed her four-year-old record and 
has given 15,614 lbs 9 oz. of milk in one year. 
Last Fall she was shipped to the State and 
other fairs, being away two weeks, during 
which time she shrank 40 per cent in her milk 
and did not again recover, which we estimated 
would reduce her record over 1,000 lbs. Our 
three-year-old heifers are now milking from 
54 to 60 lbs. each per day, any of onr two-year- 
olds over 40 lbs. and some about 50 lbs., al¬ 
though not yet acclimated. 
Syracuse, N. Y. Smiths & Powell. 
--- 
Cure for Garget. 
Among remedies suggested for garget I 
have tried none that has been so effectual as 
the following: Take a small piece of Poke- 
weed (Phytolacca decandra) root, about the 
size of the thumb nail and put it in a potato 
and feed it to the cow. One or two doses 
have been, with me, sufficient to work a cure. 
Carthage Landing, N. Y. j. a. t. 
[A quart of the roots thinly sliced and 
sprinkled with meal would be better. Eds.} 
Sirborintlturat. 
FORESTRY NO. 15. 
DR. JOHN A. WARDER. 
Trimming and Training. 
Much ado in the boohs but little to do in well 
regulated plantations. Nature's work the 
cheapest and best if aided by close planting 
Excejjt.ional species. Treatment of fasti 
giate trees. Shortening in aspirants. 
Single leaders preserved. Older trees need 
little if they have been well treated when 
young. Proportion of top to stem. Park 
and lawn trees to be differently treated. 
Modes of proced ure. Implements. 
The earlier writers on forest management 
had a good deal to say about trimming and 
training. ThiB arose from two circumstances, 
particularly among the foresters of Great 
Britain, with whose writings we in this coun 
try have been most familiar. First, the mis¬ 
taken plan of wide planting encouraged 
branching, and the usual custom iu former 
days of making pollards by cutting off the 
bough 9 from time to time for use as fuel, 
forced the trees into bad shape. In some cases 
this was claimed as a right by the dear people, 
and amiably granted as a privilege by the 
royal proprietors of the forest domains, who 
held these reserves rather as hunting grounds 
than as sources of lumber and hence were less 
solicitous as to the forms of the trees. 
Another cause arose from the very opposite 
desire to produce crooked and distorted sticks 
for use in the construction of ships where 
curves and elbows, or rather knees, were re¬ 
quired in the naval architecture for which 
Great Britain was so famous even before the 
introduction of iron into this branch of man¬ 
ufacture. The wide planting, particularly of 
the oaks, encouraged the natural habit of the 
pedunculate variety of Quercus robur to 
spread wide its sturdy branches, into which 
the strength of the stem was divided. With 
the same object in view as we learn from the 
early writers, weights were attached to these 
lateral growths to bind them down, while 
props were set beneath them where the requi 
site bend was needed, so that the desired form 
should be given to the growing tree. All this 
required great labor of trimming and training 
to produce the effect sought after, but such 
torture is no longer practiced. 
Where the object is to produce tall, straight 
and handsome shafts for spars, for hewiog 
and dimension timbers, or for saw-logs, and 
even for other economic uses, or as fuel, to 
produce fine trees as the German foresters do 
Hochwald, the first requisite, after selecting 
the appropriate species, is to plant the trees 
thickly. Then they must needs grow upward 
for air and light; their lower branches will 
soon be smothered, will die and then fall away 
while still small, leaving neither scar nor 
blemish behind them, and the successive an¬ 
nual layers of wood will be deposited over 
their remains without any irregularity, so that 
the product will consist of what is known in 
the markets as “ clear lumber.” 
The forester, when passing among his trees, 
will keep a sharp look-out for double leaders 
that sometimes occur. He will remove one 
of them or subordinate it by shortening in, and 
thus throw the whole force of growth into the 
other. So also when a vigorous young shoot, 
bent down by rain and wind, has been unable 
to rise to its proper position, it may be cut off 
at any seasou when discovered and a new 
shoot will start upward to take its place. 
Some varieties, like the W ild Cherry, are 
naturally fastigiate in their habit; such will 
require more care by the forester to secure a 
single leader, by bending or twisting or cut¬ 
ting back all but one of the aspiring shoots. 
Some species, on the contrary, have iv natur¬ 
al tendency to spread and to branch out lat¬ 
erally. Such are the walnuts, often the catal- 
pas, the mulberries, and notably among these 
the Maclura, or Osage Orange, in which case 
the use of the knife judiciously applied to these 
laterals may be required. So great is this 
tendency in the Maclura that it has been re¬ 
commended by T. V. Munson, of Texas, to 
grow the plants as strongly as possible for two 
seasons, and then to cut them back to the 
ground, selecting the strongest of the new 
shoots that spring from the stump; all others 
are cut off and the reserve is forced upward 
into a flue, strong, straight shoot from which 
all laterals are to be removed as they appear, 
and thus, when thickly planted, a tall stem Is 
secured for a tree that is prone to branch out 
into a low head. In this way the value of the 
future timber is greatly enhanced. 
