APRIL 7 
As the amount of the applied nitrogen which 
outers the crop is dependent upon an immense 
variety of circumstances, it is evident that the 
experience of a number of seasons can alone 
produce results of any value for forming an 
estimate upon this point. 
• ff 1 am correct, in saying that, even in a year 
of the greatest abundance, more nitrogen is 
applied than is taken up in the crop, the dif¬ 
ference taken up on an are-rage of years must 
he somewhat in proportion to the difference 
between the largest and the average crop. 
In the application of nitrates or ammonia to 
growing crops in England, I am inclined to 
think it will lie hardly safe to calculate upon a 
loss of much less than 60 per cent. 
Rothtmisted, England. 
Clrbonnillm-al. 
FORESTRY No. 33. 
Forest Nursery. Part VI. 
DK. JOHN A. IVARDER. 
BERRIES OR PULPY SEEDS—SEPARATION FROM 
THE PULP—PREPARATION FOR PLANTING 
MACLUKA—MR. MANN'S METHODS, 
A n ts a >ul A corns—Chestnuts,Buckeyes. Beeches 
<inks — Preservation. Ptantiiu /, Winter Care 4 
Tap-Roots — Nursery Treatment — Walnuts 
and Hickories — Treatment of Nets and 
Plants. 
Berry and Pulpy Seeds need special 
management in their preparation and in the 
treatment of their seedlings; the nutlets of 
many are quite small, and some have hard, 
woody or homy cases that make them refrac¬ 
tory and I will throw them into class four. 
They all require to lie separated from their 
fleshy envelopes by mechanical means, uided 
by maceration, and our common stone-fruits 
are benefited by freezing. Papaws, persim¬ 
mons, apples, pears, quinces and other fleshy 
fruits will need £o be crushed so as to separate 
tin seeds by washing. Stone-fruits, including 
Hie Wild Cherry, Cclta'a, Mountain-Ash, Dog- 
wood, etc., can be separated by macerating or 
wash tog: after being dried the}' may lie safely 
stored, but they a re the better for exposure to 
moisture and frosts. 
The true berries, such as the Rubu-s family, 
the mulberries, the Osage Orange, currants, 
gooseberries, amelanchiers, elders, ami some 
others, may be separated from the pulp by 
crushing and washing. Many of these have 
small seeds, and many of the nutlets are quite 
hard; the latter are improved in their vege¬ 
tative power by soaking or by exposure to 
frosts. Excepting the Madura, with its 
larger seeds and sturdy young plants, which 
may be grown in the seed drills, the most of 
these seeds should be sowed in beds or boxes tit | 
linst and lined out afterwards. All these seeds 
retain their vitality sufficiently well after 
being dried, but some of them should be soak¬ 
ed until they begin to sprout before sowing 
them in the Spring, nor should they be put in 
until the ground is warm. 
The seedsof celastrus, euonymns, magnolias, 
hollies and some others are covered with a 
coating of soft, tenacious material that should 
be removed before planting them. Mr. Jeu- 
kius keeps magnolia seeds mixed with old saw¬ 
dust. out-doors and has them growing satisfac¬ 
torily after Bpriug planting, though they ger¬ 
minate slowly, lying until June: he prefers 
Fall planting of the Im lily-gathered seeds. 
Many magnolias naturally make only one, the 
terminal bud, the first year, which is a favor¬ 
ite morsel for the rabbits, which must lie kept 
away from them, 
The Madura or Osage Oruuge, long exten¬ 
sively propagated for hedging, is now assum¬ 
ing importance among our forest t rees on ac¬ 
count of its valuable timber and because its 
merits have been officially recognized by the 
Laud Commissioner of the United States, so 
that its treatment in the forest nursery de¬ 
serves fuller notice. 
