*884 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
401 
market is worth $8 or $9. Who makes the 
profit? 
Cucumbers for pickles may be planted from 
June 15 to 30—about the 20th is the best time. 
The writer above alluded to usually plants 
them on a freshly turned sod, after takiugoff 
an early crop of hay. To produce a good 
crop they require a liberal supply of manure, 
both spread on, and in the hill. It may be 
stable manure or chemicals, both together or 
either alone. Cacumbers should be planted 
about five feet apart each way. If attacked 
by bugs, they should be dusted with plaster 
and Paris-green. Missing bills should be re¬ 
planted until as late as July 10, Ten or 12 
seeds should be dropped in the hill, and after 
danger from bugs is past they should bo 
thinned to five plants. 
As soon as the first cucumbers are two or 
three inches long, the picking should com¬ 
mence ami be continued as often as the pickles 
are large enough. In very favorable weather 
this will be every day, but usually once in two 
days will be as often as it will pay to go over 
the ground. Iu picking, care must be used to 
avoid disturbing the vines more thau is neces¬ 
sary. All large cucumbers which have been 
missed in previous pickings should be gathered 
when seen, If left on the vines and allowed 
to go to seed, they will check the production 
of new ones. 
After picking, the cucumbers should bo ex¬ 
posed as little as possible to the sunlight and be 
soon washed and packed in brine. In salting, 
the cucumbers should bo packed with two 
quarts of salt per bushel Enough brine 
should be added to cover them. Make it by 
dissolving salt in cold water until it will float 
a potato. The pickles should be stowed in u 
cool cellar and the tops of the casks should be 
covered with loose heads, which will require 
weighting with a sftotie to keep the pickles un¬ 
der the brine The casks will need looking 
after once a week to see that the brine covers, 
the pickles. 
When the pickles are wanted for market, 
they may be freshened by soaking in cold 
water for three days, changing the water 
every day. They are then covered with cold 
vinegar, with a liberal allowance of various 
spices und alum enough to harden them, 
about a pound to the barrel. Keep them in 
all stages away from brass or copper, unless it 
is desired to color them a bright green and, at 
the same time, poison them. A very little cop¬ 
per will surely do both, but alum will not. 
Either cider or whit© wine vinegar may be 
used, or a part of each. Cider vinogur gives 
the best Mavor, and in cold weather is just a* 
good, but white wiue vinegar Is the only kind 
which will keep them iu hot weather or at any 
season in a hot room. The writer says he 
likes, except in the hottest weather, to use a 
mixture of part white wine vinegar und part 
cider vinegar. 
Silage. —Or. Voelcker lately said, before an 
English Farmers’ Club, in regard to ensilage, 
that all depends on the regulation of the pro¬ 
cess of fermentation. Then the nutritive 
qualities as well us the composition of the si¬ 
lage depend very much on the value of the 
stuff that is put into the silo. If you put good 
stuff in you get good silage; if yon put un¬ 
ripe, immature produce, of low nutritive 
value, you may cook it and ferment it, and do 
with it as you like, but you will never get 
first-rate stuff out of it. On the other band, if 
you let your green provender get over ripe, 
woody, and Btringy. it keeps well enough, for 
the simple reason that all that is fermentable 
or liable to change has left It. The immature 
produce does not keep; the over-ripe produce 
sometimes keeps extremely well—but what do 
you get when you have it? 
Sugar from the Yellow Wood. —The 
Rural New-Yorker says: “For the third 
year we have gathered the sap of the Ytdlow- 
wood (the Cladrastis tinctoria, or Virgilia lu- 
tea of botanies) and boiled it down to sugar. 
The sap will flow earlier, in larger quantities, 
and continue later from the Yellow-Wood than 
from the maples, and, as we believe, will give 
more sugar. The Rural people, all of whom 
have eaten this sugar, say that in quality it Is 
as rich and buttery as maple sugar. Uf course, 
it does not possess the peculiar maple flavor, 
hut, instead of it, an acid flavor resembling 
sweet lemonade, quite agreeable to most of 
those who ate it. In texture and color it close¬ 
ly resembles the tilled maple sugar. We are 
in hopes that our experiments with this Amer¬ 
ican tree will lead others to follow our exam¬ 
ple on a larger scale.” 
