THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. fg 
nuisance, may be practically abated. But as 
long as one dog is worth two shepherds at the 
polls, the nuisance will remain unabated, law 
or no law. o, s. bliss. 
farm (Logics. 
SORGHUM IN CENTRAL NEW YORK. 
The sorghum industry uptimes such in¬ 
teresting aspects tlmt we give methods and 
results of its successful culture wherever we 
find them. Those interested will do well to 
read these gathered statements, with note 
book and pencil at hand, to jot down hints 
lor their guidance next season It has by 
some been thought doubtful if the raising of 
sorghum north ol the forthieth degree of 
latitude could be made profitable. We there¬ 
fore give the experience of the Messrs. 
Bishop iu Veroua, Oneida County. N. V.. in 
latitude about forty-throe degrees north. 
Five-and-a-half years ago they planted 
their first crop. They bought for $i5 an old 
mill originally Costing *500 in Western New 
York, which was used some twenty years 
ago when the process of manufacturing was 
crude, and manufacturers had not learned 
howto get rid of the raw sorghum flavor. 
This mill was run by horse-power iu an old 
shed. The whole process was simple and 
primitive. After running two years at a 
profit and enlisting several neighbors in the 
culture, they decided to erect a good mill, 
which is now said to be in successful opera¬ 
tion. 
.SEED AND ITS MANAGEMENT. 
They get their seed from different sources 
in small quantities at a cost of one dollar a 
pound, first to secure seed that is uot of mixed 
varieties, second, because home-grown seed 
deteriorates, and seed grown in the South or 
'Test gives them better crops. But all seed, 
before planting, is tested by putting it in 
water: that which Moats, is rejected; good seed 
is heavy, ami siuks. Soaking also helps sprout¬ 
ing. They plant about an iuch deep in 
hills three feet apart each way. eight to ten 
seeds in each hill, and thin out to six or seven 
if there are too many in a hill. They get the 
best results by planting late in May. The 
crops should be all in the ground by the time 
the apple trees are iu bloom. As the plants 
are slow to germinate, phosphate is used to 
hasten them. Where phosphate was used the 
plants have matured and done well: where 
lime or nothing was used the canes will not 
he cut this year. The plauts are hoed early, 
but only slightly hilled up. The only sulse- 
queut attention they get is by the use of the 
cultivator twice. The chief difficulty seems 
to be to get the plants to come up, and re¬ 
planting two or three times becomes some¬ 
times necessary. 
Frost injures cane before, bat not seriously 
after it is matured. If practicable, however, 
it should be cut before frost comes. If cut 
before frost, the canes are usually stripped of 
their leaves; if after, the caues and leaves are 
ci ushod together. All the stalks ubove ground 
should be cut. Two men will strip, top, cut 
aud draw to the mill half an acre of caue per 
day. 
The crushing is done as soon as possible 
after the eane is gathered. For this purpose 
a twelve-horse steam engine is used which also 
does the pumping, defecating aud boiling. 
Wood is used for fuel. The rollers are t.vo 
feet long, one foot in diameter, and are set 
the thickness of a sheet of t in apart; they 
make eight revolutions a minute and easily 
crush one ton au hour. Two men manage 
this machine aud the engine. The juice 
passes out into a tub through a straw strainer 
mid is then pumped by steam into the defeca¬ 
tor, a vat six feet by three feet with its bot¬ 
tom covered with coil pipe one imd-a-quarter 
inch bore, which heats the juice by steam. 
Ai any point before the heat reaches 180 
degrees, lime water which will test 10 degrees 
HauinJ is added, one quart to every four or 
hvi 1 iuches 1 depth ot juice. The scuui is re¬ 
moved previous to adding the Hint. As soon 
as the juice lieglus to swell and i isc. steam is 
dint off and the fluid allowed to cook for live 
or ten minutes. When the thick scum again 
forms and begins to crack il is skimmed off 
quickly, and the steam again let on until the 
juice boils and the scum is aguiu removed. 
