640 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
SEPT §7 
THE 
RURAL NLW'YORKtR. 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban . .o m 
Conducted by 
E. 8. CABMAN, 
Editor. 
J. 8. WOODWARD, 
Associate 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New Y. rA. 
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27. 1844. 
It is hard to make all people believe 
that our published rates for advertising 
are turner deviated from. We offer $100 to 
anybody who can show that he has, with- 
iu the past year, been offered rates lower 
than those published in every issue of 
this journal, by anybody connected with 
this office. We also give notice that on and 
after the First day of January , 1885, our 
discount to advertising agents trill he 15 in¬ 
stead of 20 per cent. 
When renewing, we beg our subscri¬ 
bers to send us the address label which 
will show us when the subscription ex¬ 
pires. It will save us much trouble. 
Again, for the third year, the Champion 
Quince is decidedly later than the Orange 
(or Apple) or Kea’s Mammoth, at the Ru¬ 
ral Grounds. Except that this tree bears 
very early, we really do not see why it 
should be disseminated. 
— : - 
We were looking over a small-fruit 
catalogue of 1845 a few days ago. The 
following were the only kinds of straw¬ 
berries offered: Ilovey’s Seedling, Boston 
Pine. Willey’s Seedling, Princess Alice 
Maude, Early Virginia, Metliven Scarlet, 
Mammoth Alpine. 
We are having a fine chance, this year, 
to observe the effect of pollen upon the 
kernels (which are the fruit) in our field 
of 60 different varieties of corn. For in¬ 
stance, upon ears of white late corn, there 
arc kernels of early yellow; that is to 
say, the yellow kernels are quite hard, 
while the white kernels are in the milk. 
-- 
Now r (September 16) we arc preparing 
our plots for wheats. As usual, we shall 
plant many new kinds, in order to test 
their hardiness and general value. But 
we shall give the greatest space to our 
own hybrids and cross-breeds. We pro¬ 
pose; to mark out the land, so that single 
kernels may be dropped a foot apart each 
" aj ■ 
We are now-a-days alw'ays sorry when 
we see the Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tu- 
lipifera) commended for the lawn or 
street. Ten years ago we thought other¬ 
wise. The trees arc luxuriant and beau¬ 
tiful when young, and cutting them back 
for a year or so prolongs their youth as it 
were. But they will not stand cutting 
hack for many years, and the old trees be¬ 
come branchy and ill-shapen from the 
loss of branches broken off by the wind, 
or bent down and cracked by their own 
weight. 
Tnn Rural cross-bred corn, which we 
propose to send to subscribers in our next 
Seed Distribution, is a grand mixture in¬ 
deed. The kernels of some kinds began 
to harden as early as August 10th. Now 
it is posstbU, though far from probable, 
that each of our 60 kinds is itself mixed 
with 60 kinds, which when planted 
should show an indefinite number of va¬ 
riations. Our subscribers, selecting from 
next year's crops those winch upon their 
farms promise to thrive and yield the 
best, will, of course, set about fixiug the 
crosses, the upshot of all of which will be 
that we shall hear of the Rural crosses for 
years to come. We hope that many im¬ 
proved strains will be the result of our 
experiment. 
Again we must speak of the Victoria 
Grape as among the very best in our col¬ 
lection. It ripens exactly with the Con¬ 
cord. The bunches are full and perfect, 
though at one time mildew attacked the 
stems. It is, m quality, rather better than 
Concord. Pocklington is in full fruit, 
growing within 50 feet of the Victoria. 
The berries are no larger, not as good in 
quality, and the buaches are smaller. Thus 
far we have little to say in favor of the 
Pocklington, except that it seems hardy, 
healthy, and prolific, which would be 
saying a good deal, were the fruit of bet¬ 
ter quality. We raise grape-vines for 
their fruit, and if this is decidedly infe¬ 
rior, no other merits can compensate for it. 
- — - 
When we offered the $10 for the 
largest shapely potato, we did so in 
perfect good faith and with no desire to 
secure a whole car-load of potatoes, which 
a friend suggests may he the case, and that 
the aggregate amount paid in charges by 
the many who must fail, will be more 
than the money received by the one suc¬ 
cessful. This we should sincerely regret: 
and that no one may pay any needless 
charges, we suggest that when any one 
finds a potato which he thinks worthy of 
competition, he should carefully preserve 
it in common saud, and scud us a postal 
card telling its actual weight. We will 
from time to time publish the weights of 
the largest, and after November 1 we will 
notify those whom we wish to forward 
their'potatoes, and we will pay the charges 
on all except the winning potato, and 
thus “avoid the very appearance of evil.” 
