550 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
ANatlonal .Journal for Country mul Suburban Homos 
Conducted by 
K. S. CABMAN', 
J. S. WOODWARD, 
Editor. 
Associate. 
Address 
' THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 84 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, AUGUST 15 1885 
About the first of September we shall 
lay before our readers a proposition that 
will greatly please those who are willing 
to interest themselves in extending the 
circulation of the Rural New-Yorker. 
We know we have hosts of good friends 
who will aid us all they can anyway, and 
we take it that there are many others 
who would be glad to work for the 
Rural, if by so doing they could earn as 
much as or more than they could in any 
other legitimate way. We propose, in 
that number, to show that this can be 
easily done. The intention is to make 
subscribers the most liberal propositions 
ever offered by any farm journal. Mean¬ 
while we will thank our friends to send 
us lists of names (no matter how long) 
of those to whom they desire us to send 
specimen copies. We will mail to each 
name one or more numbers, as may be re¬ 
quested. In the absence of request, we 
will mail a single specimen, at our con¬ 
venience. Large as the circulation of the 
R. N.-Y. is, we do not see why it should 
not be doubled during the next season, and 
we are going to try in every way, consistent 
with reasonable economy and honorable 
business enterprise, to do it. The kindly 
words and the personal efforts of our 
readers, who can speak knowingly of the 
Rural’s merits, will certainly bring suc¬ 
cess, and when our propositions are fairly 
understood by them, we feel assured that 
they will heartily assist us in doublingthe 
circulation of the Rural New-Yorker, 
and thus proportionately extending its 
field of usefulness. 
A number of experiments have been 
tried at the Rural Grounds in order to 
find some cheap substance that would kill 
or repel the wire-worm that causes one 
kind of scab in potatoes. Three different 
varieties of potatoes have been dug, over 
the seed-pieces of which (covered with 
two inches of soil) powdered sulphur w as 
strewn. Not a wire-worm was seen, though 
the soil in ttie Spring was infested with 
them. Some evidences of the fungoid 
scab were found on a few tubers. 
It will soon he time to separate the 
lambs from the ewes, and every farmer 
who has not a field with fresh grass on 
which to turn them, had best at once set 
one apart so that it may get a fresh, tender 
growth in time for their use. It will also 
pay to fence off a corner of the sheep pas¬ 
ture now, leaving a few holes just large 
enough for the lambs to pass through, 
but not the old sheep, and in this in- 
closure, place suitable troughs in which 
to feed daily a mixture of corn, oats, bran 
and oil-meal, that the lambs may become 
accustomed to eat them, so that when 
weaned, they may have enough of these 
to take the place of their mother’s milk. 
It pays to take good care of the lambs, 
and does not pay to let them get to run¬ 
ning down before Winter. A lamb fat 
in December is half wintered. 
We with pleasure call attention to the 
very full list of State, Provincial, County 
and other important fairs, which we give 
in this number of the R. N.-Y. We have 
got the infoi mation in almost every case 
directly from the officers of the societies 
named, and hence it may be regarded as 
authentic. This is the third time 
we have this year published a fair list, 
each time giving information much in ad¬ 
vance of any other paper, and we believe 
that the list which we now give is much 
fuller and more reliable than any ever be¬ 
fore published so early in the season. 
We hereby sincerely thank the officers 
of the various societies for their very 
ready assistance in so promptly forward¬ 
ing to us the dates of their several fairs. 
Our friends should study the list, and 
make it a point to attend as many of the 
important fairs accessible to them as they 
conveniently can. 
Have you not some pasture or meadow 
field that you expect to put into corn, 
oats, barley or potatoes next Spring* that 
is now pretty full of weeds that you 
would like to exterminate ? Look about 
and see 1 If you have such a one, put. 
the teams in and plow it at once, being 
careful to plow every inch of it and to 
turn it over flat. At once put on the har¬ 
rows and cultivators and work it down 
level. We have fouud no better tools for 
this purpose than the Acme Harrow and 
the Keane (N. H.) Disc Cultivator. Make 
it a point from this time till Fall not to 
let a green leaf of any kind get an inch 
high on that field, and the last thing in 
the Fall plow it up into beds, opening out 
the dead furrows, so that no water will 
stand upon it. Our word for it, when 
you see, next Summer, how thoroughly this 
treatment subdued the weeds and what a 
magnificent tilting it was for any crop 
you chance to put on the field, you will 
forever thereafter be an advocate of “fall¬ 
fallowing.” For this is fall-fallowing, 
and all there is in it. and no more efficient 
method of killing weeds and thoroughly 
fitting land was ever invented. But, re¬ 
member, no half-way work will answer 
here; its efficiency depends on complete 
plowing and thorough after cultivation. 
