Vol. XLIII. No. 1775 . 
NEW YOKE, FEBRUARY 2, 1884. 
JEntered accord .ngtoActof Congress. In the year 18M, by the Rural New-Yorker In the office of the Librarian of Confess at Washington.) 
hrice five cents. 
f8,00 RJER YEAR. 
^rbhricnlturiil. 
THE BLUE HPRUG'E (Picea pungens). 
Several specirueus of this beautiful spruce 
have been growing in the Rural Grounds for 
from five to eight years, as we remember. Not 
another evergreen is so much admired by vis- 
tors for the peculiar color of its leaves, which 
is hard to describe. We may call it glaucous 
or blue or steel-green, or a whitish-green, or a 
sea green; but in fact it is a color unto itself. 
Miss Bird, in her “ Lady’s Life in the Rocky 
Mountains,” speaks of it as follows: •• It looks 
as if a soft blue silver powder had fallen upon 
its deep green noddies, or as if a bluish hoar¬ 
frost, which 
must melt at 
uoon, were rest¬ 
ing upon it ” 
Our specimens 
are from five to 
six feet high, 
and have thus 
far proven thor¬ 
oughly hardy. 
The Blue Spruce 
will be foinid In 
nurserymen’s 
catalogues un¬ 
der one or the 
other of the fol¬ 
lowing names: 
Abies Men/.iesii 
Parryana, Ab¬ 
ies Eugelmunuii 
or Abies pun¬ 
gens. The new 
n o me n c lature 
which substi¬ 
tutes Picou for 
Abies and Alt- , 
ies for Picea,has 
not as yet beeu 
recognized by I' 
American cata- 
logties. 
The well-exe- I 
cuted cut shown 
at Fig 34, was 
taken from a 
specimen grow¬ 
ing in Professor 
Sargent’s gar* j 
den iu Brook- I 
line. Mass., and 
measures 10 feet -pj j p -j 
seven inches iu 
hight. It was raised from seed collected iu 
Colorado by Dr. C. S. Parry iu 1862. Tbe 
illustration from which ours is re-engraved I 
appeared iu the Loudon Gardener’s Chronicle 
of December 8, 1883. 
~ “ 
^fvDsman. 
RELIEVING CHOKED CATTLE. 
moved from a cow’s or a calf’s gullet by ap¬ 
plying the hand to the neck of the animal, 
below the substance, and pushing it upward, 
I once relieved a cow that got choked by an 
apple, in that manner. I pushed the apple up 
until I could feel it no longer, when I gave my 
hand a quick upward thrust, and in a moment 
the cow was crushing the apple with her teeth. 
Roekport, O. M 
RELIEF FOR CHOKED CATTLE. 
The way of relieving choked calves de¬ 
scribed iu the Rural of January u, is prob¬ 
ably a good one; but every one has a different 
way. When I find any of my stock choked, 
I fasten them some way, and then if the ob¬ 
stacle is between the brisket and jaws, I get 
year, which was no doubt true in his locality, 
and might have been in many others. In thig 
| vicinity the rot. came gradually, the potatoes 
I being affected more or less for some years ac¬ 
cording to the soil and location of thegrowing 
crop before the destruction was so widespread 
as mentioned by Mr. Fuller in 1844. The dis¬ 
ease has never beeu overcome here since; some 
years very little is seeu of its effects, while in 
others there is quite a loss from that cause. 
It was not of the rot, or of its cause or cure 
that I intended to write about here; my ob¬ 
ject is to call to the attention of writers who 
make positive statements, that they had bet¬ 
ter make such qualifications as to "limit their 
assertions to their knowledge of facts in the 
vicinity where they dwell. 
Had Mr. Fuller said, 'Twenty years ago a 
BLUE SPRUCE (Picea pungens.) Re-engraved from the Gardeners’ Chronicle. Fig 
Au item in the Rural of January 5, -tells I 
llow an old farmer used to relieve his calves 1 
that hud got choked with apples, by smashing ! 
the apples with a block and mallet: and I 
have heard of othej-s running hoe haudles and 
ev n Sled stakes and othef rough objects down 
the throats of cattle for the same purpose. 