Is this fair ? 
■» * * 1 — - 
News comes from Charleston, S. C., 
that a machine for picking cotton has 
been perfected; that it does its work in a 
clean and thoroughly efficient manner, 
and that it will probably save over three- 
fourtus of the expense of picking by hand. 
As cotton picking is estimated to cost 
about $50,000,000 a year, this new device, 
if what is said of it proves true, must be 
a great boon to the Southern planter. 
Another invention of immense utility, 
telegraphed this morning from Augusta, 
Ga., ism the shape of fire-proof cotton 
bagging, which promises to revolutionize 
the packing of the staple, to cause the ab¬ 
andonment of the old jute bagging, and ti 
reduction in the insurance rates from the 
highest to a minimum figure. It consists 
of an earthy, or asbestos like substance, 
dissolved in a kind of glue like white¬ 
wash, and spread over bagging made of 
cotton goods. The invention is called 
antiphlogan; and the inventor, P. C. 
Close, a machinist, claims it is easily 
made, as cheap as sand, and the whole 
bagging will cost less than the jute or 
gunny bagging used now. A decisive test 
is reported. Besides keeping at borne 
immense sums for impoited jute, this in¬ 
vention is likely to open a new industry, 
and cause the manufacture into bagging 
of over 30,000 bales of cotton annually 
for baling the raw lint cotton. 
Several arrests have lately been made 
in this city and Brooklyn of people for 
selling bogus butter contrary to the pro¬ 
visions of the law passed by the last State 
Legislature, and which went into effect 
.Tune 1, absolutely prohibiting the manu¬ 
facture and sale of all imitation butter or 
cheese id this State, Some of the de¬ 
fendants pleaded that they sold the goods 
under their real names, thinking the law 
allowed them to do so; others declared 
the law unconstitutional, and have ap¬ 
pealed to the higher courts. A good deal 
of complaint has been made of the dilato¬ 
riness of Dairy Commissioner Brown and 
his subordinates in enforcing the provis¬ 
ions of this law, which was loudly de¬ 
manded by the dairy interests of the State. 
It should be borne in tnind, however, that 
the provisions of the lull embrace several 
other features beside those relating to 
bogus butter and cheese, to gain familiar¬ 
ity with which would take some time; 
that all the machinery of the Commission 
had to he invented and organized, which 
could not he done in a day or a week, and 
that the opponents of the measure were 
fully prepared to offer a vigorous resist¬ 
ance to its enforcement, and had secured 
the highest scientific and legal xalent to 
maintain their position, aud that it was, 
therefore, prudent to act carefully and 
cautiously at the outset. It seems to us. 
however, that the day of delay should be 
over, and that v igorous measures for enforc¬ 
ing or testing the law should be promptly 
taken. Legislation on this subject in other 
States is likely to be greatly influenced by 
the outcome of the contest* here, and not 
a moment of unnecessary delay should be 
permitted until the question of the consti¬ 
tutionality of the law is decided. 
LAND-GRABBING AND LAND- 
GRABBERS. 
Agents of the General Land Office, 
who, for the past year, have been investi¬ 
gating the fraudulent grabbing of the 
public domain by individual and corpo¬ 
rate cattle owners, have reported that 
their researches have hitherto proved that 
between five and six million acres of the 
finest portion of the public land have been 
illegally fenced in, and that several more 
million acres have been dishonestly ac¬ 
quired by fraudulent entries under the 
preemption, homestead, and other land 
laws of the United States. An agent in 
New Mexico declares that 90 per cent, of 
the entries in that Territory are fraudu¬ 
lent; while a Dakota agent estimates the 
fraudulent entries there at 75 per cent. 
The boldest, most unscrupulous and arro¬ 
gant offenders are the foreign cattle com¬ 
panies. The Trairie Cattle Company, an 
exclusively Scotch syndicate, control over 
1,000,000 acres, comprising two tracts of 
over 100 square miles each: one of 15 
square miles; one of 25 square miles, and 
one of 75 square miles. The Arkansas 
Valley Cattle Company, another foreign 
organization, has seized upon an equal 
area, while other alien corporations hold 
vast bodies of the public domain by the 
high band of robbery and the low cun¬ 
ning of perjury and fraud. 