So much for the trimming and training of 
young trees. Those which are older, if their 
early treatment has been judiciously man¬ 
aged, will need very little assistance from the 
hand of man, armed with the saw, hatchet or 
bill-hook. Some species, it is true, will make a 
bushy and crowded top in consequence of their 
tendency to produce a superabundance of 
branches; such may need a little thinning out* 
but even here the direction of growth into a 
main leader, will usually be sufficient. Nature 
will thin out the superabundant branches in 
her own effective way. Other species—those 
of a spreading habit—which produce a small¬ 
er number of main branches, will sometimes 
need the curbing of some of these to direct the 
flow into the proper leader; this is done by a 
pretty free shortening-in of their extremities. 
In the growing forest, after the first years, 
and whenever the young trees begin to show 
a bare stem, relieved of its lateral branches, 
it becomes a question how much naked stem 
we should have and how much of the tree 
should be furnished with branches, twigs and 
foliage, to preserve the greatest vigor of 
growth. It has been recommended to keep 
one-third of the hight of the tree clothed, 
while the lower two-thirds are bare of twigs 
and branches. This proportion may be main¬ 
tained, if necessary, by trimming, but the 
natural shading of the growing tops will gen¬ 
erally suffice. 
In this discussion purely forest trees have 
been considered, but we must recollect that 
the conditions are all changed in the park or 
on the lawns; yes, even on the avenues that 
adorn the highways. There the object is not 
to produce pure lumber, but we desire grace 
and beauty and grateful shade, hence the 
modes of treatment are to be entirely differ¬ 
ent, In the avenue the stems must be trim¬ 
med up to a moderate hight so as to lift the 
branches entirely above all passing vehicles, 
when they may spread at will and yield their 
gratefully umbrageous shade, though admit¬ 
ting the necessary light and rain to the high¬ 
way. In the park, and especially on the 
lawn, we desire the trees to be so developed 
as to show out all their peculiar characteristics 
with the grace and beauty of their forms. 
For this purpose they must be planted singly 
and in open groups, and when grouped they 
should be so assorted as to present similarity 
of habit and expression rather than diversity 
in each cluster—let the contrasts be brought 
out by separate group?. But all this belongs 
more appropriately to the landscape en¬ 
gineer, while we may return to our proper 
province and consider the trimming of 
such trees. Whatever care of this nature 
may have been expended upon these trees, they 
never should show that any trimming had 
been done to them. The treatment should 
have been begun in tbeir infancy, when only 
so much cutting and training should have 
been permitted as would insure the develop¬ 
ment of the natural habit of each species, 
with the judicious application of the princi¬ 
ples requisite to form the head, that have al¬ 
ready been advanced, and here even a wide¬ 
ly-spreading oak or elm or walnut or ma¬ 
ple will be highly ornamental and much ad¬ 
mired, though unsuitable in the forest plan¬ 
tation. 
In the treatment of evergreens, especially 
conifers, we shall find the greatest discrepancy 
between what is appropriate to the forest and 
that needed in the open grounds. Many of 
the most beautiful of the conifers are naturally 
pyramidal or conical iu their contour, at least 
during their infancy and their adolescence, 
which usually lasts at least as long as the 
planter can expect to enjoy them. Now this 
character may be lost through want of care, 
or retained and hightened f>y a little judicious 
treatment. On the lawn the young ever¬ 
greens should never be trimmed up so long as 
it is possible to avoid such a practice; they 
should be treated like a pyramidal dwarf pear 
tree, being “ trimmed down, rather than 
trimmed up; ” that is to 8 a J ( the natural form 
should be encouraged and maintained as long 
as possible, the lower branches should be 
trained so as to extend, and to rest upon the 
green sward, or only removed when those next 
in order above them are ready to occupy their 
places next to the grass. This effect may be 
secured by never allowing the branches of an 
upper whorl to extend beyond the tips of the 
set below them. Here then comes the oppor¬ 
tunity for the trimmer to display his tact and 
his good taste, not by barbarously shearing 
bis patient into stiff and formal shape, but by 
judicious shortening of the tips of the central 
shoots of each branch that threatens to trans¬ 
cend its proper bounds. 
In some species he may find it necessary to 
curb an aspiring branch that will start up be¬ 
side the true leader, which must always be 
supreme in conical trees: in others he may 
have some difficulty in maintaining a good 
leader, but, except where for variety’s sake a 
flat-head or table-shaped tree may be desired, 
there need be no difficulty iu restoring the 
lost leader by turning one of the laterals into 
an upright position. Iu all cases where the 
knife has to be applied (and it should always 
be the knife, never the shears and seldom the 
saw,) the cutting ought to be made in such a 
manner that it will not be seen. This is ef¬ 
fected by starting the knife on the upper or 
inner side of the branch to be shortened, when 
it will be kept from the view of the beholder 
—the cut should be to a bud or as near it as 
can be practiced without injury. In ever* 
