430 
ing Fiber Co., 56 Front St., N. Y., sell a cloth 
that makes an excellent substitute for glass 
in a hot-bed. 
L. J. S* South Liverpool, Me. —1. What 
varieties of cherries are least liable to ^ilack- 
knot? 2 What varieties can be grafted on 
the wild cherry? 3. What varieties can be 
grafted on the Blackheart? 
Ans. — 1. Who can answer? 2. May Duke 
and Morello. 3. Nearly all sorts. 
DISCUSSION. 
PROSPECTIVE PRICES OF POTATOES. 
L. T. M , Boston, Mass. —In a late Rural, 
in answer to an inquiry with regard to the 
probability of an advance in the prices of 
potatoes before planting time, the opinion 
was expressed that there isn’t much likeli¬ 
hood of such an advance, chiefly on the 
ground that heavy foreign shipments would 
keep down prices, and that growers have held 
back stocks for prices which they could not 
realize. The trade here is of a somewhat 
different opinion. Advices indicate that the 
stock held back in New York, Pennsylvania 
and especially New England, is not large. 
Importations come almost exclusively from 
the Canadian Provinces, .Scotland, England 
and Germany. Some came from Holland, 
but the surplus there is already exhausted and 
that in Germany is nearly so. Experience 
has shown that European potatoes will not 
do for seed in this country, and the demand 
for seed will, this year, be very heavy. Un. 
usually large orders for seed potatoes have 
already come to this market and New York 
from the South where Northern potatoes are 
the main reliance for seed, and the drain to 
that section is likely to be quite large from 
all the Northern States possessing convenient 
transportation facilities. • If potatoes do not 
rise much in price it will be due, not so much 
to foreign importations, as to special efforts 
that will be made at home to get the new 
crop into market earlier than usual. Of 
course, the first of the new crop in market 
will, as usual, be from the Bermudas; but 
these will fail to supply the demand, and by 
that time foreign importations are likely to 
be small. Southern potatoes do not bear 
transportation well enough to stock the 
Northern markets, which are likely to be 
monopolized by those who may have choice 
Northern potatoes for sale. Potato growers 
in New England and elsewhere, so far as I 
have been able to learn, are already getting 
ready to plant potatoes unusually early; for 
the earliest crops are likely to find an un¬ 
usually high market this year. According to 
the reports of the Department of Agriculture 
the total potato crop last year was 128,800.T)00 
bushels on 2,300,000 acres, or at the rate of 50 
bushels per acre; while the average annual 
consumption is 140,000,000 bushels, leaving a 
deficiency of 12,000.000 to be supplied from 
abroad. Now, in the 11 years from 1877 to 1887 
inclusive, our total imports were 24,656,694 
bushels, or a yearly average of 2,241,554bush¬ 
els, so that to supply the quantity generally 
consumed we would have to import nearly 10,- 
000,000 bushels more than usual. In those 11 
years we exported a total of 5,948 558 bushels 
or an average of 540,777 bushels, a great pro¬ 
portion of which was for seed to the Bermudas 
and other West Indian Islands. We are hardly 
likely to export so much in this year of short¬ 
age. Of course, the shortage and consequent 
high prices are sure to cause a decrease of con¬ 
sumption, but this can hardly amount to more 
than a couple of million bushels. 
DUTY ON ANIMALS IMPORTED FOR BREEDING. 
J. A. H., Carlton, Pa. —I cannot agree 
with the Rural, page 78, in regard to admit¬ 
ting stock duty free, unless the animals are 
imported by those who want them for their 
own use. There should be a specific duty 
levied on all stock imported for sale, for the 
purpose of excluding inferior animals. I 
have seen some very inferior animals with 
pedigrees, that had been bought from im¬ 
porting firms at two or three times the price 
of better native stock. The money raised by 
such duties should be used in guarding 
against the importation of foreign diseases. 
Experts should be sent abroad to study the 
minor as well as major diseases of animals 
and the treatment practiced where such dis¬ 
eases exist; the major diseases are not so 
likely to be imported. 
R. N.-Y.—There is no doubt that a consid¬ 
erable number of inferior stock—horses, cat¬ 
tle and even sheep—are imported every year 
and sold here for prices altogether dispropor¬ 
tionate with those for which they were bought 
in Europe. This has long been a serious com¬ 
plaint with honest importers of prime stock. 
