loss which would otherwise inevitably be sus¬ 
tained, the change is one full of doubt and 
danger. , . ... 
Several years ago we reduced the price of 
the Rural New-Yorker from 82 65 to $2 50 
and later to 82.00. The latter change wc have 
always regretted. We do not think it alone 
has ever added five hundred subscribers to our 
list, while it has materially limited our power 
to continue those improvements which, during 
the past four years, have marked the gratify¬ 
ing progress of this journal.. • 
We cannot say that we very highly appre¬ 
ciate that class of snbseribera anyhow, who 
cannot afford to pay fifty cents annually for 
the encouragement of the best agricultural 
writers and for the production of original, 
honest., first-class work. 
While, however, there are thousands who 
deem $2.50 or even $2 00 high for agricultural 
weeklies, the price of agricultural monthlies is 
never a subject of comment. We must there¬ 
fore conclude that there are thousands of 
people who are earnestly interested in rural 
affairs, that, all other things being equal, had 
rather pay 81.50 for twelve monthlies than 
fifty cents more for fifty-two weeklies. The 
old sayiDg—" A penny wise and a pound fool¬ 
ish ” never had a stronger application than 
here. . . ..• -. 
We beg onr readers to understand that our 
comparison is not made from auy invidious 
thought. We do not believe there is any other 
journal that would glory more heartily over 
the unqualified success of our entire agricul¬ 
tural press, according to the measure of indi¬ 
vidual merit. But wa submit that the discrim¬ 
inations in favor of monthlies are unjust and 
senseless. If the price of weeklies is right- 
then the price of monthlies is at least three 
times too high. If the price of weeklies is al¬ 
ready too low, it is suicidal on the part of pub¬ 
lishers to run it down still lower. .... 
Thanks to Professor Beal and to Dr. Sturte- 
vant for specimens of corn. 
Justicia writes thus forcibly in the London 
Garden on the subject of making schools more 
attractive to pupils by means of gardens. “ A 
beautiful development of the garden ideaisnow 
taking root in men’s minds on the continent of 
Europe and in America. To make school beauti¬ 
ful and pleasant is a great aim. and to make it 
so by means ot a garden is to follow a very sure 
road to further good-A living garden would 
be bottter than any number of diagrams on the 
walls or any other roundabout way of teach¬ 
ing what can only be really taught through 
the eyes. 
“Up to the present time” Justicia continues, 
“the schools of our own and other countries, 
however well managed in other respects, have 
been far from beautiful to see, being often 
dismal to the hardened adult, let alone an 
impressionable child. Of course, the one easy 
and delightful way to change all this is through 
the garden, and whore so much is sacrificed, 
as in most civilized countries, for philan¬ 
thropic purposes, it may be hoped that many 
people will endow schools with gardens. . . . 
Quoting from this enterprising journal we 
are reminded to remark upon the change 
which has come over it, as 6hown in the num¬ 
ber for Oct. 30. Previously it consisted of 10 
pages and & cover. Now it consists of 20 pages 
without a cover. Tbe price was Gd. Now it 
is 4d. per copy. Either one of these changes, 
it might be supposed, would suffice for ouee. 
The two together will necessitate a formidable 
increase in its circulation to insure the 6ame 
income as before the change. But Mr. Robin¬ 
son’s motto has ever been “ onward.” He has 
thus far taken no sLep backward and we trust 
he never may . 
It is proposed to change State prisons into 
banking houses. There would be a full sup¬ 
ply of officers and clerks. 
Mr. E. Williams gives to the N. Y. Tribune 
a very interesting article upon “ Possibilities 
in the Corn-field.” He describes his visit to 
the Rural Farm with Dr. F. M. Hexamer, Dr. 
