672 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
OOT n 
THE 
RURAL NLW'YORKtR, 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban Homo. 
Conducted by 
K. 8. CABMAN, 
J. 8. WOODWARD, 
Editor. 
Associate. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Pabk Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1884. 
It will be seen from our illustration, 
last week, of Moore’s Early Grape, drawn 
from specimens grown at the Rural 
Grounds, that the printed catalogue illus¬ 
trations are not much overdrawn. 
A good epitome of the merits of Moore’s 
Eurly isthat it is a desirable early variety 
for cold climates where better grapes 
cannot be grown. It has, also, a special 
market value in ripening before most 
other kinds. Its large berry is also at¬ 
tractive. 
Among our collection of grapes there 
is not one superior to the Jefferson (Rick¬ 
etts) in quality. We regret that our vine 
has this year shown signs of weakness, 
but the few bunches that ripened were as 
meaty, juicy, vinous and tender as ever. 
This is a red grape, ripening rather late. 
Mu. D. P. Rarneh, of Morton Co., D. 
T., says that they have scab on potatoes 
grown in newly-broken prairie land, where 
there are no wire-worms, and where there 
never was any manure. We must con¬ 
clude that there is more than one cause 
for scab, or else several diseases or inju¬ 
ries are known under that name. 
Wk should think it would be a good 
idea and a philanthropic gift if several of 
our wealthy readers were to subscribe for 
from 500 to 5,000 copies of the It ORAL 
New-Yorker, to be sent to energetic far¬ 
mers of the poorer class. It would do an 
immense sight more good than giving the 
same amount of money to support the pres¬ 
ent political campaign. 
Ik you have fruit trees to buy this Fall, 
pray be careful to procure the best kinds 
for your soil and climate, and those true 
to name. Do not run any risks. You 
can better afford to pay one dollar for 
every tree, and know what, you get, than 
25 cents and find that you have worth¬ 
less varieties 10 years hence when they 
begin to bear. Prepare the land well, 
also, for their reception—keep the roots 
covered every minute until they are set in 
their places aud covered with soil. 
A NOTE FROM CHARLES DOWNING:— 
Referring to what he had said regarding 
the Marlboro Raspberry,m our Fair Num¬ 
ber, our venerable friend writes us: 
“From some remarks as to the Marlboro 
Raspberry in the last Rural, it occurred 
to me when I said the ‘color and flavor 
of the fruit a'.l indicate its native origin,’ 
that I ought to have added the flavor to 
my taste was unpleasant and wanting in 
character-, yet many prefer the flavor of 
the native red and others of its class,such 
as Turner, Brandywine, Cuthbert, etc., 
all of which are better in quality than 
the Marlboro; but none of them compares 
in quality with the European varieties.” 
Eleven years ago we laid a four-inch 
pipe from our house to the lake—a dis¬ 
tance of 200 feet,with a considerable fall. 
Last week the water from the sink re¬ 
fused to pass off and we were obliged to 
hunt for the obstruction in the pipes. It 
was found within a few feet of the lake. 
The roots of an Amorpha fmtieosa (False 
Indigo) had made their way through the 
joints, though well cemented, as we sup¬ 
posed, and taken full possession of the 
pipe for two feet. The soap and grease 
had collected upon the roots and extend¬ 
ed toward the house in an almost solid 
mass for ten feet. Do not tell us that 
it is unnecessary to thoroughly close the 
joints of drainage pipes if trees grow near 
them! 
We wonder if the same folly is going 
to occur in case of Hereford cattle as 
was committed with Short-horns eleven 
years ago, aud more recently with .Jer¬ 
seys. At a late sale of the deceased W. 
Carwardine’s herd at Leominster, Eng¬ 
land, Lord Wilton, eleven years old, was 
bid off by Mr. Vaughan, of Indiana, for 
3,800 guineas ($19,391.) Now there is 
great extra risk in transporting so aged a 
bull across the Atlantic, and his service at, 
best cannot last long. Pleuro-pneumonia 
is also breaking out among our herds, and 
there is no telling how destructive it may 
be; and in any event, this and the Texas 
fever and other diseases prevailing more 
or less among our cattle, ought to be u 
warning to the breeders not to run prices 
extravagantly high, for just so sure as 
they do, a ruinous depreciation will soon 
follow with lessened sales, aud great 
losses will be sustained by those who 
have been committing this folly. Mr. 
