§24 
AUG 48 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row. New York. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 1883. 
We have this year raised 10 acres of 
Silver Chaff Wheat for our main crop. 
This variety originated iu Canada, though 
it came to us through Gen. Le Tine, the 
then Commissioner of Agriculture. It 
may not he quite so hardy as Clawson, 
but it yields more on our sandy soil and 
makes a finer quality of flour. 
Tile decline in the price of cattle is the 
subject of deprecation or congratulation 
as the speaker is a seller or buyer—a pro¬ 
ducer or consumer. Although live stock 
has increased here even in greater ratio 
than our population, the present fall can¬ 
not be due to over-production, for beef is 
still seen on millions of tables much more 
rarely than it ought to be. The fact is that 
there was a “boom” in beef last year; 
prices were too high in view of the cost of 
raising cattle, and they are now falling 
to the legitimate level—accommodating 
themselves to the general law of average, 
which applies to the cattle interests as 
well as to all other stable interests of the 
country. Last year the country enjoyed a 
“boom” in nearly all agricultural pro- 
duc-ts.and now there is a general tendency 
to shrinkage in values. While stock is 
low in comparison with prices in 1882, it 
is still high in comparison with those of 
1880 and 1879, and is by no means below 
the limit of profitable production. 
The other day Parnell gave notice in 
Parliament that he would call attention to 
the sad agricultural results of the late 
English policy in Ireland, but a cablegram 
on Thursday announced that be would re¬ 
frain from doing so, on the understanding 
that the Ministry would soon introduce 
some more remedial legislation. It does 
not require the calm, ummpa.ssioued but 
terribly clear and forcible statement of 
criminating facts and deductions of con¬ 
clusions for which the Irish agitator is re¬ 
markable. to give a fair idea of some of 
the results of the policy of expatriation. 
The agricultural returns sent in to the 
Register-General of Ireland for last year 
show a melancholy condition. The 
acreage under crops decreased 8,114,031) 
in,j» country whose total area is less than 
that of Indiana. The decrease of land under 
flax was 34,000 acres. The yield of pota¬ 
toes was 1,500,000 tons less than in 1881. 
The cultivated land is lapsing into 
wilderness or is converted into grazing 
ranches; while on all sides the black, 
skeleton rafters of desolated homes whose 
hearth fires are quenched forever owing to 
the heart-broken exodus of a home-loving 
peasantry, tell the same story of decay 
and decline. 
We have never thought it profitable to 
manure (top-dress) pastures. When grass 
land fails, corn, the first crop in the rota¬ 
tion, receives chemical fertilizers only— 
500 pounds to the acre. Then we manure 
also with concentrated fertilizers for oats, 
using farm manure for wheat seeded to 
Timothy and clover—plowing, usually the 
fourth year thereafter for corn again. Ro¬ 
tations must, of course, vary with the 
climate and soil, but this is found to be 
the most profitable for Long Island farm¬ 
ers in general. Potatoes upon our soil 
rarely yield a heavy crop, for the apparent 
reason that during the season drought 
usually occurs severe enough to check their 
growth. Our best crops have been raised 
with chemical fertilizers sown in the fur¬ 
rows under level culture, the pieces (two 
strong eyes) dropped one foot apart, the 
drills three feet apart. At River Edge, 
(New Jersey) where the soil is more moist 
and inclined to clay, we have raised at 
the rate of over 700 bushels of potatoes to 
the acre, but with wheat, oats and corn— 
no matter how well the land is prepared— 
the crop is never so heavy as in favorable 
seasons on Long Island. 
- - 
In 1873 Chester County, South Caro¬ 
lina, started the system of compelling all 
persons to fence in their live stock, in¬ 
stead of fencing out other people’s stock, 
and other counties soon followed Ihe ex¬ 
ample. Nearly a year ago a general law' 
was passed on the subject, and when this 
went into effect last October, trouble be¬ 
gan. Thousands w r ho own cattle, horses, 
hogs, goats or sheep own no land, but 
graze their stock in waste places, in the 
timber or along the highways, and while 
in many counties the majority are op¬ 
posed to the law, a considerable minority 
are disposed to resist it in all the others. 