But i believe that in most cases of the kind, 
such - eaus are uot necessary. Auy sub- I 
Stance, such as an apple or i>otato, can be re- ' 
my thumb and foi’c-tinger below and press it 
upward, taking grout care uot to let it slip by 
till it is up to the jaws; then I choke the ani¬ 
mal till it begins to show signs of distress, 
such us running out the tongue and flounder¬ 
ing. Theu I let go quickly, and nine times out 
of ten the obstacle will be thrown clear out 
of the mouth. s. s, o. 
Biugham, Pa. 
twill Crops. 
POTATO-GROWING LONG AGO AND 
NOW. 
In the Rural for December 1st, 1883, Mr. 
O. F. Fuller, of Worcester. Mass., gives a 
short history of the potato. He also mentions 
the rot as haviug appeared iu 1844 to such an 
extent as to nearly destroy the crop for that 
farmer who raised 100 bushels of potatoes in 
the vicinity of Worcester, Mass., was looked 
upon as having an enormous stock, while to¬ 
day many of our large growers raise thousands 
of bushels,” readers of his letter could then 
compare notes and see how it was in their 
neighborhoods twenty yeai-s ago and also at 
the present time. Such comparisons would 
be instructive, and might lead to such com¬ 
parisons in the ditferent. crops grown in differ¬ 
ent sections of our wide-extended country as 
to show valuable results for the future histo¬ 
rian iu regard to crops, stocks, etc. (Mr. Ful¬ 
ler is ouly a boy farmer; the letter referred to 
«as written for the \ outns' Department bv 
Mr. Fuller, who is a member of it.— Eds.]. 
The first crop of potatoes grown by the writer 
was grown 51 years ago, aud was grown from 
potatoes cut to single eyes, that method having 
beeu originated, so far as then known, by my 
grandfather, who began the practice of it 100 
years ago in the town of Glastonbury, Conn., 
which was theu called East Society, in th- 
' portion of {hat old river town, common- 
j !y called, at that time, "out on the hill,” from 
its hilly and rocky surroundings compared 
with j;be topography of "Glastonbury 
Street, ’ that portion of the town adjoining 
the Connecticut River. Hundreds of bush¬ 
els of potatoes were grown yearly there 
by my grandfather, and very many of 
them were used in fattening swine, the pork 
thus made being sold in the markets on the 
j Connecticut River. Pork-raising in this way 
! was in many instances the best- business the 
farmers could engage in in those days, and 
boiled potatoes with a little meal mashed 
j through them would fatten hogs very fast in 
I the warm weather of the FalL The potatoes 
yielded luxuriantly in the new grounds of that 
portion of the town at that early date, so that 
1,000 bushels 
were no un- 
jj common crop 
for him to grow 
in a year from 
1780 to 1800, 
soon after which 
he removed his 
family to this 
place, and as 
fast as he could 
clear his land he 
increased his 
crops so that he 
soon raised po¬ 
tatoes here by 
the thousands of 
bushels yearly, 
and fattened 
both hogs and 
cattle with them 
to good advan¬ 
tage, especially 
during and soon 
after the war of 
1812. 
When I was a 
boy it was no 
uncommon oc¬ 
currence to boil 
and feed to fat¬ 
tening hogs 400 
or 500 bushels of 
potatoes in the 
Fall each year, 
and perhaps as 
many more to 
fattening cows 
- ^ or bullocks dur¬ 
ing Winter. 
f* 34. Four hundred 
bushels of pota¬ 
toes to the acre formed no uncommon crop 
here 60 or 70 years ago, while now one-half 
that amount is considered a good crop. Very 
few potatoes are now fed out to farm, stock by 
farmers compared with the quantity fed in 
this way 50 years ago, but I am fully con¬ 
vinced that very many more might be grown 
and fed to both cattle aud horses at a profit 
if all farmers consulted their best interests. 
Certain it Is that a few potatoes aud a little 
meal aud shorts, make a very desirable mess 
for either a dairy cow giving milk or a fatten¬ 
ing or working bullock, when provided with 
a warm stable, which all farm animals should 
have to thrive to the best advantage iu this 
latitude. 
There was probably never a time when so 
much attention was paid to growiug new sorts 
of potatoes as at the present, and those farm¬ 
ers, so far as my knowledge extends, that 
take pains to get the best of the new sorts, 
generally have the best potatoes for their own 
table use. It seeuus to me that, unless special 
