54 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
FES 44 
DISCUSSION. 
E. A. L , Buffalo, Iowa.— What profit is 
there in reading such an article as that on 
“ How Farming Pays,” on page 857 of last 
year’s Rural ? Who should receive credit 
for such a crisp statement of facts put in a 
tabular form ? The man who furnished the 
original to the Ohio Farmer, or the man who 
sent the communication to the Rural New- 
Yorker, who in digesting the article makes 
it more striking by adding bow it is done in 
N. Y.; or does the R. wish credit for spread¬ 
ing such curious statements for people to won¬ 
der over in pursuit of information. To the 
point:—Where in our Northern States do 
farmers charge or receive $3 per acre and 
a half for plowing; and where are $5 per 
day to be had six days in succession on a ten 
acre field, and would it uot be an excellent 
business to rent drills to farmers at 30 cents 
per acre ? And, finally, in the statements 
from Ohio in addition to paying for thrashing, 
there is an item ot $9.50 for 15 hands for a 
quarter of a day—I wonder what their em¬ 
ployment was: it could not be putting wheat 
into a barn; perhaps they kept tally ! The 
N. Y. man it seems is bound to be ahead. He 
comes forward and by making no rent charge, 
implies that land in one part of York 
State is rent free. “ Print never lies.” It is 
very difficult to swallow the truth in some 
cases, though; and in the article mentioned 
it will not go down without assistance. 
H. C. H., Burden, N. Y.—I think the Ru¬ 
ral depreciates Kaffir Corn too much from its 
behavior at the Rural Grounds. Last season I 
bought two pounds of it which 1 planted in 
drills quite thick. It grew well all through 
the season, some reaching ten feet in hight; 
all averaged about eight. I used enough of it 
green to know that stock like it in that way. 
The rest was allowed to mature. A part of 
it was cut before frost. The seeds of this were 
nice aDd plump. The remainder was cut 
after a frost and the seeds were a little 
shrunken. The. flour makes excellent griddle 
cake, especially so when mixed with wheat or 
buckwheat flour. Cooked alone in water and 
eaten with milk it is also nice. I thrashed 
out about seven bushels of the grain, and the 
miller said it was all flour. Poultry eat it 
greedily. I think it will be nice for little 
chickens and turkeys. Horses and cows 
eat the dried fodder in preference to that of 
field corn. It is a little late, however, for this 
climate unless it learns to hurry up a little. 
G. W. F., Corneau, Mo.— I wish to call 
the attention of Western readers of the 
Rural to the quotations and remarks about 
Brazilian Flour Corn, in the issue of .Tan. 21. 
I can say that the claims put forth for it are 
extravagant—not to say nonsensical. It has 
not matured here—40® N. Lat —in two years’ 
trial, and I had to feed it to the cows before 
the cob and corn were quite rotten. I con¬ 
sider it unworthy further trial, and fall back 
to the old kind—called in the catalogues Tus- 
carora, or flour corn. I have tided this kind 
for about.20 years and find that, mixed with 
wheat flour, it improves the bread; does the 
same with buckwheat for cakes; makes good 
corn cakes and corn bread, and is very nice to 
stir in yeast. It matures with other corn and 
yields about as much, but not 100 bushels 
per acre. 
C. A. U., Walls Church, Va.— It annoys 
me to read of the numerous remedies given 
for removing warts from cows’ teats. I’ve 
tried a remedy for years and it has always 
proved just the thing to get rid of the nuisan¬ 
ces, and put in words it is just this: ‘‘Grease 
’em,” or .words to that effect. 
Complete Food.— If seeds be planted in 
any substance which furnishes only potash, 
these seeds will produce dwarf plants only a 
few times heavier in weight than the seeds 
themselves. If seeds be planted in 
any substance that furnishes phosphoric acid 
only, the same failure will occur. So, also, 
plants can not thrive in any substance which 
gives them nitrogen only or nitrogen and pot¬ 
ash, or potash and phosphoric acid, or nitro¬ 
gen and phosphoric acid. Plants must have 
all three or they can not live and thrive. 
This has been shown time and time again by 
the most careful experiments. The little 
growth made is at the expense of the seed it¬ 
self, which furnishes these foods, and then 
the plant may still linger on while, so to speak, 
living upon itself. Every farmer should im¬ 
press this absolute and most important truth 
upon his mind. Crops to succeed must be 
well supplied with their own ash constitu¬ 
ents, and with some available form of nitro¬ 
gen. 