The round fruit is made up of a stringy pulp 
holding together the numerous seeds, which 
are grouped together like radii from t he cen¬ 
ter. The oranges, so called from tlieir resem¬ 
blance to the citrus fruit, fall from the trees 
on the access of frost: these may l*e gathered 
and exposed to a hard freeze, after which they 
soften, and by maceration and washing the 
seeds are readily separated and cleaned: they 
must be well dried by exposure to the air and 
frequent stirring, as otherwise they will heat 
or grow moldy. When dried they may lie 
packed in sacks or barrels for storing or trans¬ 
portation. and cau be kept for years, but they 
will deteriorate with time. Good seed will 
feel cold to the hand. When wanted for 
planting they should lie soaked in warm water 
for one or two da ys, changing the water sever¬ 
al times; when drained they may be mixed 
with sand, one-third bulk, and kept in a warn 
place, stirred three times a day and kept damp 
by sprinkling with warm water twice a day. I 
Thus treated and kept at a temperature of 65 
or 70 degrees, the seeds will liegin to sprout 
in a couple of days, when they should be put 
into the ground. The seeds should lie well 
sprouted or pipped, but this must uot be over¬ 
done, ns the sprouts are easily broken off, 
Mr. Wm. Maun, who grew the plants in Im¬ 
mense numbers in Illinois, recommended soak¬ 
ing the seeds by the bagful, t hrowing the sacks 
into a horse-pond, uutil thoroughly wet and 
germinated, lie planted them with a wheat 
drill, stopping alternate outlets; he cultivated 
them by horse power, mowed off the tops with 
a harvesting machine, and cut t he roots eight 
inches below the surface with a tree digger or 
share-plow of his own design, and then pulled 
them from the loose soil, They wore then 
counted in hundreds, tied in bundles and stored 
in collars, and packed in soil, moss or saw¬ 
dust. Smaller quantities may be hselod-iu 
out-doors, or piled with alternate layers of 
soil and covered with earth securely from 
frost and air. With all these labor-saving ar¬ 
rangements Mr. Maun was aide to supply the 
market at very low figm-es. This may be cited 
as an illustration of the possibilities of Ameri¬ 
can intelligence and enterprise applied in new 
liues of industry, enabling even high-priced 
labor to compete with the world. 
Nuts and Acorns are thus grouped to¬ 
gether because they have similar natures and 
require similar treatment. Most of them are 
remarkably sensitive of both extremes of 
moisture and dryness, while others, being rich 
in oily matter, are liable to become rancid if 
kept too long in a dry state. Of the first group 
are tin* chestnuts, honse-chestnuts and buck¬ 
eyes, beech-uuts and acorns. Their natural 
moisture, when freshly gathered into a mass, 
causes them to heat and to sprout prematurely 
or to become moldy unless carefully dried and 
frequently shoveled over. On the other hand, 
'i lii'ii once perfectly dried the tissue of their 
cotyledons Is'comes very hard, and their vital¬ 
ity is usually lost. Many of these seeds will 
sprout when lying upon the ground within a 
few days after their fall from the trees if ex¬ 
posed to a warm Autumnal shower. 
It has been advised to mix these sissls with 
damp, not wet, sand so soon as they are col¬ 
lected. and to keep them covered from the 
rain and in a low temperature: if at all too 
wet they " ill spoil. Those who have had most 
experience recommend committing these nuts 
to the soil in drills or boxes so soon as they 
have been harvested. The box plan offers 
some protection from the ravages of field-mice 
and squirrels, which are very destructive. 
At the end of one growing season the seed¬ 
lings are taken up, their long tap-roots short- 
cued and the plants heeled in or stored in 
cellars, to lie set out in nursery rows the fol¬ 
lowing Spring. Some species make a very 
small growth in their'first year, though vigor¬ 
ous enough when their roots become well 
established. Some need to be kept in the nur- | 
scry rows for several years before large enough 
to In 1 planted out. 
Walnuts and hickories having very oily 
seeds are very liable to become rancid if kept 
too "arm, They may be planted at once in 
drills, They cau be mixed with sand, or they 
can lie kept out-doors iu piles exposed to tho 
elements, but must be guarded from vermin. 
Many persons insist, upon placing all the 
seedsof t his class at once into the places they 
are to occupy permanently rather than to sub¬ 
ject them to the mutilation of their tap-roots, 
which is incident to tlieir removal in and to 
the nursery rows, The danger arising from 
this process is perhaps very much overesti¬ 
mated, ns seedlings of this class are usually 
slow growers at first; it has been observed 
that those which were transplanted at one year, 
root-pruned, und set iu lines to grow, rarely 
failed to do well, and that when removed and 
planted out afterward they had a good sys- 1 
tern of brauchiug roots (hat insured their suc¬ 
cess in the plantation. Perhaps the impor¬ 
tance of preserving the tap-roots has been too 
much insisted on by theorists. It is certainly 
a more economical method to transplant and 
to cultivate in the more limited space of the 
nursery than to plant these seeds over a wide 
area that will require much labor in cultivat¬ 
ing and weed-killing for several years until the 
trees can shade the ground sufficiently to pro¬ 
tect. themselves from such intruders. Exjieri- 
meuts are in progress with young oak trees to 
test these questions. Some acorns were plant 
eel where the trees are to stand, others were 
started iu boxes that confined the root* or in¬ 
clined them horizontally until set out atone 
year old, while others sowed in nulTsory 
rows in the open ground were transplanted 
and severely root-pruned at one and two 
years old, and again more or less mutilated 
when at last planted out. All are now grow¬ 
ing in their stations, uud they apjiear to thrive 
equally well. Walnuts and hickories have 
very strong tap-roots with few lateral filters, 
and when taken from tile woods and fence- 
cornel’s they are found to suffer in transplant¬ 
ing, as do many other species, but those which 
have been cultivated in the nurseries where 
they could be root-pruned, are iu u very dif- 
| ferent condition; il. must be remembered, how- 
oven that young hickories make top very slowly 
at first, until they become well established iu 
their root-system under ground: once well 
rooted, however, they grow apace. 
itonntlliirjrtt. 
