DECS 
THE BUBAL J3EW-Y0BXEB. 
843 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER’S 
Prizes for the Best Essays 
On Ten Given Subjects. 
ALL SUBSCRIBERS ARE INVITED TO 
CONTEST FOR THEM. 
A BULLETIN. 
Last year the Rural New-Yorker 
offered a few prizes for the best essays on 
“Profitable Farming for a Poor Man,” the 
object being to assist those who were 
about to engage in farm life with a small 
capital, or those who were struggling un¬ 
successfully to render their farms profit¬ 
able. The response was so gratifying that 
we have determined to offer a larger 
amount of premiums and a varied list of 
subjects. We now present these subjects 
to our readers, with the prizes appended 
for each as follows: 
I. Iloir xhall we educate our children agri¬ 
culturally! 
That is to say. how shall we so educate 
our children that they may appreciate the 
benefits of farm life and turn them to the 
best advantage? 
Prize, $50. 
Offered by Mr. Lawson Valentine, of 
Houghton Farm, Mountainville, N. Y. 
II. For one column of short paragraphs 
which shall give the pithiest, soundest advice 
and instruction to the general farmer as to 
any or all departments of his occupation. 
Prize, $50. 
Offered by the Rural New-Yorker. 
III. Butter Making. -Sub-heads to be 
considered: The Dairy Room or Building, 
How should the cows be fed and cared 
for. Ensilage, Soiling, Pasturage, Care of 
milk, Creamery. Deep or Shallow Setting, 
Butter Color, etc. The writer may treat 
such of the sub-heads as lie chooses. 
Prize, $50 in Cash. 
OR IN FERTILIZERS, AS PREFERRED. 
Offered by the Mapes’s Formula and 
Peruvian Guano Co., of New York. 
IV. The best cattle for the dairy and the 
shambles. 
Prize, A Weed Full Cabi¬ 
net Sewing* Machine, 
Price $50. 
Offered by the Rt ral New-Yorker. 
V. Swine. —The best breeds and how 
best to feed and care for them. 
Prize, A Victor Sewing 
Machine. Price $37.50. 
Offered by the Rural New-Yorker. 
VI. Ho'rses. —Farm and road. The best 
for the farmer’s use. 
Prize, One American 
Fruit-Dryer. Price $75. 
Offered by the American Manufacturing 
© 
Co., of Waynesboro, Pa. 
VII. Sheep. —The best breeds and how 
best to feed and care for them. 
Prize, Farmer’s Favor¬ 
ite Mill and Press Com¬ 
bined. Price $75. 
Offered by the Iligganum Manufactur¬ 
ing Corporation, Higganum, Ct. 
As to the stock prizes, what is wanted 
is successful personal experience. Each 
competitor 13 privileged to try for one, 
two, three or all of the prizes. If you 
have, been more successful than your 
neighbors with any kind of stock, how did 
you manage it? What we wish is to help 
ordinary farmers to select the most profit¬ 
able stock and to give them the best pos¬ 
sible advice how to make each kind pay 
best, whether they live in the East, West, 
North or South. 
VIII. Plans of the best general-purpose 
1 varus, corn cribs, farm labor-saving con¬ 
trivances of any description. 
Prize, A Silver Hunting 
Case Watch. Price $20. 
IX. Rye .—Its value as a grain, for it* 
straw ; as a green manure, for soiling, 1 
etc., etc. . 
Prize, Twenty Cuttings 
of the genuine Victoria 
Grape 
from the original vine sent to the Rural 
Experimental Grounds by the late T. B. 
Miner. This is thought to be the best of 
his 15,000 seedlings of the Concord. 
X. How to ]>roduce a maximum yield of 
potatoes. When to plow; what kind of 
land is best adapted; what manures or fer¬ 
tilizers, and how much should be used; 
how far apart should the hills or drills be; 
and how far apart should the seed pieces 
be placed ? How many eyes to a piece; 
seed-end, stem-end or middle ? Should 
we hill up or cultivate flat ? 
