218 
(Continued from page 215.) 
the locust would serve you. If we were in¬ 
tending to set out hedge plants we should 
choose the Japan Quince. We do not think 
that any kind of a live hedge pays in the long 
run. 
.7. H. S., Nova Scotia —1. What, is the best 
manure for grape-vines? 2. What kind of 
hedge plants will thrive best with least sun; 
will any succeed under shade trees? 
Ans.— 1. Our opinion is that you can do no 
better than to give the vines farm manure 
and then add raw bone flour and some form 
of potash, say kainit. 2. No. Hemlock and 
Arbor-vitae will stand a moderate amount of 
shade. But it will not pay to attempt to raise 
any hedge whatever in a shaded position. 
J. A. G., Courtney , Pa. —1. Is the Hilborn 
Raspberry quite hardy ! What is its manner 
of growth? Is it productive? 2. Is the Ohio 
a good market berry ? 3. Is Green’s nursery 
thoroughly reliable? 
Ans. —1. We have not tried it long enough 
to know. It is said to be hardy further North. 
Its manner of growth is similar to that of any 
blackcap. It is said to be productive. 2. No, 
it is too small. 3. Entirely so. 
W. C., Muscatine, Iowa .—What does the 
Rural think of J. It. Salzer, La Crosse, Wis, 
Are his seeds, especially the Bonanza Oats, 
what he claims them to be? 
Ans. —We have never heard anything de¬ 
rogatory regarding him. We have received 
some of the Bonanza Oats and intend to try 
them. 
W: T. R., Saratoga Springs , N. Y .—What 
can I do to save my seed beans? They are 
filled with small b|ack insects that eat out the 
inside. 
Ans.—T he damage is already done. The 
weevils, as grubs, eat the inside of the beans. 
E. S. C., Orangeville , Pa .—Where can I get 
the song called “The Flying Trapeze?” 
Ans. —Hitchcock, Printing House Square, 
New York. 
C. Lect .—During May we shall publish a 
special number of the Rural devoted to in¬ 
secticides and methods of fighting insects. The 
spraying process will be fully described. 
DISCUSSION. 
J. A. II., Carlton, Pa.— I have been very 
much interested in the Rural's hybridizing 
experiments. It has demonstrated that the 
field is much wider than heretofore supposed 
and I feel confident that it will achieve sucl 
cess that will astonish and delight the horti¬ 
culturists of the world. While some of the 
experiments did not seem to me likely to re¬ 
sult in anything valuable, I have great hope- 
that the rye-wheats and, possibly, the rasp- 
blackberries will be valuable. Permit me to 
suggest some promising experiments. Every¬ 
body would like a tomato two or three weeks 
earlier than any we now have, and if in addi¬ 
tion it should be a hardy or even half hardy 
perennial, what more could be desired, pro¬ 
viding the quality were all right? The Sol- 
anum dulcamara (Musk vine or Bitter-sweet) 
is a near relative of the tomato, is as hardy as 
a White Oak, and ripens its fruit a month 
earlier than tomatoes not forced. Use a large 
acid variety of tomato. The egg plant does 
not succeed thus far north. We have a plant 
known here as the Blue tomato. The fruit is 
inclosed in a husk like a ground cherry and is 
froirt an inch to an inch and a half in diam¬ 
eter, resembling a miniature New York pur¬ 
ple egg plant fruit; it is earlier and hardier 
than the tomato; it resembles a miniature 
stramonium, what is its name. [The Purple 
Alkekengi.—E ds. 
THE LATEST AND BRIEFEST. 
Our sparkling'contemporary, Popular Gar¬ 
dening, gives a.good hint: “Learn the correct 
name of every tree, vine and plant on your 
grounds. It is a task in which the youngsters 
of the family should also take apart.”. 
Those desiring to quickly enrich ordinary 
soil for market garden or other crops requir¬ 
ing high fertility, are advised by the above 
monthly to take the following course: Man. 
ure well in the spring and plant potatoes: dig 
these in good time and sow rye; spread man¬ 
ure on the rye in early winter evenly; in the 
spring plow under the rye and manure to 
bury them; apply ashes and superphosphate, 
harrow thoroughly, and the land will be ready 
for cabbages, early corn, squashes or any 
crop of similar needs. The advice is not far 
outofjthe way K is it?.. 
W. A. Smith, of Berrion Co. Michigan, says 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
that the Niagara Grape has winter-killed to 
the ground for three consecutive winters. ... 
The only advantage to be derived from feed¬ 
ing silage to animals which are being fatten¬ 
ed, says Mayor Alvord in the American Culti¬ 
vator, seems to be in the tonic effect of this 
succulent food, increasing the appetite and 
securing general thrift. There certainly does 
not appear to be anything in the material of 
corn silage itself to directly produce an in¬ 
crease of flesh or fat. But its hygienic effect 
is marked wherever used in moderation. 
