lege crystallized it in a remark to me, not long 
ago. He had just heard me, in a “ Farmers’ 
Institute,” urging farmers to educate their 
sons. “Ah !’’said he, "You’ll hatch ducks. 
They’ll swim away from the farm !” I could 
only reply, “If a hen hatches ducks, then 
somebody has been putting duck’s eggs under 
her.”„ I cannot now stop to ask whether it is 
the colleges or the farmers themselves that 
have done it. 
One thing is certain—our farmers cannot 
always thus furnish educated men for all the 
professions and higher grades of business, un¬ 
less some ct these educated farmers’ sons re¬ 
turn to the farms, and show the value of edu¬ 
cation there. “All the rivers flow into the 
sea, yet is not the sea full,” Nor are the riv¬ 
ers empty, nor the land dry, Why ? Recauee 
the waters “ return again upon the land 
because the sun’s heat takes up the waters of 
the sea, holds them in invisible vapor, or In 
fleecy clouds, whence they descend in showers 
to make the pastures green, and cause the 
springs to gush and the rivers to flow. And 
it would seem that a like return must in some 
w r ay be made from the colleges to the farms, 
or in time an ignorant peasantry will result 
that will furnish neither funds nor boys for 
the colleges. 
Shall we send our sons to an agricultural 
college ? Alas the deplorable fact meets 
us, that not even these colleges (with one 
or two notable exceptions') graduate farm¬ 
ers. Mr. B. F. Johnson, in these columns, 
implied that it was because the presidents 
have not had agricultural knowledge, tastes 
and instincts. Professor Caldwell blames 
the farmers; says in substance that the 
colleges cannot make bricks without straw, 
or even clay. To show that it is not 
the fault of the non-agricultural presidents, 
he says: “The man who has now for several 
years filled the president’s chair in what is 
generally supposed to be the most successful 
agricultural college in the land (Michigan, I 
presume), was not a practical and scientific 
agriculturist; he proved to be the right man 
iu the right place, because he knew' how to 
get the right sort of men about him.” 
Professor Caldwell might have added, “ be¬ 
cause, true to the spirit of the laws that cre¬ 
ated these agricultural colleges, he manfully 
set about the problem of furnishing a thor¬ 
ough theoretical and practical education in 
agriculture, and of Convincing the farmers 
of Michigan that their sons needed just such 
education. He looked to bis base of supplies. 
He educated practical and scientific farmers 
and fruit-growers, and sent them abroad in 
Michigan to prove by their fanning that such 
ed ucation pays. Professor Cald well speaks of 
the “disheartening apathy of farmers,” and 
says that the tribe saying, that “one man car. 
lead a horse to water, but ten men can’t make 
him|drinfa,” is a fair representation of the state 
of mind of at least ninety uine-hundredths of 
the farmers in regard to agricultural educa¬ 
tion;” that no matter who is president, “they 
will neither go uear the college, nor send their 
sons there that it is this that has “ forced 
so many of them to work to a greater or less 
extent in other educational directions than 
that originally laid out for them that “if 
farmers’ sons, eager for new 1 light iu farming, 
had crowded to the colleges as fast as they 
were opened,” then “if men (professors) could 
have been found, they would have been pro¬ 
cured by trustees and presidents I” 
Hoes not this sound like a lamentable con¬ 
fession that thw men were not found and not 
obtained. And yet the farmers’ sons are 
blamed for not at once crowding to these 
colleges to get the training which confessedly 
they could not get if they weot. Does not 
this reverse the law of supply and demands 
As a general principle, indeed, demand will 
in time draw or create the necessary supply; 
but in particular cases and given localities, 
the supply, especially of new things, precedes 
and even creates the demand. There is what 
may be called a potential or latent demand, 
but it must be awakened or developed. You 
must display your goods or machinery and 
prove their value or utility, to create or 
secure the demand. How were mowing 
machines first introduced, or any new thing? 
Did some company erect fine buildings, put 
up the sign “mowing machine factory,” and 
then fold their hands and say “as soon as 
farmers crowd to our factory eager for mow¬ 
ing machines, then if inventors can be found 
and if material can be bought, we will make 
them?” No, they employed inventors, bought 
their patents, collected material and manufac¬ 
turing appliances, expended thousands before 
they got a dollar in return, made the machines, 
took them to farmers' fields and proved to 
them above their inertia, and in spite of their 
prejudices, that the machines would cut the 
grass cheaper and better than their scythes, 
and then, and not till then, the farmers bought 
the machines. 
