870 
DEC 23 
T H K 
RURAL- NEW-YORKER, 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban Homes. 
Conducted by 
KLBBRT S, CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. S 4 Park Row, New York. 
dA CUROAY, DEC. 23, 1882. 
A REQUEST. 
In renewing we beg our readers to 
write their names, post-offices, counties 
and States plainly , and to state whether 
the subscription is new or old. If the 
paper be not received after a reasonable 
length of time, please inform us of the 
fact or of any irregularity when the 
subscriptions were mailed. We make 
the above requests that we may the more 
promptly rectify mistakes. 
The Rural New-Yorker was the first 
journal to expose the Bessarabia Corn 
humhug. We planted a small plot and 
found it to be n erely the white dent 
common in our Middle States. 
The next number of the Rural New- 
Y'orker will be the Index Number—the 
last of the year. The index will be longer 
than ever before, and the same pains have 
been taken with it as with those of sev¬ 
eral years past, A cheap index is a 
worthless appendage. The Rural’s In¬ 
dex Number is by far the costliest of the 
year except the Fiar Number. 
The Rural New-Yorker is promptly 
discontinued at the end of the subscrip¬ 
tion term. Our readers need never, 
therefore, put themselves to the troub'e 
of writing us to “ stop the paper.” It 
will surely “ stop ” as soon as the term 
paid for expires. This is indicated by 
the numbers on the address label. If 
there is no number alter the name, the sub¬ 
scription expires at the end of the year. 
* * » 
It affords us much pleasure to be able 
to inform his numerous friends that the 
venerable Charles Downing has so far re¬ 
covered from the effects of the serious 
accident which endangered his life several 
weeks ago, that his relatives in this city, 
with whom he has be< n detained since 
the mishap, are hopeful that ere long he 
will be restored to ordinary health, in 
spite of the severity of such a shock at 
the age of eighty-two. Ilis misfortune 
must have had one gratifying result, how¬ 
ever, in the manifestations of public es¬ 
teem and regard it has elicited from 
friends and admirers in all parts of the 
country. Always courteous and liberal 
in imparting his large f und of informa¬ 
tion, few have done so much for Amer¬ 
ican horticulture and pomology both by 
his own writings and by Ids supervision 
of those of bis brother A. J. Downing, 
the illustrious author of Fruits and Fruit 
Trees of America, with whom many 
papers confound him in noticing his 
late misfortune. 
— . " 
The most cumbersome and troublesome 
part of the process of ensilage is the 
weighting of the covering of the silo, 
from 100 to 200 pounds per square foot 
being required for the compression of the 
fodder. In England, where the process 
h is been introduced, this weighting and 
the consequent laborious handling of the 
material—equal to 5 to 10 tons for every 
10 feet square—are dispensed with. The 
English silos are tanks underground, 12 
by 14 feet and 12 feet deep, made of con¬ 
crete and aiched over and having a man¬ 
hole which can be covered air-tight. 
The cut fodder- rye beiag used in one 
case—was merely tramped down aB it 
was put in, and when the silo was full, 
the covering was put on and cemented 
down. When the silo was opened five 
months afterwards, the fodder was in 
excellent order with the exception of six 
inches on the top, and was fed to cows 
very successfully. Perhaps this new idea 
may be worth adoption here. 
Ip our farmers would now pay more at¬ 
tention to breeding good mutton sheep, 
and largely increase their flocks of these, 
they would lessen the injury to themselves 
from the curtailingof the demand for their 
hog products in Prussia and France. It 
would also be much better for our own pop¬ 
ulation if we lessened the consumption of 
THE fURAL 
pork among us, and ate more mutton; for 
the latter is much the more healthf.Tl and 
even palatable as cnegets accustomed to it. 
In fact, there are hundreds of people who 
will never touch fat pork, though they 
may now and then take a bit of lean, ten¬ 
der ham and bacon. Now let all worth¬ 
less dogs be destroyed, and those that 
are of value be fastened at home at 
nipht, and then flocks of sheep may be 
safely and rapidly increased—kept, in¬ 
deed, close to villages without danger of 
their being killed. There are millions of 
acres of land in the United 8tate« of so 
poor a soil or so hilly or stony that they 
cun never be cultivated at a profit. But 
all these would make fair pheep pastures, 
like the chalky Downs of England, where 
thousands oi sheep are profitably pi stured 
in Summer, and brought down in the val¬ 
leys to be fattened for Winter. 