Among pretty carefully observed trials of feed¬ 
ing silage to fattening steers, the following 
appears to Major Alvord to snow satisfactory 
results which cannot be disputed. 
An evenly matched pair of beef cattle, five- 
year-old steers, were fed on dry food only, fat¬ 
tening rations, for seventy days; No. 1 weigh¬ 
ed 1270 pounds at the beginning and 1390 at 
the close, a gain of 120 pounds. No. 2, 1220 
pounds and 1320 pounds, a gain of 100 pounds. 
For the next thirty-five days, fifty pounds of 
corn silage were substituted for the coarse, 
dry forage in the ration of No. 2, that for No 
1 remaining unchanged, the grain feed the 
same as before in both cases. During this sec¬ 
ond period, No 1 gained ten pounds and No. 2 
gained ninety-two pounds, or almost three 
pounds a day. For a third period, also thirty- 
five days, the rations of the two steers were 
reversed, when No. 1 gained seventy-five 
pounds and No. 2 lost twenty pouuds. 
Here is a clear case where two animals press¬ 
ed with heavy feeding, all dry, had gained 
rapidly for a time, but in two months had 
about come to a halt, when the introduction 
of corn-silage, a very cheap food, caused 
the increase in weight to continue at a satis¬ 
factory rate, whereas further dry feeding re¬ 
sulted in net loss. 
A finely executed photo-gravure of St. 
Gaudens’s bronze medallion of the late Dr. 
Asa Gray appears in Garden and Forest of 
February 29. 
Speaking of shrub propagation, Mr. Hoopes, 
in the above journal, says that while the ordi¬ 
nary Snowball, Viburnum opulus, strikes like 
a weed, its Japan relative, V. plicatum, is 
quite difficult to handle. While most spiraeas 
are easily propagated by cuttings, the Exoch¬ 
orda (now recognized as a spiraea) is exactly 
the reverse. All the hydrangeas root readily 
except the Oak-leaved. The ordinary quince 
emits roots readily enough, while cuttings of 
the ornamental Japan Quince refuse to do so. 
Most common shrubs, continues Mr. Hoopes, 
as weigelas, spiraeas, hydrangeas, lilacs, deut- 
zias, tamarisks, viburnums, etc., are best 
propagated by soft-wood cuttings in mid-sum¬ 
mer, care being taken to secure the wood as 
soon as it begins to harden. This is the criti¬ 
cal period, and on its observance depends suc¬ 
cess or failure. Cuttings three to four inches 
long, with two or three curtailed leaves at the 
summit and without any regard to a bud at 
the base, should be placed in shallow boxes 
filled with firmly pounded sand. A perfectly 
close, warm atmosphere, with an abundance 
of moisture and shade, will cause roots to 
form in a short time, when they may be grad¬ 
ual inured to the outside air. 
Any shrub having underground stolonifer- 
ous branches, which are, of course, supplied 
with buds, should be increased by root-cut¬ 
tings, especially where other cuttings are dif¬ 
ficult to strike. The Japan Quince, Oak¬ 
leaved hydrangea, Spiraea opulifolia, philadel- 
phus, rubus and rlius are examples of this 
class. Spiraea opulifolia is now changed to 
Neillia. 
Yes, a fine wire netting placed about apple 
trees, as the Rural World suggests, will pro¬ 
tect the tree against the borer. But this fine 
wire netting is rather costly.. 
Charles V. Mares remarked in a late ad¬ 
dress, as reported in the American Garden, 
that a pretty good strawberry crop is 5,000 
quarts, yet that amount contains no more 
plant food, and in only slightly varying pro¬ 
portions, than half a ton of Timothy hay. Al¬ 
most any poor land will yield the half ton of 
hay, while 5,000 quarts of strawberries can 
only be obtained on very rich soil. Why? 
The Timothy has a long season for its growth 
and is a rank, steady feeder. The strawberry 
is a dainty feeder, has a limited root growth 
and must do the bulk of its work in a few 
weeks, from blossoming to fruiting, and then 
must work at high pressure. 
The R. N.-Y. has often alluded to the fact 
that Dr. Lawes used 14 tons of good stable 
manure and produced an average of 34 bush¬ 
els of wheat per acre for 40 years. Alongside 
was another plot upon which the equivalent of 
the plant food in farm manure was applied in 
the forms of chemical fertilizers, save that the 
nitrogen in the latter was only 40 pounds per 
acre, against nearly 200 pounds per acre in 
stable manure ; yet this produced an average 
of over 35 bushels, wholly due to the more sol¬ 
uble form of the plant food in the chemical 
fertilizers. 