1 hen the ju ce is drawn into the settling 
tanks by u “rock tube,” where it settles 
quickly, and is drawn from the bottom of the 
tanks into the evaporator. 
1 he evaporator consists of two puus whose 
combined length is 1 ft feet with a width of 4-1 
inches they re.,t on a brick arch over a wood 
lire. One of the pans into which the defecat¬ 
ed juice first runs iu a constant stream has a 
single partition in it. This pan is over the 
hottest part of the fire and the juice, not more 
ban an iuch deep, boils and evaporates rapid¬ 
ly. The other pan consists of one of Blv- 
tner’s cook pans with narrow partitions 
which force the sirup from side to side until 
it reaches the end and outlet. As the sirup 
issues it falls through a wire strainer into a 
tub. It is put into white ash barrels of 32 
gallons each for market. Two men attend 
the evaporator and its fires. 
According to tables given, it takes 12 gallons 
of juice standing at five degrees, or 10 gallous, 
at six, or eight-and-one-haJf gallons at seven 
t o make one of sirup. .1 nice sometimes runs as 
high as 10 degrees, in which case five gallous 
will make one of sirup. The saccharometer 
shows the degrees of sweetness of the juice 
and richness of t he cauc. 
The Messrs. Bishop raised in all this year 
about 12 acres.Of cane, but only about eight 
acres were fit. to cut. It is mostly Early 
Amber. But little seed matures. This is a 
serious loss, as the seed is worth its weight in 
corn for feed The yield of seed is generally 
from 20 to 30 bushels per acre, which pays 
all the ex [tenses of the crop previous to mil- 
liug. They cut off the tops and feed them un¬ 
thrashed to their sheep. They expect to add 
a bagasse-carrier next year to remove the 
crushed canes. 
Sorghum has not done well for three suc¬ 
cessive seasons in Central and Northern New 
York ou aceouut of too much cold or dry 
weather or too early frosts. These gentlemen 
believe, however, that sorghum has paid them 
as well as any other crop would have done. 
There is a growing demand for good sirup 
which sells quickly at 50 cents a gallon. 
They have not bought cam*, but have manu¬ 
factured a good deal for their neighbors at 
20 cents a gallon, flood cane ought to make 
14 gallons of sirup to the ton. They estimate 
the cane they cut this year will not exceed 
six tons an acre when it ought to be eight or 
niue If this cane runs 12 gallous ol sirup 
to the ton or 73 gallons to the acre, it will 
bring * 3 ',. Messrs. Bishop figure the expense 
closely at not to exceed *10 an acre; this in¬ 
cludes phosphate a t. .<!.*>•) an acre, hoeing and 
cultivating, stripping, cutting, hauling and 
manufacturing This shows a profit of #20 
per acre. In a good season when nine tons 
per acre would be easily grown, when the 
seed matured and the juice yielded 14 gallons 
of sirup to the ton of caue, this profit would 
be more than doubled. The bagasse makes 
an excellent fertilizer for grain when plowed 
under in the Fall. 
The sorghum crop in Oneida County this 
year is very light. Considerable caue has 
been grown for the [last two seasons iu Madi¬ 
son County. An expensive mill has beeu 
erected tnere and farmers liuve been encour¬ 
aged to raise a crop in the hope that it could 
be successfully worked up near home, but this 
mill has not worked satisfactorily and much 
of the cane was taken to the Bishop mill iu 
the adjoining county to be manufactured. 
But the distance is too great; only a few will 
haul so far. The unfavorable season added 
to tue waut of near-by mills to manufacture 
it diminished this year’s crop. The shortage 
this year as compared with last is estimated 
to l>e about fifty per cent. The reports from 
farther north iu Jefferson County, N. V., 
show the crop this year nearly ruined by the 
disastrous frosts of September. 
SORGHUM NOTES. 
I have been iu the business for a long time, 
and I find that cane is making better sirup 
every year. I have raised a hybrid that is an 
improvement ou lKith the original vnineties— 
it is earlier aud makes better sirup. The va¬ 
rieties hybridized were the Early Amber aud 
Sugar-Cane. 
