s 
4888 
THE BUBAL MIW-YORKIR. 
> 
before the grain was ripe enough to shell, but 
well out of the dough state. The wlr at was 
put in. in the fall of 18S0, and harvested in 
1881, which was a favorable season here for 
the wheat crop. No special effort was made 
for either piece excepting the extra cleaning 
of the seed sown. 
Oneida County, N. Y. 
WHAT POPULAR NAMES SHOULD BE 
PREFIXED TO OUR TWO SPECIES 
OF BED CLOVER? 
PROFESSOR W. J. BEAL. 
A wholesale seedsman writes me: “We 
have but two distinct varieties of Red Clover 
in commerce in the United States—‘Medium’ 
and ‘Mammoth.’ The former is by common 
repute, a biennial, the latter mce or les« 
perennial. Still the books adhere to the old 
name Medium for the Mammoth variety, and 
while this does not confuse the careful reader 
when the term is used in a botanical article, it 
tends to hopeless confusion in tables of serds or 
directions for mixtures, etc., and it would be 
a matter for congratulation if scholars, mer¬ 
chants and farmers could be brought into 
agreement as to names. You may be able to 
help our American authorities to a simplifica¬ 
tion in this matter. We shall be pleased to 
do at any time anything in our power to help 
on the cause—good seeds and the truth about 
them.” 
( A hundred and fifty years ago all botan¬ 
ists agreed wi'h Linnaeus in calling our large, 
late, or Mammoth clover, Trifolium medium. 
Perhaps ten. maybe twenty years ago, some 
“smart” fellow began to call the small or early 
red clover “Medium” clover, and very soon a 
crowd followed his example. Now shall the 
botanists back down to this new interloper 
who had no knowledge of botany or who was 
ignorant of the confusion he was making? 
Among the common names, of our grains and 
seeds, there is scarcely an end to the confusion. 
- and there seems to be little or no attempt to 
set the matter right and follow any uniform 
plan. At present it seems to me best in case 
of red clovers to speak of one as “Early Red,” 
the other as “Late Red”or“Mammoth Clover.” 
Then all parties may understand each other. 
Please drop the term “Medium” Red ^Clover 
altogether. Again speak of them as “species” 
and not as “varieties.” 
It will probably not be very long before some 
substantial society will take up this matter of 
popular names to grains, seeds and vegetables, 
and try to do what the American Pomological 
Society has done and is still doing for a re¬ 
form in the names of our fruits. 
Agricultural College, Mich. 
Ofiirij Ijitsban^n). 
BUCEPHALUS BROWN’S NOTIONS AND 
IDEAS. 
Farmers are Human. — Almost every¬ 
body, farmers inclusive, has a prejudice in 
favor of his own pocket. This “sticks out” in 
all discussions. The cattlemen are in favor of 
letting up on oleo, because the makers furnish 
a market for tallow The dairymen will not 
listen to any statement favorable to a butter 
substitute, and are bound, indirectly if not 
directly, to wipe out oleo entirely. They are 
for crushing at once the agricultural chemist 
who says it may be made a proper and whole¬ 
some substitute for butter. They will not 
hear a word about its averaging as good as 
dairy butter, and being, at its worst, no worse 
than much of the butter that has been and is 
put upon the market. “We are all poor crit¬ 
ters,” as the Widow Bedott sagely said. 
Water in Butter. —Some buyers of very 
good-looking and well-flavored butter com¬ 
plain that it is too salt, while the maker in¬ 
sists that it has not been over-salted. The 
same buyers say that a slice or print of the 
butter left exposed in a warm room, will, in 
two or three days, become thickly encrusted 
with salt, which may be scaled off, leaving 
the butter still quite salt enough. That is 
true, too, and yet the maker may not have 
spoken falsely in regard to over-salting—that 
is, if the old 'standard of an ounce to the 
pound is not so regarded. But let the pur¬ 
chaser weigh the print or slice carefully be¬ 
fore exposing it to the air, and then, after a 
few days, without removing the salt coating 
which has appeared, weigh it again. He will 
find that it has decreased 10, or even 15 per 
cent, in weight. How is this? Simply a 
dairyman’s trick of adulterating his butter 
with water. To this adulterated or extended 
butter, he adds the usual weight of salt per 
pound, making it perceptibly too salt, even to 
those who are accustomed to salt butter. In 
the warm room the water comes to the sur¬ 
face and is evaporated, leaving the objection¬ 
able incrustation. 
