278 
MAY 5 
lateness of the Clydesdale and the style of the 
Cleveland Bay, we have created a horse which 
in his perfection combines all these qualities 
and is one of the most useful animals in the 
world. It is fortunate that from any com¬ 
bination of the breeds known among us a 
horse can be obtained which will answer the 
purpose which the American farmer has in 
view. It is not uniformity in size which we 
require, but uniformity iu character; and 
this can be secured by subjecting the animal 
to uuiforra influences for many generations. 
A description of a useful farm-horse will show 
this to be true, so far as his shape and size are 
concerned—and a consideration of the char¬ 
acteristics I have referred to will show the 
correctness of this view so far as concerns the 
moral qualities. 
A GOOD FARM HORSE 
should be well-balanced, strong and sagacious. 
H is head should be mild, clean, long, expres¬ 
sive. His ear should be of medium size; his 
eye full, clear and gentle. Ilis neck should be 
well-arched, muscular and of medium length. 
His shoulder should be strong and solid at the 
base; of good width from the elbow to the point 
of the shoulder, sloping moderately and strong 
at the top—with withers not too sharp. His 
back should be straight, firm, hairy, having 
what Virgil calls a “double spine, 1 ’ and joined 
to the rump by an even mass of muscle. His 
hips should be compact rather than raw or 
prominent; his stifle well-rounded; his ramp 
handsomely developed; his tail arched slightly 
from the attachment to the body. His legs 
should be straight, well-eorded, with strong 
joints and wide below the knees and hocks. 
The pasterns should be somewhat short but 
elastic. His foot should be round, open at the 
heel, dark-colored, with an elastic frog, and 
with a fine-grained, tough, horny structure. 
His barrel should be round, bis chest deep. 
His wind should be strong and his digestion 
perfect. Now , a horse of this description may 
be of any size from 'J00 pounds to 1,.500; of any 
hight from 15 hands to 16}£ hands; of any 
color, although bays, browns, sorrels and grays 
are the best, and he will be capable of great 
endurance on the road or at the plow. He 
should be selected with reference to the work 
he is to perform and thp locality in which he 
is to live. 
For heavy work on drays, or for hard toil on 
level lands, a large-sized horse may be useful. 
But in hilly countries, and in sections where 
quicker motion and more dexterity are needed, 
the smaller horse will answer a better purpose. 
Strength is not always governed by size— 
although there are circumstances iu which the 
dead weight wliich a horse throws into the 
collar is more important than his nervous force. 
For ordinary farm work a very heavy horse 
is not desirable, especially when we consider 
the variety of service he has to perforin. And 
we may congratulate ourselves that the en¬ 
ormous Loi-ses brought to this country have a 
tendency to become reduced in size, as they 
are bred here and to Itecome more active as 
the reduction goes on. 
The characteristics or the moral qualities of 
the American farm horse are to lie found iu all 
the breeds of which he is made up. It is neces¬ 
sary that he should be fearless, patient, intelli¬ 
gent, docile, and courageous iu his work. He 
combines the best qualities of bis varied an¬ 
cestry, all preserved and developed by the 
work which he performs, and the influences by 
which he is surrounded. As the Arab has be¬ 
came keen, spirited, untiring, dashing, domes¬ 
tic by long association with the Bedouin of the 
desert, so the farm-horse lias become teachable, 
steady, tractable, patient, by long association 
with those whose long Bummer days are spent 
in the field at the plow, or the horse-rake or 
tedder. But he has another side to his char¬ 
acter without which he would not satisfy the 
active and busy society to which be belongs. 
He is stronggenduring, active on the road; 
and from long-continued exercise in this way 
he has become the embodiment of activity and 
vigor as a dri ving-horse. He, as well as liis sire 
and dam and grandsire and grandam, and so on 
for generations back, has served as laborer 
and roadster until he has become an invalua¬ 
ble ally to man in his labor on the farm and 
iu his business on the road. 
If I am told that a large proportion of these 
horses are dull and sluggish I can only say, 
man has made them so. So long as we will in¬ 
sist on breeding to a stallion which has no 
spirit and no intelligence, simply because he is 
to be found in the neighborhood, we must ex¬ 
pect to be tormented with an indifferent class 
of farm horses. But when we remember that 
a bright, and active and intelligent stallion 
can be found wherever horse-breeding is a 
business, wo may assure ourselves that there is 
no necessity for surrounding ourselves with 
dull and inefficient brutes. The same may be 
said of the mares used for breeding and work. 