Culbertson, of Wisconsin, we think, paid 
810 guinas, ($3,930) for Grove 3d, a Here¬ 
ford bull, last year; but this was only 
about one-fifth of the price paid lor Lord 
Wilton. Perhaps the aristocratic name 
helped to augment the price of the latter! 
Again, we have planted all the newer 
and newest kinds of tomatoes. Each has 
been kept separate and carefully staked. 
With the exception of the King Humbert, 
there isn’t enough difference between 
them to shake a stick at. Perfection, 
Mayflower, Paragon, Cardinal, Favorite 
are nearly all alike, and the one is just as 
good as t’other. Humbert is distinct, 
and we shall speak of it again. Alpha is 
early, but in no other way superior. A 
tomato sent to us to be tested by D. 8. 
Marvin, seems to be about the same as 
Alpha. 
We have received several baskets of 
beautiful Niagara Grapes from different 
friends. But we do not care to say moie 
about this grape than we have said, 
though our opinion of it has in no sense 
changed. It is well known that our Mr. 
Woodward was chiefly instrumental in 
its introduction, and although we have 
explicitly stated that his entire pecuniary 
interest in the Niagara Grape Company 
ceased before bis interest iu the Rural 
New-Yorker began, yet there are always 
those who, if given half a chance, are 
ready to throw doubt upon such state¬ 
ments. 
Where the land is high and very dry 
—as in case of drought—we are pretty 
well convinced that potatoes had better 
not be harvested until frost. We have 
made no exact tests, but the feeling is 
upon us, from one year’s experience with 
another’s, that potatoes in such a soil will 
so harden and mature that they will keep 
longer and shrink and rot less than when 
harvested as soon as the vines die. We have 
had no rain at the Rural Grounds iu live 
weeks. The early-dug potatoes are rot¬ 
ting, while those in the ground, so far as 
we have examined, are perfectly sound. 
very short time, and, by repeating the 
operation at intervals of one or two weeks, 
the ground can be kept entirely clean. 
See to it now that all weeds grown in and 
about the garden Are carefully cut or 
pulled, and all, root and branch, placed 
in a pile and burned. The seeds are so 
fully matured that it is not safe to place 
them even in a compost heap, and it is 
better to sacrifice what little mammal 
value they contain than to scatter the 
seeds. By cutting or pulling them when 
damp, hut few seeds will shell out, and 
by putting an armful of dry straw or 
brush at the bottom of the pile and leav¬ 
ing them till mid-day, they can be easily 
burned. Every day you now neglect this 
little “chore,” the* more weeds you will 
have to contend with next Summer. Go 
for them at once! 
--- 
TnEHK seems to be a positive mania for 
betting on the result of the present presi¬ 
dential election. Syndicates are formed 
for wagering hundreds of thousands of 
dollars in various sums on the election or 
defeat of this or that candidate by this 
or that majority. Bets on all sorts of 
combined events are common. The 
gambling fraternity are, of course, unus¬ 
ually busy; but quiet, staid men are 
nearly as venturesome. Formerly bets of 
hats by ordinary folks were frequently 
made in a jocose mood; cranky parti¬ 
sans would also pledge themselves to per¬ 
form some absurd feat in ease of the de¬ 
feat of their favorite candidate; but bet¬ 
ting nowadays is pursued, not for excite¬ 
ment, but for money. The speculation 
in the stock and produce markets through¬ 
out the country is, doubtless, responsible 
for much of the bettiug mania. It has 
bred the gambling spirit in the country. 
Many of the brokers and speculators in 
railway stocks, petroleum, grain, etc., 
look upon a bet ns a pure business t rans¬ 
action, feeling it as honest to stake their 
money on the speed of a horse or the re¬ 
sult of an election as on the chances of 
the market, This pernicious spirit is 
spreading. The complications and un¬ 
certainty of the present presidential can¬ 
vass stimulate it. All good men should 
earnestly discourage it,; no good man 
should yield to it. A bet decides nothing 
except the rashness of the better—Don’t 
bet. 
CONTAGIOUS PLEURO PNEUMONIA 
AND THE VETERINARIANS. 
There is a chance on the farm to make 
use of idle times and rainy days, to do 
more than mend broken harness and tools, 
or loaf about the barn. With a few good 
tools, the time can be well spent iu mak¬ 
ing such things as are needed about house 
and barn, and which can be simply made. 