The Dairymen who practice this trick (and 
the number seems to be increasing) are a little 
too greedy. They not only want to sell water 
for butter, but they also want to get in as 
much salt as possible, because there is a very 
fine profit in selling even salt at the price of 
butter. They overreach themselves in the 
end, but meantime the public suffer, and the 
reputation of dairy butter sinks lower and 
lower. 
HUNGARIAN AND BARN GRASSES AND RYE FOR 
SOILING. 
Here is my experience with Hungarian 
Grass this year: After picking strawberries I 
turned one-half acre over and sowed Hunga¬ 
rian Grass. It was very dry, but it grew about 
two feet high, and was thick and headed well. 
It was estimated to cut two tons, and was 
cured so that it looked green in the mow. The 
horse and cows ate it with avidity and it was 
a very satisfactory crop to me—the first I 
ever raised. I had three acres of winter rye. 
It was cut in June and we got six loads; but 
it was cocked up for a week, every day of 
which it raiued, and the rye got well bleached 
out. I thought it would be poor food for 
milch cows and used a part of it to mulch 
strawberries. I gave the cows some last night 
and to-day, and they ate it well. The second 
crop of rye was about half Timothy, headed 
out; it was cured nicely and was a heavier 
crop than the first, so I thought the rye was 
satisfactory on the whole. 
To my potatoes I gave level culture, kept 
them clean as long as I could work them 
with a horse, and the last hoeing sowed oats 
thickly among them to keep the weeds down; 
but the Baru Grass grew fastest and when I 
commenced cuttiug, it stood about four feet 
high all over the piece; but it makes very good 
feed cut green. As I was three weeks cutting 
and feediDg it began to get ripe towards the 
last aud was not relished so well. I do not 
think it would make good dry feed. Some of 
my neighbors, after seeing my crop, talked 
about sowing the seed for fodder instead of 
sowing com, but I tell them it would be like 
the priest’s blessing. He was called upon to 
go around and bless the crops to make them 
productive. Coming to a poor piece of land 
he said a blessing would be of no use; what it 
wanted was mauure, and I suppose manure 
made the Barn Grass grow. a. l. herrick. 
Chautauqua County, N. Y. 
Butter is a Luxury, and butter-making 
is a fine art. Merely as a food, a high-grade 
butter is extremely costly, the fatty element 
being attainable in other palatable forms at 
one fourth the cost to the consumer. The re¬ 
lation of the two is much like that between 
plain sugar and fine confectionary. The lat¬ 
ter, if nice, is nice, and so of choice butter. 
But as cheap confectionary is inferior to plain 
sugar, so poor butter is a worse diet than 
good suet or meat gravy—or good oleo. 
Few Good Dairymen.— All the fine arts 
require a peculiar temperament and delicacy 
of taste, in the broad sense of the word. Not 
one man or woman in ten has the character¬ 
istics to become either a good butter or cheese 
maker, any more than they would have to be 
fine cooks or “artists” in any line. Undoubt¬ 
edly advice and instruction, as well as sharp 
criticisms, have had the effect of greatly im¬ 
proving the average quality of dairy butter 
during the past 20 years. But this raised av¬ 
erage comes mostly from the improvement of 
the few, rather than of the many. There is 
as bad butter made now as there ever was, and 
an immense quantity of it, too. 
Creamery Butter.— Here is an opportu¬ 
nity to make a “fair average article,” by mix¬ 
ing everybody’s cream together, aud having 
it made up by an expert operator. But the 
main difficulty is not remedied. Butter is 
spoiled in the milk, before the cream is separ¬ 
ated, in a vast number of cases. The strictest 
supervision will not prevent this. There is no 
cure, short of death, for a dirty man or wo¬ 
man. Nevertheless, in creamery butter the 
dirt is diluted and averaged, and the superior 
manufacturer, together wi h the uniformity 
of grade, makes the enterprise successful from 
the business point of view. 
Communications Received fob the Week En 
December 3', 1887. 
D P--W. S—C. W. M. A. L. J„ thanirs— 
T -^m L Y R - t S ’o ? g- B - - T - J- thanks 
Tr-~9- ^ T -, —J H - S.— B. H. J. G. P. L.-L. R. B 
W-Jp-; 5 thanks-W. L. R. A. C. G -W. C. G. - J. R. 