Mr. Mapes further says that the greatmerit 
in the Rural’s trench culture with potatoes 
is that it secures a loose, fine tilth not only at 
the roots, but particularly around the stems 
where the tubers form. The system checks 
evaporation, and the depression of the rows 
turns into the rows much of the rain water 
falling between them, which would be other¬ 
wise largely wasted. With these conditions 
and the abundance of soluble food Mr. Mapes 
says he has seen a yield at the rate of over one 
thousand bushels per acre, and he sees no rea¬ 
son why the same conditions and similar re¬ 
sults may not be secured in field culture. 
Besides the direct manurial effect of 
potash, which is • so especially great in some 
soils and crops, including the fruits, it is use¬ 
ful in times of drought by its attraction for 
moisture. Whenever any sort of potash salt 
is exposed to free air it soon begins to liquefy, 
wetting and decomposing every organic arti¬ 
cle around. In an address before the Ameri¬ 
can Horticultural Society, Mr. J. M. Smith, 
of Green Bay, Wisconsin, told of his having 
dressed part of a potato field with ashes at the 
rate of 00 bushels per acre. The rest of the 
field was dressed with compost. A severe 
drought came on; the compost part of the 
field scarcely paid for digging, but the ashed 
portion yielded a fair crop. 
TnosE a who cannot eat onions, or are too 
fancifully genteel to do so, lose one of the 
most beneficial foods known, says the Ameri¬ 
can Garden. It seems as if the onion tribe 
were designed as regulators of the system, 
they act so wholesomely on every part of it. 
For one thing alone, the women of Provence 
and the South of Europe are said to owe their 
fair-grained skins and supple ease of limbs to 
their diet of oil and onions, not to say garlic. 
One would not be a social nuisance for the 
sake of a healthy diet, but if parsley or burnt 
coffee will not remove the odor from the 
breath, a spoonful of powdered charcoal will. 
The N. Y. Times says that what we want 
more than horses that can run a mile in two 
minutes are those that can carry a rider 10 
in 60 minutes. 
Seventeen cents per day, the Breeder’s 
Gazette believes, was the calculated value of 
the ration Prof. Henry fed to some of his 
cows, and from one cow ho received 34 cents 
per day in butter, from another 45 cents, and 
from another 56 cents. This wide difference 
in results was due entirely to the differences 
in the animals, which were in turn controlled 
by selection and breeding. As great a differ¬ 
ence exists in the capacity of different ani¬ 
mals to lay on flesh on a given amount of feed 
as is shown in the capacity of different cows 
to yield milk and butter. And the difference 
is so great, in either case, as to make it a 
matter of the very highest importance to the 
farmer that he possess animals of the very 
best productive capacity. It simply means 
half price or double price for the food con¬ 
sumed. 
In the late excellent report of the Michigan 
Horticultural Society, it is said that the best 
way to remove trees from the forest or largo 
trees from anywhere, is to prepare a year 
ahead by cutting a trench abopt the tree and 
filling it with litter. We respectfully suggest 
that the earth taken out of the trench is better 
than any kind of litter. The only object in 
digging a trench is that the roots may heal 
and the tree may then be lifted with the re¬ 
maining roots intact. 
Professor Tracy entered his protest 
against the Eastern cry that the Norway 
Spruce is a failure as an ornamental tree. In 
Michigan, he says, they owe more to it than 
to all other evergreens. Unquestionably the 
Norway Spruce thrives better in Michigan 
than in many other States. 
Superintendent Graham, in the Indus¬ 
trialist, says that a well-conducted newspaper 
is the only medium through which the adver¬ 
tiser can reach the people with profit to him¬ 
self. Such, at least, has been the experience 
of the oldest and best-known advertisers, who 
arrived at the conclusion through the expend¬ 
iture of many thousand dollars in experiment¬ 
al advertising. 
Mr. Stewart estimates that the value of 
the oat crop is reduced fully 10 per cent, by 
smut Sulphate of copper, used in the com¬ 
mon solution of four ounces in a gallon of wa¬ 
ter for six bushels of seed, ho considers an ef¬ 
fective remedy. Ho believes that the same 
result may be secured in the case of corn and 
wheat, both of which crops are seriously dam¬ 
aged by the smut parasite. 
WORD FOR WORD. 
