644 
SEPT.2S 
THE BUBAL NEW-YORKEB. 
THE 
Rural New-Yorker, 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY SEPT. 25, 1880. 
A POTAT O EXPE RIMENT. 
At the suggestion of Mr. D. S. Mar¬ 
vin we planted a row of potatoes last Fall 
on November 12. A potato of medium 
size, of a very productive new variety 
which is not yet introduced, was out in 18 
pieces (single eyes) which were plaoed one 
foot apart in a drill six inches deep. One 
pound of potato fertilizer, mixed with 
soil, was strewn over them, and the drill 
filled in and leveled. Over this a mulch 
of coarse salt hay and Red Cedar boughs 
was placed aB a winter protection. Every 
piece grew, and the vines were large and 
healthy. The row was dug September 
6, and the yield weighed just 18 pounds, 
being variable in size, and in shape by 
no means symmetrical. 
■ ■ •»♦♦ 
NOTICE. 
Beginning as soon as the White Ele¬ 
phant Potato iB harvested, we shall send 
them to our subscribers as they apply, 
the weather (temperature) permitting. 
The seed distribution will not begin un¬ 
til the latter part of the year. Sub¬ 
scribers may apply whenever they choose, 
of course. It would, however, save them 
some trouble and a trifle of expense if 
they would apply for the seeds in the 
letter renewing their subscriptions. 
They will be forwarded as early and 
surely in the one case as in the other. 
We. request our good readers not to stick 
their stamps to letters, and to mnko 
application for seeds on a separate slip 
of paper, being careful to give full ad¬ 
dress, written as plainly as possible. 
Wo request also, as a matter of fairness 
t o us, that those who cannot give our 
seeds a careful, -pains-takiny trial will 
spare us by not applying for them. 
-- 
NEW CROPS AND NEW INDUSTRIES. 
In a new country, where the people are 
not yet masters of all the branches of in¬ 
dustry wliicli bring wealth and employ¬ 
ment, new industries are continually 
suggesting themselves, many of which 
may easily be adopted and established. 
In flax growing the fiber has, as yet, 
but little value, and there are no linen 
manufactories in the United States. 
The silk worm is also not yet acclimated 
here. The great source of'profit in beet, 
sorghum and corn sugar is but just be¬ 
ginning to be known. The alpaca wool 
and Angora hair product are yet small in 
America, as are the jute and ramie pro¬ 
ducts. The cultivation of tea and coffee 
and many other Bemi-tropical products 
have a great future. Add to these the 
thousand of little industries which each 
locality may have for using up raw 
materials and working them to the high¬ 
est values, and but a small part of the pos¬ 
sible production of the country yet exists. 
- - - 
THE WORLD’S FAIR AT NEW YORK. 
The selection of a site for the World’s 
Fair, at New York, in 1883, has been re¬ 
ferred to a select committee, chosen from 
members of the executive committee, and 
they are visiting all the localities under 
consideration for the purpose of examin¬ 
ing into the advantages and disadvan¬ 
tages connected therewith, and will re¬ 
port to the executive committee in a short 
time. 
The absence, in Europe, of several 
prominent persons who wish to be among 
the subscribers to the first $1,000,000, 
and the great interest taken in the polit¬ 
ical campaign, have suggested the post¬ 
ponement of the time of opening the sub¬ 
scription books to the 10th of November, 
when it is expected that the full amount 
Avill be at once put down. The increasing 
interest in the project is shown daily by 
the many letters of inquiry and sugges¬ 
tions received by the Secretary, and the 
■ numbers of applications for space for ex¬ 
hibits, and the directors are confident 
that this will prove the largest and most 
successful exhibition ever yet held in any 
country. 
BOOKS OF REFERENCE—PROPER INDEX. 
Time is money, and to the editor often 
more than money—life. When he picks 
up a book to refer to some point he 
knows to be discussed in it, yet finds no 
reference to it in the index, with what 
weariness he opens and searches through 
a treatise to find what a proper index 
would have referred him to in a moment. 
Perhkps the greatest sin committed by 
compilers of books is the utter neglect to 
give any analytical reference to the points 
discussed. The want of a proper index 
renders many of our books of reference 
of little value. 
If we examine the voluminous reports of 
the State agricultural societies—most of 
them are without an alphabetical index, 
without any analysis of their contents. 
Take the 32 volumes of the Transactions 
of the New York State Agricultural 
Society—a work that would have for the 
student and editor great value, if it had 
analytical indexes to the contents—and a 
half-day may be lost in searching for the 
discussion of n point. 
