THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
APRIL 2 
(Con tinned f rom page 221.) 
is sulphuric ether, one ounce; lauduaum, two 
ounces-; compound decoction of aloes, five 
ounces. Mix and give as a drench every hall' 
hour until relief is obtained. 
“wolf teeth” in a nonsK. 
O. II. S., Franklin Forks, Pa— My colt 
coining three yearn old, has large “wolf 
eetli” iu the upper jaw; do they injure the 
eye-sight, and should they be taken out? 
Ans. It, is practically t he unanimous opinion 
of veterinarians that these tooth have very 
little influence upon.the eyes. They are su¬ 
perfluous teeth not needed in mastieatiou. 
They do sometimes lacerate the tougue and 
cause soreness and inflammation. In such 
cases they may be drawn out. A pair of for¬ 
ceps will do the work easily. The old plan of 
kuocking them out with a hammer and cold 
chisel is barbarous. 
ADVANTAGES OF THE SHERWOOD HARNESS. 
G. M. B.. Bon Accord, Kans .—It is claimed 
that a team cau do more work with the Sher¬ 
wood harness than with the common one. Is 
there auythiug in it? 
Ans.—A span of horses hitched in the usual 
way have all the pressure on the shoulders. 
The team, on account of the whiflletrees, is 
quite a distance from the load. I^et the load 
run against an obstruction, and many horses 
flinch with pain and stop pulling, thus losing 
all advantage of previous momentum. With 
the Sherwood harness the team is hitched much 
closer to the load. The yoke is made of spi iug 
steel, oil-tempered and very elastic. There is 
no concussion to the shoulders of the horses, 
but they can press forward without the jolt 
and sudden stoppage which occur with other 
harness. Those are the points claimed for the 
Sherwood harness and they appear to he sound 
in theory. ___ 
Miscellaneous. 
G. W. G., Catonsville, Md .—Should oyster 
shell lime be spread upon the land immediate¬ 
ly as it comes from the kiln or should it bo 
thrown into large piles and spread after it has 
been slaked i 
Ans.— We should prefer the latter plan. 
The lime might be dropped about the field iu 
heaps containing from two to five bushels and 
spread after slaking takes place. It should be 
spread immediately after slukiug while it is in 
the form of a dry, white powder. If left too 
long and permitted to become wet, it is pasty 
and hard to spread. 
G. R. T., Reading, Mass .—What is the pro¬ 
cess of salting butter with brine instead of 
using dry salt ? 
Ans. —The butter is salted iu the churn. 
Just as it “comes" and gathers in particles 
about the size of shot, the brine is poured into 
the churn and the butter thoroughly rinsed 
with it. It is claimed that this method obvi¬ 
ates working aud that the butter cannot be 
over-churned or over- worked or over-salted 
or under-salted. A good article on the sub¬ 
ject will be found on page 68 of this volume. 
A. S. A., Pittsfield, Ills.—Wo could not give 
the value of the inclosed sample of taukago 
without an anatysis. It appears to be of fair 
quality aud w< uld make a good fertilizer. 
Average tankage is worth about $85 per ton. 
DISCUSSION. 
frequently in damp weather, under the shelter 
of the top growth I have seen the ends of 
rootlets projecting above the surface. Notic¬ 
ing these things, the thought occurred to me 
that plants could not feed below where the air 
circulated freely; that such free circulation is 
necessary to enable the roots to assimilate plant 
food. Does the Rural know if any experi¬ 
ments have been tried to show that, the roots 
which go deep down nourish the plant, or 
only bring it water, and hold it in position, 
while other roots near t he surface gather the 
plant food. In this ease of the wheat plants, 
may not the explanation be t hat when plant¬ 
ed too deep the air was excluded to such a 
degree that the roots of the young plants 
could not use the pluut food present? Dops 
not the teudeney to develop roots just at the 
surface indicate that there is their feeding 
ground ? 1 would like to inquire if roots gen¬ 
erally start from one end of seed grain and 
the top from the other as represented in the 
cut? 