Z Action of Plaster.— Gypsum, sulphate of 
lime, land-plaster, and plaster are all the 
same. It was for a long time thought that 
the effects of plaster on clover were due to 
the lime of the plaster. Others thought that 
the plaster served to fix ammonia from the 
air. The fact is, says Storer, page 207, Agri¬ 
culture, that the experiments of several dif¬ 
ferent observers workiLg independently of 
one another, have shown that gypsum exerts 
a powerful action in setting free potash which 
has been absorbed and fixed by the earth. It 
is found that the lime of the gypsum is fixed 
in the soil, while a corresponding quantity of 
sulphate of potash goes into solution. Thus it 
happens not only that gypsum sets free potash 
(as well as magnesia and ammonia) for the 
use of the crop, but it causes potash to be 
transferred from the upper to the lower layers 
of the soil, so that the roots can everywhere 
find a store of it. This last-mentioned point 
is one of no little importance in the case of 
deep-rooted plants, such as clover. Gypsum 
slioxdd be applied, to the, land some months 
be fore the crop for whose benefit it is used , in 
order that there may be time enough for it to 
act upon the matters in the soil. There is no 
longer any difficulty (Storer’s Agriculture, p. 
209) in explaining how it is that gypsum some¬ 
times does its best service on fairly good 
soils, which have been well manured aud kept 
in good heart, so that potash may have accu¬ 
mulated in them. Nor is there any diffi¬ 
culty in seeing why gypsum is apparently 
so capricious in its action; for upon soils that 
are tolerably rich in fixed potash it will do 
good service, while upon soils poor in potash 
it will not. But it is none the less true that 
gypsum is a fit manure neither for poor land 
nor for regions where high farming is prac¬ 
ticed. It is a fertilizer of times that are past. 
Wherever there is profit to be got from high 
farming, gypsum would usually be found to 
be a much less efficient fertilizer than potassic 
manures. Gypsum is to be regarded, as an 
excitant, rather than as a form of pi antfood. 
Of course, says Professor Storer, gypsum can, 
aud does, supply plants with lime and sulphur 
in cases where the plants need more of these 
things than can be found already in the soil; 
but, considered as a manure of direct action, 
it has infinitely less significance than bone- 
meal, guano, superphosphate of lime, and the 
like, which actually give to the plant sub¬ 
stances which are lacking in the soil. 
each plot separately, the benefit of each'costly 
ingredient found in a complete fertilizer can 
be determined, and strong reasons ^thereby 
be given the farmer, r either for purchasing or 
declining to purchase'any'particular element. 
The Rationality of Using Complete 
Fertilizers. —The difficulties, says Professor 
George H. Cook, of determining what a field 
actually requires has led men to reason that 
they run less risk of failure if they mix to¬ 
gether everything known to be valuable, and 
give the plant an opportunity of selecting what 
it can utilize. The so-called complete fertili¬ 
zers are made upon this plan. This is as ra¬ 
tional as it would be for a manufacturer, 
knowing what materials are used in making 
a wagou, to at once buy what was needed 
without examining his store-house to find what 
he already had in stock; his course, in fact, 
would be less open to criticism, for his stock 
might improve by storage, a fact unfortuna¬ 
tely not the case with a farmer, whose most 
costly supply, nitrogen, is known to waste 
rapidly under certain conditions present upon 
each fertile field. 
Fertilizer manufacturers and farmers are 
lioth interested in ascertaining what is needed 
and what is rational. 
Often station officials hear brands of fertil¬ 
izer pronounced worthless by farmers who 
have used them without the least benefit. 
Frequently such criticisms inferring dishon¬ 
esty upon the dealer’s part, are known at the 
station to be in a measure groundless; the 
mixture containing all that the maker claims 
in his guarantee; the dealer’s dishonesty rest¬ 
ing entirely in his statement as to what, his 
mixture could do. It is difficult to convince 
a farmer in such a case that a dealer cannot 
know what element or combination of elements 
are necessary for his farm; it is equally diffi¬ 
cult to convince a manufacturer that a too 
general advertisement, by claiming more than 
can be fulfilled, will eventually bring him to 
grief. At present there seems to be one rem¬ 
edy only for this trouble, and that is for each 
farmer to test his own lands and find what 
elements of plant food will give him most fav¬ 
orable returns. 
The method is simple and can be carried out 
by any thoughtful man, as the R. N.-Y. has 
for many years urged upon its readers. A piece 
of land measuring one and one-tenth acre for 
example, may be divided into 11 plots. Two 
of the plots are planted without fertilizers or 
manure of any kind; these will indicate what 
the land alone can yield. Upon the remain¬ 
ing nine plots, materials containing plant 
food are applied broadcast. On plots 2, 3 and 
4, single elements on each; on plots 5, 7 and 8 
combinations of two elements upon each; plot 
9 all three elements, aud upon plot 11 barn¬ 
yard manure. 