A great deal of bitterness and violence has 
been displayed in various parts of the 
State during the last nine months, and 
serious disaffection exists in at least six 
counties. This appears to have culmina¬ 
ted in Lexington County where mobs have 
been burning farm buildings, turning 
stock into the growing crops, whipping 
and even murdering citizens who support 
the fence law’. Old Ku Ivlux notices have 
been served on prominent advocates of the 
new 7 legislation, and where such warnings 
have been unheeded Ku Klux vengeance 
has followed. The last deed of this kind 
occurred a few nights since in Full Swamp 
Township, when about 20 white men with 
faces blackened and covered with masks 
visited a couple of brothers named llutto, 
and after grossly maltreating them, ex¬ 
torted promises from them to tear down 
their pasture fences and fence m their 
crops. The Governor having been ap¬ 
pealed to, directed the Sheriff to arrest the 
law-breakers, half-a-dozen of whom have 
been brought as prisoners to Lexington 
Court House, while an armed posse is still 
hunting for others. The respectable 
classes generally favor the stock law, its 
bitterest enemies are those who are op¬ 
posed to property laws generally. 
“BROWN GUANO.” 
A profitable source of vile income has 
lately been declared illegal in Egypt. The 
W’ise men of the days of the Pharaohs be¬ 
lieved that after 3,000 years people would 
return to animate (heir earthly bodies, 
which it w as therefore of the highest im¬ 
portance should be preserved for reanmia- 
tion. Accordingly while all the wisdom 
of the most skillful chemists was enlisted 
in the preparat ion of wealthy mummies, 
in case of the poor the bodies were merely 
saturated with bitumen, or natron, baked 
in an oven, swathed in woolen rags, then 
tied up iu a mat of palm leaves and laid 
away to rest in the great sepulchres in 
row’s of thousands. While the mighty 
Pharaohs, their powerful relatives and 
haughty priests and nobles have thus been 
preserved to serve as mummies for the 
museums of every town in the barbarian 
world; are converted into pills and po¬ 
tions for the healing of various diseases, 
or into charcoal to be used in refining su¬ 
gar, the most hideous form of utilitarian 
desecration has been shown by the degen¬ 
erate Egyptians of our days in selling the 
tens and hundreds of thousands of lower- 
class mummies to merchant vessels at so 
much per ton to fertilize foreign fields. 
From the innumerable tombs near Mem¬ 
phis and in other parts of Egypt, long 
strings of camels were employed until 
quite recently in openly carrying this hu¬ 
man bone dust to vessels in the harbor at 
Alexandria; while large quantities of such 
human remains, under the name of “brown 
guano.” w'ere brought to the vessels in 
cargo-boats from the ancient sepulchres 
and catacombs which honeycomb the 
rocky ridge near Alexandria itself. The 
vile trade was earned on without any at¬ 
tempt at concealment or disguise, and* vis¬ 
itors could see human bones, glass tear 
bottles and earthenware lamps that had 
all been laid away perhaps before the days 
of Joseph, shoveled up together with the 
accumulated brown dust, carried up the 
ships’sides in baskets and dumped into 
the hold to be conveyed to England where 
the regular price was £0 iOs., or about 
$32 per ton—a price that gave the manu¬ 
facturers of fertilizers a good profit by 
mixing the stuff with Peruvian guano. 
THE LATEST CROP ESTIMATE. 
By the 10th of each month the Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture lias analyzed and for¬ 
mulated the results of its crop reports for 
the previous month, so that a brief ab¬ 
stract is w ired to the chief points in the 
country, and usually appears, whole or 
still further condensed, in the papers. 
From the abstract received here this morn¬ 
ing it appears that the average of Spring 
wheat is 07, the same as in 1882, but 
higher than for any previous August since 
1877. The returns for August do not es¬ 
sentially change the indicated aggregate 
of July for the entire crop. 
In New England, the Middle States and 
the Ohio Valley, and also west of the 
Mississippi there has been an improvement 
in corn. Tn Illinois, Missouri and Kansas 
the improvement is slight—only a single 
point; while in the South there has been 
a decline on account of drought, and a 
slight one in Michigan from too much 
moisture. Taking the whole area, how¬ 
ever, the condition has advanced from 88 
to 89 per cent, of a perfect crop. In Au¬ 
gust, 1879, the condition of the corn crop 
was 90 and the yield, according to revised 
estimates, 28 bushels per acre, on an area 
of 53,085,420 acres; the present returns 
indicate a yield of not over 25 bushels per 
acre, on 68,000,000 acres, or an aggregate 
of 1,700,000,000 bushels—about 17,000,- 
000 bushels short of the exceptionally 
large crop of 1880, when the average per 
acre was 27 M bushels, and the area 62,- 
317,842 acres. The condition now is six 
points higher than in August last year, 
but lower than in any August from 1870 
to 1880 inclusive. The nights have been 
too cold for rapid development and the 
crop is late, and frost may still cause dis¬ 
aster. The averages of the States of prin¬ 
cipal production are:—Illinois, 86; Indi¬ 
ana, 95; Ohio, 89; Michigan, 68; Ken¬ 
tucky, 97; Missouri, 88; Kansas. 97; 
Iow’a, 85; Nebraska, 84; Wisconsin, 85; 
New York, 90; Pennsylvania, 99; New 
Jersey, 101; Virginia, 93; North Carolina, 
83; South Carolina, 70; Georgia, 74; Ala¬ 
bama, 80; Mississippi, 87; Louisiana, 100; 
Texas, 93; Arkansas, 87; Tennessee, 89. 