R. N.-Y.—Botanists tell us that warmth, 
moisture, air aud food are essential to the best 
development of plants. Of course different, 
families of plants differ in their root system 
as well as in their stems aud leaves. Why 
the fibrous or feeding roots of corn should 
grow nearer the surface than those of clover 
or onions, no one can tell. The power which 
the clover and other pea plants have of en- 
riching the soil seems to depend upon the I act 
that their roots gather food from a considera¬ 
ble dept h, “pumping It, up” so to speak,for the 
support of the rest of the plant. Onroful ob 
servations show that mulching induces the 
roots of many plants to grow nearer the sur¬ 
face; that droughts iuduce the roots to grow 
deeper; that roots travel, as it were, long dis¬ 
tances in search of moisture and food; that 
roots do not. penetrate so deep in rich as in 
poor surface soils. It is also a fact that 
pruning the surface roots of plants impairs 
their vigor for the time, while it causes, as 
in transplanting, an increased growth of 
surface fibrous roots. If the tap-root of 
various plants be destroyed, it is never repro¬ 
duced, showing, apparently, that while it fed 
the plant in the beginning, it, is not thereafter 
essentiul to its existence. 
In every seed there is an embryo which con 
gists of a t iny stem and leaves. The latter 
grow out of the soil, while from the stem is¬ 
sue the roots. 
HOW DEED DO PLANTS FEED ? 
M. M., Medway, Mass. —The drawings of 
wheat plants grown from plantings at differ¬ 
ing depths in a late Rural recall to miud a 
query which lias often presented itself to me, 
viz.—Do the roots of plants get nourishment 
from the soil except at Or very near the sur¬ 
face? My observation has led me to susi>eet 
that the roots which penetrate to considerable 
depths do not, gather plant food When 1 
have plowed under manure eight to ten in¬ 
ches deep I could not see much benefit from 
it. I once set four grape-vines. For two of 
them I dug holes three feet or more deep and 
filled them to within one foot of thejsurface 
with stones, Vines und'statile manure. Then 
I put in good loam and set the,, vines. The 
other two vines were set iu holes just jlarge 
enough to receive the roots properly. I ex- 
pee ted a reward for thelaVir expended in set 
tiug the first two; but they never grew any 
better than the others: 1 thought not quite so 
well. Another instance was an experiment 
tried by a member of our formers’ club to 
find at whut depth to place the manure to pro¬ 
duce the best results in growing sugar beets. 
Some drills he opened very deep mid placed 
the manure iu the bottom; in some he placed 
the manure a few Inches below the surface, 
and in some just below or at the surface, He 
said the:nearer the;surface.the manure was 
put, the better the plauts grew. I have no¬ 
ticed that corn,'potatoes, beets, turnips and 
cabbage when growing fast'always have 
abundance of roots very near the surface, und 
Clover Sickness. —Dr. Lawes favors the 
Albany Cultivator with a very important 
article regarding the cause of clover sickness, 
which has occupied his attention almost from 
the commencement of his experiments. For 
a long time he hardly advanced beyond the 
fact that no combination of manures, natural 
or artificial, would cause clover to grow upon 
land which wa-s clover-sick. Of late years he 
has gathered two or t hree scraps of knowledge 
which have enabled him to mount a stop or 
two up the loug ladder, on the top of which is 
the solution of the problem. Several plots 
were differently manured or fertilized—one 
not being manured at all for many years, 
Comparing the condition of the land where 
there was no disease and where the disease 
was the worst, Dr. Lawes finds that where 
there was no disease, no organic or nitrogen¬ 
ous manure had been applied, aud all the veg 
etable mutter grown had been removed: while 
the mineral manures applied contained more 
phosphoric acid and potash than what, was 
carried Off in the crops. The land where the 
disease destroyed u large portion of t-ho croj 
received, with the mineral manures, every 
fourth year, 2.1NHI pounds of rape cake aud 
200 pounds of salts of ammonia, the large crop 
of roots and top- being also plowed iu. As 
compared with the other Roil, this soil contains 
vegetable mutters in a different, stage of de¬ 
cay uinl provides suitable food for a great 
variety of underground life. He (iuds that, the 
application of rape cake Is followed by an im¬ 
mense increase of wire-worms; it is said 
among farmers that where the corn crops are 
attacked by wire-worms an application' of 
rape cake will hill them, the fact being that 
they cease to eat the young corn and feed upon 
the cake. * # * The evidence points to a 
destruction of the clover plant by living or 
guuisms iu the soil, a large increase in this 
life having been encouraged by the liberal 
supply of organic and nitrogenous matter. 
This docs not, however, explain—supposing 
he had taken another leguminous crop, say 
beans, at the end of the fourth und the eighth 
year, followed by Red Clover in the 12th year 
—why the crop would, in all probability, es 
cape the attack of the living agencies and bo 
free from disease. It is at this point that the 
difficulty of finding a satisfactory solution is 
the greatest, and it, cau only be met by assum¬ 
ing that the clover plant requires, as a part of 
its food, a special organic compound. Dr. 