To the above note of ours, reprinted in the 
Gardener’s Monthly, Prof. Thomas Meehan 
appends the following interesting paragraph: 
The Yellow-Wood bleeds from winter 
wounds more profusely than any tree we 
know, and we have seen icicles over a foot 
long from some of these wounds in early 
Spring. In freezing, whatever is held in solu¬ 
tion in water is rejected, and in sugar-bearing 
liquids the sweets are always concentrated on 
s the end of these icicles. From some on the 
^ ellow-wood icicles we found an abundance 
i of sugar, last Spring, just as the observant 
editor of the Rural notes.” 
i _ 
Chas. W. Garfield, in the Grand Rapids 
1 Democrat, says that pedigree is as impor¬ 
tant a consideration in wheat growing as in 
breeding flue stock, and as long as we use so 
little thought in the selection of our seed, wo 
must be content to grow scrub wheat and 
poor crops A systematic system of improv¬ 
ing wheat by weeding out all the poor stools 
and heads from a selected plot, and thus iso¬ 
lating the chosen stock, is practicanle and 
promising. It is the greatest blunder possible 
to pass our wheat through a fanning mill, and 
select onlv the largest grains. How quickly 
we would deprecate this practice in selecting 
seed corn. The largest, nicest, plumpest ker¬ 
nels uniformly grow upon the shortest, poor- 
est-fllled ears. This is no stock to breed from; 
the inouey lies iu the long, well filled heads 
upon prolific stools, and these have only 
medium-sized kernels, and these wo cannot 
afford to reject, but we really do reject them 
in saving only the largest kernels for seed. 
As well breed Jersey cows with size only in 
view, forgetting the milk pail and butter 
firkin. Enough attention is not given to the 
amount of available plant food within easv 
reach of the growing wheat plants. It is not 
enough that the soil be pretty good; it must 
be excellent, to produce a big crop. The 
young wheat plant must have a full supply of 
soluble food within easy reach of its roots, be¬ 
fore it exhausts the amount of food within 
the body of the seed; this is secured by a 
liberal dressing of well rotted manure worked 
into the surface soil. Wheat gets its tendency 
to tiller broadly, from parentage; but this 
tendency, to be of most value, must be stimu¬ 
lated and supported by available fertility in 
the soil; the bushels per acre are dependent 
upon breadth of stool and length of ear. We 
see, then, the importance of goofi seed and of 
good usage, aud all ought to be ashamed of the 
fact that the average yield of wheat per acre 
is gradually growlug less. 
Pruning Evergreens.— The editor of the 
Gardeners’ Monthly says that evergreen trees 
love pruuing as well as deciduous; which is 
very true. The Scotch Piuo and the Chinese 
Arbor-vitro are two plants which derive won¬ 
derful benefit from the pruning knife. Roth 
these are very liable to get ragged when left 
entirely to their natural inclinations, but 
grow with a beautiful, compact luxuriauce un¬ 
der the occasional application of the knife. 
Indeed the Scotch Pine with judicious pruning 
makes one of the most beautiful ornaments of 
the lawn and pleasure ground. It can be 
made to take many odd forms; one of the 
most picturesque is obtained by cutting off its 
head when about 10 feet high, and uever letti ng 
another leader grow. The side branches am 
all cut away except the upper t,ior; these 1 
then spread outwardly—not exactly creeping, 
but flowing forwurd in the most luxurious i 
green imaginable, making a much prettier ar- i 
bor than any weeping tree we ever saw, ] 
These peculiar objects are very striking in a i 
flower garden, and other things besides ever- j 
greens will furnish them. Deciduous shrubs t 
may often be trained into interesting forms. t 
Ihe Wistaria Sinensis, for instance, makes a c 
very interesting object, trained as a small 
tree. If tied up to a stake for one or two 
years, aud then suffered to stand aloae, it will 
make a pretty rouud head, und when in Spring 
the pendant blossoms are in profusion, it * 
makes a unique ornament on a lawn. The ' 
Bitter-sweet may also be trained in a bush 
form to a single stern, and wifi thus in a few 1 
years abandon the vine habit. 8 
I ‘Bain,’ the reputed ‘Secretary,’ is a fraud. 
The three-cent stamp investment is a bait to 
catch the victim on an expensive hook. 
The three-cent stamp will get an invitation to 
buy a worthless book for five dollars. I re¬ 
peat. don’t throw away your money on bogus 
incubators. I, know." 
Since the above was in type we have re¬ 
ceived two or three other letters similar to the 
oue above, for which the writers have our 
thanks, but which it is hardly necessary to 
publish. The editor now in charge of the 
poultry department was not on duty last year 
when the C. S. incubator swindle was venti¬ 
lated, and so was not posted.” This fraud, un¬ 
der various aliases, lias been frequently de¬ 
nounced in the Rural’s “Eye Opener." 
“Ensilage.”— The Editor of the Mark Dane 
Express asks if philologists will kindly come 
to the rescue before we have introduced a uutn- 
ber of barbarous new words into the language 
iu connection with ensilage? For instance: 
“ensilage” is often used as a verb, and some 
one lias gone so far as to speak of an “ensi- 
lager,” which is quite unendurable. A cor¬ 
respondent suggests the following nomencla¬ 
ture: 
Silo: The structure. 
