FES 23 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
446 
ndnr. Tlin granaries and coni cribs of a 
many fa rmeisi a pc constantly nvpmin with 
mice, and if is no easy task to destroy them 
or drive them away. With plenty of wheat 
and corn about them, they will not. he in 
duced by the most, tempting bait to enter a 
trap. 
Sometimes a good cat will keep the prem¬ 
ises tolerably dean of rats and mice, but such 
cats are only seldom met with, i have often 
used the following device with perfectly 
satisfactory result* : place some pieces of 
cheese, meat, fish, etc., in the bottom of a 
tight (mouse-tight) barrel, and fill this with 
ears of com up to the top, then put it in the 
corn-crib or granary, whore mice abound, 
placed in such a way as in give them a good 
chance tc easily reach the top. 
They will soon make this their favorite 
abode, stay and breed in it. In a week or 
two you can tell by that peculiar savory 
smell that the mice have put up their quar- 
r)9auties. I hivo not fed them yet, hut wjl 
begin to do so next Spring. The pond having 
been made two years before the fish were put 
into it,, was full of insects and grasses, which 
must have afforded them food. WheD put,in. 
they were ID months old, audabout five inches 
long. Those we have caught were excellent 
for the table. Some Leather Carp were re¬ 
ceived front Commissioner Baird in October, 
1882, and placed in a pond 60 by ISO feet,, hav¬ 
ing the same depth and kind of bottom as the 
other pond. This was supplied with water 
that oozed from the larger pond through ten 
teetof earth and also by rain water that ran 
down from the hills. The fish here have 
spawned, and are unite numerous, but we have 
not tested their edible qualities yet. I re¬ 
ceived 19 of them in good condition, about two 
inches long. I don’t think them as handsome 
as the Scale Carp: but they seem a little 
hardier. E . H . w . 
barbed wire is not wanted for all the strands, 
use a twisted ribbon of steel, which will be 
1 letter than the plain round wire. Two barbed 
and two plain twisted will make a good and 
handsome fence. The danger to stock is slight. 
Catonsville, Md. a t, r 
CROP REPORTS OP THE DEPARTMENT 
OF AGRICULTURE. 
The reports of the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture, as well as those of the State Boards, 
have heretofore taken little account of the 
rainfall and temperature, and the fact that a 
certain number of degrees of accumulated 
heat, during the growing months, is absolutely 
essential to a sound crop of corn, does not 
seem to have entered the heads of the report¬ 
ers. We were, therefore, treated to the as¬ 
tonishing estimate of 1,600/(00,000 bushels of 
presumably sound corn as the crop of 1883; at 
the same time the data furnished by the Sig¬ 
nal Service reports demonstrated half an 
average crop to be impossible. To be sure the 
reports wore subsequently corrected and a 
large measure of nnsonnd corn reported; but 
uot until the price of the crop had beeu made 
ou the larger estimate, to the manifest disad¬ 
vantage of the producer. 
*** 
If matters could be so arranged that the 
Department of Agriculture and the Signal 
Service could act in concert, so that at 
the same time the estimates of the crops 
are sent out, they may be accompanied 
by the essential meteorological phases 
of the season, there would be few of these ex¬ 
aggerated estimates of the growing crops 
which were a very marked feature of those 
of 1883. Rut at the same time the Signal Ser¬ 
vice needs to be largely extended so as to af¬ 
ford it opportunities to report from all crop¬ 
growing centers in addition to the few which 
are merely confined to the rivers and the 
lakes But this would be for the especial 
benefit, of agriculture, which keeps no lobby 
at W ashington and has no money to retain 
enough of the gang of oue-horse-lawyer Con¬ 
gressmen. hereditarily hostile to the farmer, 
aud a majority of whom are alwavs “on the 
make.” 
IMPROVED TOOTH OF CROSS-CUT SAW. 
Here is a cut (Fig. 67) of an improved form 
of tooth for a cross-cut saw, which I suppose 
Cross-cut Saw. Fig. 67 . 
originated with me. and which increases the 
cut of the saw from -30 to 50 per cent. The 
change is in the drag tooth, shown in Fig. 67. 
The tooth is pointed at the centerof the blade, 
and is of the same length as r,he cutting teeth 
The usual plan is to have the drag teeth with 
a chisel edge and about one-twentieth of an 
inch shorter than the other teeth, so that the 
cutting teeth cut one twentieth of au inch 
deeper than the drags clean the saw-dust; 
while my plan causes the drags to clean the 
dust to the very bottom of the saw kerf. 
A saw filed m this way will show a little m 
when one looks across the teeth length-wise of 
the saw. The saw runs much smoother filed in 
this way. The plan has been tested thoroughly. 
Jersey, Ohio. o. B. t. 
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ENCOURAGEMENT FROM CANADA 
B. F. JOHNSON, 
MORE ABOUT SPRING-TOOTH EAR 
ROWS. 
The vindication of spring-tooth harrows in 
a late Rubai, by Geo. F. Lowe, was very ap¬ 
propriate. and must have beeu read by many 
a "Ruralist” with feelings of gratitude and 
pleasure, after the perusal of the article 
“About Harrows, ’ by Henry Stewart, who 
so unceremoniously culled the most excellent 
work doue by these harrows mere “scratch¬ 
ing.” 