Puck: “A popular motto for this Great and 
Glorious Nation—‘No TrustP”-“This is 
about the time of year that a man decides on 
becoming an amateur gardener. He should 
apply to the man who bocame an amateur 
gardener this time last year, if ho would like 
to get $10 or $15 worth of implements for 
about $1.50 ”-Husbandman: “If there is 
any more iniquitous form of combination to 
control prices of what is regarded as the 
necessaries of life than the modern ‘Trust’ the 
public has no knowledge of it. The law of 
supply and demand is subverted. The greed 
of conspirators takes its place.”-Here are 
samples of Uncle Esek’s wisdom in the last 
Century: “There is one instrument that no 
clever woman has ever learned to play on, and 
that is a second fiddle.”_“What a miserable 
time we should have in this life if we were 
obliged to mind our own business and let our 
neighbors mind theirs.”... “Ignorance makes 
a man impudent; you would think it ought 
to make him modest.”... “An old man in love 
is as helpless as a blind kitten.”....“Act nat¬ 
ural, my friend, and though you may not be 
very strong, you wont, be ridiculous.”.... 
“Obstinacy is the characteristic of the ignor¬ 
ant: and, after all, it is their only safety.” 
RURAL SPECIAL REPORTS. 
CInllfornla. 
Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., March 3.— 
We are permitted to publish the following 
personal letter, written by a member of the 
New Jersey Horticultural Society who went 
to California with the American Horticultural 
Society: “The railroads and the people from 
Mount Shasta in the North to St. Diego in the 
extreme South, have for weeks been doing 
their level best to banquet us, to drive us and 
show us through their immense orchards of 
peaches, apricots, prunes, raisin and wine 
grapes, their olive, English walnut, almond 
and orange iuclosures, their beautiful orna¬ 
mental grounds filled with so many rare 
plants that our exports desired to spend days 
looking them over. The climate allows of the 
cultivation of such an immense variety from 
all climes that when either corporate or priv¬ 
ate wealth takes hold words fail to describe 
the extent and luxuriousness produced on 
many cultivated grounds. Their hospitality 
is liko their plans—on such a large scale that 
denizens of such a small State as New Jersey 
have been for several weeks constantly over¬ 
whelmed. We have been transported about 
2,000 miles up and down their different val¬ 
leys and entertained at almost every consid¬ 
erable town in them. Our speakers have been 
many times exhausted in responding; likewise 
our best talent in drawing up resolutions of 
thanks and commendation. The fruit-raisers 
are very enthusiastic over their future. In 
some lines in some sections they have done 
well for the past two years in raisins, apricots 
and prunes, and in a small section—Riverside 
—in oranges. The consequence is they are 
setting out enough trees to supply the wholo 
Northern States with the first three men¬ 
tioned fruits; but, take the State all over, they 
cannot now market all they raise, for farmers 
outside of the booming class tell me that tons 
of grapes, apples and other fruits are wasted 
for the want of a market and inability to 
gather them, yet land set to fruit is held at 
$500 to $1500 per acre, and thousands of hold¬ 
ings before setting are held at $400 to $500 per 
acre,and wonderful stories are told of the prof¬ 
its to be made at those prices. Yet thousands 
of acres of the wine grapes and apples and 
along the coast of oranges, are being rooted 
out. Except in a few favored localities tho 
black scale, and more particularly the cotton 
scale, are making sad havoc with the orange 
trees. Nowhere in the coast valleys have we 
seen healthy orange trees, and the oranges are 
only fit to bury. But at Riverside and a few 
favored nooks among the foothills we have 
seen the fruit hang in such size, beauty and 
luxuriance as to make the eye glad. Yet in 
these places windstorms and frosts have dam¬ 
aged much fruit. So even in this favored 
land we have not found the Paradise of fruit¬ 
growing, for here, though perhaps not to the 
same degree as with us, growers are forced to 
fight insects and the elements. There is one 
condition that shows in all directions and that 
is the great prolificness of all trees. With the 
exception of the orange the growers have 
not only to cut back heavily all the tops each 
year, but they are forced to incur great ex¬ 
pense in thinning their fruit. One man told 
mo he had counted 2,000 purtly formed 
peaches under one tree after tho Chinamen 
had only fairly thinned the yoiqjg fruit. 
There has been during the past four years a 
most wonderful development of this Southern 
California. The Eastern peoplo have brought 
in here over $150,000,000 of capital and many 
persons have realized thousands and even mil¬ 
lions by the rise of property. Hundreds of 
farms, costing from $2 to $30 per acre, have 
been divided into five-acre farms, water has 
been piped on to them, and sold for $400 and 
$500 per acre, for villa lots and to raise fruit. 
The whole country for from six to 10 miles 
a rouncWLos Angeles and St. Diego has been stak¬ 
ed into building lots, while almost innumerable 
town sites for 100 miles east, north and south, 
have been laid out and auctioned off with 
cheap excursions, free lunches and brass bands 
and on most of the sites many costly improve¬ 
ments have been started. To the Jerseyman 
with his conservative training this all seems 
bewildering; but the adopted or native Cali¬ 
fornians are glowing with confidence in the 
great future, but I cannot help prophesying a 
day of reckoning. h. i. b. 