EnslIoRe : The system of preservation. 
Ensll; The suhstnnee preserved. 
Ensile: The verb. 
Ensilor; The operator. 
Whether “ensil” is preferable to “silage,” 
philologists should tell us. Perhaps it is a 
“more tenderer word;” but it is more of the 
character of a scientific term than that of col¬ 
loquial English. 
THE LATEST AND BRIEFEST. 
The Chicago Tribune says that the working¬ 
men of Chicago annually spend enough money 
for liquor to purchase nearly 4,000 cottages at 
82,500 each..... 
Tjie Kansas Industrialist says that prairie 
liny, which a few years ago at this time of 
year sold, at 82.50 to $4 00, sold the other day 
on the streets for |12 per ton. This is partly 
attributed to the fact that Government con¬ 
tractors last Fall raked the country close, and 
then the last was a hard Winter; hut still the 
great moral many farmers draw from it is 
that they must go to tame grasses. 
A member of the Massachusetts Horticultu¬ 
ral Society remarked that when the Koiffor 
Pear was introduced and lauded ns one of the 
most wonderful of fruits, all nurserymen of 
any enterprise had to procure It, though they 
may have hesitated as to its value; and now 
they all have a stock, and it is ter their inter¬ 
est to unload, and the result is that this fruit 
is recommended far beyond Its real value. 
Ohio says that butter!uoshall not be colored. 
It must therefore bo sold white 1. 
Sorghum Amber Cane.— A half acre of 
this was grown as a forage crop on the farm of 
the New Jersey Agricultural College. The 
weight grown per acre was not quite as great 
as that of the best fodder corn, and the stalks 
are so hard that cattle cannot eat thorn readi¬ 
ly, when they are full grown. But by cutting 
and crushing them they can all be consumed, 
aud the cattle eat them with avidity and 
thrive upon them. Horghum will make a de¬ 
sirable food crop to alternate with fodder 
Sold.— The Farmers’ Review, of May 29, 
1884, says: “In the last issue of the Farmers’ 
Review, we published an article which came to 
us as an original contribution from Fort Scott 
Kan . commending the ‘C S. Incubator, of 
J. M. Bain, of New Concord, Ohio.’ Facts 
which have since come to our knowledge indi¬ 
cate that, instead of being an original contri 
bution to us, it has been gent to papers 
throughout the country generally, and instead 
of emanating from Fort Scott, Kan., it comes 
really from New Concord. O do, the home of 
J. M. Bain, and the so-called N. A. Poultry 
Association. The fraudulent effort to obtain 
free advertising of the C. 8 . Incubator would 
raise the strong presumption that everything 
connected with it is alike fraudulent. 
“Since the above was written,” says the Re¬ 
view, “the following letter has come to hand: 
“Canton, O., May23,l884. 
Ed. Farmers’ Review: —I have just read 
the communication on page 380 of the last 
number of the Review signed ‘X Will,’ and I 
hasten to ask a little space in your valuable 
columns, to say to the readers of the Re¬ 
view that they will do well to let ‘Bain’s’ 
incubators alone. The ‘North Ameri¬ 
can Poultry Association’ is a myth, and 
Prof. Bunn, of Ames, Iowa, speaks a good 
word, in the Prairie Farmer, for the good old 
Tartarian Honeysuckle. It is one of the few 
really handsome shrubs which defies wind and 
weather on all soils of the great North-west... 
Sobqhum FOR Forage.— In the same jour¬ 
nal, Prof. Wiley, the United States Chemist, 
states that sorghum is one of the most valuable 
of forage crops. He doubts whether there is 
anything better adapted than sorghum for en¬ 
silage. Especially wherodry Hummers are apt 
to prevail, will the sorghum plant be found 
invaluable.—For forage purposes it should be 
sown broadcast, or in drills, like wheat or 
oats. Both as a sirup producer and a fodder- 
maker he looks to see it one or the most im¬ 
portant crops of the great Northwest. 
The Breeders’ Gazette agrees with Prof. 
Hanborn that “good grass—or, what is better, 
clover and grass combined-is the cheapest 
food that the Western farmer can give any 
kind of farm stock in Hummer." This should 
be supplemented with grain food of some kind. 
Koseb may be budded in late June. Do you 
wish to increase your stock of any particular 
shrub or tree? If you have a long, low-grow¬ 
ing shoot, layer It—that is, bend it down, cut 
ting a shallow slit iu the bent part, peg it 
down and cover with soil. In the Fall or next 
Spring you may sever it from the parent and 
transplant it... 
Rose Bugs, How are we to exterminate 
the pests? Mr Meehan says that hand-pick¬ 
ing will do the business more rapidly than one 
has an idea of. We propose to try Persian 
Insect Powder, Buhach, the petroleum emul¬ 
sion, etc. 