f-E. B—S E. K. P. II K.—C. W. M. P. B„ (har 
p‘ h' V C - E «7 S o H 'ig E- P - P ’ th *nks -T. i 
U S' n’ B ^ .thanks—L. E. B , thanks-E 
C ’ b’ s 1 ' h' B a ~ J « C ' K L - v - D - , G - s - s ■ than 
Th.Tli.co'A 11 ■> cauliflower and seed recei 
Thanks.- S. & H.-A. E S , thauks-L. h a., than 
J. is. H.—G. M. H. M. B. B.—R. H —Thanks to 
Myers.—J. W. H.—J. C. A.—A. A. K.—H H F 10 
Gilt-edged Butter can be produced only 
by gilt-edged people—by which I mean people 
of constitutional neatness and refinement, 
joined with conscientiousness and operative 
skill. The proportion of such people to the 
whole mass must, in the present stage of our 
civilization, be relatively small, and the but¬ 
ter produced by them should be and is rightly 
ranked as a high luxury, and paid for propor¬ 
tionately. Wealth has so increased in this 
country that to a large number of people it is 
a matter of no importance what the price may 
be that they pay for their food. They want 
the best and are perfectly willing to pay the 
price, if they can get the goods. 
In New England, and generally through 
the Eastern States, it has been the railroads 
which have indirectly forced so many consti¬ 
tutionally unfit people into dairying. Butter 
and cheese are the most concentrated forms 
into which our crops can be put. and conse¬ 
quently they are the most cheaplv got to 
market. They also exhaust the land the least, 
aud thus help to lessen the consequences of 
shiftless and ignorant farming. The coarser 
farm produces are rendered utterly unprofit¬ 
able, as usually grown, by Western competi¬ 
tion. favored by low freightage, which takes 
the products of the West thousands of miles, 
and right by our doors, at rates that make 
Eastern competition impossible under exist¬ 
ing conditions. The immense reduction 
which has been made on Western through 
freights, which has even overcome the com¬ 
petition of water transportation, should never 
have been allowed by the legislatures of 
Eastern States, without insisting upon a pro¬ 
portionate reduction of local rates. If this 
bad been done the through rales would have 
been somewhat greater and the local rates 
greatly less. The result upon Eastern farm¬ 
ing would have been so great as to be incal¬ 
culable. Things would have been so evened 
up that Westward emigration would have 
been almost limited to foreigners, aud Eastern 
farms and farming would not have been so 
deprived of value and hope as they now ap¬ 
pear. — 
But There is Hope that we are now seeing 
the worst of this, and that by legal enactments 
partly, yet more from other causes, a revival 
of Eastern farm prosperity is at hand. The 
“New West” is getting farther and farther 
off, while the “Old West” is becoming so 
thickly inhabited, the productiveness of its 
soil so lessened, and the cost of its farming so 
enhanced,that an equilibrium is being reached. 
The worse has come to its worst, and things 
must mend. Adversity, while it discouraged 
and ruined many, has developed the capacity 
of others,and there can be no doubt that East¬ 
ern farming is very much better and Eastern 
farmers are much more skillful in their 
att than thev were 40, 30, or even 20 years 
ago. Our cheap farms, well located, near 
good markets must soon attract some of the 
now abundant capital seeking investment, 
and the new generation of young farmers 
a better future before them than their fathers 
saw. I regard the prospects of skilled farm¬ 
ing along the Atlantic border as better to-day 
than they have ever been since the country 
was first settled. 
W hy Not More Sheep?— This is a common 
question, but, after all, it is rather a wonder 
(considering that “ without our dogs ”) 
the prices of mutton and lamb are not higher 
in the market. The supply seems to be pretty 
well up to the demand, as much so as in the 
case of poultry, at least. For one, Bucephalus 
doesn’t want to go into the sheep business 
without the protection of dog-proof fences for 
his flock. Of all the pitiful, mournful, soul- 
harrowing sights, what is more so than a flock 
of sheep after the dogs have raided them? And 
what help is there? We must not poison a dog, 
or shoot him, unless caught in the very act. 
The dogs seem to be as well aware of the law 
as their owners, and to know their business as 
well as a Wall Street shark. 
CORRESPONDENTS’ VIEWS. 
Dairy Lessons. —In connection with dairy¬ 
ing, one of the most satisfying experiences of 
the past year has been that of exchanging the 
old-fashioned shallow setting of milk for deep 
setting, together with the inauguration of a 
system of testing and recording the product of 
each cow, both as to quantity and quality. It 
has been a surprise to me to note how little 
extra time it requires to make a certainty of 
what was before always more or less uncertain. 