- ♦ « ♦- 
HELP THE GOOD WORK. 
Our subscribers are invited to send us 
the names and addresses of any of their 
friends interested in rural affairs, and we 
should be happy to send them at once 
free specimen copies of this journal. 
Desirous of extending the Rural’s influ¬ 
ence to eveiy country home, we shall feel 
grateful to our readers if now they would 
make kindly mention of the Rural New- 
Yorker to their friends when suitable 
opportunities offer. The year closing is the 
most prosperous it has ever enjoyed under 
its present management, and we have 
endeavored to improve the paper in the 
same ratio. We have no further promise 
to make for 1883 than that—life spared— 
any further increase in our circulation 
will be attended with a proportionate 
improvement. There are many journals 
of more or less worth published all the 
way from 25 cents to $1.00 per year, well 
worthy of patronage. But their aims are 
Decessaiily somewhat different from those 
of our own. Good paper, good printing, 
original matter, original engravings, ex¬ 
periment grounds and free seed distribu¬ 
tions cannot be successfully combined in 
such publications. Quality and cheap¬ 
ness are ever incompatible and those who 
seek to obtain five dollars’ worth for one 
dollar will generally lose the dollar and 
fail in their object. The Rural earnestly 
desires to elevate the dignity of country 
farm life and it is evident that the eleva¬ 
tion of the tone and style of agricultural 
literature is a step in the right direction. 
We again ask those who put faith in our 
professions to assist us in our work of 
love by speaking of the Rural New- 
Yorker in terms wh'ch seem to them 
well merited. Such woids, coming from 
those who are diiinterested judges, have 
more weight and are of more assistance to 
us than many may suppose. 
THE COST OF MIDDLEMEN. 
While the mid diem in, or, let us say, 
the distributor of the farmer’s produce, is 
a necessary go-between for both the lar- 
mei who produces ford and the purchaser 
who consumes it and also for the mer¬ 
chant who imports foreign articles and 
the farmer who needs then, it is yet 
too true that this office of middleman is 
too often usurped by far too many un¬ 
necessary persons. A noteworthy ex¬ 
ample of this evil has recently become 
prominent in the disturbance of the cea 
trade. This business is very large, and 
any unnecessary tax laid upon tea is felt 
in every house and homestead in the land. 
And the tax laid upon this article of uni 
versal consumption for the support of a 
large number of entirely useless middle¬ 
men is enormous. The custom of the 
trade has heretofore been that the im¬ 
porter sells to the jobber at from (at 
present prices) 8£ cents to 45 cents a 
pound. The jobber puts on a profit of 10 
cents a pound and sells to the wholesale 
grocer; the wholesale grocer adds 10 
cents and sells to the retailer, who in his 
turn adds 20 to 30 cents a pound and se’ls 
to the consumer. Thus the 84 cents per 
pound tea gets to be 50 cents a" pound by 
the time it goes into the family tee-pot, 
and the careful housewife is apt to say, 
when the remark is made that there is 
too much water in the pot, “ tea costs so 
much thrt I must be careful of it.” Quite 
an uproar is now being made in the tea 
trade because the importers are selling 
direct by means of auction sales to the 
retail grocers who can buy one, or ten 
chests, at the importers prices, and so 
dispense with the jobbers’ services and 
save the amount of the tax levied upon 
the public lor the support of persons 
who are essentially non-producers and 
who in no way add to or increase the 
wealth of the world. And this one in¬ 
stance may be made a text which our read¬ 
ers may expound and apply for themselves. 
GREAT MILKING SHORT-HORN COWS. 