That unusual intelligence and aptitude for 
domestic service have been developed from 
this class of horses is manifested by the fact 
that from them have sprang the best of our 
roadsters and trotters. The serviceable farm 
horses have been the Morgans and Messenger 
and Morrills and Clays, and Patchens and 
Hambletonians, and the serviceable family 
horses carrying us to church, to the business 
resorts, and on our pleasure excursions are these 
same Morgans, Messengers, Morrills, Clays, and 
Patchens and Hambletonians—horses of great 
endurance, patience, activity and inherited 
docility. We would do well, therefore, to pre¬ 
serve the varied qualities for which these 
breeds are famous. And if we breed good 
drivers while we breed good farm horses, we 
shall have gained so much for ourselves and a 
driving American community. 
To accomplish this, good breeding and good 
care arc both necessary, A neglected colt ma¬ 
tures slowly and seldom forms that attachment 
to man which develops his good qualities as he 
comes to his work. While we breed, there¬ 
fore, with care, we should food and treat with 
care and kindness also, if we would secure 
those characteristics wliich make the Ameri¬ 
can farm horse valuable. 
Da in) i}ii£ham)n]. 
HOW TO MAKE MILK AT TWO CENTS 
A QUART. 
HENRY STEWART. 
For some yeara past. I have been giving 
considerable attention.study and practice to the 
feeding of cows for milk and butter, and during 
part of the time I have been selling milk. The 
cheapness of the product, of course, has been 
the great point of consideration, and this 1 
hare found to depend more upon feed than 
anything else. A poor cow may even be made 
to pay her way by liberal feeding, and it is 
equally true that a good cow may be made to 
lose money by niggardly treatment. This has 
been made especially apparent during the past 
two years, iu the first year I was feeding 
with my own hands and also milking most- of 
the time; in the second year, for unavoidable 
reasons. 1 was obliged to leave the dairy wholly 
to a hired tnan. The cows were the same, and 
everything the same, except the feeding and 
care. The second year, which was 18812-’3, the 
product of 10 cows was not quite half that of 
the previous year, 1881-’2, and the feeding was 
in about the same proportion; the first year 
the cows were sleek and fat and the milk pails 
overflowed; the last, year the cows were very 
thin and the milk pails were correspondingly 
light. The first year the daily made money; 
The last year it lost. So much for ray own ex¬ 
perience iu general, and this leads naturally 
to discuss the particulars. 
And just here I might mention that, a reader 
of the Rubai, in Montana writes me on this 
very point. He is trading 20 cows of common 
stock, which iu that Territory is perhaps not 
quite so good as the common stock elsewhere. 
He says lie has fed very little, and wants to 
know the best ration to feed them. It gratifies 
me very much that this person says “toagreat 
extent he owes it to my suggestion that he has 
tieen able to contract liis butter for 50 cents 
a pound at liis door.” Next to enjoying the 
success of one’s own work is the pleasure of 
knowing that you have helped some “brother,” 
as Emerson says, to succeed in the world; or 
words to that effect. 
Now a cow is a machine iu which food is 
made intomilk. Of course, much depends upon 
the machine; a poor machine, as 1 explained 
in the former article, cannot do as good work 
as a good one; but the very best one cannot 
make something out of nothing or do good 
work with poor material. At the same time a 
very good article may be turned out of au in¬ 
ferior machine sometimes when good mute- 
rials are skillfully used. Every dairyman 
cannot have cows that will rate A1 and liecome 
the admiration of the world generally, but he 
can feed them just as well as a £10,000 cow is 
fed when she is said to turn out her three 
pounds of butter a day—I mean in quality 
rather than quantity, for feeding for milk 
is different from feeding for butter The 
basis of all feeding is grass or hay; green 
fodder or dry fodder, and the supplemental 
foods as corn meal, bran, middlings, and the 
wastes as brewers’ grains, glucose meal, malt 
sprouts and the oil cakes. First, then, the 
grass should lie made rich and succulent. This 
is of the greatest importance, both for pastur¬ 
ing and for hay. A good full bite of Orchard 
Grass or Red Clover will give twice as much 
milk for the same cow as a poor, thin pasture 
of Red Top, June Gross (which, whou poor, is 
rightly called “ Wire” Grass, and is justly 
scorned as poor stuffi and weeds. Orchard 
Grass is the very best early pasture. I have 
found the common Quack Grass a splend id ca rly 
pasture and it is the first herbage that gives a 
bite at this early season—April. Where a dai¬ 
ryman intends to permanently pasture his cows 
I would recommend Quack Grass first, Orchard 
Grass next, Red Top and Blue Grass—when 
grown on rich ground next, with some White 
Clover mixed iu; and for a green fodder crop, 
to help out. Red Clover or Luceru. These are 
the most productive milk materials the dairy¬ 
man possesses. 
