220 
APRIL 5 
THE 
RURAL NEW'YORKER. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT 8. CARMAH. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 84 PARK ROW, New York. 
SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1884. 
SPECIAL NOTICE. 
We have now filled all applications for seeds re¬ 
ceived up to last Saturday. All those who. having 
applied previous to that date, have not yet received 
them, will please notify us by postal card at once, 
and another packet will be sent at once. 
All whose names are upon our subscription lists 
are entitled to apply for these seeds, no matter wheu 
the subscription expires or whether it is the Inten¬ 
tion or not of the subscriber to renew. They arc not 
premiums. 
Our object In charging a part of the postage to sub¬ 
scribers Is that we may not have applications from 
those who are not Interested In farm or garden pur- 
61llt8. 
All persons who subscribe for (lie Rural^em’A ork- 
er in connection with other Journals which publish 
the combination advertisement offering the seeds, 
need not make application. The seeds will be sent 
to them without application except In case of over¬ 
sight or miscarriage. For example: The Inter-Ocean 
and the Bubal New-Yorker [with its seed distribu¬ 
tion) are ofTererd for $2.75 Whether the Inter-Ocean 
is subscribed for through the Rural, or the Rural Is 
subscribed for through the Inter-Oeeau, the sub¬ 
scriber to both papers Is entitled to the seeds without 
application. The same may be said of the Detroit 
Free Press. New York Times. Tribune, Suu, Mall 
\Canadai, etc., etc. 
Some of our seed packages require six cents for 
postage—but most of them five cents—except to Can¬ 
ada, where the postage Is 10 cents. But our subscrib¬ 
ers are desired to send us but three cents. The Rural 
New-Yorker pays the rest. 
--- 
If you have not received the Rural seeds 
of its present distribution; if you have not 
received all of them, notify m by postal 
card. 
-- 
Our next portrait will be that of Prof. 
L. B. Arnold, probably the first dairy au¬ 
thority in America, with a biographical 
sketch of his life by T. D. Curtis. 
We find that 34 eggs of the new Wyan¬ 
dotte fowls weigh four pounds, or 8 1-2 
eggs to the pound, rather a small average 
size. The eggs vary in color much the 
same as do those of Light Brahmas. 
If you wish to send 10, 50, or 100 speci¬ 
men copies of the Rural New-Yorker 
to friends interested in farming, you have 
only to send us a list of the names. Speci¬ 
mens will be promptly forwarded. Who 
will send us the longest list? 
Many who apply for our seed distribu¬ 
tion the second time fail to give their ad¬ 
dresses. Some forget to sign their names. 
Some merely sign their initials. We leant 
every one of our subscribers so situated 
that he can test them, to have these seeds, 
and it will not be the Rural’s fault if 
any omissions occur. Apply note. 
The Rural New-Yorker has nearly 
concluded its reports of the tests of new 
potatoes of 1883. They have been as im¬ 
partial as the sun’s rays. Next week, 
please observe the test of the old red 
Mercer. The latest varieties of potatoes 
are not quite so far ahead of the old, worn- 
out kinds as many suppose—not by a long 
shot. 
—--♦ *-♦- 
Rural readers, we tell you to try the 
Telephone, Stratagem, Pride of the Mar¬ 
ket. and American Wonder Peas. They 
are the cream of the pea list. The first 
three tested by the Rural New-Yorker 
when first introduced from England, are 
now offered by all good American seeds¬ 
men. The Telephone was sent out in our 
free seed distribution of four years ago. 
We value the American Wonder for its 
quality and earliness. 
If you have 20 acres of poorish land for 
corn this Spring, and have only manure 
enough for 10 acres, it is much better to 
put all the manure on the 10 acres, and 
give them a little extra care and atten¬ 
tion, and raise a rousing crop, letting the 
other 10 lie in grass, than to spread the 
manure over the whole 20. and plant, and 
cultivate, and get only half a crop; ’twill 
pay better. It never pays to half farm. 
--- 
It is not very long ago that our old 
neighbor, the American Agriculturist, 
wanted to sell us a controlling interest in 
that journal. Now it would like to buy 
the Rural New-Yorker if it could but 
raise money enough. We hear it is going 
to start a farm weekly. But those who 
find it difficult to run a monthly bad bet¬ 
ter beware of quadrupling their responsi¬ 
bilities and cares. The successful weekly 
farm journal of to-day needs a head—and 
a heart. 