By this species of swindling the purchasers 
here a ,- e cheated by having worthless animals 
palmed off upon them as valuable beasts sim¬ 
ply on account of the name of the breed; 
honest importers are injured by dishonest 
competition, and the reputation of the breed 
damaged anil the improvement of our ordi¬ 
THE RUBAI. NEW-YORKER. 
nary stock retarded; for the man who discov¬ 
ers that he has paid a big price for a worth¬ 
less brute is likely to despise the breed in 
which he has been deceived, and to be slow in 
again investing much money for the improve¬ 
ment of his stock by the purchase of animals 
which, though highly jiraised, may turn out 
equally valueless. The imposition of a high 
import duty would, no doubt, check such im¬ 
portations, for while choice stock would be 
able to pay it, poor stock would not. The 
owners of many of the herd-books have sought 
to effect the same result by very high fees for 
the registration of imported stock; in some 
cases as much as $100 being charged for each 
registration. There are already in the coun¬ 
try quite enough animals lrelonging to some 
of the breeds to enable us to dispense altogeth¬ 
er with foreign importations of the same race 
for the improvement of our herds; but this is 
not the case with all breeds. Still, it has been 
frequently urged that the danger of import¬ 
ing contagious diseases, especially among cat¬ 
tle, fully counterbalances any advantage we 
may gain from the importation of choice 
breeds, and hence it has been urged that Con¬ 
gress should, at least for a time, put an em¬ 
bargo on all foreign cattle. The general live¬ 
stock interests of the country are, however, 
opposed to such a measure. They want the 
best strains of live stock of all kinds for breed¬ 
ing purposes at as low a figure as possible, for 
the rapid improvement of our native stock. 
If heavy import duties were imposed on for¬ 
eign stock, the price of native animals of the 
same breeds would soon go up, and ordinary 
farmers anxious to improve their sheep, cat¬ 
tle or horses, would be the sufferers. It is 
therefore for the general advantage that no 
duty should be charged on importations of 
choice' specimens of each breed, and practical¬ 
ly it is impossible for the customs officers to 
discriminate between choice and inferior spe¬ 
cimens. Either all have to be taxed or none; 
and it is considered a less evil—for the present, 
at any .rate—to allow all breeding stock to be 
imported duty free, than to tax all. If the 
importation of animals for breeding purposes 
were confined exclusively to those who wanted 
them for their own use, very few indeed 
would be imported; for the difficulty of select¬ 
ing good specimens in Europe and the trouble 
of transporting them to the ships and caring 
for them on the voyage and on their arrival 
in this country—passing them through the 
Custom House and the quarantine, etc., etc., 
would be so great that very few persons 
would incur the bother; whereas regular im¬ 
porters have matters so arranged that very 
little trouble is experienced. 
A 20-year-old Asparagus Bed.-— The 
oldest bed of asparagus that Mr. J. M. Smith 
now has in bearing, as he states in the Farm¬ 
ers’Review, is about 20 years old, and he has 
never in his life, either at home or abroad, 
seen finer asparagus than he cuts year after 
year from this bed. The soil is a sandy loam. 
It was manured very heavily and then 
plowed, turning the manure under. It was 
plowed from eight to ten inches deep. The 
furrows were made three feet apart and 
about six inches deep, and in no case more 
than seven inches in depth. They were 
made with a common shovel plow. 
The plants, either one or two years old 
from the seed, were placed in the bottom of 
these furrows about 15 to 18 inches apart, 
taking care to spread the roots about in their 
natural positions. This is very easy to do 
After the plants were so placed the earth was 
drawn back into the furrows and pressed 
down with the feet, aud the bed was made. 
Since that time it has been kept free of weeds 
and grass, and every spring the tops have 
been cut off and burned, a good coat of ma¬ 
nure put on the ground, and dug under, using 
the common six tined manure fork for the 
purpose, aud being careful not to dig so deep 
as to disturb the roots of the plants. The re¬ 
sult has been that since it came to its best, 
which was about three years after setting, it 
has never once failed to yield a magnificent 
crop, both in quantity aud quality. In cut¬ 
ting care should be taken to cut it clean as 
long as it is cut at all. The reason for leaving 
the tops on the beds without cutting until 
spring is the following: When the snow falls 
the tops catch and hold it. It remains there 
until it melts aud is the best mulch for the 
beds that can be given. It always leaves the 
ground in the best of order for early working, 
and the plants can be started some days earlier 
in this way than by any other open ground 
method that he has ever tried. 
The.above js essentially the method followed 
on the immense asparagus farms '"of’Long 
Island. It is far better than the expensive 
method advocated by many inexperienced 
writers, viz., that of spading or plowing very 
deep and applying a hundred loads of manure 
or more to the acre on the start. The R. N.-Y. 
would, not run the furrows less than four feet 
apart, the plants being set 15 to 18 inches 
apart. 