A. R. Ledonx, Mr. C. V. Mapes and Mr. Henry 
Stewart, and the conclusions which were ar¬ 
rived at from their investigations. The ar¬ 
ticle ends: 
“What is the average yield per acre ? I have 
no statistics at hand, giving the average yield 
per acre in New York or New Jersey ; but Illi¬ 
nois is one of tbe great corn-growiDg States 
of the Union, ana I find, in her Agricultural 
Report for 1878, the average yield per acre re¬ 
ported by counties, varies from seven to forty- 
nine, while the average in the State was 
twenty-nine bushels. The yearly average from 
1800 to 1S78 varied from eighteen to forty 
bushels, while the general average for that 
period i6 given at thirtv-two bushels. I think 
the general average of the E istern and Middle 
States is higher than this, but not so high as it 
ought to be, and if sneh exceptional crops as 
above cited will induce trials and experiments 
■with varieties, fet tilizers. or culture that will 
enable us to equal or even approach such 
yields, it will go far toward answering the 
query presented to the Connecticut Board of 
Agriculture last Winter, namely, “ Whether 
the cost of moving the corn crop of the West 
to the seaboard would not produce the same 
crop at home.". 
We are very happy to be able to place before 
our readers the following hopeful letter. It 
seems to give a reasonable assurance that we 
shall not be disappointed in sending a trial 
quantity of seeds of this valuable fodder plant 
to those who apply for our seed distribution : 
Aiken Co., 8 . C.. Nov, 13,1880. 
' ‘ It is about the middle of November and 
still our ‘Branching Sorghum.’ is growing. 
We have had no killing frost as yet, and al¬ 
though the ground is wet and cold and growth 
is slow, yet the seeds are filling out, anil I be¬ 
gin to think I shall have quite a quantity of 
seed for you. Of course as ’tie still growing, 
it will take time to dry, so it can be thrashed 
out and cleaned, and this will bring it late—yet 
tbe ttest of it is that the prospect is fair for a 
small crop. At least “fef ns hope so." lean 
fully appreciate your anxiety on its account 
and the confusion its non-arrival w ould make, 
and I therefore wrote, as I did, so as not to 
make too much noise in case of a failure; but 
the holding off of frosts has brightened the pros¬ 
pect. Now can you give me any hints of the 
best plan for thrashing and cleaning it, for I 
am a novice in the bueiuess ?". 
We would advise our friend to write to Dr. 
W. B. Jones, of Herndon, Ga. He has raised 
various sorts of Doura, Egyptian Corn, etc,, 
for years, and can give the information de¬ 
sired. 
Those who are tormented—or rather whose 
plants are tormented—with that disgusting 
pest, the mealy bug, will do well to read Horti- 
cola’s notes of this week. ........ 
Mr. W. C. Barry takes up a subject which, 
it seems strauge, has never, or so rarely been 
touched upon before. In au article to the 
London Gardeners’ Chronicle he says that dur¬ 
ing a visit to England he noticed the scarcity 
and high price of grapes. They were 3s. and 
4s. per pound. The question naturally sug¬ 
gested itself whether it might not be possible 
to produce cheaper Iruit by cultivating the 
American grape... 
The chief obstacles, it appears, to open 
grape culture in England are late Spring and 
early Autumn frosts, as well as moist, dull, 
cloudy weather. “Are there,” Mr. Barry asks 
“ no localities—at least in the Southern parts 
of England, where these frosts do not prevail 
and where there is a sufficient amount of solar 
heat to mature the grape ?”.. 
Another impediment to ihe introduction of 
the American grape is the quality of the fruit. 
English people consider it too pulpy and too 
foxy. This judgment has been arrived at by 
testing varieties like the Concord, Isabella and 
Hartford Prolific which even here hold but a 
second rank. Mr. Barry regrets that such an 
opiniou should prevail, as it works against a 
trial of our new varieties, many of which, he 
thinks, might prove desirable if not profitable 
for open-air culture in England. 
In late proceedings of the Elmira Farmers’ 
Club, as reported in the Ilnsbandman, Mr. G. 
