fHE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
25 
success. This experiment has been tried in 
his valley several times since, and he thinks 
always with success. 
on one piece of land he sowed salt in the Fall, 
and had a splendid crop of potatoes, and on 
the same soil when he put no salt he pot no 
crop. For three years back he has bad good 
crops bv using salt, but not otherwise. Mr. 
C J Edie, of Marcy, N. Y , said that during 
the season of 1881 he bad tried salt on soil in 
which he had planted potatoes He broadcasted 
about 1,000 or 1,200 pounds per acre.and har¬ 
rowed it in. The potatoes were then planted 
and others were planted alongside in the same 
Held without salt. The effect was most strik¬ 
ing. Just as far as the salt extended, the po¬ 
tatoes were smooth, sound and of good size. 
In the rows next adjoining where the salt did 
not reach, the potatoes were small, wormy 
and rough. 
The repair of broken limbs of farmamimals 
has been shown to be an easy operation, Mr. 
H. Stewart remarks. All that is required 
is to put the animal—if a large one—insliugs, 
to bring the fracture into 
proper position.and then bind 
the limb with bandages 
k dipped in common plaster of- 
Paris paste. The bandage 
is made in the form of a roll, 
by sewing the ends together 
in a long strip and winding 
this around the limb in the 
usual manner. The limbs of 
small animals may be repaired 
by enveloping them in wetted 
straw-board, fitting it to the 
limb carefully.and then bind- 
' ing a common bandage over it. 
clay soils? Yes, we include them; we include 
any soil that is well drained.... 
There is no business, from ruling nations to 
picking pockets, which is managed in so slip¬ 
shod and slovenly a fashion as tarming. says 
the Agricultural Gazette of England. 
Our friend, the Orange County Farmer.pre- 
sents a cut of the fruit of Early Harvest Black¬ 
berry,that represents it as fully twice as large 
as the fruit ever grows. This berry is small It 
has two claims to superiority—earlmess and 
firmness... .. 
The Farm Journal says that silk culture in 
America is likely to prove profitable—to those 
who have Russian Mulberry trees, and silk¬ 
worm eggs to sell. The fellow who buys ’em 
will probably discover that he has made a 
mistake..... 
Are not you going to try for one of the 
presents offered to Rural subscribers? Prob¬ 
ably you would if you could know that a one 
hundred dollar implement or 
other article would be awarded 
to a club of 25; or that an article 
well worth $50 would be given 
for a club of 10. That is the way 
it looks at present.. , - 
Now is the time to send for the 
catalogues which we are begin¬ 
ning to announce in our columns. 
Those who have seeds, farm im¬ 
plements or anything of the kind 
to buy should send for every one. 
Our readers may rest assured 
that the Rural's notices of 
these catalogues will be impar¬ 
tial and just in every way. We 
shall consult their interests in 
every case. 
Major Brooks says, in the 
Rural Home, that, more cherries, 
berries, peaches and grapes and 
less pie, cake and meat would 
lessen paiu, prolong life and 
greatly increase the mental and 
physical vigor of the race. 
Subscribers, we offer you $2,800 in 321 
sterling presents for the clubs you may send 
us from now until May 1st. From present 
appearances we do not think you can engage 
in a more profitable work... 
Col Henry Wilson, of Boston, says many 
deserted farms in Massachusets can be bought 
cheap enough so it will pay to plant them to 
forests. He would recommend planting ash, 
hickory or elm, set in rows four feet apart 
and four feet in the rows, and after five years 
cut out every other tree for hoop poles, and 
in five years more remove every other row 
for some mechanical use. Pruning is too cost¬ 
ly a job: plant thickly and let the best sup¬ 
plant the rest,.... 
Come and see 150 bushels of potatoes har¬ 
vested upon a half-acre of very poor land next 
October at the Rural Grounds To produce 
these will not prove a more difficult under¬ 
taking than the 130 bushels of shelled corn 
raised on an acre at the Rural Farm under 
flat culture, with but 500 pounds of fertilizer 
on the acre, sown broadcast. 