And I believe the case is just the same in 
regard to agricultural education. There is a 
potential or latent demand for it, which will 
FES 3 
be active enough as soon as the utility of such 
education is shown—and not till then. 
Indeed Professor Caldwell seems to admit 
as much in his next paragraph. He says 
they (the agricultural college?) will not pros¬ 
per till it is made to appear that such special 
education as is gained there does really make 
a more successful slid prosperous farmer of a 
man.” Well, in Heaven’s name, who or what 
agencs T is to make this appear, nnless it be 
these same agricultural colleges munificently 
endowed from our public domain for that 
very purpose? Again he says, "No amount of 
talk and argument about the usefulness to the 
farmer of a sound knowledge of botany, 
chemistry, etc., will go so far towards help¬ 
ing the cause for which the agricultural col¬ 
leges are laboring or are wilting to labor (sic!) 
as the presence in a neighborhood of a single 
graduate of such a college who, as his neigh¬ 
bors can plainly see, is a smarter and more 
successful farmer than they because of the 
well stored mind which he brought, away from 
the college with his diploma.” Not in a Bpirit 
of carping criticism, hut with a heavy heart, 
I ask, is not the case hopeless by his own 
showing? These colleges, now after nearly 20 
years, are “willing to labor” for the cause of 
scientific agriculture if the farmers’ sons 
“eager for new light” will only crowd to them 
as fast as they are opened. But they will 
never be eager nor “crowd” till “the presence 
of a single graduate in a neighborhood” all 
abroad in the State shall have demonstrated 
the utility of such knowledge; students will 
not come till graduates go forth, and gradu¬ 
ates cannot be made unless you have students. 
Here is a wide river with a boat on yonder 
shore. You cannot cross the river till you 
get the boat, and you cannot get the boat till 
you cross the river. 
Is the prospect encouraging in Ohio, for ex¬ 
ample,' The land grants were made 20 years 
ago. The first deeade was spent in deciding 
whether we should have an agricultural col¬ 
lege or divide the grant up among existing 
colleges. During the second decade our “Ag¬ 
ricultural an d Mechanical College” was estab¬ 
lished at, Columbus, Its endowments are 
over a million dollars. It has, perhaps, the 
finest chemical, physical and mechanical 
laboratories in the West. It long ago out¬ 
grew the name “Agricultural and Mechanical 
College,” and assumed that of State Univer¬ 
sity. It has a full dozen of Professors, but 
until about a year ago it had but a single 
professor for its entire agricultural half. It 
numbers its students by the hundreds and its 
graduates in no inconsiderable numbers, but 
to this day it has never sent forth n single 
agricultural graduate. It teaches almost 
the entire range of literature and science 
taught at Harvard or at Yale, and has hun¬ 
dreds of students, but has scarcely a baker’s 
dozen in its regular agricultural course. With 
bitter disappointment we ask, “When shall 
the presence of graduates froni|tb { s agricul¬ 
tural (?) college, all abroad in the neighbor- ' 
hoods of this our goodly State, demonstrate 
the value of an agricultural education and 
cause farmers’ sons to crowd to our State 
University for one ?” At the present rate it 
would take a century or more. 
When a theological seminary is endowed 
it is expected that it will graduate ministers; 
and it does. When a medical college isestab- 
lished it is expected that it will graduate 
doctors of medicine; and it does. And it 
would he deemed a perversion of fuuds if it 
graduated lawyers or ministers, or anything 
bvt doctors. And when a million dollars are 
given from the sale of a part of the public 
domain and from State or county taxation 
“to establish and maintain an agricultural and 
mechanical college in Ohio,” we have a right to 
expect that it shall graduate scientific far¬ 
mers and mechanics; and “no amount of talk 
and argument" can convince the farmers of 
Ohio that this great institution is fulfilling 
the design of Its founders if it only does 
the same kind of work already done by 20 
other colleges in the State, whether it does 
that work better or worse than the other 20. 
And if when we send our sons to this college 
they invariably become something else than 
farmers—“ hatch out ducks’’ as the learned 
pre8ideDt expressed it, then it doesn’t take a 
very shrewd chicken fancier to guess who has 
furnished the ducks’ eggs. 
For every college or university has its at 
mosphere, its genius, its traditions. Those 
of some colleges are toward theology, as of 
Williams and Oberlin. Of some toward lit¬ 
erature's Yale and Harvard. Of some to¬ 
ward science, as Cornell and John Hopkins. 