I Peg down verbenas, petunias, and roses if 
you would have full beds of green leaves and 
bright flowers. Mulch the Gladioli. If you 
would establish a hod of double portulaca, 
pull out the plants which bear single flowers, 
as soon os they bloom.. ..... 
Mr. BRuooEunoF, of Thorbum Co., im¬ 
ported nuts of the Japan Chestnut 15 yoars or 
more ago. He tolls us that the seeds germi¬ 
nate freely, and that the seedlings bear in 
three years. This is a valuable bit of infor¬ 
mation ... 
If thero is any tree, says the veteran, C. M. 
Ilovey, the peer of the Magnolia grandiflora, 
it would bo a pleasure to know what it is. 
Alas, this flue maguolia is not hardy north of 
Virginia.. 
Sir J. B. Lawks is going to build a silo, and 
he proposes to carry out u series of experiments 
towards the end of the year. 
Hungarian Grass, or Millet, may be sown 
now or later. Prepare the land thoroughly, 
pulverize and roll it. Sow the seed in drills 
or broadcast-—a bushel to an acre—and roll 
again. A good plan is to sow the seeds, har¬ 
row again, and thou roll. If sown now, it 
will be ready to cut by the middle of August.. 
Mr, Latiirop, of the Massachusetts Horti¬ 
cultural Society, thinks it a duty for rich men 
to retire from business and give beauty to the 
country. 
It is a good plau not to leave more than two 
strong water or muskmelon plants iu a hill, 
uo matter how far the hills are apart. It is 
also wise to pinch off the ends of fcbo leading 
vines, so as to induce a more vigorous lateral 
growth. Then you may hope for splendid 
melons. 
NOTES FROM OTTAWA ON THE 
RECENT FROST. 
The early part of May was warm, spring- 
ike weather, and when we do get such weather 
vegetation goes forward with a rush. The 
!oth and 2 fith of May were unusually close, 
varm days; the young leaves on the forest 
roes were fast expanding, and the growth 
vus very tender. In the ufternoon of Tues- 
lay the 27th, the wind, which had been in¬ 
creasing in velocity, changed to the north, 
tnd the thermometer took a dive below the 
orties; and on Wednesday morning, vegeta- 
ion looked limp and yellow. The frost 
iad not been very severe, the glass sinking 
nly to 32°, with a cloudy sky. It was hoped 
he cold snap would pass away without any 
art,her damage; but the wind rose, blowing a 
artial gale all day, and its cold, blighting 
fleets were becoming evident, the mercury 
..idicatiug from 41)° to 42°. Wednesday night 
was bright and clear, with increasing cold, 
and on Thursday morning it was found that 
the thermometer had registered 28° during 
the night. There was u light frost agalu on 
Thursday night. 
The previous warm weather had induced 
plautors, especially market gardeners, to put 
their seed into the opt n soil; consequently 
beans, potatoes and corn wore well up. To¬ 
mato plauts had been very generally set out, 
aud all were cut to the ground. A few beans 
here and thero escaped, some gardeners los¬ 
ing 8801) or 1900 worth of plants. Grape-vines 
from which winter protection had been early 
removed bad, in many instance*, grown nine 
or 10 inches, showing the flower buds. The 
■hoots were uot all killed; sometimes where 
two had sprung from neighboring eyes 
one was killed, the other escaped, apparently 
untouched. In very few vineyards were all 
destroyed, though some cases of this kind are 
reported. The damage to vines in exposed 
situations will probably reduce the crop to 
one-third or one-half, about Oituwa; though 
some will not suffer so much, others will to a 
larger extent. On Saturday, May 31. i made an 
excursion into the country and found many of 
the forest trees more or leseinjured; the Black 
Ash leaves were entirely destroyed, the but¬ 
ternuts badly frozen, and as the flower spikes 
are Standing up at the points of the branches 
above the foliage, it is feared the nut crop 
for the present season will be a short one. 
Beeches and maples are also son in what dam¬ 
aged. Homo small specimens of the Russian 
and English Mulberries, whose leaves are just 
opening, are badly nipped. The apple trees 
coming into bloom, and the plums, whose blos¬ 
soms have fallen, do not appear to have mate¬ 
rially suffered. 
Peas, us a rule, are a hardy crop, and have 
escaped with the exception of Bliss’s Ameri¬ 
can Wonder, which has been badly cut up. 
Potatoes will, of course, come on again, but 
will not furnish as early tubers as was expected. 
Coleuses, Geraniums, and other bedding plants, 
set on the north side of a high, tight fence, 
or building, have escaped the best. Why 
■ome plants of the same variety were killed, 
