k 
VOL. XXXIX. No. 35 .1 
Whole No. 1596. \ 
NEW YORK, AUG. 28, 1880 . 
(Price Five Cents. 
) $2.00 Per Tear. 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by the Rural New-Yorker, in the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
M. B. BATEHAM. 
M. B. Bateham died, after a lingering; ill¬ 
ness, at his home in Painesville, Ohio, August 
5th, 1880. Long, quite intimately associated 
together lor the advancement of agriculture in 
our adopted State, the elder is now left to la¬ 
ment the departure of his younger yoke-fellow. 
Born among the fruitful gardens of smiling 
Kent, England, on September 13, 1813, with 
garden associations and surroundings, it was 
but natural that when his father migrated to 
the valley ol the Genesee in 1835, and estab¬ 
lished a market garden at Rochester, New 
York, the younger Bateham. theu 13 years of 
age, should become imbued with a taste for 
horticulture that has been the guiding impulse 
of his life-work. His frequent visits to Roch¬ 
ester in later years, since it has become so fa¬ 
mous a horticultural center, must have been 
very gratifying to our friend, who would there 
see the abundant fruitage of the good seed he 
himself had helped to sow in the earlier half 
of this century. 
From the garden the transition was easy and 
natural to the seed-store, and so we find him 
established as a seedsman in 1833. His quali¬ 
fications as a writer were soon called into re¬ 
quisition, and for five years he was editor of 
the old Genesee Farmer, for a long time the 
leading agricultural paper, even while the fer¬ 
tile valley was recognized as the Great West, a 
term which has been widely separated from the 
Genesee in these later years by the westward 
march of empire. 
Mr. Bateham's tastes naturally brought him 
into contact with such men as Ell wanger & Bar¬ 
ry, and he spent some time in their extensive 
nurseries, which afforded him a flue op portunity 
of becoming familiarly acquainted with fruits 
and encouraged hiB love for pomology. After 
au extensive Western tour, chiefly on horse¬ 
back, and partly undertaken in pursuit of 
health, Mr. Bateham settled in Columbus in 
1845, and has ever since been a citizen of Ohio. 
There, in the first year of hi6 residence, he es¬ 
tablished the Ohio Cultivator, one of the first 
agricultural papers printed in the State. In it 
he found a good medium for imparting much 
valuable information, and a means of commu¬ 
nication with others interested in rural affairs. 
His articles on insects aud grasses were among 
the first papers upon those topics that were 
spread before the farmers of Ohio. In its 
pages he called upon the fruit-growers and 
nurserymen to assemble in convention and 
compare notes and fruits, and from this begin¬ 
ning in 1847 has grown up the State Horticul¬ 
tural Society of to-day—a fitting monument to 
the memory of its originator. From its early 
organization Mr. Bateham has been its untir¬ 
ing secretary, always declining proffers of what 
some might consider the higher post of honor 
as presiding officer. To do was his choice, and 
so he preferred to wield the pen to the gavel, 
ludeed it is the mightier implement of the two, 
and in his hands it was fully and faitnfully em¬ 
ployed in the diffusion of valuable informa¬ 
tion among his fellow-men. 
In 1846 the Ohio State Board of Agriculture 
was organized, aud at the first annual meeting, 
held December 9, 1846, Mr. Bateham was one 
of those duly elected to serve as a member. At 
this meeting we find him advocating and urg¬ 
ing the establishment of a department of agri¬ 
culture by the general government at Wash¬ 
ington, D. C. 
At the annual meeting, held December 6, 
1848, our friend, then secretary, was again 
elected for two years and agaiu chosen Secre¬ 
tary of the Board. 
In 1855 the Ohio Cultivator was sold and 
became the Ohio Farmer. This relieved Mr. 
Bateham from a heavy burden, and left him 
free to pursue his horticultural bent. The 
little nursery which had already been the 
means of disseminating quantities of choice 
fruits and plants was largely increased in size 
and usefulness by the establishment of the 
Columbus Nurseries, with which Mr. Bateham 
continued to be connected until he sold his in¬ 
terest in 1864, when he removed to the pleas¬ 
ant little city of Painesville, where he estab¬ 
lished a happy home and fruit garden. Be¬ 
fore leaving Columbus he had planted very 
extensive orchards, the first venture of the 
kind in the State, embracing many thousands 
of fruit trees of different sorts. 
It has beeu especially as a writer on horticul¬ 
tural and agricultural topic& that Mr. Bateham 
has left his mark in Ohio, and this will be 
more aud more fully realized as the years 
roll by. At his funeral, Mr. Chamber- 
lain, Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, 
truly said. - —“ Not an orchard or a grain-field 
in Ohio but has felt the influence of his labors 
for the improvement in varieties cultivated, 
and for improvement in the modes of culture.” 
As Secretary of the Ohio Horticultural So¬ 
ciety, wkidb was like his own offspring, he 
was a most untiring officer, ever watchful 
of its interests, and ever willing, as a member 
of the committee, to visit other asso¬ 
ciations of like character in our own and dis¬ 
tant States. Whatever he learnt from such 
visits—from consultation with others as well 
as from personal observation—he shared at 
once with the public at large by means of bis 
ready pen and the liberal space always accord- | 
cd his articles iu the agricultural press. So I 
ardent was his desire of benefiting others by 
his study that during the sickness which has 
just terminated fatally several contributions 
from him were published in the Rural and 
other papers. 
In the family, in the church aud in the com¬ 
munity about him, our friend always endeav¬ 
ored to discharge every duty faithfully, and 
he leaves behind him a record of love, devotion 
and uprightness that is entirely praiseworthy. 