Writers say that eane deteriorates, and that 
hybridizing does the same. My experience is 
the reverse. John n, harder. 
Monroe Co., Iowa. 
Cntomological. 
EGGS OF ROUND-HEADED APPLE- 
TREE BORER. 
Our latest authority' ou pomological ento¬ 
mology, Mr. Saunders, says of the ubove pest 
on page 17, of Insects Injurious to Fruit 
Trees, that “the eggs are deposited late iu 
June and during July, one in a place, on the 
bark of the tree near its base. Withiu two 
weeks the young worms are hatched, aud at 
once commence with their sharp mandibles to 
gnaw their way through the outer bark to 
the interior.” 
I have had a long, intimate and sorrow 
tul acquaintance with borers, and urn sure 
that Mr. Stumders is wrung. The egg is uot 
laid on but under the bark of a young tree, 
and at least under the outside bark of an old 
tree. The t w o accompanying drawings (Figs. 
20 and 21) of natural size, show the thing ex- 
Lxteknal Crevice on Ai*ple I rek made 
by Round-headed Bohkk.—F ig. 20. 
actly. In inserting the egg. the beetle makes 
« longitudinal incision, which becomes, by 
the assistance of the drying air, a ragged 
gash, like that shown in Fig. 20. There is 
Section ok Apple Tree Trunk, Showing 
Location ok Egg of Round-headed 
Borer.—F ig. 21. 
no difficulty for a pair of attentive eyes to 
detect this mark. Just to oue side of it is 
a slight prominence iu the bark, beneath 
which lies the embryo borer, as show u at E in 
lit;- 21. If still in the egg,a pressure with a 
knife handle on this protuberance will burst 
the rough, leathery, light-brown envelope of 
the egg with au audible snap. This is 
the t ime to destroy the pests before they have 
done tiny harm. They can l>e found in the 
egg or just hatched, and Ik* easily destroyed 
lute in August or iu September. I have 
found some of the eggs still uuhatched in 
September, and if Mr. Saunders is correct as 
to the period of gestation, the beetle must 
continue to lay eggs well through August, in 
Central Maine. c. g. atkins. 
Kennebec, Co., Me. 
round-headed apple tree borers. 
Some cause unknown seems to have favored 
the multiplication of these pest> in rb is vicinity, 
for during the past season they have been 
much more abundant than usual, attacking 
both old ami young tree* Young orchards 
that were neglected this year will suffer great¬ 
ly, aud in some cases be almost annihilated. 
The complaint about the pests is general 
among orehardists. The greatest source of 
difficulty that 1 find iu dealing with them is 
their habit of occasionally working down 
below the surface of the ground aud pushing 
out their chips where they cannot be seen. To 
circumvent them I propose next June early 
before the eggs are laid, to mound up all my 
young trees six in lies high with earth to com¬ 
pel the beetles to lay their eggs high on the 
trunks, so that by removing the earth w r hen 
searching, we can surely find them. 
Manchester. Me. c. g. a 
recent outbreaks oe the army-worm. 
That a period of general immunity from 
Army worm injuries would follow the last, 
great out break in 1*81 was to be expected, aud 
in fact the pest has in the past two years not 
attracted much attention. It prevailed over 
a large area but not in very injurious numbers, 
as a rule in 1882, and this year it has been 
scarcely heard of. Mr. J. S. A. iu a commu¬ 
nication to the Mirror and Farmer, records 
its appearance in Jutie iu East Windsor, Vt, 
The marching worms were effectually stopped 
by timely ditching. e. v. rilky. 
iUuintllitmi. 
A PROPAGATING CASE. 
For the rootiug of cuttings of valuable 
plants, starting seeds which require consider¬ 
able time to germinate aud seeds of tender or 
greenhouse plants, and also tomatoes, egg¬ 
plants, etc., early iu the Spring, a hot bed is 
indispensable. Those beds made of manure 
are not only disagreeable but require consid¬ 
erable hard labor to construct and must lie 
outrof-doom. A green-house with its furnace, 
boilers aud steam pipes is too costly for the 
amateur. Flower-pots around the stove are in 
everybody's way and boxes in the windows 
are a last resort, and generally prove to be 
flint-class cemeteries for fond ho|»es and glori 
ous expectations. A nice, cleau, cheap aud 
effective apparatus for propagating fancy 
plants and growing delicate seeds on a small 
scale, would be welcomed by enthusiastic 
amateurs all over the country. 