The Legislature of New York should 
be asked to appropriate a sum sufficient 
to compensate a thorough agricultural 
scholar for making a complete analytical 
index for the 32 volumes, and thus ren¬ 
der them of some permanent value. Let 
us ask the gentlemanly and accomplished 
Corresponding Secretary of this Society 
if he cannot a fiord to give us a proper 
index to the future volumes ? 
--- 
THE RURAL BRANCHING SORGHUM. 
There is nothing among tlio seeds of 
our next Distribution regarding which 
we have greater expectations than the 
Rural Branching Sorghum, We cannot 
think otherwise. Our plants which have 
not been cut, are marvels of luxuriance, 
eight feet in bight—bearing wide, long 
leaves, and more of them than upon In¬ 
dian com. The plants cut August 5, are 
now four feet high and may now be ent 
agaiu. New forage plants are danger¬ 
ous things to commend. We have not 
forgotten Prickly Comfrey, Pearl Millet 
and several kiuds of Doura, Egyptian 
Corn, etc., which, lauded to the skies 
within the past few years, are now re¬ 
jected as of less value than corn. We do 
not is now its origin any further than that 
our friend, Mr. Satterthwaite, of S. C., 
procured a few seeds from Florida some 
years ago and has raised it upon his farm 
in preference to corn, millet or any other 
fodder plant. It will appear toonr read¬ 
ers that we have much to lose and noth¬ 
ing to gain by unduly praising our 
Branching Sorghum. By another sea¬ 
son it will have been distributed over the 
entire country, and thousands before the 
close of another year will have tested it 
and can judge whether our praise is mer¬ 
ited or not. 
We have learned by three triala that 
there is but one way to sow this sorghum 
so that, its growth and yield shall be sat¬ 
isfactory. We shall speak of this way 
later and trust that, whether it meets 
the approval or disapproval of our 
farmers, they will, as a matter of justice 
to us, follow it to the letter. 
- » »♦- 
SOUTHERN PROGRESS, 
The indications of a rapid recovery and 
growing prosperity of the Southern 
States is at this tune too apparent to be 
denied. With the beginning of the bus¬ 
iness year, September 1 st, the papers in 
the larger cities are publishing compar¬ 
ative statements of trade, and from these 
there is every indication of a rapidly 
growing prosperity. 
As we go down the coast the extending 
fields of early vegetables and fruits show 
that there is profit aud employment in 
the cultivation. Inland there is an in¬ 
crease of the number of acres of land in 
cultivation, and there are more machinery 
in use, better tillage and more attention 
to manures. Little manufactories and 
home repair and machine shops are rap¬ 
idly increasing, while oil mills, foundries 
and cotton and woolen mills are becom¬ 
ing institutions of very many States. 
The commerce of the coast cities is largely 
ahead of that of last year, and a feeling 
of confidence prevails with a much great¬ 
er apparent spirit of enterprise among old 
settlers and newcomers. 
In the Mississippi Valley the same in¬ 
creasing prosperity is still more notice¬ 
able. The commerce of New Orleans is 
one-half greater than the previous year, 
and the Mississippi River is not only the 
Father of Waters, but is becoming the 
mother of an immense inland oommerce. 
In nothing is this prosperity more ap¬ 
parent than in the inor* ase in the num¬ 
ber of little and great industries which so 
much cooperate in using the raw mate¬ 
rial and in supplying home requirements, 
without the necessity of long transporta¬ 
tion between the markets and sources 
of production. These are among the 
greatest auxiliaries to the farmer’s pros 
perity. 
- 4 ♦ » " ■ ■ 
THE PRESERVATION OF FORESTS. 
At the meeting of the American Asso¬ 
ciation for the Advancement of Science, 
lately held in Boston, the Committee on 
Forestry submitted the draft of a memo¬ 
rial to the Governors of the various States 
calling their attention to the necessity of 
preserving and cultivating forests to sup¬ 
ply our future demands for timber. Eight 
recommendations looking to this end are 
made in the memorial. Laws shonld be 
passed in the different States protecting 
trees planted along the highway and en¬ 
couraging the setting out of such planta¬ 
tions by proportionate deductions from 
highway taxes. The increased value of 
land due to the plauting of trees thereon 
should be exempt from taxation until 
some profit may be obtained from the 
plantations. Money should be appro¬ 
priated to ennble horticultural aud agri¬ 
cultural societies to give premiums for 
tree planting, both for the largest areas 
set out and tbe best management. 