Lawes goes on to show by experiments in an¬ 
other field how u soil which became poor in 
organic matter, nitrogen, phosphates and pot¬ 
ash, ceased to furnish food for one legumin¬ 
ous plant, while it was accumulating fond 
suitable for another plant of the same order. 
In his garden the soil is rich from the accu¬ 
mulations from former manures. No fresh 
organic or nitrogenous manures have been ap¬ 
plied to feed living bodies in the soil. This 
has never been clover-sick, though clover has 
been grown on it continuously for 85 years. 
It is quite possible when organic matter has 
reached a certain stage of decay it may 
cease to be food for much of the larger sorts 
of organic life, such as worms, etc. Salts of 
ammonia appear always to have an unfavor¬ 
able influence upon clover and to encourage 
disease. 
We have merely attempted to give the gist 
of Dr. Lawes’s article which fills over three 
columns of our respected contemporary. 
There are a few conclusions which Dr. 
Lawes draws from these experiments; 
1, That clover disease does not occur even 
when the crop is grown continuously, pro¬ 
vided that the soil contains in abundance the 
appropriate food of the plant, 
2. That, clover disease occurs iu highly- 
manured soils if the crop is repeated too fre¬ 
quently and sufficient time is not, allowed 
for the format ion of the appropriate food of 
the clover. 
8. That the fertility of a soil may be largely 
reduced by cropping and absence of manures, 
while at the same time the food specially re¬ 
quired by the clover may be increasing in the 
soil. The crops grown during the process of 
exhaustion may be partly, or wholly, plants 
of the same natural order as the clover, pro¬ 
vided that they differ from the clover in cer¬ 
tain propert ies of their growth and the range 
of their roots. 
4. That, although clover does not appear to 
possess the same power of appropriating the 
mineral food of the soil as the cereal crops 
(for which reason mineral manures are often 
advantageously applied to thiserop), still min¬ 
eral manures cannot be depended upon to grow 
clover, on clover-sick land, 
5. That nil the evidence points to the soil ns 
the chief source of the mineral und nitrogen¬ 
ous food of the clover; and if it should be ul¬ 
timately proved that the nitrogen of the atmos¬ 
phere played auy important part iu furnish¬ 
ing the nitrogen taken up by the plant, it is 
more probable that the nitrogen enters into a 
combination with some ingredient of the soil, 
than that it is directly assimilated by the 
plant itself. 
The Butter Globule.— Henry Stewart 
says, in the N. Y. Times, that the fat globules 
in the milk are very small, not more than 
U2500 to 1-4500 of an inch in diameter. They 
float in the milk in the form of an emulsion, 
aud do not have any covering or inclosing 
pellicle, as was formerly supposed and so 
stated by Prof. Arnold aud some persons who 
blindly accepted what he told them. The idea 
of the inclosing pellicle, or skin, however, first 
originated with some French physiologists, 
and was simply adopted here by various pro¬ 
fessional dairy lecturers, whospreud it, abroad 
with various fantastical embellishments 
equally visionary in regard to the operation 
of churning, as it was thought to depend on 
this fanciful pellicle. Thus it, was said and 
taught to dairymen that the erearn should lie 
forced through narrow spaces between the 
churn and the dasher, so that this pellicle 
could be rubbed and worn off or ruptured, 
and this theory, requiring a great deal of 
labor to carry it out, has inflicted life-long 
injury upon many a dairyman's wife who used 
the old-fashioned up-and down chum, which 
was recommended as the best for this rubbing 
process. Mr. Stewart claims that ho wits the 
first person in America to show by numerous 
microscopical examinations aud by making 
and churning artificial cream and comparing 
this with common cream that, the butter glo¬ 
bule was simply a small particle or drop of oil 
suspended in a viscous aud adherent fluid mid 
differed physically in no degree from an arti¬ 
ficial emulsion of oil in au albuminous or 
gummy fluid. This explanation of the char- 
acter of milk and cream is now fully accepted, 
and tha> old theory is discarded, with the re¬ 
sult of completely changing the common 
belief in regard to churning and the action of 
tlie churn. No dasher is needed in a churn. 
All that is required is to cause a certain agi¬ 
tation and concussion of the cream so that its 
particles arc violently dashed together, when, 
if the temperature is just right, the small fat 
globules adhere together and gradually form 
masses, which, under a microscope of high 
power, lappear like raspberries or a bunch of 
small particles adhering loosely together in a 
menstruum of buttermilk. Formerly butter 
was churned until it formed a large lump in 
the churn; it was then taken out, and squeezed 
and slashed in a bowl or upon a slab, with the 
ladle or by the hands to get rid of the butter¬ 
milk which was contained in it. The result 
was that either the buttermilk not wholly re¬ 
moved spoiled the butter very quickly or the 
grain of the butter was injured. 