His labors for others have now closed; he 
has gone from the cares of his earthly pil¬ 
grimage to the regions of bliss, promised and 
prepared, as we are assured by our Savior, for 
those that love and serve Him. May our end 
be like his, peaceful and happy! w. 
ifarra fottoraj. 
A SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF COMPOSTS. 
PROCESSOR F. H. 8TORER. 
All that has been said of dung and urine as 
the ferment, and of peat or sods as the “ body ” 
in compost making will apply as well to a 
great variety of other organic matters. 
Fish, flesh, blood, offal, guano, night-soil, the 
dung of birds all act promptly and powerfully 
as ferments; while straw, leaves, twigs and 
bushes mown in pastures, weed6, potato-vines, 
loam, pond mud, ditch scrapings aud a variety 
of other mattors are readily fermentable. Fish, 
flesh, blood and the like are really more pow¬ 
erful ferments than dung. There is, however, 
one objection to these substances, which ap¬ 
plies more particularly to blood, viz.: that the 
compost resulting from its uso has an ex¬ 
tremely offensive odor which, while it annoys 
the workmen uot a little, adds nothing to the 
fertilizing power of the material. Weeds have 
the merit of containing very considerable 
quantities of potash, phosphoric acid and lime, 
as well as nitrogen and they would be partic¬ 
ularly good for compost making were it not 
for the seeds they carry. The common notion 
that weed seeds are destroyed in the process 
of composting with dung is practically au 
error, though based on conceptions which are 
in some part true. But this point belongs 
properly to another place in the discussion. 
Even oil-cake will serve very well to excite 
the fermentation of compost. To this end 
cotton seed has been largely used in our 
Southern States, as rape-cake has been to a 
certain extent in Europe. Manifestly those 
kinds of oil-cake which are unfit for fodder, 
such as the cake from the castor-oil bean and 
the physic nut, may be appropriately com¬ 
posted. An interesting case of the use of rape- 
cake is reported by a Swedish chemist. A law of 
the land forbids the selling or removing of straw 
from certain estates belonging to the crown, 
although more straw is habitually produced 
on these estates than can be used as fodder 
and litter. In order to decompose the re¬ 
mainder quickly an experiment was tried, as 
follows : the straw was thrown into heaps six 
or eight feet high and was theu wet with 
water in which pulverized rape-cake had been 
soaked aud stirred. The moistened straw was 
covered with a layer of earth four or five 
inches thick and left to ferment for a month. 
It was then forked over and agaiu moistened. 
After the secoud fermentation, the compost 
was ready to be hauled out and applied to the 
land. One cwt. of rape-cake was used for 
every ten loads of straw, and two months and 
a half were found to be sufficient for the 
whole process, 
Besides composts prepared with dung, or 
some other organie substance used as the fer¬ 
ment, there is another very important class of 
composts which are made with alkalies, such 
as wood-ashes, potashes, lime, soda-ash, 
or mixtures of lime and salt. The alkali not 
only disorganizes the peat and brings about a 
first fermentation, similar to that induced by 
dung, but in the case of lime, at least, it 
doubtless playB an important part in promot- 
i ug the subsequent nitric fermentation, both in 
the heaps and in the field. The alkalies have 
one special advantage in compost making in 
that they can corrode and disintegrate many 
rough and intractable organic matters aud re¬ 
duce them to a condition in which they are ii t 
to undergo decay. Hence it happens that al¬ 
kali-composts are fitly prepared with crude 
peat, as it cornea from the bog, with twigs 
chips, corn-stalks, coarse sods, garden rub¬ 
bish, tan-bark and similar refractory materials. 
The alkalies arc useful also in correcting the 
sourness of crude peat, and by destroying the 
vitality of the seeds of weeds, the eggs of in¬ 
sects and the spores of fungi. The corrosive 
power of the caustic alkalies is too well known 
to need description. As relates to the material 
used for composts, it would appear that the 
alkalies unite chemically by preference with 
some of the constituents of the organic matter 
(such as peat or straw, for example), and in so 
doing disorganize the materials and destroy 
their coherence. Bat the matter thus crumbled, 
or made ready to crumble, is from the mere 
fact of its mechanical condition, peculiarly 
prone to decay, aud there are reasons for be¬ 
lieving that the presence of the alkali does 
also promote fermentation in the chemical 
sense. Dr. Angus Smith noticed long ago that, 
if a soil is very alkaline and moist the conver¬ 
sion of the orgauic matter into ammonium 
compounds is very rapid. lie put some soil not 
very rich in nitrogen into this condition by 
means of a little ammonia, so as to make it 
alkaline, and the consequence was the rapid 
occurrence of a very intense putrefactive fer- 
mentatioo. not in any way differing, as far as 
could be perceived, from that of ordinary 
putrei&ction of animal and vegetable matter. 
Excellent composts are still made, and they 
were formerly made more frequently than 
they are now, from wood-ashes and peat and 
from lime and peat ; in many instances the 
lime was replaced with ad vantage by a mixture 
of lime and salt. Sometimes soda-ash was used 
and there is good reason to believe that, in de¬ 
fault of wood-ashes, potashes would be found to 
be the most convenient of all the alkalies. Dr. 
Dana in his '* Muck Manual,” a book which 
had much influence in its day, specially com¬ 
mended the mixture of lime and salt and it has 
been largely used In many localities both 
North aud South. It was urged a few years 
ago that salt should be admitted free of duty 
in order to eucourage the growth of cotton. 
Practical experience has Bhown very clearly 
that the mixture of lime and salt is better than 
lime by itself; that is to say. it exerts a more 
powerful alkaline action than lime alone and 
is a more efliciem agent for disorganizing the 
crude peat. But it long remained a puzzle 
how this could be, for when solutions of lime- 
water and salt are mixed it is not found that 