Cora fodder comes next—in point of 
time only—being equally productive when 
properly grown. But corn must not bo 
grown broadcast; it must be grown in drills 
and cultivated as if grown for grain, or it. is 
poor stuff. I would not advise any dairyman 
to make milk cheap by putting water in it. 
either into the pail or into the cow, by watery, 
wishy-washy fodder, as broadcast fodder corn 
is. If the dairyman wants milk at two con Is a 
quart and to make a profit out of that price, he 
must grow some early sweet, corn to feed to his 
cows, fts soon as the Hush is off the pasture. I 
have grown Narrngnnset.t for the earliest fod¬ 
der and Evergreen after that; the first has the 
largest sweet stalks of any early kind, and the 
latter may be grown ns large as field corn on 
good soil. These fodders will carry the cow 
through the Summer, and the hay and stover 
made from these crops, if they are cut in good 
season and cured well, will do just as much in 
the Winter with other feed liberally given. As 
to the quantity fed, I would givu just as much 
as a cow will eat eagerly and look around for 
a little more. Too much food will lessen the 
milk, and as no two cows are alike in this re¬ 
spect, eveiy oue must find for himself just the 
right quantity to feed. Fifteen pounds is the 
least quantity any cow should have at a meal 
and three meals a day. 
In addition to this feed, even in the 
Summer.it will pay to give some addi¬ 
tional food. Brewers’ grains are an excel¬ 
lent, wholesome food. There is nothing 
wrong or injurious about them, undone pouud 
of corn meal to five of grains will add twice 
their value to the yield of milk. The point in 
feeding is to give the cow one cent’s w< >rth and 
get two cents’ worth of milk in return. How 
to do this one cannot tell very well. One might 
as well try to describe what lightning is to a 
blind, deaf and dumb man. Eveiy one must 
work out this problem for himself: it is enough 
for an intelligent man to put him on the track 
and then let him fiud the means to move him¬ 
self along. Only general rules and suggestions 
can be given, and even if one can say I have 
done it so and so. another may not lx* able to 
do it precisely in the same way. One must try 
and try for liimself as the way is pointed out. 
Glucose meal is also a useful and valuable 
milk food and absolutely free from just, objec¬ 
tion. Those who talk about alcohol in brewers’ 
grains and acid and chemicals in glucose meal, 
are—well, they don’t know what they talk 
about; because grains have never been fer¬ 
mented and if properly kept will not., need not 
ferment, and glucose meal has never been sub¬ 
jected to chemical operations; it is only the 
starch that is made from it which is treated 
with sulphuric acid, some of which we get in 
the sugar or sirup nud take without, any fuss. 
But glucose meal requires about one-fourth as 
much line wheat or rye middlings, or buck¬ 
wheat middlings, added to it to make it a per¬ 
fect, food. Then a few pounds of it. given daily 
will be usefully employed, even when cows are 
upou pasture. 
Watering is as important as feeding. Too 
much water will shrink the milk. Six gallons 
a day are enough for a cow,even upon dry feed. 
A cow will drink T2 gallons at times and bloat 
herself, and stand humped up and shaking, and 
at milking time will fall off two or three 
quarts. That takes away one day’s profit. It 
pays to warm the water at all times. In the 
Sun liner, water from a well should be warmed 
in the sun for an hour or more, and in the Win¬ 
ter it pays to turn two or three pails of boiling 
water into the trough to take the eliill off that 
freshly pumped from the well. In the Winter 
the fodder should bo cut and wetted with warm 
water. This may be a trouble; it is only a 
little one; and when done regularly and pro¬ 
vided for, it is no trouble at all. If a cow has 
her feed mixed with lumps of ice, two cents a 
quart won't pay for the milk. For two years 
I steeped inmt sprouts and bran in a barrel and 
madeathiuslopof it with which the cut fodder 
was wetted and it mode a difference of two 
quarts a day in the milkiug for each cow. 
Two pounds of bran given in a warm slop will 
do as much good us four pounds given dry; 
and a pound of corn meal given upon wet feed 
will lie better than if it is given dry. For 
making milk, the quantity needs to be stimu¬ 
lated more than the quality, and the milk dai¬ 
ryman cannot feed precisely as the butter 
maker, if he wants to get the most money out 
of liis milk. For I have found that to sell milk 
with 15 per cent of cream on it, puts no money 
into the pocket, although it. may get the dairy¬ 
man some empty reputation. So that for cheap 
milk one must increase the quantity as much 
as possible and disregard quality so long as it 
is passably good. But with the manners of 
feeding above suggested no one need fear to 
submit his milk to the test of the lactometer. 