Prize, Five Two-Year- 
Old Vines of a New 
Seedling Grape 
originating with Mr. D. S. Marvin, of 
Watertown, N. Y., and named by him the 
“ Rural New-Yorker.” Bunch medium to 
large, compact, not shouldered; berries 
long, black, above medium. Skin tough, 
pulp sweet, tender, juicy, rich, sugary, 
sprightly, refined, refreshing, abundant. 
No harshness or acidity. Quality for ta¬ 
ble, best. The fruit ripens with Lady and 
Tallman. Vine vigorous and very hardy. 
remarks. 
It is proposed that the prizes should be 
awarded March 1, and that all essays 
should be sent in by February 1. 
It is desirable that these essays should 
be written as short as practicable. All 
other things being equal, the shorter essay 
should win the prize. 
It is to be hoped that the readers of the 
Rcral New-Yorker for whose benefit 
the above propositions are made, will 
heartily assist the project by contesting 
for the prizes, even though they may feel 
that they stand little or no chance of win¬ 
ning them. It is the valuable experience 
that is needed. Little heed will be given 
to elegance of language or grammatical 
accuracy. We only require that the essays 
be written so that they may be easily read. 
It will be necessary that the essays be 
marked I, II, IH, IV, etc., according to 
the subject treated, in order that they may 
be classified at once. 
PHOSPHATIC LAND-PLASTER. 
PROFESSOR f. h. storer. 
An advertisement which has happened to 
strike my eye in a German agricultural 
newspaper that was issued some months 
since, is instructive in that it marks one 
distinct step of progress in respect ti 
the manufacture of fertilizers. Under 
the heading “Land-Plaster for Noth¬ 
ing” a firm of fertilizer manufacturers at Bie- 
brieh-on-the-Rhiue, advertise pkosphatie gyp¬ 
sum which, as they represent, is obtained in¬ 
cidentally in large quantities as a residue from 
the preparation of superphosphates of super¬ 
latively high grade. This residual gypsum, 
which is naturally more or less contaminated, 
so to speak, with traces of phosphates too 
small to repay the trouble and cost of remov¬ 
ing them, is offered at 25 cents the horse-load 
of 2,200 to 2,200 pounds, if taken directly from 
the factory at the expense of the purchaser; 
or at $5 the car load of 23,000 pounds if loaded 
and forwarded by the manufacturers. It is to 
be had any day and every day at the works, 
and purchasers are assured that the material 
contains enough phosphoric acid to repay the 
price, nud that the gypsum is really thrown in 
for nothing. 
Thera are two points of interest in this ad¬ 
vertisement: First, the evidence it affords 
thut oven at superphosphute works in coun¬ 
tries where the geuerality of farmers have 
acquired just notions as to the composition 
and the real signification of chemical fer¬ 
tilizers. it »s practically impossible to put off 
or sell a worthless or well-nigh worthless pro¬ 
duct, and, second, the great mass of waste 
material to be got rid of gives a vivid idea of 
the magnitude which the manufacture of 
superphosphates of extra quality has attained 
abroad. It is true, indeed, that a part of the 
superphosphate produced may be used for 
baking-powders, or, perhaps, as a medicament, 
but it is none the less plain that much of it 
finds a market as a fertilizer. These very 
high grade superphosphates were a good deal 
talked about Heveral years ago, aud it has 
been said that our American dealers have 
sometimes imported them for the very lauda¬ 
ble purpose of mixing with superphosphates 
of inferior quality in order to bring the latter 
up to the required or the advertised standard. 
It is no very difficult matter, anyway, to pre¬ 
pare superphosphates vastly more powerful 
than those to which we are accustomed. 
According to Morfit, it is even possible to get 
products containing 24 per cent, and 34 per 
cent, of soluble phosphoric acid by operating 
according to the usual method on perfectly 
pure precipitated “bone-phosphate” and “re¬ 
verted phosphate,” respectively, and by leach¬ 
ing these products, in order to eliminate the 
gypsum, and then evaporating the solution, a 
a dry product containing even 60 per cent, of 
soluble phosphoric acid may be obtained. 