We present a sketch lFig. 22) and descrip¬ 
tion of an amateur's propagating chest, 
case or house. If this apparatus is made ac¬ 
cording to the sketch and description, and 
then fails to give satisfaction, it will be the 
fault of the one who has charge of it. 
Cuttings will root, and the most delicate 
seeds will germinate in it, if it is properly 
managed. They must not lie baked or boiled, 
if they are expected to grow. Thermometers 
are cheap, and one is as necessary to this case 
as a steam guage is to an engine: uot as a 
mere ornament, but as an indicator of the 
amount of heat on tap: and it must be looked 
at occasionally if any success is expected. 
The case may be of auy desired size. The 
oue described (Fig. 22) is 50 inches high in 
Propagating Case.— Fig. 22. 
flout. 30 inches at back. 30 inches wide and 
42 long. It is made of light pine and con¬ 
tains three drawers. A small door, having a 
glass center and a draught slide, is set in the 
front. Holes with sliding covers are made at 
both ends, as seen iii the sketch. The drawers 
are four iuches deep, have sheet-iron or tan 
bottoms, and rest on a sheet-iron, zinc or tin 
floor. The floor is perforated with a uurnber 
of quarter-inch holesaud rests on small beams, 
A small plate of iron or tin i-> suspended over 
th? lamp to scatter the heat. 
To make the lamp burn steadily there must 
be a constant draught of air passing into the 
box through the holes in the door and out of 
those iu the ends of the euse The lamp eau 
be watched through the glass door. Begin by 
turning on but h small flame and increase un¬ 
til the proper temperature is ranched. The 
box may be placed iu the house near a south 
or east window, amt iu warm weather it may 
be out-of floors. If placed on eastors, it will 
be easier to move about the house. 
When the plants are watered the box should 
be thoroughly sprinkled above uud below, to 
prevent the wood from becoming dry and in 
flammable. G reat care should be exercised ou 
this point when the box is kept in the house. 
The drawers arc filled with clean sand foreut- 
tiugs aud i ich mold for seeds. With this case 
au energetic young florist eau supply a whole 
neighborhood with plants, roses, etc., by 
starting them during w inter. ' picket.” 
Various. 
IRRIGATION. 
REV. L. J. TEMPUN, 
Irrigation, that is becoming so prominent iu 
connection with Westeru farming, is no new 
thing under the sun. Its use in the produc¬ 
tion of useful crops goes back farther than 
authentic history carries us. Taking the hint 
from the annual overflow of the Nile, the 
Egyptians, in time immemorial, constructed 
elaborate systems of canals aud ditches, by 
which the waters of that river were diverted 
to those lands not reached by the natural 
overflow of the stream. As a result, the 
granaries of the country were full, aud great 
mountains of grain might be seeu piled in the 
vicinity of the chief cities, while ueighboriug 
nations were iu great distress from famine. 
Iu China, remarkable alike for the density 
of its population and for the fact that the 
country produces its own food supplies, irri¬ 
gation is oue of the chief sources of the fertil¬ 
ity of the soil. This great empire is cut up 
with a perfect network of canals, that are 
employed not only for furnishing water lor 
irrigating the fields but also as water-wavs tor 
conveying the products to market. The 
Grand Canal, from Pekib to Canton, is nearly 
one thousand miles loug. Without irrigation 
it would be impossible for China to furnish 
even a bowl of rice to her teemiug millions 
of consumers. 
In Iudiu, even with a considerable rainfall, 
the very existence of both government and 
people is dependent on irrigation. Withiu a 
very few years past extensive districts, con¬ 
taining millions of inhabitants, were almost 
entirely depopulated by famine, as a result of 
a failure of rainfall. To meet the wants of 