It is often a choice between doing without 
or making many convenient things, and, 
when possible, it is, of course, the best 
way to make them. After stepping up 
two feet, to get into the house for weeks, 
or using a loose, shaking board resting on 
chunks of wood for a step, the time given 
to making a strong, permanent set of steps 
seems well used. Making and driving in 
strong pegs for liangiug the harness, or 
fashioning a box with a lid for currycomb, 
cards and brushes, will make a man won¬ 
der how he managed to do without them. 
The boys will make good use of the tools, 
for if they make nothing of practical value 
at first, they will learn how to use them. 
The chicken-coops that fall to pieces when 
moved, ladders that let the boys down 
faster than they want to come, wl.en tried, 
and benches with very uneven legs, will 
be followed by better work, and conve¬ 
nient things will multiply under their 
hands, after they fairly understand how 
to make them. 
One of the most thoughtless and un¬ 
wise things a farmer can do, and yet 
a practice so common that a farmer’s gar¬ 
den has become a synonym for a w T eed 
nursery, is to let weeds take possession of 
every place made vacant by the removal of 
any crop. This practice not only exhausts 
the fertility of the soil, but fills it so full 
of noxious seeds as to greatly multiply 
the labor of keeping a clean garden the 
following season. It is a very sensible 
practice to so arrange the various plants 
that those maturing together, at dif¬ 
ferent times, shall be grouped, so that as 
they mature and are removed, the vacant 
ground shall all come in one plot, gradu¬ 
ally enlarging, as others mature and are 
removed. When so placed, a boy, horse 
and cultivator can go over the ground in a 
The doubt felt by many as to the con¬ 
tagious character of the pleuro-pneumonia 
prevalent among cattle in different parts 
of the country, has been expressed most 
emphatically by the Chicago Livestock 
Exchange, which has frequently denied 
the existence of a single case of genuine 
contagious pleuro-pncumonia in this coun¬ 
try. Lately it was resolved by this body 
that the extent of disease among cattle in 
the West was exaggerated, and that for 
the purpose of determining beyond ques¬ 
tion whether or not the disease now de¬ 
clared to exist in Illinois is contagious, 
the Exchange should place at the disposal 
of Commissioner Luring ten head of cat¬ 
tle to be placed among any cattle in the 
State, which may be declared by the 
Commissioner to be afflicted with conta¬ 
gious pleuro-pneuinonia; these cattle to 
run with the diseased herds in the same 
manner as cattle run and feed together on 
the farm, for the period of three months. 
This resolution was sent to Commis¬ 
sioner Loring, who referred it to Dr. D. 
E. Salmon, Chief of the Bureau of Ani¬ 
mal ludustry. In reply, the latter says 
that the resolution assumes that the re¬ 
ports of the officers of the Department 
arc so improbable and questionable as 
regards the extent of the disease and its 
contagious nature, that experiments in¬ 
volving the loss of three months’ time in 
the efforts to control the disease, should 
be made before a definite conclusion is 
reached or a decided course of action 
adopted. The extent of the disease can 
be readily ascertained by visiting the 
infected herds or corresponding with 
their owners, whose addresses are 
given in the reports to the Department. 
Six hundred animals have been exposed 
to the disease and 90 cases of pleuro¬ 
pneumonia have so far resulted, in spite of 
vigorous efforts to arrest the malady. A 
large number of the affected linimals have 
been examined after death, and iu every one 
there has been found the characteristic 
appearance of the lungs, described the 
world over as peculiar to lung-plague. 
The highest veterinary authorities in 
the country have, after investigation, been 
unanimous on this point. In every in¬ 
stance the infection has been traceable to 
one original herd. As a matter of 
fact, therefore, the test of communi 
cability has already been made on a 
scale compared to which the little ex¬ 
periment proposed by the Live Stock 
Exchange sinks into insignificance. 
Owing to the long period of incubation of 
the disease, the proposed experiment would 
require at least three months to produce 
definite results, and it might be four or 
five mouths before a sufficient proportion 
of the animals would be attacked to fur¬ 
nish satisfactory proofs of contagion. 