Onion Culture. —Onions, like cabbages, 
will thrive on any soil, gravelly, mucky or 
clayey, says J. J. H. Gregory in the Albany 
Cultivator, if such soils are properly prepared 
for the crop. Each of these soils will give its 
character to the crop; those raised on a grav¬ 
elly soil will ripen down the earliest, be a 
bright straw color, which the eyes of every 
market gardener delight to see. grow harder 
when ripe, and, as a rule, keep best. Those 
raised on mucky soil not specially prepared 
for the crop, will make coarse, late bulbs, 
among which will be man} scullions, the dread 
of the market gardener, aud all will be soft 
and spongy in structure, of a dingy color and 
very poor keepers. Those raised on clayey 
soil, must be on land which has been well un¬ 
derdrained, that the soil may be of a friable 
character Onions on such a soil usually grow 
extra large and are apt to be late in ripening 
down. 
After an experience of a score of years, 
raising many acres annually, if it were a 
choice between upland and a mucky soil, Mr. 
Gregory would certainly prefer having as 
much as half the crop on the latter, having 
experienced so often the disastrous effect of 
droughts on upland in making the crop more 
liable to be affected by smut and blight. On¬ 
ions on muck do better on mineral manure, 
such as wood ashes and bone that has been 
made soluble. These supply the potash and 
phosphoric acid, and a portion of the nitrogen 
needed by the crop, and the draining of the 
soil will set free, through chemical action, 
sufficient nitrogen additional,which in a latent 
state, in greater or less per cent., always exists 
in such vegetable matter. As muck itself is 
humus, we do not need barn manure to supply 
this, which is one argument for its use on up¬ 
land. Again, mucky soil is rather too light of 
itself, and barn manure makes it more so. 
The onion grower knows that half his suc¬ 
cess depends upon the quality of the seed sown. 
Sugar from Sorghum.— In response to a 
resolution of the Senate, the Commissioner of 
Agriculture, the other day, transmitted to 
that body the report of Professor Swenson, 
in charge of the experiments in the manufac¬ 
ture of sugar from sorghum cane at Fort Scott, 
Kansas. It says the greatest difficulties which 
will be encountered by those engaged in devel¬ 
oping this industry will be the scarcity of men 
capable of operating factories, and a training 
school for young men in this work would be of 
inestimable value. The improvement of the 
quality of the sorghum cane is also one of the 
subjects which should receive immediate at¬ 
tention. The idea that sorghum cane will 
grow anywhere and do well with any kind of 
treatment is considered one of the main 
causes of poor cane. The establishment of a 
sugar refinery within easy reach of sugar fac. 
tories, it is predicted, will be one of the impera¬ 
tive needs in the near future, as the demand 
for any kind of sugar but white granulated is 
comparatively limited. The sugar produced 
at Fort Scott averaged 2)4 per cent, of being 
as pure as the best granulated, while the sell¬ 
ing price has been about 1]4 cent per pound 
less. In conclusion Professor Swenson says 
that sugar can be produced fully as cheap in 
Kansas as in Louisiana. 
Sir J. B. Lawes on Agricultural Pro¬ 
gress.— In a late London Agricultural Gazette, 
a most interesting autobiographical sketch by 
Sir J. B. Lawes appears. The last part states 
that the publication of Liebig’s book on Ag¬ 
ricultural Chemistry in 1840 influenced con¬ 
siderably the direction of his experiments, 
aud later on brought him into a somewhat 
heated controversy with one of the greatest 
geniuses of that time. Nearly 50 years have 
passed since that book was written. It was a 
bold work; and for some years afterwards 
everyone could give confident opinions upon 
all subjects relating to agriculture—but where 
are we now ? asks Dr. Lawes. Have we a found¬ 
ation laid, and can we say that such a thing 
exists as a Science of Agriculture? Another 
half century will doubtless show more rapid 
progress, as there are so many more brains at 
work on the subject in various parts of the 
world; but when we consider that almost 
every other science contributes its share to 
form what we call the Science of Agriculture, 
those who follow the pursuit must expect 
plenty of hard work and be content with a 
moderate amount of success. 
Climatic Extremes in Iowa.— President 
W. I. Chamberlain of the Agricultural Col¬ 
lege at Ames, Iowa., gjyeR spipe reasons, in the 
FEB 25 
Albany^Cultivator,'why farmers’ institutes in 
Iowa are not as successful as in other States. 