Here, in the timbered portion of Wiscon¬ 
sin, where farms are small and stumps aud 
stones plentiful, the spring-tooth harrow is 
superseding all others. It is used here upon 
new ground just divested of timber, among 
the stumps, grubs and green roots, without 
any previous plowing, to prepare it for wheat, 
tearing the soil in a matiuer most gratifying 
(not “harrowing”) and fitting it for the seed, 
as I am convinced no other harrow could 
do it. 
A point of great excellence in the spring- 
tooth harrow not mentioned by Mr. Lowe, is 
its ease of management among roots aud 
stumps. There is no lifting, no turning the 
team completely away from the work to get 
around a stump. Those used here are without 
sulky attachments, but with iron guard* around 
them so that they may bo drawu around a 
stump like a logging chain, it being almost 
impossible to catch one against a stump suf¬ 
ficiently to stop a team. The most inexperi¬ 
enced driver or boy can use one elfectually iu 
the most stumpy fields. e. e. colikx. 
Waupaca Co,, Wis. 
JEWEL POTATO, 
From Nature. 
ters in the barrel. Now take part of the corn 
out, being careful that no mouse escapes while 
doing so Take the barrel out-of-doors, far 
enough away from the buildings, so that a 
mouse that tries to get away may be caught 
before reaching a place of safety. Have a 
good cat handy, while you finish taking out 
the corn ears. Ofteu one cau kill a dozen or 
two mice in this way at a single haul. When 
all the mice in the barrel are promptly dis¬ 
patched, refill and reset the barrel trap 
Old and unusually cunning rats aud mice 
cau often be caught in other traps after pro¬ 
longed and persistent baiting. For the pantry, 
kitchen and cellar, there is no surer wav of 
catching a rat or mouse, aud often after they 
have for some time refused to c-o ho., tho 
CABP in the west. 
Glad you call for reports on the German 
carp. I received a bucket of Leather Carp 
from the Government Last Spring. They were 
about two to three inches in length. I placed 
them in a good, new pond of small size fed by 
a spring, where they at once disappeared till 
warm weather, when thev became very active 
in search of food. About the mid-Sumraer I 
began feeding them out of curiosity, and find- 
iug they thrived so well, I continued to supply 
them with what they would consume daily 
of green corn shaved off the cob, and cooked 
potatoes. 
They soon became very tame and interests 
ing, growing rapidly to a foot in length by the 
time the weather became cool, when they 
farm 
JORDAN PROLIFIC POTATO. From Nature. 
A CONVENIENT MOUSE TRAP FOR 
GRANARIES, ETC. 
common store traps, than by a simple figure 4 
trap (h ig. 66), baited with toasted cheese, 
pork or bread. 
gradually disappeared. Presume they are 
now suugly hibernating in the mud and deep 
water, aud may come out in the Spring all 
right. If so, they will probably spawn in 
J une, when I hope to give you a further good 
report. G. o. H. 
Keokuk, Iowa. 
Rats and mice levy on the majority of us 
farmers a rather heavy tax, a tax, too, which 
we should not pay without a stroug and per¬ 
severing effort to avoid or at least lessen. 
CARP IN ILLINOIS. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS, 
I received from United States Fish Com¬ 
missioner Baird teu Scale Carp seut iu a tin 
can. Five were dead on their arrival, and 
three were Hoati rig ou their backs. 1 put them 
into a lake 70 feet wide by 2.50 long, fed by a 
spring 80 rods away aud having a mud bot¬ 
tom. The lake was stocked on April 10, 1881 
Next August I resolved to draw off the water 
for the purpose of enlaigingthe poud, which 
was origiually made to supply ice, I sup¬ 
posed, of course, tbe fish were all dead, but 
much to my surprise, a* the water shallowed, 
hundreds of small carp appeared. The water 
was not drawn off after this sight, and now it 
would be impossible to tell the number of fish 
in it; for it literally swarms with the little 
Thanks to Mr. Hovey for his very interest¬ 
ing paper on the Coueord Grape in a late 
number of the Rural. Now if all our native 
grapes had such iu beret ting histories attached 
to them, and were all such histories as care¬ 
fully written as this, what an interesting vol¬ 
ume could be compiled: But does he really 
think that there is only one grape iu cultiva¬ 
tion superior to it, namely, the Muscat of 
Alexandria.' Why, where are the other va¬ 
rieties of foreign grains, to say nothing of all 
those improved native varieties that have 
been introduced of late? The Concord un¬ 
doubtedly was at one time the best native 
grape we had; but that time has gone by and 
all might as well acknowledge it. True, the 
ROADSIDE FENCES. 
I do not like “Elm’s” fence as figured in the 
Rural New Yorker of January 5. Boys 
will walk on tbe top rails, aud if there ureany 
weak places in it, as there are apt to be, they 
will get broken. It will cost more than all- 
wire fence aud need repairing oftener. It 
will need larger posts and therefore more ex¬ 
pensive ones, and will cost more to pat up. 
Why not have it all wire with posts 16 feet 
apart, of three by threo chestnut, or any dur¬ 
able wood, and every tenth post about nine 
inches in diameter, planted three feet deep and 
t veil rammed, and the end posts braced. 
k,,mI N.„y,,L, - 
Mouse-trap. Fig. 66. 
H.ese pests not only destroy, actually eat a 
countless number of bushels of grain every 
year, after we think it safely stored away; 
ut they also render manifold that amount 
almost unfit for food by imparting to it that 
w ell-known, extremely disagreeable mousy 