J. S. Collins tells the N Y. World /' 
that he has used kainit as a fertiliser 
on strawberry plants, applying one ton 
to the acre, with very satisfactory re- / 
suits. He made the application in the f 
Fall previous to setting the plants in 
the Spring. This goes to prove that I 
Mr. Collins’s land needs potash, but not l 
phosphoric acid or nitrogen at present \ 
At the meeting of the Massachusetts \ 
Board of Agriculture they had a lively \ 
tilt on the subject of corn tor fodder. \ 
Some contended that at its best it was \ 
not worth two-thirds as much as hay; 
others said it was worth, pound for 
pound, os much as the best hay. Heu- 
ry Noble bad only five acres of pas¬ 
ture for 40 cows from the middle of 
May to October, these cows had what 
thev could get in that pasture and 
what green corn they would eat He has had 
a fine quantity of the best quality of milk, aud 
the cows are fat. He is fully in favor of this 
method of keeping cows. 
It has become an almost general rule with 
the originators of new fruits to make state¬ 
ments in regard to the size, productiveness, 
and quality, that, cannot be verified by exper¬ 
ience; in fact, the stereotyped phrases added 
to the descriptions of new varieties, are 
‘‘double the size and twice as productive as 
auy other known varietyWere such state¬ 
ments half true, remarks the Sun, we would 
long ago have had strawberries and rasp¬ 
berries as large as pine apples, and the plants 
so productive that our fields would have been 
covered a yard deep with fruit... 
Mr Henderson’s book, “How the Farm 
Pays,” gives the preference to the Jerseys for 
the dairy, and, for selling milk in the villages 
or cities, the Ayrshires, it says, will be the 
most profitable. “They are easy keepers, 
hardy, and will produce from 4.000 to 6.000 
pounds of milk in one season, and the milk 
generally brings from four to five cents per 
pound at retail”. 
Mr. Henderson also says—and we were 
pained to read it—that the longer he lives the 
less he believes in the value attached to the 
so-called science of agriculture. 
Aralia Spinosa. —Though with some ob¬ 
jection from a slight propensity to sucker, 
the Aralia spinnsa, or Angelica Tree, some 
times known as Hercules Club, is one of the 
most effective shrubs for a group on a lawn 
to be viewed from somedistance. The thorny 
stems are surmounted by huge, fern like 
leaves, which in August are crowned by a 
mass of greenish-white, mist-like flowers, 
which crown especially attracts the eye for a 
considerable distauce. We think that Mr. 
Meehan, from whose Gardeners’ Monthly we 
copy the above, is mistaken as to its “slight 
propensity” to sucker. With us it suckers as 
freely as any other little tree or shrub we 
know of. In truth, it is as bad as an ailan- 
thus. . 
TRANSCONTINENTAL LETTERS, 
MART WAGER-FISHER. 
Dayton is nearly two hundred miles east 
(and north) of The Dalles, and just about the 
same distance in a straight line, on a map, 
The Times Fays, truly 
euough. that selling and buy¬ 
ing by weight is the only 
just and reasonable method 
of disposing of farm produce. 
The barrel, bushel, basket, 
load, and other common 
measures are all so irregular 
and indefinite that the greatest dissatisfaction 
prevails among both sellers and buyers, and 
constant disputes are occurring. 
Chess and Wheat —The Weekly Press of 
Philadelphia remarks that considerable inter¬ 
est was aroused in the famous case of Wheat vs. 
Chess by a head of wheat containing pedicels 
of chess, exhibited by Professor William 
Sauuders, of London, Ontario. A committee, 
consisting of Professors Spaulding and Steere 
and A. C. Glidden, appointed to examine it, 
reported that, although apparently a clear 
case of reversion from w heat to chess, it was 
shown by the microscope to be an accidental 
lodgment of the chess pedicels while the 
head of wheat was green, and a binding in. 
so to speak, by the contraction of thesurround- 
ing glumes by the ripening of the grain. 