In like manner I think we have a right to 
claim that the influences of all our agricul¬ 
tural colleges shall be decidedly towards, 
and not away from agriculture. I am glad 
to say that at least in Michigan and Kan sa s 
and Mississippi, and perhaps Massachusetts, 
the influences are already of this sort; and 
that the leaven of their successful work for 
agriculture is working elsewhere. In Ohio, 
for example, active steps are now being taken 
indeed are already in part taken, to make our 
State University strong and thorough in its 
agricultural work. 
I must ask space in your columns hereafter 
to show how, in my opinion, the farmers may 
meet and encourage this evident desire, and 
make these institutions more nearly what it 
was»intemled they should be. 
f arm Crouomi), 
THE SULKY PLOW—AND NITROGEN' 
B. F. JOHNSON. 
Doubtless r great majority of the readers 
of the Rural will conjecture from the epi¬ 
graph I may have something new and inter¬ 
esting to say about the sulky or riding plow, 
but what connection, near or remote, that 
useful implement can have with nitrogen, 
looks like “ one of those things no fellow can 
find out.” And yet the two may lie said to 
be closely, if not inseparably, associated, both 
in practical and scientific agriculture, as most 
will be willing to admit when I am through. 
That there should he considerable differences 
of opinion as to sulky plows, arising not only 
from differences of structure, but from wide 
divergencies of soil on which they are used, 
is not at all surprising; but that a Western 
farmer or mechanic, who has used them or 
seen them in use, should regard them as an 
exacting, a clumsy, a useless or an uncalled- 
for diversion in the form of the breaking plow, 
is remarkable. For most, if not all, strong, 
black soils of the prairie, and the equally rich 
yellow and red loams and clay loams of the 
timber, under certain circumstances the sulky 
plow is absolutely essential for the thorough 
breaking of the sod. These circumstances are 
when in cold, wet Springs, like that of 1882, 
great acreages of corn and small grain land 
are at the time of seeding too wet to plow, 
or, being plowed and seeded, the crop is 
drowned out, and ro cultivation following, a 
rank growth of grassand weeds appears; then 
the next. Spring, the sod has become so thick 
and tough a common walking plow will not 
do the work of turning it and burying the ac¬ 
cumulated weeds and rubbish under and out 
of sight, and it is only a sulky plow of good 
form that will. Ami so in ease of the demand 
for plowing under a heavy cane or broom- 
corn stubble, the common walking plow is 
quite unequal to the task, both on account of 
the difficulty of keeping it in the ground, and 
the constant accumulation of weeds and stub¬ 
ble in front, helping to lift the plow out. And 
the capacity of a twenty-inch sulky plow of 
good form (and there are many of them), 
when drawn by three or four heavy mules or 
horses, hitched abreast, to cut a furrow slice 
twenty inches wide and five inches thick, and 
then cover completely under and out of sight 
a broom corn stubble equal in quantity to the 
stover of any two crops of corn, must be seen 
to be understood, believed in and appreciated. 
It is made the reproach of sulky plows that 
though they seem to require less draft than 
walking plows of the Rame size, at the end of 
the day’s work they really have tired the 
teams more—a fact which must be admitted, 
but with the sufficient explanation, that the 
spiky never shirks its task, but goes straight 
through everything; while the other jumps 
out at the least obstruction, and in doing so 
relieves the team from the constant strain of 
the draft—a letting-up which tells in the 
course of a w arm Spring or Summer day. 
Tested by the dynamometer for a given 
length of uniform furrow, the beet sulky 
plows require less draft, by from 10 to 86 per 
cent., than the common walking plows; but, 
at the end of the day’s work, the sum of the 
forces required to keep the two in motion will 
he found to be from 10 to 20 per cent, more 
for the sulky, and for the reason that, on ac¬ 
count of its structure, the sulky is always un¬ 
der draft, while the other shirks or jumps 
over obstructions and lessens the aggregate 
force employed. As for the driver, it is near¬ 
ly as tiresome for a healthy and active man 
to sit and ride a sulky plow all day as to fol¬ 
low a walking plow; hut where the man has 
the choice either to ride or to walk when he 
pleases, as in the average plowing, the advan¬ 
tage is vastly in favor of the sulky, 8o, too, 
in respect to bnj^s, or old, or feeble, or lame, 
or rheumatic men, they can manage a sulky 
when to handle and guide a walking plow 
would he out of the question. To sum up, 
then, in a few words, the sulky plow has be¬ 
come nearly as essential to modern Western 
agriculture os the corn-planter, the self bind¬ 
er, or the many-ahoveled two- w heeled eulfci- 
tor; aside from the consideration that when 
properly ased it is powerful for good In restor¬ 
ing to the soil, where used, its lost vegetable 
substance, and, in that matter, its deficient 
nitrogen. 