Within that time, it is hoped that every 
vestige of the disease will he removed 
from the West, and this will almost cer¬ 
tainly be done in Illinois by the slaughter 
of all affected animals. In view of the 
extremely contagious nature of the mala¬ 
dy, and of the great danger to the vast 
herds of the West, unless it is promptly 
stamped out wherever it appears, the Doc¬ 
tor, it seems to us, is quite right in saying 
that to allow animals suffering from this 
dangerous disease to live and graze on the 
pastures of Illinois; to go beyond this 
and deliberately set to work propagat¬ 
ing the scourge in the very heart of the 
stock-growing region of America—“to 
follow such a course for three or four 
months, and in the meantime to allow t he 
plague to gather headway in other locali¬ 
ties, would be idiotic and inexcusable.” 
The Department has for months been test¬ 
ing the contagiousness of the disease on 
this side of the Alleghanies, and there is 
therefore no real reason why any needless 
risk should be incurred by experimenting 
on the other side of the range. 
While the Rural New' Yorker has al¬ 
ways been careful to avoid any exaggera¬ 
tion with regard to the prevalence of con¬ 
tagious pleuro - pneumonia among our 
herds, it has nlw r ays stoutly emphasized 
the great danger to our vast cattle inter¬ 
ests, especially in the West, from the exist¬ 
ence of even a few r scattered eases in any 
part of the country. That such cases have 
existed we have acknowledged from the 
first. The men appointed to investigate 
the nature of the disease by the State and 
General Governments, could have been 
selected only on account of their supposed 
competency. Among them have been the 
highest veterinary authorities in the 
country, men of honorable records in va¬ 
rious offices they have filled. It is incon¬ 
ceivable that all of the investigators—at-d 
there are at least half-a-hundred men well 
known in their respective States—should 
have been mistaken in their diagnosis of 
a disease so well known and so clearly in¬ 
dicated by well-marked symptoms as con¬ 
tagious pleuro pneumonia. Some of them 
hold official positions under the State or 
General Governments; raos' of them, how¬ 
ever, are independent practitioners; but all 
are unanimous as to the contagious nature 
of the malady. The charge, therefore, that 
the officials misrepresented or exaggerated 
the gravity or extent of the disease to insure 
lucrative positions for themselves, appears 
to us inconsistent with the facts; and, in¬ 
deed, it would be a harsh assumption to 
suppose that the chosen officers of the 
State and General Governments should, in 
their official reports, make deliberate mis¬ 
representations with regard to so supreme¬ 
ly important a matter, from the basest and 
most sordid motives. 
-- « » ♦ - 
BREVITIES. 
Look to the cellar. A foul odor is as dan¬ 
gerous as a thief against whom we are careful 
to lock our doors. 
Our watermelons aud inuskuiehms, on spe¬ 
cial plats, are failures this year. We planted 
all of the new kinds, but the season has been 
unfavorable. The melons are sum 11 and low- 
flavored. Melons must hare a hot Bummer in 
our Northern climate. 
We have already told our readers that on 
the 14th and Kith of March we placed hens on 
26 Wyandotte eggs and succeeded iu hatching 
11 chicks. September 23 the first egg was laid 
by one of this hatching. 
Now, prepare your soil for currants, rasp¬ 
berries, blackberries and grapes. As well may 
you plant them now as in the Spring, aud bet 
ter, too, on several accounts. A mulcih of lit¬ 
tery stuff over the roots will do good Sifted 
coal ashes will give a decided protection. 
Marshall P. Wilder writes us that he 
has prepared strawberry plants for proving 
the truth of the statements which have re 
cently beeu made regarding the effects of 
fertilization. The plants will be under glass 
where there can be no doubt as to the effects 
of the pollens or different varieties 
A circular on silk culture, issued, free, by 
Commissioner Loring, is designed as a practi¬ 
cal encouragement of this industry. Congress 
having appropriated $15,000 for the purpose, 
all persons who are unable to buy silk-worm 
eggs, and are desirous of engaging iu silk- 
culture, will be furuished with them gratuit¬ 
ously bv the Department. Send in your ap¬ 
plications. therefore, promptly, all ye would- 
be silk culturists! 
Owing to very dry weather and a powdery 
soil, we were unable to begin plautiug our 
special wheat plots until the 29th of last mouth. 
A line shower prevailed the night before. Iu 
a week or so. we shall be enabled to inform 
our friends whether the few grains gathered 
from our hybrid between wheat and rye (the 
one which most resembled rye) germinate or 
not. We have no fear tor the other grains re¬ 
sulting from the same cross. 