“Spread” Himself Too Much.—M r. 
Hugh J. Brooks, in the N, Y. Tribune, men¬ 
tions the case of u farmer of 800 acres who 
wanted to sell. His children wanted to get 
away, ids wife wanted to get away, he want¬ 
ed to get away. Mr. Brooks wont to see that 
farm, aud didn't wonder that they all wanted 
a change of scene. The farmer began with 
100 acres, and instead of making the most of 
that,, he bought more aud more, and in strug¬ 
gling with debt worked himself and family 
beyond their strength, neglected mental and 
social privileges, aud did nothing to beautify 
the home or make home life attractive. The 
visitor looked in vain fora strawberry anil 
asparagus bod, the raspberry and grape-vi les, 
the burdened branches of apple, pear, peach 
and cherry, lie found a few currant bushes, 
but they appeared to be ashamed of them¬ 
selves, and doubtless wished that they, too, 
could get away. 
-*-*-*- 
THE BUBAL'S LUNCH. 
D. S. M arvin, in Popular Gardening, does 
not believe that the finest grapes are pro¬ 
duced on the strongest shoots of the previous 
year’s growth. Wherever there is a feeble 
growth of the vino, there the idea is right; 
but wherever there is a sti ong growth then 
it is wrong. The fruit lmds upou the most 
vigorous canes are not so well developed as 
upon medium-sized canps... 
Mr. Marvin has tried the experiment over 
and over, and the sum of his observation is, 
that the medium canes ure t-ho ones that de¬ 
velop the best fruit buds whenever the vines 
are strong..... 
Professor Cook, in an address before the 
New Jersey Horticultural Society, alludes to 
the fact that moisture and free circulation of 
air arejudisppusa hie conditions of nitrification, 
and, provided the circulation of air is main¬ 
tained, the more moisture the more rapid and 
complete is the nitrification. This alone 
would suffice to show the importance of a mel¬ 
low soil for growing plauts. 
We have yet, to learn of a case in which a 
poor crop of oats was attributed to sowing too 
early.•. 
The Times says that the pernicious teach¬ 
ing of a clique of agricultural writers in re¬ 
gard to the effects of plowing in clover as a 
better thing for the soil than the use of ma¬ 
nure is having serious results. 
Five do Hal’s will purchase a bushel of clo¬ 
ver seed, or enough for six or eight acres. 
The fall growth will make, on good soil, not 
more than four tons of green matter per acre. 
This cannot be equal to 10 or 12 tons of ma¬ 
nure, either in direct or indirect benefit to the 
land. But farmers are too apt to lie misled by 
positive statements set fortli in well chosen 
and easily read sentences, and much mischief 
may be done iu this way. 
It would not. do to forgot that as novelties 
all of our old and valuable varieties first found 
their wav into wide cultivation, says Popular 
Gardening. It, is true that a large proportion 
of novelties fail when put to the test of wide 
dissemination aud it is also true that nine- 
tenths of the novelties are “oldities,” or trash. 
If every new thing offered were a prize, prizes 
would soon go a-begging. 
Mr. Terry's experience, as he states in the 
Cultivator, is all in favor of sowiug clover 
early. A few freezes aud thaws will cover it 
nicely. In 17 years Mr. Terry has not failed 
of a fair stand in this way. On his land he 
considers four quarts to the acre enough. Ho 
also sows a little Timothy— three or four 
quarts—but the hay will be mostly clover. 
The Timothy will catch in some places where 
the clover misses, and theu, also, it'holds the 
clover up somewhat and increases the yield of 
hay per aero. 
OUR friend, the Cultivator aud Country 
Gentleman, assures a correspondent, in reply 
to a question, that the eow-pea is “too small 
in growth at the North to be of value.” This 
is a mistake. We have grown many varieties 
of the cow pea at the Rural Farm and can as¬ 
sure the Cultivator that several of them not 
only make a stupendous growth of vine, but 
rjpon the fruit early and in great abundance.. 
MR. I dki.l remarked, at, the last session of 
the N, J- H, that the reason why there is 
not a greater consumption of fruit in om 
cities is that the middle and poorer classes 
spend too pmoh of their money for beer. He 
estimates t hat, Kl[oh people spend i>0 cents tor 