---- 
It is the fashion nowadays for seedsmen 
to attach their own names to the new 
seeds or plants they introduce, and the 
fashion is in every way a commendable 
one. Thus we have Sibley’s Pride of the 
North Corn, Landreth’s White Winter 
Wheat, Henderson’s White Plume Celery, 
Burpee's Welcome Oats, Thorhum’s 
Late Rose Potato, Gregory’s Hubbard 
Squash, Bliss’s American Wonder Pea, 
etc., etc. When one appends his name 
to the article he introduces, it, is a kind of 
guarantee that he has faith in it. If it 
prove to be a superior variety, it is a 
standing advertisement for the introducer, 
while if it prove inferior, it will certainly 
prove harmful to his reputation. 
Instead of planning how you can buy 
that adjoining farm, and how you can 
manage to make the wife, girls and boys 
scrimp and save to pay for it, depriving 
them, not only of the comforts, but of 
many of the actual necessities of life, that 
you "may die the owner of a few more 
acres, it is much better to study how you 
may arrange the barns, or build a new 
one if necessary, so that you may 
feed a few steers, and a few sheep 
and lambs, or feed and milk a few cows, 
anything, or everything to increase the 
manuriai supply till you have enough to 
bring every acre you have to its highest 
state of productiveness. It takes no more 
teams, time or labor to cultivate a rich 
acre than a poor one, and there is a great 
deal more money—and satisfaction, too— 
in one acre highly manured and heavily 
cropped than in two half manured, and 
growing ordinary crops. No farmer 
should be satisfied with any crop he ever 
has produced, no matter how large; but 
should continually stnve for something 
to excel all previous yields. 
CANADIAN IMMIGRATION. 
During the past few years Canada has 
been making extraordinary efforts to at¬ 
tract emigration from the Old Country, 
and especially from the poverty-stricken 
districts of Ireland. The Pacific Rail¬ 
road and the capitalists who have 
bought large tracts of land from it, and 
from the Dominion Government, along its 
route, were in many cases equally zealous 
in procuring European settlers. The Im¬ 
perial Commissioners and the. Dukes 
Committee in Ireland, aided in this object 
by paying for the passage of the emi¬ 
grants, in whole or in part, and giving to 
each a donation of $5 on landing. Some 
of the Provinces, notably Ontario, sent 
agents to the United Kingdom to aid in 
the selection of emigrants to be forwarded, 
and as far as possible tolimitthc selection 
to persons capable of developing the re¬ 
sources of the country. From the report 
of the Department of Immigration of On¬ 
tario, made to the Legislature the other 
day, however, it appears the results of 
these combined efforts can hardly be 
called satisfactory. In spite of cure in 
selection, a considerable number of the 
new-comers proved to be physically unfit 
for laborious and remunerative employ¬ 
ment; others, misled by representations 
made to them in the Old Country ns to 
work and wages, refused to accept 
reasonable rates of wages on landing; a 
large number would do no labor as long 
as the “landing money” lasted, and 
others, who had been sent, to “good situ¬ 
ations” in the rural districts, left them 
and returned to Toronto. Last year 27,- 
119 immigrants settled in Ontario,^ the 
estimated value of whose effects was $533,- 
295. The total expenditure on account 
of these immigrants made by Ontario, 
amounted to $20,971.83. From the sta¬ 
tistics of emigration from the Dominion 
into the United States, amounting to 
39,452 last year, it is quite likely 
that a considerable proportion of the best, 
of the new-comers passed over Into this 
country, while the riff-raff probably 
caused* a considerable number of old set¬ 
tlers or natives to cross the line on ac¬ 
count of the depression in wages produced 
by the influx. 
- ♦♦« - 
THE TUMBLE IN WHEAT. 
For a considerable time there has been 
a marked decline in the price of wheat all 
over the country, and during the past 
week this has culminated in a panicky 
condition and a bad break in the market. 
May wheat usually brings the highest 
price of the year; but. last Wednesday 
No. 2 Chicago Spring, for May delivery, 
opened at 91 cents, at Chicago, and 
closed at 87 1-2 cents, the lowest price 
for 20 years. March wheat sold at 83 3-8 
cents, 'and April at 83 1-2 cents. The 
transactions during the day are estimated 
at 100,000,900 bushels. The losses may 
be estimated from the fact that a Balti¬ 
more speculator sold 1,500,000 bushels at 
a loss of $25,000. On Thursday the ex¬ 
citement continued, and at the opening of 
business wheat sold at 80 cents, the low¬ 
est price ever paid for May wheat in Chi¬ 
cago, and, after numerous fluctuations, 
closed at 87 cents. The average fall in 
prices of the various grades during the 
week has been about six-and-a-half 
cents in the Chicago market, and other 
markets have sympathized with it. 