These high-grade products have, of course, 
the merit that they can be transported com¬ 
paratively cheaply; and, looking from the 
commercial point of view, they are obviously 
well-fitted for the compounding of “mixed 
fertilizers,” of various names, to meet the 
fashion of the hour. The merit of concentra¬ 
tion is one of no small importance, since, when 
a quantity of such fertilizers is moved from 
one place to another, the farmer has to pay 
only for moving the thing he actually wants, 
while in the case of ordinary superphosphate 
he has to pay the costs of transporting a great 
mass of useless sand and gypsum with which 
the fertilizer is admixed. 
It is not improbable that the gypsum of the 
German advertisement results from a pro¬ 
cess of manufacturing superphosphate similar 
to that described by Professor Brunner as in 
use at Wetzlar. on the Lahn, which consists 
in treating powdered phosphate-rock with 
very dilute sulphuric acid, and so obtaining a 
solution of phosphoric acid and a residuum of 
gypsum which is contaminated with whatever 
insoluble matters the original “rock” con¬ 
tained. At Wetzlar, the manufacturers are 
said to still entertain hopes that the residual 
gypsum, which contains two or three per 
cent, of phosphoric acid, in the insoluble form, 
may eventually be disposed of to the farmers 
of the vicinity, though they had no success in 
getting rid of it in this way hitherto. The 
solution of phosphoric acid, after having been 
separated from the gypsum an 1 properly con¬ 
centrated by evaporation, is made to acr upon 
bone ash, bone-black, or some pbosphatic- 
guano, of good quality, for the purpose of 
converting them into high-grade superphos¬ 
phates. The product ordinarily obtained is 
said to contain 88 per ceut. of soluble phos¬ 
phoric acid. 
It i3 noticeable that a certain mild renewal 
of interest in favor of the use of gypsum as 
an application to clover and other leguminous 
crops, has been excited abroad through the 
favorable results obtained in some recent 
French experiments. These experiments were 
made at the farm school at Hubaudieres, in 
the old province of Touraine, near the center 
of France, upon soils described as calcareous 
sandy clays. The Lucerne fields of the estab¬ 
lishment, which had never before been plas¬ 
tered, were dressed with gypsum during sev¬ 
eral years. In each field, one plot of two- 
and-a-half acres received no gypsum; another 
plot was dressed with gvpsum at the rate of 
235 pounds to the acre, in the month of 
March; another received a similar amount of 
gypsum in December; aud still another was 
dressed in March of the next year; that is to 
say, in the Spring of the year in which the 
amounts of grass and hay obtained from the 
several plots were weighed. It will be no¬ 
ticed that the plots which had been dressed 
in March and December of the first year got 
no gypsum in the second. Not to quote the 
figures in detail, it may be said that, in one 
case, the December plastering gave a yield of 
15,290 pounds of hay (upon two-and-a-half 
acres); while the March plots gave 13,090 and 
14,300 respectively; and the plot that received 
no plaster gave 6,930 pouuds. The gain of 
hay from the December plaster over the crop 
obtained from the plotplastered in the follow¬ 
ing March, was nearly 1,000 pounds upou the 
two-and-a-half acres. In uuother case the 
December plot gave 22,726 pounds of hay; the 
first March plot gave 13.S43 pounds; the second 
Mareh plot ga vo 18,460 pounds; and the noplas- 
ter plot 9,350; and the gain of December over 
the following March was 4,257 pounds. The 
Director of the school concluded that, for his J 
locality, plaster applied in Autumn, after the 
last cutting, or in early Winter, gives a larger 
yield of Lucerne than that applied in the 
Spring, when the ground is covered with 
vegetation. 
The iaea tnat gypsum needs tkne in wmch 
to act is not inconsistent with the modern view 
as to its mode of action, viz.: that it works 
to set free potash from certain difficultly 
soluble compounds in the soiL But it may 
well be questioned whether gypsum will ever 
regain its old prominence as a fertilizer. For 
new lauds of certain biuds aud qualit y, aud 
for some old fields which have been cropped 
aud fertilized in a uot wholly judicious way, 
gypsum has undoubted merit. Its cheapness 
commends it, and it will probably continue 
to be used in regions where the methods of ' 
farming are not very advanced. But for 
farming of a high order, and, in general, 
where the soil is intelligently cropped and 
highly manured, the action of plaster seems 
to be hardly powerful enough to meet modern 
I requirements. The probabilities are that, in 
1 such situations as these, the use of gypsum 
will generally be found less effective than the 
use of potash-compounds, outright, or of 
mixtures of potash-compounds and lime. 