AMONG THE SPRING CATALOGUES. 
MARY WAGER-FISHER. 
In looking through a half 
dozen or more, of t lie, 25 
lo SO catalogues of trees, 
plants and seeds, yearly 
advertised in the Rural 
New-Yorker, one is im¬ 
pressed with the magni¬ 
tude of the business, and 
also with the profitable¬ 
ness of it, in that the 
majority of these firms 
seud their catalogues.post¬ 
paid. gratuitously to ap¬ 
plicants, a very large ex- 
jieuse in and of itself. Ln 
addition to this, wh e u 
orders arc made for seeds, 
or plants, there are nearly, 
if not quite always, "ex- 
tras" sent, which yield 
fully as much'pleusure to 
the recipient as the filled 
order. So, all in all, 1 know of no illustrated 
literature, which for the "money 1 ' is so enjoy¬ 
able as the catalogues, or any of the minor in¬ 
vestments that yield so much interest and 
pleasure a* the results of patronizing the 
catalogue makers. 
Next to possessing the marvelous flowers 
and fruits heralded iu these publications, is 
the reading of the catalogues themselves. 
They possess one characteristic which I am 
sure is not fully appreciated. It. is that of 
bringing all these growing tilings up to the 
topmost bight of the imagination. I always 
see with ray mind's eye juy larkspurs larger I 
and bluer, m v Canterbury Bells statelier, my 
lilies queenlier and my roses superber than 
t hey actually prove to be. hut. when I turn the 
pages of these catalogues, I see every flower 
that I buve ever cultivated, portrayed mag¬ 
nificently. 1 never had in my life such spikes 
of mignonette, nor such enormous heads of 
sweet alyssum, nor candytuft so branched 
with blooms, nor such beds of royul-i’oU’d 
pansies as these catalogue people lead me to 
seel Neither do my stalks of gladioli ever dis¬ 
play so many opened flowers at a time as do 
these pictures, nor my pelargouiums stand so 
magnificently decorated with trusses of color! 
But notwithstanding my unequal endeavors. I 
like this luxurious extravagance in the cata¬ 
logues, this fascinating extravagance of even 
day beauty. That the artists who draw the pic¬ 
tures look through a magnifying glass, is nut 
the only reason why they see more in the small 
flowers than most people who cultivate l hem 
do, or that, the text makers describe blossoms 
as being ten inches across, when for most of 
us they are never overlive or six. Observa¬ 
tion and special culture produce wonders, and 
most of ns fail in lx/ith; so if we find disappoint 
mont in some of our ventures we should ex¬ 
claim iu the language of the old school reader, 
"The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves.’’ A 
little room for "allowance” is but prudent, 
especially when beholding the new Vick straw¬ 
berry which Mr. Green would huve us believe 
bv the pictures and text of his catalogues pro¬ 
duces berries at, the rate tho laud of Canaan 
did grapes in the time of Moses! Really, he 
tells the biggest strawberry story, the most 
charming talc in all the .Spring catalogues, if 
you can only believe it, ISO berries the yield 
of an average plant? Enough for the family 
breakfast. Good morning to tile milleuium! 
But to return to the flower seeds. I think 1 
never had a more interesting Rammer than 
one several years ago when 1 had all the seed¬ 
lings I wanted. My garden plot was filled 
with 82 varieties of seedling flowers, many of 
them new to me, But, as we grow older iu 
experience, we gravitate toward “settled” 
things. And so, all iu all, while there is a 
fresh and delicious charm about secedlings, 
there is a more assured and comfortable feel¬ 
ing with perennial plants. If you put. your 
money into plants and shrubs that live year 
after year, the investment seems to be more 
permanent,. And now that certain varieties 
of flowers, that, a few years ago were quite be¬ 
yond the frugal purse, can 1*> had cheaply, 
there is no reason why most people cannot en 
joy the luxury of the best. Among these are 
lilies and gladioli. The latter cost anywhere 
from a cent apiece for small bullis to *5 for 
the choicest single large bulb—a fancy price 
that none of us need waste time or money on. 