People at the East, he says, scarcely appre¬ 
ciate the severity of the climate there. The 
isothermal lines do not at all follow the paral¬ 
lels of latitude, and winds have more to do 
with the severity and dangers of the climate 
than the cold itself. Des Moines and Ames, 
in Central Iowa, are not far from the latitude 
of Chicago, Cleveland and New York city, 
but the climate is far hotter in summer and 
colder in winter. During the last four weeks 
there have been but seven days in vrhieb the 
thermometer did not go below zero, while it 
reached 34° below one day, 29 v another, 26 u 
another, and 23° several others. Twice 
within three weeks the wind has swung into 
the south for a few hours with rain aud soft 
snow. But suddenly it would swung into the 
west, and a blizzard of two days,- with fierce 
wind aud an atmosphere surcharged with 
fine snow, would drive man and beast to 
cover or to death. Once for. three days the 
main road was untracked by any team save 
the college omnibus which then ran one trip 
instead of three. 
American Mutton Sheep. —Henry Stew¬ 
art, who is recognized as among our first 
authorities on sheep, says that our American 
mountain sheep have the same kind of mutton, 
and when crossed by South Downs their meat 
is quite as good as that of the English sheep. 
A North Carolina mountain half-breed South 
Down pasturing in the woods and fattened 
upon the chestnuts and acorns in the fall is 
equal in every respect to the best English 
mutton sheep, and no American shepherd need 
go further for a desirable location or better 
sheep for mutton. But one cannot have 
everything in one sheep, and when wcol is 
wanted mutton must be sacrificed, and vice 
versa, for the best mutton does not carry 
the most profitable fleece. If we follow the 
English methods, pasture the flocks upon rich 
meadows, feed in the fall upon turnips, and 
finish with cotton-seed oil meal, we may have 
mutton equal in every respect to that of Eng¬ 
land. 
BRIEFS. 
According to Prof. Bailey’s extended trials 
the Ignotum Tomato was considered the best 
last year of the many kinds planted at the 
Michigan Agricultural College. This is a 
provisional name given to one of several 
kinds from Prussia. He thinks it may be an 
extra good strain of Paragon. 
The Rural some years ago (as files will 
show) expressed its belief from side-by-side 
trials that Livingston’s Paragon, Livingston’s 
Perfection, Mayflower and Scoville were the 
same tomato. So also we thought the Hovey, 
Essex Hybrid, Livingston’s Beauty, Climax 
and Rochester the same as the Acme tomato. 
Prof. Bailey, who must now be considered as 
our first authority on tomatoes, finds them 
identical. 
Prof. Bailey is doing some splendid work. 
He is entitled to the thanks of the gardening 
public for his tomato investigations alone. 
He repeats what the R. N.-Y. has several 
times not so well said that “it would be grati¬ 
fying to know that seedsmen could turn their 
attention somewhat in the direction of the 
elucidation of synonomy rather than in the 
entanglement of it”. 
Prof. Bailey in his pepper experiments finds 
Yellow Bell, Golden Upright of Burpee and 
the Golden Queen of Tillinghast, and Carre 
jaune hatif of Vilmorin the same. 
The Jewell Strawberry is not prized by 
Prof. Bailey. Neither is the Henderson, 
Prince (of Berries), Jersey Queen, Sunapee, 
Vick, Vineland, Woodruff No. 1, Parry, Great 
American, Mrs. Garfield, Glendale, Crystal 
City, Bid well. The R. N.-Y.’s notes as to the 
above kinds, as old volumes show, will not 
differ materially' from Prof. Bailey’s estimates 
except, it may be, as to the Jewell and 
Parry. 
Prof. Bailey speaks well of Alley’s No. 9, 
Atlantic, Black Defiance, Duncan, May King, 
Mount Vernon, Sharpless, Crescent and Man¬ 
chester. 
One of our readers writes us that he be¬ 
lieves “the people generally are being bled 
more for harmless mixtures called patent 
medicines than for fraudulent fertilizers.”.... 
The Rural’s friend and contributor, A. B. 
Allen, is now in his 86th year. 
Try the variegated beets. They are really 
beautiful as foliage plants. The Rural talked 
a good deal about them 10 years ago, and 
now, like other half-forgotten good things, 
they are again periodically coming to the 
fore..... 
AVe see a Tree Everbearing Blackberry of¬ 
fered. This is quite a new thing to the R. N- 
Y. Of course, we shall try it . 
Py'retiirum ciuerflVU'folifim, the Persian 