The immediate cause of the panicky de¬ 
cline is ascribed to unloading by some of 
the heaviest “long” operators, who had 
been holding up against a drop to 90 cents 
for May wheat, but when that came an 
avalanche of “long” wheat was thrown on 
the market, rapidly depressing prices. 
The real causes of the break, however, 
were the very large “visible supply.” 
amounting to 85,379,560 bushels on March 
22, against 22.856,591 at the same date 
last year: the enormous stock on hand in 
commercial warehouses and farm gran¬ 
aries, amounting to 150,000,000 bushels on 
March 1, according to the Department 
of Agriculture; the excellent condition of 
the growing crop in nearly all parts of 
the country, and particularly in Califor¬ 
nia; and the comparatively low prices of 
wheat in our foreign markets. For 
months speculators have been artificially 
keeping prices here above thoso which 
Europe has been willing to pay tor our 
product, thus curtailing our exports, while 
Russia, India, Australasia. South America, 
and our other rivals marketed what wheat 
they had to sell. 
During the eight months ending Feb¬ 
ruary 29, our total exports were only 49,- 
000,000 bushels, against 88.000,000 for a 
like period of the previous year. With 
the decline in prices towards export fig¬ 
ures, the railroads have lowered their 
rates to the seaboard, one company chaig- 
ing only 12 1-2 cents a bushel from Chi¬ 
cago to New York, and there are reports 
of contracts for 20 cents a bushel from 
Chicago to Liverpool. It is to be hoped 
that most of our “visible” surplus will 
thus rapidly find a foreign market, so 
that prices may be higher for the stock 
still in farmers’ hands. 
--- 
WINTER HOG PACKING. 
The season for Winter hog-packing 
lasts from November 1 to March 1 Ac¬ 
cording to the Commercial Bulletin, of 
Chicago, the total receipts of hogs at that 
point in these four months were 2,555,931 
against 2,824,516 for the corresponding 
period in 1882-83, and the number 
packed was 2.011,384 against 2,557,832 
in the previous Winter season. The av¬ 
erage gross weight of the hogs was 243.16 
pounds, against an average of 254.56 
pounds the previous Winter. The aver¬ 
age loss in weight per head was one 
bound in November; four pounds in 
December; twenty pounds in January, 
and thirty pounds in February, the aver¬ 
age gross weight of the season's receipts 
being 11.4 pounds less than in the like 
period of 1882-83, while the average 
net weight was 15.12 pounds less, and the 
average yield of lard, 2.18 pounds less. 
Early in the season the supply was liberal, 
and the prices low’; but lroin the latter 
part of December the supply and weight 
decreased, while prices steadily increased. 
Tne Cincinnati Price Current furnishes 
full statistics of “ Winter Pork Packingin 
the West,” the “ West” including Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois. Iowa, Missouri. Kansas, 
Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michi¬ 
gan, Kentucky, and Tcunessee, which 12 
“packing States” raise 28,255,497 out of 
the 44,200,893 hogs in the country last. 
January, according to the figures of the 
Department of Agriculture. Returns are 
givcu from the. various points in these 
States where 800 hogs and over were 
packed during the season. Briefly, the 
aggregate number of hogs packed “in the 
West,” was 5,402,064, compared with 
6,182,212 in 1882-83 — a reduction of 
730,148. The average gross weight per 
hog was 251.44 pounds, or 15.58 pounds 
less than last season. The average yield 
of lard was 32.25 pounds per hog, or 2.18 
pounds less than last year. 'I he percent¬ 
age of lard was 13.22 of gross w eight, 
against 13.27 last year. Of pork, 444,082 
barrels were made, or 273,858 less than in 
1882-83. The average cost of the hogs 
was $5.18 per 100 pounds gross, or $1.10 
less than lust year. 
The returns of the Department of Agri¬ 
culture for January show an increase of 
six-and-a-half per cent, in the number of 
hogs in the Western packing States and 
in the rest of the country; but other pretty 
trustworthy “authorities” maintain that 
there is a decrease, the Price Current put¬ 
ting it at 15 per cent., and certainly the 
above figures seem to confirm this view 
of the supply. This question is important 
as bearing ou the prices of hogs during 
the Summer packing season, from March 
1 to November 1. On March 1. the stocks 
of barreled pork in the West aggregated 
294,125 barrels, or 131,375 barrels less 
than last year. The stocks of meat, ex¬ 
clusive of barreled pork, were 210,875,000 
pounds, or 88,005,000 pounds less than a 
year ago. The stocks of lard were 199,900 
tierces, or 6,400 less than March 1, 1883. 