W. Iloffmuu, is reported as having said: 
“ How the cutting out of non-beaiing stalks 
of corn can increase the yield of those that are 
left, except as they are given more room, 
passes my comprehension." ...... 
It is very plain that cutting out non-bearing 
stalks can in no other way increase the yield 
of the present crop. The loss of pollen from 
the earless stalks would indeed tend to reduce 
the yield. That is to say, there would be less 
pollen for the silk (pistils) of the perfect 
plants. But in the one case (where all of the 
plants are permitted to remain) the seed 
(ovules, rather), would, some of them, be fer¬ 
tilized by tbe pollen of the earless plants; 
while in tbe other all the seed would have 
for parents those plants bearing one or more 
“ fungologists,” entomologists, and, in fact, 
plant doctors of all sorts. 
WHAT OTHERS SAY. 
Mr. Otstot, on being asked what Winter 
apples he would recommend for Southwestern 
Ohio, gave the following list: Ben Davis, 
SniUh’B Cider, White Pippin, Rome Beauty, 
Jenneting, Winesap, Jonathan and Newtown 
Pippin. 
Cornflower. —Some of the prettiest things 
in the show-house at Kew of late have been 
some pot6 of Centaurea Cyanus, the common 
cornfield weed, whose blue flowers are so 
charming, says the London Chronicle- Now 
that it is raised to the dignity of a show plant 
we shall not care to call it a weed again. It is 
said to be the favorite flower of the Emperor 
of Germany, and another Emperor is stated to 
have preferred it <o all other flowers iu his 
garden. We must say their Imperial Majesties 
show their good taste. 
Fruits for Kansas. —The Kansas Agricul¬ 
tural Report gives the following as the 
answer to many questions as to the varieties 
that produced a full or fair crop in 1879. The 
answer is given iu the order of the quantity 
borne :—Of apples, 50 of the reports name the 
Rawle's Genet as the most productive; 19, the 
Willow Twig; Winesap aDd Ben Davis, 18 
each; 16 Maiden’s Blush, RamboandNoithern 
Spy, 14 each. Peaches were almost an entire 
failure. Pears (in the order named), Bartlett, 
DucheS6e d’ Angouleme, Seckel, Flemish 
Beauty. Plums, Wild Goose, and Miner. 
The Fruit Recorder knows of no one 
where the Kitlaiinny stands the Winter, who 
would advise planting the Snyder. But what 
does recommend it (the Snyder) is its extreme 
hardiness. 
Cranberry pickers being unusually scarce 
about Cookstown, N. J , this season, in order 
to get bis crop promptly gathered, Major 
New bold, ofj that place, as we learn by tbe 
Germantown Telegraph, offered as a prize to 
the male picker who gathered the greatest, 
quantity in one day, a valuable double-barrel 
gun and to the best female picker, a handsome 
cottage set of furniture. About three-fourths 
of the population of Cook6town contended 
for the prizes, which resulted in the crop be¬ 
ing gathered in a single day, a prodigious 
amount of work having been accomplished. 
On warm soil and in shellered situations, 
peas sown at this season and kept well cov¬ 
ered during Winter will often grow finely in 
Spring and produce a crop long before Spring- 
sown peas are ready for the table. So says 
the experienced Dr. Hexamer. 
ears. 
If we desired still further to increase the 
fruitfulness of the variety of corn known as 
Blount’s White Prolific, or auy other kind, the 
best method that occurs to us would be to cul¬ 
tivate a 6tuall plot—say one-eighth of an acre. 
Seed corn should have been previously se¬ 
lected from those stalks only which had borne 
the highest number of ears. Then just before 
the silk appears, cut out every stalk bearing 
les6 thau tico or perhaps three sets. The yield 
of this plot would suffer not only on account 
of the removal of such stalks, but also from a 
deficiency of pollen, in consequence of which 
many of the ears would be imperfectly filled 
out. But there can be little doubt that corn 
so produced would, if planted another year, 
yield a greater number of ears to the stalk than 
seed 6aved in the u6ual way. 