Diborintlliuol. 
FORESTRY No. 37. 
Forest Nursery. Part X. 
DR. JOHN A. WARDER. 
CHAP. 5. CONIFERS. 
Cultivation of the Nursery Rows; Trimming 
by Cutting Bach; Time for Root-prun¬ 
ing; Objeet of Trimming; Can the Leaders 
be Removed? They wilt be Restored: Shear¬ 
ing Condemned; Contour; Postulates for 
the Treatment of Evergreen Conifers in 
Nursery , Lawnand Park; Laws of Pruning 
these Trees. 
After having been thus lined out, the trees, 
of whatever class or character, will need thor¬ 
ough and frequent cultivation to keep them in 
a free-growing condition. If their growth be¬ 
comes too rampant; this may be checked by 
attacking them either above or below: that is, 
they may be cut baek when becoming too tall 
and open in their tops, or they may have their 
growth checked by using the tree-digger, or 
the sharp spade to curb their extending roots. 
Both processes have the effect of improving 
the form of the young evergreens by thicken¬ 
ing their branch lets; the roots also are made 
more numerous aud fibrous by the subter¬ 
ranean plowing. 
Do not be afraid of cutting back the leader 
of your evergreen; it will soon lie reproduced, 
though it may become necessary to curb com¬ 
peting aspirants, where more than one shoot 
attempts to lead upwards, after the heading- 
bacK or from any accidental cause. Beyond 
this, very little trimming will be required by 
the young conifer in the nursery, and by no 
means allow vour plants to be sheared, as is 
too often done: iu curtailing the lateral 
growth use the knife to remove the ends of 
straying branches, and with the edge upward 
cut from within outward so that the kerf shall 
not be seen. The reader is referred to a lecture 
upon this subject, printed in the Transactions 
of the American Nurserymen’s Association for 
1881, pages 35 to 4‘2. 
Mr. Douglas, who was one of the fii*st, in this 
country at least, to advocate and defend the 
cutting back of the lenders of evergreens aud 
to use the tree-digger for root-pruning, says, 
in a private letter to the writer: “It is best to 
use the root primer in the Spring before the 
growth is much started.” He also finds this 
“the best time for all trimming, heading-back 
or shortening-in of evergreens, and succeeds 
best when they are just beginning to start, 
their new growth in the Spring.” Extra lead- 
era may lie safely removed at anytime when 
observed, and may l>o easily snapped off with 
the thumb aud linger while iu their first softj 
sappy growth of a few inches, aud before the 
needles are developed. 
The following extracts from a paper upon 
the treatment of evergreens read before the 
Nurserymen's Association, though not new*, 
may here be presented to a new audience, the 
readers of the Re rat. New-Yorker. “The 
object of all trimming of evergreens, but es¬ 
pecially iu the nursery, should lie to shape the 
young tree aud to multiply or thicken its twigs 
and thus to increase the amount of foliage. A 
similar design and corresponding practice 
should Ik? continued in the t reatment of trees 
of greater size when planted ujam our lawns 
and our parks. These w ill iimot happily adorn 
or unhappily disfigure, just, as their owner 8 
appreciate and follow', or utterly neglect a few* 
simple principles which it is the desire of the 
writer to point, out for the benefit., first of those 
who nurse and train the little plants iu their 
infancy, and, next, of those who are to pur¬ 
chase them and enjoy their adolescent and ma¬ 
tured beauty and their* grandeur in after 
years * * * Can tiro lender of an ever¬ 
green lie shortened with impunity? is a ques 
tion that has been much discussed. This may 
be answered positively iu the affirmative. It 
can be done whenever, in the judgment of the 
nurseryman or the arborist, he may find it de 
tdrable to check the too rampant growth: es¬ 
pecially of those species that throw out their 
laterals in w horls at the end of the previous 
year’s shoots, this may be done with the mani¬ 
fest advantage of thickening the tree. For a 
long time there was a prejudice against such 
a practice, and it was thought of vital im¬ 
portance to avoid such cutting back, but wo 
have observed the results alter accidents from 
storms and from the lesions inflicted by birds 
and insects, when tin? consequences are often 
happy in the improvement Of the tree. As a 
rule, we all desire to preserve the leader intact, 
but there is nothing essentially vital in the 
leader, as once supposed. 
Sheuring has the effect of thickening or 
multiplying the lateral branches, and thus 
rnakiug the trees compact and perhaps better 
adapted for screen hedges. * * * It has 
only the merit of cheapness aud economy of 