The amount of agricultural land which 
any one person can acquire under the set¬ 
tlement laws is 160 acres, which he must 
settle upon and improve for five years in or¬ 
dinary homestead cases, and for a minimum 
of six months after survey, in commuted 
homestead and preemption cases. By 
taking advantage of the homestead or pre¬ 
emption and timber culture laws he may 
acquire 320 acres; but here again he must 
settle upon and improve the land for a 
prescribed period. Desert land can be. 
acquired to the extent of 640 acres upon 
specified proof of having irrigated it. 
Scrip lands do not require any settlement 
or improvement, but the amount of these 
is too small to merit consideration. 
The vast ranges, therefore, embracing 
thousands of contiguous acres, have gen¬ 
erally been dishonestly acquired in two 
ways—by fraudulent eutnes, or by illegal¬ 
ly fencing in the public domain. The 
entries are made along the streams under 
fictitious names, or by “dummies” em¬ 
ployed by the cattle men, and paid from 
$50 to $100 for making entries of 160 
acres and perjuring themselves to secure 
patents, which are at once transferred to 
their unscrupulous employers, who, hav¬ 
ing thus monopolized all the water “priv¬ 
ileges” in a section, control all the grazing 
land in the surrounding country. A 
common fraud in New Mexico, Arizona, 
California, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, 
Montana and Utah, is practiced by means 
of the Desert Land Act. This provides 
that on selecting 640 acres of desert land 
to be irrigated, 25 cents per acre shall be 
paid down, the settler being allowed 
three years to pay the remainder. Instead 
of taking up desert land, however, the 
very best land is occupied for compara¬ 
tively nothing for three years, and then 
used for absolutely nothing as long as it 
can be kept in dispute. Of course, in 
cases of false entries, the local Govern¬ 
ment officials are generally in collusion 
with the public plunderers either directly, 
or, more commonly, through lawyers and 
land agents who have secret understand¬ 
ings with the offices. Hence it is that 
the position of land agent in a new coun¬ 
try is so eagerly sought even by men to 
whom its legitimate emoluments would 
be a small inducement to incur the hard¬ 
ships of frontier life, but who soon be¬ 
come rich from the dishonest perquisites. 
In all these cases some pretence has 
been made of acquiring possession of the 
land by legitimate means; but in most 
cases the plunderers have not deigned to 
lay out money to pay their tools for per¬ 
jury, or to corrupt officials, in order to 
obtain gigantic stock ranges; they have 
merely put barbed wire fences around as 
large a tract as they chose to take the 
trouble to inclose. In doing this, they 
often fence in genuine homesteaders, who 
are either frightened away or provoked to 
a fight and ruthlessly shot down by ruf¬ 
fianly cow boy employe*?. Tn the greed 
of the monopolists for more territory, 
small ranchers or settlers in the neighbor¬ 
hood are persecuted in the most heartless 
way to force them to abandon their 
homes. Their fences arc cut down, cat¬ 
tle are driven on their growing crops or 
among their stock, and it would be to 
risk their lives for them to venture to pick 
out their own brands from those of their 
oppressors. The roads to their markets 
are closed so that they are compelled to 
go miles out of their way; and fraudulent 
and illegal fences are put even across the 
mail routes of the United States. While 
arrogantly occupying the public lands for 
nothing, and persecuting their poorer 
neighbors, the cattle kings refuse to pay 
a cent of taxes; so that all the public 
burthens press upon the galled shoulders 
of the honest agricultural settler and 
small ranchman, yet insults and outrages 
of all sorts are heaped upon these until 
the complaints ot the survivors who are 
being driven from their homes in all parts 
of the frontier, are multitudinous in the 
Interior Department. 
The announcement that the cattle kings 
—native and foreign—have, of late, been 
making fraudulent entries of land, and 
illegally fencing in the public domain 
more busily than ever, is not surprising, 
in view of the audacity with which their 
operations have been so long conducted. 