We know that insects, vegetable parasites 
and diseases of all kinds increase in plants— 
we observe it more especially among edible 
fruit-bearing plants. The gardener or the fruit 
grower complains. “There is a pest for 
everything,” he says, while gloomily antici¬ 
pating the time when it will cost more to raise 
fruits than they are worth. But few are 
thoughtful or ju6t, enough to place the blame 
where it belongs, viz., upon those who for 
years have been torturing plants by all sorts 
of unuatural proceedings and tieatment in 
order to please the eyes of people and to pro¬ 
duce fruit that meets with a ready sale. Thus 
while wg are pleased with the results which 
unuatural conditious produce—while we are 
delighted with a special growth caused by 
checking the evenly distributed powers and 
functions of plants, we may look for corres¬ 
ponding evils in one form or another, and a 
wider field for the practice of microscopiste, 
water are frequently prescribed by physicians 
in cases of dyspepsia and weakness of the 
stomach, and in some cases are said to prove 
very beneficial. Many persons who think 
good bread and milkagreat luxury frequently 
hesitate to eat it, for the reason that the milk 
will not digest readily; sourness of stomach 
will often follow. But experience proves that 
lime water and milk are not only food and 
medicine at an early period of life, but also at 
a later, when, as in the case of infants, the 
functions of digestion and assimilation are 
feeble and easily perverted. A stomach taxed 
by gluttony, irritated by improper food, in¬ 
flamed by alcohol, enfeebled by disease, or 
otherwise unfitted for its duties—as is shown 
by the various symptoms atlendant upon in¬ 
digestion, dvspepsia, diarrhea, dysentery, 
and fever—-will resume its work, and do it en¬ 
ergetically, on an exclusive diet of bread-and- 
milk and lime water. A goblel of cow’s milk 
may have four tablespoonfuls of lime water 
added to it with good effect. 
The Garden on the Farm.— President 
McGregor of the Oxford Farmers’Club—as re¬ 
ported in the Farm and Fireside, of Ohio, says 
that we run too much to the great staples, 
and the average farmer has a contempt for 
eggs, butter, honey, etc; helooksupou them as 
small, peddling business. The truck patch 
will pay in dollars and more in health. All 
the interests of the farm depend on health, 
and the road to health often runs through 
the truck patch. At a dish of red raspberries 
and cream the farmer forgets his weariness. 
Apiarists tell us that the egg which under 
ordinary rearing produces the working bee, 
if put iu a superior cell and fed on the royal 
icily, makes a queen. So the diet and sur¬ 
roundings of our children have much to do 
with their characters. Mauy chiidreu have 
been injured by ginger snaps and painted 
candy, but by extract of white clover and ripe 
fruits, never. Many luxuries are beyond the 
reach of farmers, but strawberries they can 
have, and these he believes to be a means of 
grace. He doubts not that hog-and-hominy has 
often been the means of back-sliding. 
Extra hardy Apples.—W e find the follow¬ 
ing in a catalogue just received from R. G. 
Chase & Co., of Geneva, N. Y.: In the north¬ 
ern portionsol the United States and adjoining 
provinces of Canada the feeling has prevailed 
uutil recently that nothing in the shape of 
apples could be grown, except crabs. While 
this is true as regards many of the old varie¬ 
ties, a few Russian apples and northern seed¬ 
lings have been introduced, which, though 
they may require better care than that under 
which the crabs will thrive, have proved them¬ 
selves equally hardy. Iu proof of this we 
would point to the Duchess of Oldenburgh, 
growing on the highlands of Oneida and Lewis 
Counties, and in Northern New Hampshire and 
Maine. The following li6t we rate as hardy as 
the Duchess of Oldenburgh, and consider the 
fruit of many of them of better quality than 
the Baldwin. Against each variety we give 
the season of ripeniug at the North. 
Tetofsky ..August. 
Duchessof Oldenburgn.. September. 