By measuring or weighing the crop from 
To Find the Value'of a Fertilizer by 
THE GUARANTEEDpANALYSIS ON lTHE BAGS: 
All of the bulletins issued by such stations, as 
those of Mass., Conn., and New Jersey, give 
schedules of the prices fixed upon for nitro¬ 
gen, ammonia, phosphoric acid and potash in 
their various forms, and these bulletins may 
be obtained by writing for them to the direc¬ 
tors of those stations. We find, for example, 
that the nitrogen in nitrate of soda is worth 
10 cents, a pound ; soluble phosphoric acid 
eight cents ; potash five cents &c. Suppose 
now the guarantee of a given fertilizer shows 
five per cent of nitrogen. That would be five 
pounds per 100 pounds of fertilizer, or 100 
pounds to the ton. Multiplying this 100 by 
16 cents a pound we have $16, as the value of 
the nitrogen. If 10 per cent of soluble phos¬ 
phoric acid is guaranteed, we reckon 200 
pounds to the ton, which at eight cents a 
pound would give $16, as the value of the 
phosphoric acid. The potash guarantee is, 
let us say, six per cent, or 120 pounds to 
the ton, which at six cents the pound would 
give $7.20 as the value of the potash. Adding 
these amounts up we find the fertilizer, ac¬ 
cording to guaranteed analyses, to be $39,20 
per ton. Such prices are estimated 
upon the basis of the retail cost of the 
nitrogen, potash etc., before the crude 
materials containing them have been mixed 
w ith each other. They do not cover the cost 
of mixing, or bagging, or transporting; 
neither do they cover the cost of commission 
to agents,interest on the investment,bad debts 
or long credits. The average cost of mixing 
and bagging by manufacturers is estimated at 
$2.85 per ton. If the selling price is no more 
than the valuation put upon a fertilizer by a 
Station analysis, the farmer has a certain 
guarantee that he has bought at a reasonable 
price. If the selling price is even two to four 
dollars higher than the analysis valuation, the 
price may still be reasonable. The analysis of 
Stations do not and cannot give any positive 
value for a fertilizer, for the reason that they 
cannot always decide what is the form of 
nitrogen in that fertilizer. 
Rotted vs. Fresh Manure. —Writing of 
the relative value of fresh and old manure, 
Professor Storer, in the light of what is now 
known as to the chemistry of the subject and 
also in view of the practicability of supple¬ 
menting farm manure nowadays with artifi¬ 
cial fertilizers, thinks it is safe to say that 
most farmers unduly esteem old, fermented 
manure which has been forked over repeated¬ 
ly and has rotted until it has become a soft, 
black mass. There can be no doubt as to the 
great fertilizing power of this fermented dung, 
nor of the fact that it admits of being distrib¬ 
uted more evenly and worked into the soil 
more thoroughly than long manure. In gener¬ 
al, it will be less likely than fresh dung and 
urine would be to excite rank growth, such as 
would cause a grain crop to run to leaf, There 
can be very little doubt, moreover, that very 
old manure, when once it is distributed, is one 
of the best possible breeding-places of those 
useful organisms, which, as is now known, are 
the moving cause of nitrification; whence it 
follows that the application of old, thorough¬ 
ly rotted duug may be regarded as one excit¬ 
ing cause for fertilizingthe inert humus which 
is already in the fields. Yet it is none the less 
true that chemists, almost without exception, 
are in favor of applying dung and urine to the 
land in the freshest possible state, and that 
many of the most successful and celebrated 
among practical farmers are entirely of the 
chemists’ opinion. 
The moment any kind of manure begius to 
ferment, no matter where, it gives off some 
of its substance in the form of gas; but if the 
fermentation occurs within the soil, it will be 
gradual, and the products of decay can be 
utilized by the neighboring plants. Besides, 
fresh manure, in fermenting within the soil, 
will act upon the soil advantageously in 
various ways. It will not only play the part 
of a ferment and so tend to decompose the 
inert nitrogen compounds of the humus, but 
the products of its decomposition will act as 
disintegrating agents upon the insoluble por¬ 
tions of the soil. There are, in short, many 
reasons for believing that a larger proportion 
of the useful constituents of mere dung can 
be utilized by burying it in the soil when 
fresh, than if it be left to ferment in heaps. 