This public robbery has been notorious 
for many years. The facts have been 
known to every one. They have been re¬ 
peatedly forced upon the attention of the 
Government by the public press, the re¬ 
ports of it? own officials, and the loud 
complaints of the Western settlers; yet 
nothing has been done to remedy or even 
to check the evil, beyond the making of 
reports and the passage, during the last 
session of Congress, of some cumbersome 
and hitherto inoperative legislation. The 
Public Land Committee uses mild lan¬ 
guage when it says:—“There is notan- 
other nation that would permit such out¬ 
rages as are being perpetrated on these 
lands, and it is beyond comprehension 
why the depredators should have, been 
permitted to erect and maintain their in¬ 
closures for a single day after notice was 
given of their existence, especially the 
foreign corporations.” Nor, in truth, is 
there any other country under the sun 
where bands of foreigners could enter and 
audaciously seize and fence in hundreds 
of miles of the public lands, oust the 
natives of the country from their holdings 
by threats and force of arms, and slay 
them if they clung to their possessions, 
refuse to pay taxes or to purchase the 
land, and act in all respects as the old 
Normans did in conquered England, or the 
English, later, in subjugated Ireland. 
The United States army was used, the 
other day, to expel Payne and his follow¬ 
ers from Oklahoma, claimed by t he Creeks 
and Cherokees. Why has it never been 
used to dispossess the arrogant foreign 
intruders, who have unscrupulously seized 
vast areas of the territory owned by the 
United States; thrust hundreds of Ameri¬ 
can citizens out of their hard-earned little 
holdings; and who, backed by gangs of 
ruffianly cow-boys, terrorize the region in 
which they have squatted, and intimidate 
or purchase the local authorities? If the 
laws already in existence cannot deal sum¬ 
marily with these intolerable grievances, 
Congress, early in the next session, should 
provide prompt and energetic means for 
terminating the encroachments of the 
land-grabbers, for restoring to the public 
domain the stolen lands which form the 
heritage of our citizens; and for punishing 
the native, aud especially the foreign ad¬ 
venturers, who have been guilty of so 
many arrogant outrages and oppressions. 
BREVITIES. 
Overproduction! Can there be such a 
thing as the overproduction of grain, roots or 
vegetables when thousands of hard- working, 
worth}' people are obliged to live upon the 
coarsest fare, and little of it# 
A friend, of Westville, Conn., who has 
been successful in raising a number of valu¬ 
able seedlings, writes us: “Raising seedlings 
is my pet hobby. 1 do not smoke, or drink, 
or hang around street corners, or talk politics 
at grocery stores, but spend my odd minutes 
in watching my plants, and the development of 
flowers and fruits.” 
We have received u small box of Seckel 
Pears'from Dr. L E. McAboy, of the celebra¬ 
ted Thermal Beltregion, Lynn P. O., Polk Co., 
N. C. These Seckels are larger than any we 
have seen in the North, and the quality is 
quite as good. The writer remembers with 
delight a month speut in this region several 
years ago after an attack of pneumonia. The 
air is dry and pure, the country one of mag¬ 
nificent mountains, valleys, streams, and sur¬ 
prises. 
About a year ago announcement was made 
by the Department of Agriculture that not a 
single case of bog cholera was known to exist 
in the United States, aud some sanguine peo¬ 
ple. believing the disease was spread only by 
contagion, and that no source of contagion 
then existed, felt like congratulating the coun¬ 
try on its future freedom from the plague. 
Late reports, however, from widely scattered 
parts of the country, go to prove that it is 
pretty generally prevalent just now. A tele¬ 
gram from Philadelphia last Thursday tells us 
it is raging in every couuty in south and west 
Jersey, and that its spread is so rapid that 
farmers are greatly alarmed. Along the coast 
it is extremely severe. In Southern Pennsyl¬ 
vania it is also reported to be very fatal; 
while in Northern Virginia the hogs are dying 
so rapidly from ittbattbecarcassesare thrown 
into the' Potomac, spreading an intolerable 
stench over the upper waters, and alarming 
Washington. This is a very effective method 
of spreading the disease, as running water is 
known to be an excellent vehicle of contagion. 
Some severe punishment should be provided 
by the laws for those who thus recklessly en- 
dauger the property of others to save them¬ 
selves a little trouble. Was the eontagium 
buried in the ground; hidden in the pig-pens; 
or latent in the pastures; or did causes simi¬ 
lar to, those that produced the original out¬ 
break, cause this? 