Isham Sweet, 
■bprafsu, 
Feeding Grain to Horses.— Bell’s Mes¬ 
senger (England) says that the capacity of the 
horse's stomach is about sixteen quarts. This 
fact should be borne iu mind by those who 
have charge of horses. In feeding grain to 
horses, it is important that it should be fed at 
such a time that it may remain in the stomach 
as long as need be to secure its complete di¬ 
gestion. The nitrogenous elements, in which 
grain is richer than other foods, ax*e better 
digested in the stomach than iu the intestines. 
The grain should be fed after the hay has 
been eateo, and no other food or drink should 
te given for some time after, so that the grain 
may remain in the stomach until it is fully 
digested. If the grain is fed first, aud then a 
ration as. for instance, of seven pounds of 
hay, the grain will speedily be forced from the 
stomach hy the hay. In eating the hay, it 
will be mixed with four times its weight of 
saliva, aud an hour aud a half will be required 
for masticating it. In order to have the stom¬ 
ach digest well, it should not contain more 
than ten quarts at a time, and in eating seven 
pounds of hay, the animal swallow’s at least 
two stomachfuls of hay and saliva, one of 
these having passed on into the intestines. If 
Green Crimean, 
from Portland as it is from Seattle. It is 
about forty miles north-east of Walla Walla, 
and both are in the south east corner of 
Washington—Walla Walla being but a few 
miles from the Oregon boundary. In the 
country surrounding these towns lie the fam¬ 
ous wheat farms—where the soil is “but dust 
and ashes, and wheat grows without water"— 
which is the commonly exaggerated way of 
speaking of it. 
We reached Dayton at four o’clock in the 
morning, having journeved at night, in order 
to “catch" a morning freight and leisurely re¬ 
trace our way by day. It was a cold morning, 
(the last of September), the wind and dust 
blowing at the rate of twenty miles an hour, 
and owing to a recent fire which had reduced 
the inns in the town to one hotel, we had quite 
a “history" in attempting to secure a room 
for ourselves, in which we could have fire and 
rest, to refresh ourselves for the day before us. 
It is the fate of most Western towns to suffer 
at the outset severely from fires, many’ of 
Green Crimean. Section of. 
Isham Sweet. Section of, 
which are the work of incendiaries. If the 
“times are hard,’’ the demand for artisans 
and laborers is increased by burning build¬ 
ings! It is altogether diabolic, and if I were 
a sovereign law maker, l would pul every in¬ 
cendiary into prison for fifty years, or hang 
him. Dayton is but a small town in a narrow 
valley, with a stream running through it, 
which empties into the Touchet River. The 
landlord of the hotel told me that the mercury 
sometimes falls as low as 20 degrees below 
zero, for a brief time, but making it cold 
enough to kill fruit trees. 
The apple trees, however, were loaded with 
the grain had been fed first, before the hay, 
the grain would have speedily passed out of 
the stomach into the intestines, where it would 
digest less completely than if allowed to re¬ 
main in the stomach. It is the office of the 
stomach to digest the nitrogenous parts of the 
foods, and as the oats or corn contain four or 
five times as much of these as the same amount 
of hay, it is obviously more important to have 
the graiu subjected to the full action of the 
gastric juices than to have the hay retained 
there. Hence in feeding grain it should be fed 
after the hay ration has been eaten. This is a 
matter well worth remembering in feeding 
horses. 
If the Rural's presents to subscribers idll 
pay our friends fre dollars, or even more , 
for each subscriber they send us, would it not 
pay them to spend a few days —or hours—in 
securing clubs f Well , it looks at present as 
if the gifts would be awarded upon such, or 
even more liberal terms. 