Stirred up at length by the constant 
reports of the large yields of milk of 
Holstein cows, and of butter of the 
Guernseys rnd J rseys, the breeders of 
Short-horns are just beginning to tell 
what their cows are capable of doing in 
the dairy line, and we hope they will 
continue this exhibition for the beuefit 
of the country. Formerly the Short¬ 
horns were universally bred for a combi¬ 
nation of great milk yields, and, when 
dried off and fattened, for making 
quickly and cheaply an excellent carcass 
of beef. But latterly, among perhaps a 
majoriiy of their breeders, their l eef 
points have been more generally culti¬ 
vated than those of the dairy, the former 
being more profitable than the laller in 
the Western States where they are iruch 
more extensively bred than in the Eastern. 
In the Breeders’ Gazette, we find re¬ 
cently reported the milking < f a Short- 
h( rn cow belonging to J. F. Jones, of 
Clark Co., Ivy. On March 16 her owner 
began weighing her milk with the fol¬ 
lowing results: 
Hays. 
Pounds. 
March 
15... 
. 576 
April 
30... 
. 1.2S6X 
May 
81.. 
. 1.395V 
June 
30... 
July 
31... 
.. 1516 
August 
31.. 
. 1.308},; 
September 
SO... 
. 1,210 
October 
31.. 
. 889V 
November 
15.. 
. 392 
In 244 days. 10,068 . 
Hei greatest yield in any one day wps 
63-} pounds. “For the first month this 
cow was fed on hay and grain, after 
which she was turned on grass with the r» st 
of the herd, having n> gram whatever.” 
Considering the above feed for the cow, 
we think her milking extr ^ordinary, as it 
must be recollected that the cows of 
other breeds, whose great records of milk 
are giveri, have been stimulated during 
the trial with all the best food for the 
production of milk, which they could 
digest. This is a great extra advantage 
to them, for we know as a general rule, 
that the way a cow is fed adds largely to 
or diminishes the quantity of milk she 
will give. Hereafter we will report some 
butter products of Short-horn cows ap¬ 
proaching those of the best of the Chan¬ 
nel Island breeds. 
-» -♦ »- 
THE PUBLIC DOMAIN FOR THE 
PUBLIC I 
There are few public questions of so 
much importance to the future welfare 
of agriculture in the Far West as the dis¬ 
posal of the public lands. This is a 
matter in which the entire country has 
an interest, and justly therefore it is at¬ 
tracting a good deal of the attent'on of 
Congress and of the general public. 
Vast areas of the public domain have 
been squandered on railroad companies, 
and most of these while holding their 
grants for high prices and thus retarding 
settlement, avoid the payment of their 
legitimate share of the public burthens, 
by leaving the title to the land in the 
General Government until they can find a 
purchaser, in this way unjustly escaping 
taxation. Numerous grievous hardships 
are also inflicted on settles on parts of 
t ! e public domain which are afterwards 
found to be within the limits of grants 
to these selfish corporations. Hundreds 
of thousands, nay millions, of acres are 
claimed by these wii hout having fulfilled 
the conditions on which the grants were 
made. Several bills are now before Con¬ 
gress to alleviate the hardships of early 
settlers on railroad lands and to restore 
to the General Government lands which 
have been forfeited by the railroads 
through default in complying with ilie 
terms on which they were granted. For 
at least the last five or six years, how¬ 
ever, we have noticed the introduction of 
such bills during every session of Con¬ 
gress; but not one has yet been passed 
that has taken from a railroad an sere of 
its booty. The introducers, having eased 
their consciences or gulled their consti¬ 
tuents by the introduction of such 
measures, either discouraged by the 
apathy of their fellow legislators, or, like 
many of the latter, swayed by the liberal 
“arguments ” of the railroad lobbies, have 
permitted session after session to close 
without any legislation protecting the 
public from railroad greed. 
The railroads are not the only monopo¬ 
lizers of the public lands, however, nor 
are they the worst, though they are the 
largest. They can at least plead that they 
have done something for the public in 
return for the extravagant largesses 
bestowed on them, and their outra geous 
appropriations; but what flimsy claim 
of this sort c in be made by the capitalists 
and combinations of capital that have 
already appropriated or are fast appro¬ 
priating all the chiicest parts of the] ublic 
domain 1 Some of these have invested 
their spare thousands in vast tracts 
which they merely hold, without using, 
until they wring from poor settlers from 
two or three hundred to a thousand 
per cent, on their original investments. 