The condition of oats is now r advanced 
from 99 to 100—a figure surpassed only 
last August since 1878. The average for 
barley is 95, the same as in August last 
year, but higher than in any previous 
August since 1874. From present indica¬ 
tions the potato crop will be immense, 
the condition averaging 101. The promise, 
however, is better in the Central States of 
the West than on the Northern border 
where the soil has been saturated with 
moisture. The area under buckwheat is 
equal to last year’s and the condition is 
high, represented by 99. The average 
condition of tobacco is 88. The condition 
of cotton is lower in every State except 
Virginia, the average having fallen from 
90 to 80. 
A cablegram from the London statistical 
agent of the Department says the weather 
has been unsettled during the first 10 days 
of August, and ilic temperature has been 
low for the time of the year. The 
wheat stocks are largely accumulating. 
The quality of the new Crop is fair; but 
the yield will be short. The total out¬ 
put of the European wheat will be one- 
fifth less than last year, and one-tenth be¬ 
low’ the average. German, French and 
Russian advices are worse according to 
the agent; though oilier advices will 
hardly support this opinion. 
FORESTRY. 
The American Forestry Congress held 
its annual meeting last Wednesday, 
August 8, at St. Paul, Minnesota. This 
organization was formed m Cincinnati in 
1882, at a largely attended meeting of 
prominent men interested iu the preserva¬ 
tion of what trees we still have and in the 
encouragement of the growth of trees in 
the prairie and plain States, and indeed, 
in all the old-settled States winch have 
been greatly denuded of their primeval 
timber. A second meeting w T as held at 
Montreal, last August, at which the 
American Forestry Association was 
united with the new organization. Not¬ 
withstanding the recent death of Dr. 
John A. Warder, President of the For¬ 
estry Association, and also chief mover in 
the formation of the Forestry Congress, 
and the death a few months ago of 
Leonard B. Hodges, the great leader of 
the forestry movement in the prairie 
States, the attendance at, the Congress 
was large and the interest manifested great. 
Commissioner Loring, President of the 
Congress, presided and made the principal 
speech of the occasion. If the wholesale 
cutting of timber continues in the North¬ 
ern States, and our forests are not better 
protected, he is of opinion we shall soon 
be without American forests. Lately, 
however, mainly through the efforts of 
Dr. Warder, Professor Sargent, Mr. 
Hodges and a few other earnest lovers 
of forestry and far-sighted patriots, a 
great deal of public attention has been 
drawn to the subject of aforesting de¬ 
nuded sections, and the clearings in the 
older parts of the country are being filled 
up so that in several of the States the area 
under timber is slowly but steadily grow¬ 
ing greater. Still in spite of the “new¬ 
ness” of lids country, the forest acreage is 
less than one-fourth of the total surface— 
a smaller proportion than in the east, west 
and north of Europe. 
From an interview with the Commis¬ 
sioner, we learn that to conserve our exist¬ 
ing forests he would fence them in and en¬ 
deavor to keep fires and animals out. The 
former are the most disastrous destroyers 
of all sorts of trees; while the latter every 
year ruin a vast amount of young growth. 
Ow’ing to the greed of the owners of the. 
great pineries in Maine, Michigan, Minne¬ 
sota and other Northern timber States, 
the country will soon have to depend 
mainly on the forests of the Gulf and Pa¬ 
cific States for its lumber. It is a ques¬ 
tion of considerable public importance 
whether it would not be wise to establish 
a national Forestry Bureau in connection 
with the Department of Agriculture to 
educate the public sentiment with regard 
to the importance of the subject. This, 
wc know, was a project which the late 
Dr. Warder highly approved. 