But let us explain and make that enplana- 
tion in the form of a series of brief questions 
and nearly as brief answers. 1. What has 
been the leading vice or mistake in agricul¬ 
tural practice for the last half or third of the 
century in the older as well as t.he newer set¬ 
tled parts of the country? What, but the per¬ 
sistent destruction by fire, or otherwise, of 
what was thought to have little or no agri¬ 
cultural value—wild grasses, weeds, stubbles, 
straw and all refuse vegetable matter. 2, 
What was the cause of this destruction, and 
what is the consequence? The cause was in¬ 
sufficient plows and other soil-breaking and 
disturbing implements, which required the 
land should be cleared up and the weeds and 
rubbish disposed of before these imperfect in¬ 
struments of culture could work. This has 
been and is to this day peculiarly the condition 
of things in the cotton belt, where the small 
single mule and the very light cast iron plow 
were and are relied on, notouly to break the 
land, bat to cultivate the crops, both of com 
and cotton, l’he consequence has been the loss 
of vegetable matter to the extent that some of 
the thinner soils have so little of it and its in¬ 
separable associate, nitrogen, they have beeu 
exhausted to the point of barrenness, while 
the better classes of soils make good crops 
only in seasons of copious rainfalls. 3. Under 
such a state of things, what remains to be 
done and how shall we do it? We must 
restore vegetable matter to the soil by incor¬ 
porating with it all excess of grasses, weeds 
and rubbish which are produced with the 
crops or belong to them; and where these 
are not sufficient, we must adopt the general 
practice of plowing heavy grain crops under, 
like clover, rye, buckwheat and other well- 
known plants. As to how we shall doit, it 
is plain this is the part the sulky plow has 
been invented and called upon to play, and 
that it is equal to the task is proved by the 
fact the demand for them is constantly in¬ 
creasing. 4. But what intimate connection 
has the sulky plow with nitrogen ? In saving 
from fire and burying in the earth dead or 
alive vegetable matter, the sulky plow in 
that act adds a certain quantity of nitrogen 
to the soil; for where there is vegetable mat¬ 
ter in a state of decay, or otherwise, there is 
found its inseparable associate, nitrogen; and 
this is so true that no lime-stone soil, or gran¬ 
itic or slaty soil, containing a large amount 
of soluble potash can be exhausted by re¬ 
peated croppings, so long as there is a reason¬ 
able amount of vegetable matter in or re¬ 
turned to it. In a few words, soil exhaustion 
means a total lack of vegetable matter and its 
inseparable associate nitrogen, and any course 
which restores the former, brings back the 
latter. . r >. Are we then to understand that 
most of the discussion going on in the papers 
concerning nitrogen, means simply that it has 
been lost to our soil by thoughtless and waste 
ful agricultural practice, and that all we 
have to do to restore the virgin fertility of 
our lands, is to return to them vegetable 
matter in sufficient quantity? Yes, that is 
about all there is of it, So then it begins to 
be quite apparent that the sulky plow has ap¬ 
peared on the scene contemporaneously with 
the general discussion on the subject of nitro¬ 
gen, and why there is therefore a certain pro¬ 
priety in the heading of this contribution— 
The Sulky Plow—and Nitrogen, 
- ♦♦ ♦-. 
Preserving- Shingles. 
“What is the best way of preserving 
shingles.” asked the Rural in a late issue. 
Here is my way; Make a solution of blue 
vitriol by boiling one pound in a bucketful of 
water, adding one pound of Brazil wood 
which gives the mixture a black, glossy ap¬ 
pearance. The shingles are not only rendered 
lasting but also fire proof by dipping them 
before using, as far as exposed to the weather. 
The proportion of vitriol to water makes 
little difference, more or less can be used. My 
experience with lime water is that it hastens 
decay and hence I would advise no one to 
try it. J. C. Ericson, 
Improvement in Home-Made Rollers.— 
An improvement can be made in the durabil¬ 
ity and cheapness of construction of farm 
rollers by using wheels of worn-out mowing 
machines for the heads, instead of plauk, and 
putting on tires to keep the staves in place 
(old, worn-out tires are just as good as any). 
There will be no joints to hold water and rot, 
and no staves getting loose, as when bolted or 
NOTES ON BACK NUMBERS. 
T. H. HOSKINS, M. D. 
Rural Dec. 16.—The Rural Farm need not 
be ashamed of the Jersey bull Sam—nor the 
Rural of his picture. He is a mighty good- 
looking beast, and of just the kind that haM 
given the best satisfaction iu Vermont, the 
“old-fashioned” white and fawn Jerseys. 