Try it, and tell us next Summer what 
you think of it. 
CELERY GROWING. 
And how about the celery ? Is it plant¬ 
ed yet ? This is the proper time, and no 
excuse or combination of circumstances 
should prevent every farmer, or a man 
with even a small garden, for that matter, 
from providing a full supply ot this very 
healthful and agreeable food for next fall 
and winter use. It is not nearly so much 
trouble to raise it as most people imagine 
after reading the fussy directions for 
trenching, etc., laid down in the books. 
The ground can all be prepared with the 
horses and plow; it. is no more work to 
put it out than so many cabbage plants. 
Very little banking is needed, in fact, no 
more than the cultivation will naturally 
give it; it is very easy to preserve it for 
use next Winter; its free use will add 
very much to the happiness of the whole 
family, and do much to ward off disease 
and starve the doctors, unless perchance 
they go into the celery business. In briei, 
make the trenches with the team and plow 
by plowing a “dead furrow;” scatter an 
abundance of well rotted manure iu the 
bottom of these aud work it into the soil 
with one horse and small plow; put the 
plants in this mellow soil at the bottom 
of the trench, which will be not over six 
inches deep, and, as you cultivate and the 
soil gradually works in. see that, the plants 
are kept with theft stalks close together. 
Toward Fall hill up as you would for pota¬ 
toes raised in the old-fashioned way, see¬ 
ing that the celery stalks are so kept to¬ 
gether as not to let dirt get into the 
hearts, and in Fall you will be surprised 
to see with what little work a fine crop 
of celery can be grown. Don’t forget to 
put out largely of the red or purple 
varieties. 
MILK AS A BEVERAGE. 
There is one feature of our city life 
that ought to give prohibitionists much 
cause for rejoicing. We refer to the in¬ 
creased consumption of milk for drinking 
purposes. Almost an ocean of milk is 
daily required to supply the restaurants 
and saloons. We cannot have too much 
of it. A good proportion of our business 
men seem well satisfied with a bowl of 
bread aDd milk, or oatmeal and milk, for 
lunch. There are numerous places where 
sweet milk and buttermilk are sold on 
draught, and they are all well patronized. 
We look upon this state of affairB as be¬ 
ing very encouraging. During this ex¬ 
ceedingly hot weather we do not need the 
hot, heavy dinners that cost such an 
effort to prepare, and are sure to produce 
a sleepy and “lazy” feeling. Certainly 
no man in his right mind would drink 
whisky at this season. Milk will not 
steal away a man’s brains nor make him 
a brute, but it will quench his thirst, 
satisfy his hunger and keep him in 
health. Milk is the perfect food. It will 
sustain lile without any help. We know 
plenty of men who do the hardest of work 
upon a diet that has milk for its founda¬ 
tion. We arc half inclined to think that 
“milk saloons” could be made useful in 
fighting intemperance in our cities. Sup¬ 
pose they could he placed side by side with 
the beer and whisky saloons. Nothing 
but the purest milk to be sold at the low¬ 
est possible price. Let some light, cheap 
lunch be served with it. We believe 
that such saloons would draw a consider¬ 
able element from their dangerous neigh¬ 
bors. They would at least divide sn’oon 
patrons into two classes: those who drink 
for the sake of getting drunk, and those 
who drink to benefit themselves. The 
members of the ordinary farmer’s family 
do not use nearly as much milk ns they 
should. We have known farmers to al¬ 
most deprive their own tables of cream 
and butter and send all the milk to the 
city. This is wrong. Pure, sweet milk 
is the ideal temperance drink. “The old 
oaken bucket” is not alone iu its hallowed 
memories: the old tin milking pail 
brings back many a dream of boyhood. 
REGARDING NEW VARIETIES OF 
WHEAT. 