Then, if you like, you may raise your 
gladioli from the seed at. 10 cents or more per 
packet I see that John Raul even offers seeds 
of the Lilium aura turn, the superb Japan 
Lily, for 10 cents, and perhaps there are others 
who do. The old-fashioned Canterbury Bell, 
the single and blue varieties, has grown larger 
through cultivation, with a very large saucer 
under the cup or bell, and although it is a bien¬ 
nial. il is well worth waiting a year to sec, for 
where welt grown and highly placed, it pos¬ 
sesses a most striking appearance. Like lilies, 
it needs good surroundings, being fully as 
‘‘aristocratic.” Sweet Williams and the ue" 
hardy phloxes arc among the best of peren¬ 
nials. I sa w some of the improved varieties 
of Sweet William last Summer, and they were 
very beautiful, a long time in flower, very 
brilliant, and the couipact and symmetrical 
form of the plant perfect, and very different 
from the old-time, straggling Sweet. Williams 
t hat look care of themselves and finally "run 
out.” The hardy phloxes are quite as good. 1 
also saw a variety of columbine, or aquilegia, 
from California, the finest I ever saw. I think 
it would bo worth while to patronize the man 
who advertises iu the Rural seeds nf Califor¬ 
nia flowers. Heeds can be had of the clematis, 
including that of Jackmanii and all superb, 
hardy climbers. Iris Kemp fieri, the beautiful, 
hardy Japanese bis; sweet. Violets: Iberis 
sempervirens and pansies, are all good and 
enduring plants to have. Zimiias T don't care 
for, notwithstanding some of their unusual 
Cold’s, and they cannot for a moment stand 
comparison with the Autumn and Winter 
i flowering Chrysanthemums. To obtain the 
lull effect of these brave flowers, the plants 
should be massed, forming a sea of white, 
pink, and yellow foam. Every time I sec them 
in flower I think I wdl put all my future 
flower money into Chrysanthemums. And the 
same of Drummond Phlox, to realize its une- 
qualed brilliancy of coloring you should see u 
massed lied of it in bloom, A straggling plant 
here and there conveys a small idea of the 
splendor of a congregation of them. Of an¬ 
imals I think of all the lovely and loveliest 
ihiugs, there's nothing so satisfactory as pe¬ 
tunias, the single ones. The double ones, to 
my eye, look unnatural and uncomfortable, 
nud I think they must know my poor opinion, 
for 1 never could make one grow, luckily! 
But the single beauties—mottled and striped 
and variegated and plain, sweet uud unsweet— 
they arc all glorious, and will grow anywhere 
and anyhow and bloom the whole Summer 
.and Autumn through. T don’t know why the 
M’ctlsmcn (why don't women go into the flower- 
sced business and monopolize it.') ask more for 
Conutess of Kllsmerc petunia seeds than for the 
Ordinary varieties, With rno it seeds itself 
year after year: there is nothing difficult or 
rare about it—a uoat, clean, sweet, Indy-like 
blossom, but too short of stem to be worth 
much for cutting. 
It is probably heresy, but 1 do uot care 
much for picotees. A "pink" without fra¬ 
grance, to my mind, is altogether superfluous, 
however beautifully formed and colored it 
may be, Carnations and the old-fashoned, 
sweet-scented fringed pinks (whither have 
they gone?) are delicious. A lialf-dozen sweet 
violets will give a room the fragrance of a 
palat e, an odor that no other flower—uot even 
the hyacinth—rail rival. It is much the same 
with flowers as with fruits, a general striving 
for the largest and most showy; but the ex¬ 
quisite fragrance of the one, as well as the 
exquisite deliciousness of the other, resides, as 
a i ule, ill the small ones. 
I betamnus fruxiuella may be raised from 
the seed, nud is well worth having, as it is 
perfectly hardy, flow-el’s early in the Spring, 
and is both rare and beautiful. Seedsof the 
two varieties, piuk and white, east 10 cents. 
Dainj i)itsbant | nj. 
HOW TO PRODUCE MILK AT TWO 
CENTS A QUART. 
HENRY STEWART. 
Cheapness is the result of the best work 
with the best tools and methods. Let au ordi¬ 
nary person t ry to make pins or needles by 
hand and compare his w ork in regard to cheap¬ 
ness with that of a skilled mechanic, and this 
wit h the work of a machine which turns them 
out. by the thousand at the cost of one hand¬ 
made one. It is so with every product of skill 
and intelligence; one may have the means but 
may not have the skill; another may have the 
skill without the menus; und both will fail, 
while success cAn only be gained by the com- 
llined use of both menus and skill. This is es- 
pecialh t rue of dairying, wfliich is a fine art, 
hut in this art the skill to choose the means is 
as important as the skill to use them. In 
dairying the best menus of success do not con¬ 
sist of the cows alone, although these are indis¬ 
pensable, but of t he fet'd und the appliances for 
feeding. It is useless to have tho best cows in 
existence without the feed, because the cows 
are merely machines for turning feed into 
milk, just us u mill is a machine for muking 