Everybody admits the efficacy of horse dung 
from stables when it is applied to the soil in a 
fresh, uufermented condition, but there are 
many farmers who justly set no great value 
on horse manure from which the goodness has 
been “burned out,” as the term is, in the pro¬ 
cess of hot fermentation. 
i Many practical men have urged that fresh 
manure, even if it does not actually injure 
the crop to which it is applied, may still tend 
to the production of stems and leaves rather 
than seeds and fruit. There is a widespread 
belief that, while fresh manure may perhaps 
be best for forage crops, well-rotted manure 
or compost is better suited for the production 
of grain or seeds; and, on this account, in 
many regions manure is applied by preference 
to a preparatory crop rather than directly to 
grain. But, manifestly, the rankness of fresh 
dung and urine could be controlled aud util¬ 
ized by applying the manure in small quanti¬ 
ties and supplementing it with artificial fer¬ 
tilizers of kinds appropriate to the crops that 
are to be grown. 
Manure Under Cover.— Dr. Voelcker 
says that neither fresh nor rotten dung con¬ 
tains an appreciable amount of free ammonia. 
Under good management dung loses none of 
its essential fertilizing constituents and 
neither sun nor wind expels any volatile am¬ 
monia compounds from dung. It appears, 
therefore, quite unnecessary to keep dung in 
closed buildings. In localities where much 
rain falls, and a sufficient amount of litter 
cannot be used to absorb the liquid portion of 
the manure, it is advisable to have the dung- 
yard roofed in and the sides open; but where 
sufficient litter can be spared in the making 
of the manure to retain, even in rainy weath¬ 
er, the liquid portion, it is even unnecessary 
to put a roof over the dung-pit. No loss in 
fertilizing matter is experienced when dung is 
carted and spread upon the field as soon as it 
is possible to do so after it is produced. 
RURAL LIFE NOTES. 
Dettwf.iler (a German chemist) has esti¬ 
mated that, including bedding, one cow will 
produce 14 tons of manure in a year and that 
the cost of manure of one cow for one year,es¬ 
timated on four different, farms in Germany 
was respectively $11, $14, $5 and $28 or an av¬ 
erage of $12. 
Voelcker found from analyses that in farm¬ 
yard manure which bad been rotted for three 
months there were per ton 24 pounds of potash, 
six of phosphoric acid and 15 of nitrogen. 
Allowing five cents a pound for the potash 
and phosphoric acid and but 10 cents for the 
nitrogen, the ton of manure will be worth 
$3.00. 
There is one reason, remarks Prof. Storer, 
why farmyard manure retains its supremacy 
and it is, in some respects, the most import¬ 
ant reason. It depends, probably, upon the 
peculiar condition of nitrogen in natural man¬ 
ures. It is well known that farmyard man¬ 
ures contain a variety of nitrogenous com¬ 
pounds and their presence is particularly ben¬ 
eficial for the growth of crops in many cases. 
Nitrogenous dung liquor soaks into the ground 
with especial ease; it diffuses itself in all 
directions; it does not decompose very rap¬ 
idly in cool weather; plants are very fond 
of it and it is not so easily washed out 
of the laud, perhaps, as nitrates are. From 
all this it is manifest that, until we can copy 
this valuable peculiarity of the dungs, our so- 
called artificial process of fertilization will la¬ 
bor under one great disadvantage. 
Prof. W. O. Atwater in the R. N.-Y. of 
September 12, 1885, said that for general 
farming, at a distance from the large mark¬ 
ets, the chief use of commercial fertilizers 
should be to supplement the manure of the 
farm. The right way is to make the most 
and best manure that is practicable upon the 
farm, and piece out with such commercial 
fertilizers as experiments and experience 
prove profitable. At the same time there are 
many eases, especially near cities, where 
everything depends upon getting the largest 
and best yield, where more exclusive use of 
chemical fertilizers is advisable... 
In those States where experiment stations 
or other agencies exercise a proper control 
over the fertilizer trade and defend honest 
dealers as well as consumers, there are per¬ 
haps a hundred cases of failure from using 
the ivrong materials, or using the right, ones 
in wrong ways, where there -is one from 
f raud. “ Complete ” fertilizers are, in a 
sense, irrational, but they mark the first 
step in the progress towards the rational use 
of artificial fertilizers . 
Castor pomace is worth about $20 a ton. 
It contains about five per cent, of nitrogen, 
two of phosphoric acid and one of potash. 
Certain tobacco growers believe it greatly im¬ 
proves the quality of the leaf. 
The fertilizing value of a ton of cotton seed 
meal (decorticated) is about $25. 
Dr. Voelcker says that the experience of 
light-land farmers in districts in England, 
where the land is deficient in lime, goes to 
prove that on land of that description it is bet¬ 
ter to apply bone dust or precipitated phos¬ 
phate, or phosphatio manures containing no 
soluble phosphate, to root crops, than to use 