Later rentiers of the Rural New- 
Yorker know very little of the great 
number of plants which have been tested 
either on the Long Island Farm or the 
Rural Experiment Grounds in New Jersey. 
Let us take wheats for example. We 
doubt if any experiment station or indi¬ 
vidual has planted as many difierent va¬ 
rieties. Not counting our own crosses, 
the number can not be less than 400, 
many of which, though sent to us under 
different names, had been found to be 
the same. We mention this in no spirit 
of self-praise, but merely that our later 
readers may feel that the Rural’s opinion 
in such matters ought to be of some 
value. 
It is the easiest matter for old varieties 
to be reintroduced under new names. 
For example, the U. S. Agricultural De¬ 
partment, about seven years ago, sent out 
several kinds of wheat. The seed was 
badly mixed and many farmers selected 
heads of kinds not familiar to them, and 
propagated the strange wheat as something 
new. So whenever one sees a stool of 
wheat different from that which he 
bought, if the grain pleases him it is sav¬ 
ed and sown separately. The chances are 
as 999 to 1,000 that the strange wheat is 
an old whpat. 
It will surprise our new readers to know 
that of the 400 or more different kinds of 
wheat which we have tested, there are 
not more than five kinds which we care 
to raise—that is, not more than five kinds 
which, taken all in all, seem to be more 
valuable than well-known wheats, such 
as Clawson, Mediterranean, Fultz, Amber, 
Diehl, etc. 
Our remarks have to do with winter 
wheats exclusively; spring wheats do 
not thrive with us, and our experiments 
with them have been mostly confined to 
endeavors to change them from spring 
wheats to winter wheats—all in vain. 
Our belief is that any wheat which is 
valuable as a spring wheat will not prove 
hardy enough to endure this climate as a 
fall wheat. 
AGRARIAN REVOLUTION IN IRELAND. 
While European cablegrams are con¬ 
stantly bringing minute particulars of 
every little squabble in a remote village 
of semi-savage Afghanistan, and contra¬ 
dictory rumors about petty elections in 
Little Peddliagton, hardly a word is ever 
said about a marvelous agrarian revolu¬ 
tion about to take place in the most im¬ 
portant dependency of the British Em¬ 
pire, a revolution by which every feature 
of the political aud social organization of 
society, framed upon the present unequal 
and unjust distribution of land, is destin¬ 
ed to be totally transformed, not in Great 
Britain alone, but ultimately in all civiliz¬ 
ed lauds. 
The Land Purchase Bill lately intro¬ 
duced into the House of Lords, and 
which has there passed a Becoud reading, 
provides for the appropriation of $25,- 
000,000 of the public funds, out of which 
the whole purchase money needed to 
make them owners of their farms, is ti he 
advanced to the tenants of estates iu Ire¬ 
land, thus establishing the principle that 
a country’s soil belongs of right to those 
who till it, and that levying a tribute l»y 
non-producers, in the guise of rent, is an 
iniquity whose redress belongs to the Go¬ 
vernment, or, in other words, to the voters 
of the land iu their aggregate capacity. 
Of course, the sum appropriated by this 
measure will suffice to remedy only a small 
fraction of the agrarian oppression from 
which Ireland has for centuries been suf¬ 
fering; but the doctrine once established 
AUG 15 
that the soil belongs of right to its cul¬ 
tivators, it must soon be applied not only 
to the other cotters of Ireland, but also 
to the crofters of Scotland and the tenant 
farmers of England. Nor will its influ¬ 
ence be confined to the British Tsles alone, 
for, os in other political and social move¬ 
ments, every country in Christendom 
will, sooner or later, follow the example 
of England, the delay in doing so being 
greater or less in proportion to the ad¬ 
vance made by each in liberty and civil¬ 
ization. 
The. principle embodied in this bill was 
cautiously suggested in the Land Act of 
1870, and a trifle less timidly reaffirmed 
in the provisions of the Land Act of 1881; 
but. like all land reforms, the measure 
was obstructed by the great Whig land- 
owners, who have always been encourag¬ 
ed bv the knowledge that all legislation 
detrimental to the interests of landlords 
would meet with strong opposition from 
the Conservatives commanding a power¬ 
ful minority in the Commons and an 
overwhelming majority in the Lords. 