A large, a very large, amount of timber 
is wasted every year by unlawful 
cutting on tbe public domain. This 
occurs not only on land belonging to the 
General Government but also on that 
owned by the several States. In both 
cases prompt legislation is needed to pro¬ 
tect what is left of our forests. On no 
subject of equal public interest has there 
been more shameful neglect. Take the 
case of New York as an example. A 
committee of the Senate appointed by 
the last Legislature, at its last session, to 
investigate the methods of disposing 
of the State lands and the cutting- 
down of timber in the State forests, is 
now in session at Saratoga. It appears 
that thousands of acres of valuable, rich 
land covered with timber have already 
been sold for from $1 to $5, per acre, 
and no one seems to be responsible for 
this swindling of the public; for the Land 
Commissioners, who should have the 
matter in charge, disavow all responsibility 
for, and all knowledge of. the transactions. 
Over 600,000 acres of such land still re¬ 
main. and though the last Legislature 
passed a bill absolutely prohibiting the 
sale of an acre of them, there is no 
penalty whatever for stealing timber 
from them. A man who takes a single 
stick from a neighbor’s pile may be sent 
to prison for several months or even years; 
while ihrough the culpable neglect of 
several Legislatures, the commonwealth 
may be robbed by wholesale with im¬ 
punity. 
In view of the fact that forests do im¬ 
portant service in regulating the condition 
of our rivers and water-ways, and in tem¬ 
pering the climate, surely public policy 
demands that our timbered lands should 
be preserved, no matter how many thieves 
goto jail. But, besides these beneficial 
effects of forests, a large pecuniary iu- 
come might be derived from the national 
and State forests if properly managed. 
According to Mr. Peixotto, our Consul at 
Lyons, whose report to the State Depart¬ 
ment has just been printed, the market 
value of the timber lands of France is 
$1,208,587,490, and (be annual revenue 
from them amounts to $39,458,630. 
Surely in the matter of forestry we might 
profitably and wisely learn a lesson or two 
from Ihe example of “effete Europe.” 
. -» ♦ ♦ 
BREVITIES. , 
The Rural knows of several eases in which 
plum trees growing in hen yards produce 
good crops in sections where the curculio 
abounds. 
Permit me at this late date to thank the 
Rural Nkw-Yorkkk tor $50 worth of super¬ 
phosphate awarded to me ns fifth premium in 
the Rural com contest. The Mnpcs Fertilizer 
Company forwarded the fertilizer promptly, 
freight prepaid, without exacting any pledges 
or promises whatever of me. W. N. Robinson. 
Circloville, Pa. 
Read carefully the article by Richard Good¬ 
man, a thoroughly practical and successful 
farmer and stock-breeder, w ho owns one of the 
finest farms in the Old Bay State, and exem¬ 
plifies in his own person and character all he 
wishes other farmers to be. Make a note of 
what, he says of the fairs, and don't forget it 
when you attend one. 
►Several of our friends have criticised the 
Rural sharply for its stutemeuts that the 
Downing •Strawberry is, all things considered, 
as good as any, as it grows in New Jersey and 
Long Island. Ellwanger &• Burry who have 
tested it beside all of the newer kinds state 
that “ it holds its place in spite of all new 
comera.” 
We have had so many requests for the 
Rural containing our Fair last, that, being 
unable to supply buck numbers, we deem it 
best to republish the list with considerable 
additions. This list is not, as some suppose, 
made up of clippings from other papers; 
but, with few exceptions, is the result of in¬ 
quiries made direct to the secretaries or man¬ 
agers of the various fair associations. 
Bismarck’s latest fuludtiation against, the 
American ilog is an ordoi that commanders 
of German war vessels must limit their pur¬ 
chases of American pickled pork to what is 
necessary for the support of the crows during 
the homeward voyage of the vessels from 
foreign stations, the purpose ol t he order being 
to prevent the binding of any American pork 
in Germany. Germany pays u considerable 
sum for making an able seaman out of a “land 
lubber,’’and at the best Germany has uo sailors 
to spurc, yet the West German sailor while 
afloat, are permitted to cut American pork, 
which is proclaimed to be unlit for all Ger¬ 
mans on shore. Doesn't the single fact that 
Germany permits her high-priced sailors to 
cut our pork, while forbidding all others to 
touch it, conclusively prove the ludicrous ab¬ 
surdity of the pretext on which Bismarck, not 
Germany, prohibits its importation. 