Alexander.October. 
Peach .October and November. 
Aucubafolta..November and December. 
Clark’s Orange. November to February. 
Plumb's Cider.November to February. 
Wealthy . November to February. 
Dethel .December to February. 
Haas.December to March. 
Rubicon December to March. 
McIntosh Red...November to April. 
Pewaukee.January to April. 
Walbridge.March to .1 une. 
Quince Apple.March to June. 
Large Iowa Apple Orchard.—A local 
paper [the Country Gentleman, from which we 
take the following, does not give the name ] 
states that Hon. John N. Dixon of Mahaska 
county, Iowa, has safely housed, ready for 
barreling and shipment, 35,000 bushels of ap¬ 
ples this season, in addition to enough of the 
smaller, poorer or injured fruit to make 500 
barrels of cider of 45 gillons each. Of this 
immense crop of apples, he sold 1.500 barrels 
to one man in Minneapolis, GOO barrels go to 
England, and 500 to the Black Hills. He has 
gold about 2.000 barrels to local points in the 
State, or, in other worde, he has sold 4,600 bar¬ 
rels, or 14.000 bushels, leaving about 21,000 
bushels yet on band. Messrs. Sehenck & Co. 
have already delivered to him 6,000 apple bar- 
lels, and have contracted to furnish him with 
6,000 more, to be delivered as soon as possible. 
These barrels will each hold three bushels, 
and will carry the entire product. It is esti¬ 
mated that the cider will more than pay for 
all the cooperage and the entire expense of 
harvesting and shipping the apples. From 
remarks he made in relation to the price re¬ 
ceived for those already sold, and estimating 
the balance of tbe crop at even the same low 
price, Mr. Dixon will pocket not lees than 
810,000 clear money, as the product of his 
orchard of 160 acres, which contains a large 
number of trees not bearing. 
A New Bread. —There will undoubtedly be 
a great demand for wheat-meal bread, says 
tbe Mark Lane Express. At one shop, it says, 
they are selling more of it than of while bread, 
and it is already reported to be sold by over 
a hundred bakers in London. English millers, 
in making the meal, will get a good start upon 
their rivals In America and Austria. Tbe 
bread is especially to be recommended for 
the use of working men and their families, 
and most of all to those who, like the agri¬ 
cultural laboring class, do not eat much 
meat. It is to be hoped that the Bread Re¬ 
form League will soon have branches in all 
parts of the country. 
Clydesdales, comments the above journal 
upon Americau notes, are outnumbering the 
French horses called Percherons iu the State 
of Illinois. Something with more style and 
better action than the Pereheron was called 
for, and the Clydesdale appears to fill these 
requirements. 
Milk.— Referring to the recent outbreak 
of fever in Paddington from the supply of 
milk, with which we (London Live Stock 
Journal) dealt in a recent article, Dr. Steven¬ 
son, the Medical Officer of Health for Pad¬ 
dington. suggests that the simple aud effective 
preventive is to boll your milk before using 
it. He adduces the common practices of 
Frauce, Germany, Switzerland, and India as 
a further persuasive to the adoption of thiB 
somewhat unusual precaution. 
Milk and Lime Water. —The Boston Jour¬ 
nal of Chemistry remarks that milk and lime 
“Our American friends are shipping milk 
in glass jars or bottles, direct from tbe pro¬ 
ducer to the consumer,” continues the same 
journal. “ The idea is an ingenious oue, aud 
so far is proving a great success, one farmer 
alone has ordered and has in use over ten 
thousand of these novel vessels, which, when 
filled with the milk drawn from the cows, are 
sealed securely down, with the result that the 
cousumer is insured of the gc-nulue article, 
for which the farmer iu return can command 
a paying price. Why should not the experi¬ 
ment be tried in this country ? Indeed, why 
should it etop at milk? . . . Pans of but¬ 
ter and bottles of milk might in thiB way be 
sent from country to town without the inter- 