Lxtn.nl'X}. 
FRESH BOOKS. 
How tired the children get of those monot¬ 
onous books that have so long lain around il 
sight on shelves and tables. They may never 
I have read them. Perhaps they only amused 
themselves with them as building-blocks, or 
wondered at their mysterious and unreadable 
lore. Even the stately, useless family Bible, 
big enough to crush the baby if he pulled it 
off the table, is so clumsy that its pictures of 
the youthful Isaac and his father on the way 
to the mount of sacrifice, of Death on the pale 
horse, etc., etc., seldom meet any eye of either 
young or old. 
The books of a household, especially those 
intended to attract and profit the young, 
should be adapted to their varied and chang¬ 
ing tastes. They should excite curiosity and 
| stimulate appetite, and yet be a little above 
the plane of these appetites, and so be up¬ 
lifting, educational. It is just as well that 
these books be not forever in sight. The eye 
tires of them. The mind grows to a habit of 
familiarity with their exteriors and cheats 
itself into the belief that this is equivalent to 
familiarity with their matter. There is a 
craving for something new or d ifferent. The 
same books borrowed or brought forth from 
an old hiding-place, might have eager reading. 
Books got from neighbors or from the circu¬ 
lating libraries have often a relish unexpected 
and yet natural. Change, newness whets the 
appetite, and this principle of human nature 
should not be forgotten in the literature of 
the household. If you cannot get new books, 
wisely hide the old ones from sight awhile 
and they will become almost as good as new. 
It is this principle that makes the periodical 
so watched for and welcome. But still no 
freshness of cover, no surprises launched from 
Becret places will compensate for matter and 
style adapted to each reader. “Pictures of 
silver” are very well, but "apples of gold” are 
better. 
This Country probably has a larger per 
cent, of reading population than any other in 
the world and fewer thinkers in proportion to 
the readers. Fifty years ago the man who 
read and wrote well was more than now a 
marked man in the community. Men took 
knowledge of him that he had been to school. 
Parents seeing the advantages derived from 
some scholarship sent their children to school 
and college. But now education is a less dis¬ 
tinction, everybody has it The valleys have 
been filled and the hills leveled by freeschools. 
until the wealthy send fewer to college and 
I the poor seem indifferent to the commou 
j school. Has free education been overdone, or 
is the dull plain better for society than the va- 
I negation of valley and mountain? 
Wise reading of the daily newspaper is an 
art. The wise reader selects only that - Inch 
nourishes him. He knows how to skip. He 
instinctively scents the flavor of each item or 
article as his eye catches the title, or a word 
here and there. He quickly omits what he 
does not need or relish. From some articles 
he skims lightly, as it were, the cream. Every 
word of others he reads and ponders. Un¬ 
read, the daily paper is money wasted; wholly 
and indiscriminately read, it wastes time and 
surfeits and perverts the appetite. For most 
people, the weekly paper conveys all needed 
news, is easier to read than the daily, aud is a 
safer household visitor. But neither can take 
the place of good books. 
-- 
Good work is done in agricultural and iu 
our other schools and colleges in training 
women for their peculiar duties. They are 
taught household science, economy and deco¬ 
ration, but still, iu most of these institutions, 
this instruction is theoretical, abstract, by 
lectures or, at best, by illustrations, without 
actually doing the things recommended. The 
supervision is largely defective. All the the¬ 
ory in the world can never enable one to make 
a bed or a loaf of bread properly. We can 
learn most practical matters only by doing 
them. 
- »■ » ♦ - 
1 he first three men in the world, says 
Cowley, were a gardener, a ploughman and a 
grazier; and if any man object that the second 
of those was a murderer, I desire he would 
consider, that as soon as he was so, he quitted 
our profession and turned builder. 