Prizes are recommended for tbe best 
essays and reports upon practical forest 
culture. Encouragement should be giv¬ 
en to all educational institutions iu intro¬ 
ducing practical instruction in forest¬ 
ry. The distribution of seeds and 
plants among the agricultural commun¬ 
ity is advocated, so are the establishment 
and maintenance by the State of model 
plantations under the care of men trained 
to the profession of fore stry; mid the ap¬ 
pointment. of a commission of forestry 
under State authority, of the same nature 
as the commission on fisheries now estab¬ 
lished iu some of the States ; and, last 
but most important, the need of more 
stringent laws for the prevention of forest 
fires is nrged. Great as is the yearly de¬ 
struction of our forests to supply timber 
for building purposes, for domestic 
manufactures, for fences and railroad 
ties, for fuel and for exportation ; yet in 
some years the waste caused by forest 
fires greatly exceeds the amount of tim¬ 
ber cut for use or destroyed to meet a 
veal or supposed necessity, as in cases 
where thousands of acres of trees are an¬ 
nually burnt or girdled to make clear¬ 
ings. 
-♦♦♦- 
THE GRAIN FIELDS OF THE NORTHWEST 
The extraordinary product of wheat up¬ 
on the vast plains of the Northwest, sur¬ 
prises even Americans, who are rarely ex¬ 
cited by any possible development of their 
own country; but it astounds and dismays 
Europeans, who see in it a ruinous com¬ 
petition which their farmers'cannot resist. 
When the Northern Pacific Railroad was 
proposed, it was only through the sau- 
guine and speculative spirit info in the 
flush paper-money times of 10 years ago, 
that the public went to its support with 
a somewhat reckless aud blind faith in 
the judgment of its projector. But that 
great speculator builded better than he 
knew, and by a great stroke of unexpect¬ 
ed good fortune it has been fonnd that 
the territory opened by that road covers 
the most fertile and extensive wheat fields 
in the world. These fields at present, 
though only penetrating upon a narrow 
border, are producing one-tenth of the 
whole wheat crop of the United States. 
The great success of wheat culture in 
this territory has given a surprising im¬ 
petus to the construction of railroads. 
No less than six railroads are penetrating 
this wheat district and as these advance 
a vast brigade of farmers Hank them on 
either side and even precede them in a 
wide front. In the newly organized 
counties on these lines of road there are 
already 010,354 acres under wheat culti¬ 
vation, and further west, in the great 
valley of the Red River, 208,032 acres are 
already occupied. In addition to these, 
1,696,890 acres of laud were entered by 
occupiers in 1879 and are being prepared 
for wheat ; and as these lands need 
bnt. the plow, the whole of this area, and 
possibly as much more, will be under 
cultivation within another year. 
The system of culture upon these 
farms is one that reduces the cost of the 
product to a minimum. Farming is 
done under a By stem of discipline like 
that of an army. A brigade of plows 
advances in an unbroken front and 
traverses a field miles in length. Drills 
follow and hundreds of acres are seeded 
in a day. At the harvest self-binders 
advance “ en echelon” ox one slightly 
behind the other, making no turn until 
they have traversed miles, when they 
wheel with military precision, and, with¬ 
out stop, lay down in sheaves 500 acres 
of wheat a day upon one farm. The har¬ 
vest of one farm requires 35 ears a day 
to carry it to market. Not only is wheat 
produced in this manner at the least pos¬ 
sible cost, but each aore of this fertile 
land produces as much as two to four 
acres of land upon the majority of East¬ 
ern farms. With such competition comes 
a serious question, not only to European 
farmers, but to our own farmers in the 
East—what will be the result ten them. o£ 
this now dispensation ? 
BREVITIES. 
We are pleased to know that our Mold’s En¬ 
nobled oats took the first premium at. the 
State Fair. 
Further special reports of the fairs, and' of 
the N. Y. State fair in particular, are crowded' 
out of this number. They will appear next 
week. 
The production of wine at Egg- Harbor City, 
N. J.. last year, as stated at a recent meeting 
of tbe N. J. State Board of Agriculture. was 
300,000 galionB. The principal grapes grown 
are Concord, Clinton, Taylor, Martha and 
Delaware. 
Tina year’s stock ot seeds of the hybrid! 
pentstemons which we sent last year to our 
subscribers, has been disposed of to London 
seedsmen at a very high price. In the letters 
received from onr friends little mention has 
been made of their success with these pentste¬ 
mons, perhaps because they have not yet 
bloomed. 