This measure, however, though of the 
most leveling and revolutionary na¬ 
ture, has heen introduced by a Con¬ 
servative Ministry in the House of Lords, 
the stronghold of landed aristocracy, so 
that heuceforth theWhig magnates are for¬ 
ever muzzled. and the Liberals henceforth 
will havetobid against the Conservatives 
for the favor of the landless masses by 
advocating even far more trenchant agra¬ 
rian innovations. 
BREVITIES. 
Malaria, the hobby of the doctors and the 
bueraboo of the people now a-days. is only an¬ 
other name for plant food in its gaseous form; 
or. in other words, for manure. 
Vegetable matter, wherever placed, if in 
connection with heat, moisture and air, is 
constantly undergoing decomposition, and in 
doing so js giving off to the air those elements 
which in its growth it extracted from it. and 
these eminatiou8 are malaria, and this is all 
there is of it. 
No one ever hears of malaria in a country 
of sand so pure that nothing will grow upon 
it, except it be bordered with water filled with 
decaying vegetable matter, from which, of 
course, malaria readily springs. 
The richer the soil, the moister the climate 
and the higher the temperature, the more 
rapid the decomposition, and the more doth 
malaria abound. 
Those gases constituting malaria, though 
death to humanity, are the food on which 
plants feed and thrive luxuriantly. 
The lesson to be learned from these facts is, 
to keen all decaying vegetable matter covered 
with the soil, or at least mixed w-ith it, to 
keep all such soils thickly covered with grow¬ 
ing plants, and its substaoce entirely filled 
with their roots, thus picking up every atom 
of malaria aud converting it into food, thus 
using it to sustain, instead of allowing it to 
poison and destroy human life. 
Malaria, then, properly handled, fills the 
granaries of the land instead of the grave¬ 
yards. Happy is the farmer who learns and 
heeds this lesson. 
The Rural wants every pomologist in the 
country to attend the next, session of the Am. 
Pom. Society. We ore assured that Michigan 
can take good cure of them. 
We hear that they are making great prepa¬ 
rations for the next session of the American 
PotnologJeal Rocietv at Grand Rapids. Messrs. 
Garfield. Lyon and Beal (where are three bet¬ 
ter men to be found for the work?) are all 
zealously at workly. 
The Yellow-wood (Cladrastis tiDOtoria) has 
one fault aud only ouetbat we know of. Some 
of its leaflet* begin to turn yellow now, and 
then to drop, giving the lawn an appearance 
of Fall. 
Mr. Troop, of Purdue University. Indiana, 
writes us as follows:—‘’Carter’s Stratagem 
aud Prince of Wales Peas provu to be all that 
was claimed for them, and more too. Carter’s 
Stratagem is a little ahead of Prince of Wales. 
It, was large enough for table use on July 10, 
and the largest pea in our collection. Every¬ 
body should try the Carter’s Stratagem.” 
The Rural does not hit it every time in its 
selection of seeds for its Free Seed Distribu¬ 
tion. but it hits often enough to please its 
friends. 
One of the evils of borrowing money when 
one is starting out in fife, whether ou the farm 
nr elsewhere, is that it is so easy to borrow, so 
bard to pay. The poor man, who must depend 
upon his hands alone for support ,must make 
sacrifices, and borrowed money tends rather 
to extravagance than economy. I he sooner 
he makes those sacrifices the better. There 
are few industrious young men who cannot 
save from 25 to 50 cents a week; and this 
saving, small as it seems, is a sure .stepping 
stone to prosperity. While to go behind each 
week the same amount will as surely lead to 
a life of drudgery, if nothing worse. 
We received. July SO. from our friouds J, 
O. Plumb & Son, of Milton, Wisconsin, a 
specimen of tho North Western Greening, 
that bad boon on exhibition ten weeks at 
New Orleans, and also at the Winter meeting 
of the Wisconsin Horticultural Society iu 
February, It had afterwurds been much 
handled before it was sent to us, yet it arrived 
in very good order. This is the variety winch 
we Illustrated iu the issue of March 7, of the 
current year, on page 1 it) of the Rural, and 
although not of more than good quality, it 
is unquestionably one of the best keepers, and 
as it is a handsome apple ltjmust become pop¬ 
ular in the “cold Northwest.” 