These shortages in supplies ought to influ¬ 
ence prices favorably. 
The foreign demand for American hog 
products, however, has fallen off greatly. 
According to the Treasury reports, our 
exports of hog-meats during the last fiscal 
year were only 296,184,669 pounds to 
Great Britain, against 577,799,242 in 1881, 
before the trichinosis scare; 362,391 
pounds to France, against 70,002,856 in 
1881; 15,855,494 to Germany, against 
43,005.416 two years ago, and the falling 
off has been heavy to other countries also, 
except Denmark, the Netherlands, Cuba 
and South America, all of which have 
increased their comparatively small im¬ 
portations. France and Germany have 
increased their hog production almost 
enough to supply their own needs; Ire¬ 
land is partly supplying the wants of 
England; in Central Europe potatoes, on 
which hogs are fed largely instead of 
corn, are very cheap, so that there is not 
much likelihood of auv immediate in¬ 
crease in our foreign trade; but the home 
demand for hog products is steadily im¬ 
proving. _ 
BREVITIES. 
Catalogue notices on page 218. 
The pest of the lawn. Velvet Grass—Holcus 
lanatus. Root it out wherever seen. 
Ten different kinds of “new” oats sown at 
the Rural Grounds March 25. 
W. B. Jones, of Herndon, Ga.. writes us 
that, Bermuda Grass is now valued in his part 
of the country. It is the only grass, he says, 
that will survive the effects in the hot sun. 
Inadvertently in the Kurat. of February 
15, the address of F. A. Deekens. winner of 
Prize V., was made to read Federalsburgh, 
Mo., whereas it should have beeu Federals¬ 
burgh. Md. 
Better farming, not more farming, is the 
golden text for the farm. The profit comes, 
not from the number of acres cultivated, but 
from the number of bushels we grow on the 
acres. 
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher writes us: 
“ Blackberries I have given up for years— good 
only for cooking. To every sweet one there 
are’ two sour ones. I lose grace in eating, 
twice out of three times.” 
We learn from good authority that several 
firms are selling the White Australian for 
Welcome Oats. There is no decided differ¬ 
ence, as we have shown from our own tests, 
and both are good kinds. 
It seems a sort o’ pity that men can not be 
grafted the same as plants arc. It would give 
an excellent opportunity of “working” bad 
people over as well as of judging how far the 
** fruit” is influenced by the stock. 
WyanDOTTKS. Black Sumatras, and Dor¬ 
kings are the chicks to be raised at the Rural 
Experimental Grounds this season. Our hens 
are sitting diligently, and we are only timid 
about the fertility and freshness of the eggs. 
There are now few breeds of poultry the Rural 
has uot tried. There is a great pleasure in 
writing from experience, though, in mauy 
cases, this is a high-priced teacher. 
Have you still a part of those potatoes un¬ 
sold' If so. instead of spending your own tune 
and the strength or your teams in hauling 
them to market, at from 10 to 20 cents per 
bushel, it is better to give a dully teed ot them 
to all the working, and also to all the pregnant 
animals, not excepting the hogs and sheep. 
Potatoes are just the teed needed to loosen 
their bmvels. to cool their systems and carry 
them successfully and healthily through the 
critical period. Just see how eagerly they wil 
eat them, and how smart and lively they will 
make tbe offspring. It is the poorest kind of 
policy to sell at, those prices which hardly pay 
the cost of the labor involved, and, besides, 
they are worth more to feed thoso animals. 
Don’t sell at prevalent prices. 
Seeding Lands to Grass. —Often two im¬ 
portant things are u eg Lee ted in doing this— 
seed is not. sown and there is a laek of variety. 
If the soil is finely pulverized, not half the 
luaut.ity is required as oti a rather stiff clay; 
for let us do our best with harrows, clod 
crushers, and rollers, t he surface of a stiff clay 
is still more or less lumpy, and fulliug on the 
lumps, seed will not germinate. A limestone 
soil of fine tilth does uot need more than half 
as much clover seed per acre, to produce a full 
crop, as au ordinary' loam; and not oyer one- 
fourth as much as a stiff clay. e have 
seen fields in the light, gravelly, limestone 
soils of Western New York producing the 
largest possible crops of clover from sowing 
not, over fix quarts of seed per acre; while 
loamy soils there might require 12 quarts to 
do this, and a stiff cluy, fully 24 quarts. Eng¬ 
lish farmers usually sow from six to t welve or 
more different kinds of grass seeds when 
stocking their meadows for hay or permanent 
pasture; and our good farmers are now rap¬ 
idly following their example, especially those 
{ who are devoting their lauds to dairy stock. 