Others are the owners of great cattle 
ranches or sheep ranges that monopolize 
nearly all the eligible glazing land in 
Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, New 
Mexico, Western Nebraska and Kansas, 
Texas an 1 portions of the Indian Terri¬ 
tory, as well sb mu< h of that in Oregon 
and California. 
Some of these herdsmen own from 
50,000 head of cattle to six or seven times 
that number, and as from ten to twenty- 
five acres of land on the Plains are re- 
qu’red to keep a steer a year, one can 
readily imagine the vast areas occupied 
by such herds. Many of them, too. are 
owned by foreigners who take abroad all 
the net profits from the fr :e grazing on 
our public domain. A specimen of this 
sort is the Prairie Cattle Company, com¬ 
posed of English and Scotch capitalists, 
who own over 300,000 cattle in Southern 
Colorado. These must range over some 
5,000,000 acres, nearly the whole of 
which is public property, and what com¬ 
pensating benefit does the American Gov¬ 
ernment or the American people gain 
from the investment? Yet woe to the 
agriculturist who ventures to till any of 
this range, and to the sheep raiser or 
small cattle-man who is rash enough to 
encroach on it! Little mercy will the 
wild cowboys of the capiti lists have for 
the stock or the lives of such “intruders.” 
Little or no land is owned by these herd¬ 
ers of wild cattle except comparatively 
narrow tracts along water-courses or about 
wells, but the possession of these “ water 
privileges” gives them control of vast 
adjacent areas. Even these “ privileges” 
are often, if not generally, illegally ac¬ 
quired by fraudulent means which the 
General Land Office is now investigating. 
Several bills are now before Congress 
whose object it is to put an end to such 
abuses. That of Mr. Pacheco, of Cali¬ 
fornia, provides that “the occupation or 
inclosuie of my tract of the surveyed or 
unsurveyed public lands in larger quan¬ 
tity than authorized by law shall not pre¬ 
vent the entry thereon by any one qual¬ 
ified and intending in good faith to 
acquire title under the pre-emption and 
homestead laws ” The bill is known as 
the “Brush-fence Bill,” and enacts a 
penalty of $500 or imprisonment for six 
months or both against those who violate 
its provisions. The bill of Mr. Stock- 
slayer, of Indiana, repeals all pre-emption 
laws because all entries may now be 
made under the Homestead Law in all 
bona fide cases of pre-emption. An¬ 
other bill provides that all laws author¬ 
izing the sale of public lands shall be re 
pealed. This is to prevent speculators 
from getting hold of what remains of the 
public domain which should be reserved 
for actual settlers. Several other meas¬ 
ures relating to the same subject are 
under consideration by the House and 
Senate Committees on Public Lands. 
This is the last session of a Congress 
whose sins of omission and commission 
have alieady brought upon it no small 
measure of public wrath and indignation, 
and should it close its career without 
passing a measure for the effectual pro¬ 
tection of the remainder of the public 
domain from the greed of corporations 
and the unscrupulousness of capitalists, 
it will have added a crowningdelinqency 
to its long list of transgressions. 
- « - 
BREVITIES. 
The world is greatly indebted to those 
farmers who almost iuvariably have what 
their neighbors call “luck” in raising their 
crops. 
Our friend Mr. C. Annin, of New Jersey, 
has been manufacturing sirup from water 
melons “as clear as amber and Rweet as 
honey.” 
P. J. Q., of Dwamish, Washington Terri¬ 
tory, who spoke of a new kind of wheat in the 
Rural of November 35, would oblige us by 
sending his name to Joseph Galbraith, of 
White House, Cumberland Co., Pa. 
Very satisfactory progress has been made 
in Switzerland in the warfare against the 
phylloxera. Every vine found infested hae 
been burnt in the cantons of Geneva, Vaud 
and Lucerne, and a special tax has been levied 
on the owners of uninjured vines for compen¬ 
sation of the proprietors of those destroyed. 
By the outlay of n comparatively small sum 
vim s valued at 1200.000,000 have thus been 
saved. Some time baek it was proposed that 
this method of iireservatiou should be adopted 
in France; but it was discovered that French 
legislation on rural property would interfere 
with carrying it into execution. 