Professor Blount writes ns : “I wish yon 
could slip into my room and see a “ shorn.'" 
Everybody, both men and women, stand 1 
aghast at seeing so many kinds of wheat— 
nearly 70 bunches banging by the roots, all 
labeled and no two alike. Every one of them 
is far finer than the (Eastern) seed from 
which it was raised.” 
It is reported that the British steamer 
Thaneraore, Captain Sibthorp, which sailed 
from Baltimore August 20, for Liverpool, lost 
225 head of fine fat cattle on the passage. 
When will each shocking murders of poor 
beasts cease, for it is nothing less than this. 
Our Government ought to put a stop to it as 
soon as Congress next assembles, for indi¬ 
viduals never will. The hope of gain and a 
recklessness of results will spur them on to 
the end of time in their heartless, unmerciful 
shipments. 
Tiie representatives of the Rural New- 
Yobkbr hereby extend their sincere thanks to 
Superintendent Boweu, Secretary Harrison, 
executive officers, James Geddes and his as¬ 
sistants in the Agricultural Implement Depart¬ 
ment of the New York State Fair, as well as 
to Mr. Owen of the Cattle Department, and to 
all officers of the Association tor the kindly 
interest shown in their behalf, and for the 
many courtesies which they have bo often re¬ 
ceived at the hands of these officials. 
The Irish potato crop, we are assured, is 
extraordinarily goo.1. The yield is exception¬ 
ally large and rot unusually scarce. There 
is no doubt that this satisfactory condition 1& 
mainly due to the introduction of many new 
varieties of seed from this country and Great 
Britain. The old sorts were not only “running 
out” from the same causes that produce that 
effect here, but they seem to have become espe¬ 
cially liable to rot, a liability from which the 
recent introductions appear to be at present 
in great part exempt. 
The English Agricultural Gazette, in de¬ 
scribing the market gardens of Bedfordshire 
says that In the district of Potten the soil is 
such a powerful absorbent of all kinds of 
ooirse manure, that a standing fable is told 
thereof a man once plowing iu a field, who, 
for some fault or other, laid the boy who was 
driving the team, down in one of the furrows, 
and plowed him In. Upon his being searched 
for the next day, nothing could be found of 
him but his jack knife and the buttons of his 
coat. The fate of this boy would have been 
quite different had Peruvian guano been first 
sprinkled iu the furrows; for according to a ver¬ 
acious Connecticut, legend when this was once 
done the boy by the next morning had grown 
tall enough out of the ground to cap the high¬ 
est trees in the surrounding neighborhood. 
On the first af this month one*fourth of the 
grist tax was abolished in Italy, and the re¬ 
mainder of this grievous burden upon the 
lower classes will disappear on Jan. 1st, 1884. 
It was levied for some years upon the 
grinding of all grain, and so high-priced were: 
flour and bread in consequence that the “com¬ 
mon" people had to subsist largely on poor 
corn meal porridge. A loathsome disease 
somewhat like leprosy very prevalent among 
the lower classes la ataributed to this diet. The 
abolition of this odious tax was stubbornly 
resisted by the aristocracy, as it brongbt in a 
heavy revenue froth the sufferings of the 
people, and thus enabled Italy to maintain a 
position as a military power among European 
nations. To keep up this position iu future 
some more equitable mode of taxation must 
be devised than that which made starvation 
and disease opidun c among the people. 
Time for Sowing Wheat and Rye.— The 
best time for this generally, is from tbe 10th 
to the 25th of September, in latitude of 40 to 
43 deg. Later sowings answer farther south, 
even to the last of November, according to the 
latitude. It is best to sow as early as conven¬ 
ient. so that - the plants may get well rooted 
before frosts sets in, and then they are not so 
likely to winter-klil, or heave out during the 
freezing and thawing of March weather. If 
by early sowing, or an unusually tnild and 
prolonged AulumD, the grain gets up too 
rank, it may be fed off by sheep or calves; but 
be careful not to let them do this except when 
the ground is dry and firm, otherwise ihey will 
poach it badly and Injure the crop Rye and 
wheat, are now sowii much more extensively 
than they used to be, and especially by dairy 
men, for Spring soiling. We know noLhing 
ill the way of cultivated crops that comes for¬ 
ward as early as these, or that can replace 
them for the purpose of soiling during the 
month of May and early in J une. 