The saving of labor in straining and skimming 
the milk ana in caring for the utensils, with the 
increased production,!? no small item; but the 
most satisfactory part is the knowing instead 
of guessing at the results. A simple spring 
balance hung in a convenient part of the 
stable, with papers ruled into columns, one 
for each cow, is all that is needed. When a 
cow is milked hang the pail on the balance, 
mark the number of pounds on the paper and 
at your convenience you can copy the record 
into a book for future reference. A few sec¬ 
onds only are required for each cow and you 
have the product in quantity. As to quality 
or amount of cream, a simple graduated glass 
holding a pint, which may be bought for 50 
cents or less, gives it with little trouble, as it 
will be necessary to use it only occasionally, as 
on changing feed or the like. When a little 
more method with scarcely any extra expense 
makes nil the difference between loss and gain, 
between running behind expenses and increas¬ 
ing one’s bank account and his home 
comfort, it is worth while stopping to think, 
and ask one’s-self, “Will it not pay me to use 
a little more method in my business?” 
HAMPSHIRE. 
Lessons From the Past Droughts.— 
The question, what effect have the two past 
years of drought had upon the soil? is one in 
which I have been greatly interested and one 
that I have studied carefully, and here are my 
conclusions. I do not think the land has been 
impoverished by the drought, but it has been 
taking a rest, gathering and holding all, or a 
great deal of trash, such as leaves from the 
groves, weeds and grasses, and all the man¬ 
ures that have been placed on it which it has 
been able to bold, and for the last two years 
manure has rotted and mixed with the soil 
very slowly, thus giving the land a greater 
benefit from it, and the land yet retains a 
large per cent, of the manure that has been 
put on it in the past two years. Should next 
year prove seasonable, all those who have 
manured their lands the past two years will 
get good returns for their labor. When plow¬ 
ing my land this fall 1 was surprised to plow 
up the manure as dry as it was when I plowed 
it in in the fall of 1886. This manure crumbled 
up fine when turned out, and was thus readily 
mixed with the soil, and as we have had snow 
and rain enough to wet our land this winter, I 
expect good early crops next year, even if it 
should be dry again in the summer. We have 
had no washing rains to beat down or wash 
our lands, so we have lost nothing in this re¬ 
spect. We have not had to work our lands 
when wet for two years, which is of great ad¬ 
vantage to the land: for 1 am convinced that 
working land when wet will make it poor 
faster than anything else, except it be to 
tramp it with stock when wet. I do not think 
the heat has injured the soil, but I think if we 
can have a good season next year—and give 
our lands the proper cultivation—we will 
have one of the best harvests of our lives. 
Polk Co., Iowa. f. s. w. 
“Girls” and Labor.— A friend, the other 
week, canvassed a town of 3,000 souls, but 
could not find a girl who could or would go 
to the aid of his suddenly disabled wife, moth¬ 
er of a large family—the streets all the while 
being full of girls. Most of them say they are 
not strong enough. If that is the case some¬ 
thing must be done or what when they be¬ 
come mothers of families? Aud if girls don’t 
learn housekeeping and cooking what will be¬ 
come of the boys? But the bugbear of work 
being a disgrace, and leaving a brand (really 
a mark of returning health and strength by 
reddening the cheeks, swelling the muscles, in¬ 
vigorating the gait, etc ), is at the bottom of 
the trouble. In the case named a girl from a 
neighboring town, wanting the pay, was in¬ 
duced to take the place; but a sister hearing 
of it, and ashamed of her being a servant, 
came and alarmed her away. Here is a bad 
malady abroad. Is it from despotic treatment 
of hired girls by newly enriched people? Or 
is it not more from the lessons and influence 
of young lady teachers, who dislike the soil 
and toil of common labor, and who are apt to 
intimate that one of the great advantages of 
an education is that it enables a person to live 
without hard work, as if daily muscular ex¬ 
ertion were notan essential for health and real 
enjoyment of life! w. 
Blair Co. Pa. 
Improvement in Our School.— For years 
our school has been practically a failure_ 
three teachers every year with scholars plod¬ 
ding through the old text books year after 
year, making little or no advancement. It 
was discouraging to scholars, discouraging to 
taxpayers, and discouraging to the person 
who happened to teach. Two years ago we 
hired Miss T., a young woman full of energy, 
who had the spirit of a teacher. She took the 
school for nine consecutive months, the useless 
summer term being left out. It took the first 
year to organize and get the scholars in shape. 
She has planned a course of study, and has 
uniform text books. She has given the pupils 
an incentive to come regularly to school, and 
they know when they have finished. We al¬ 
ready see an improvement in the studious 
habits of the scholars in school, while their 
moral standard is higher. It is true the ex¬ 
pense is a little more; but we feel well repaid. 
Kent County, Mich. barney collins. 
Getting Rid of^Lice. —There is nothing 
more disgusting than a lousy man or woman. 
No person suffers more than he whose clothes 
are overrun with “grav-baeks”—body lice. 
Lumbermen who have, passed a winter in a 
loggmg-camp, old soldiers or prisoners tell 
