24§ 
THE RURAL ttEW°VORKgR 
MARCH 34 
THE 
RURAL- NEW'YORKER. 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban Home % 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. C4RMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New York. 
SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1888. 
The Rural’s Rose Special -will be is¬ 
sued next week. If any of our subscrib¬ 
ers desire that we should send it to any 
of their friends, they have only to send us 
lists of their names and addresses. 
There are many complaints from South¬ 
ern Nevada of raids made on the ranches 
by bands of wild horses which run off 
their domesticated kindred, which never 
voluntarily return to toil and the stable. 
Like the buffaloes,the wild horse3 which 
formerly numbered millions on the plains 
are fast disappearing, and will soon be 
exterminated. No attempt is now made 
to tame them, as the task is thought im¬ 
practicable; but liberal rewards are offered 
for their slaughter. Those that remain 
travel in bands of 150 to 200 and cause 
fierce indignation among ranchmen. It 
is only a few years ago since New South 
Wales was plagued by wild equines 
nearly as badly as she is now by wild rab¬ 
bits, but by unfeelingly setting a price on 
their heads, she soon got rid of what was 
called an “unmitigated nuisance,” a term 
fully indorsed by our far Western ranch¬ 
men. 
Is it not important that farmers should 
know whether it is better to place the 
manure or fertilizer under or over seed 
potatoes? We began experiments intend¬ 
ed to answer this question some 10 years 
ago. We were led to believe that it was 
better to sow the fertilizer above the seed 
and further experiments were discon¬ 
tinued until last year, when further trials 
not carried on, however, in a thorough 
way, indicated that the fertilizer gave the 
best crops when placed below. This sea¬ 
son we hope to continue these tests in a 
thorough-going way. We shall make 
some 50 different plantings, first sowing 
the fertilizer under, then above, so that 
there will be material for 25 comparisons. 
We respectfully suggest that if all of the 
experiment stations in the country would 
co-operate with the Rural, the results 
could hardly fail to answer this highly 
important question. 
The following is taken from the Lon¬ 
don Agricultural Gazette, the leading 
farm journal of England: “ ‘Gulliver’. 
—In a happily conceived pictoiial parody 
on the front page of the Rural New- 
Yorker (Feb. 11th), Dame Nature is rep¬ 
resented as ‘Gulliver,’ prone and bound, 
tied down, half strangled, with ropes 
about her neck and wrists and ankles. 
And companies of ‘Lilliputian’ farmers are 
holding on. Two of them, bolder than 
the rest, having climbed for the purpose, 
are holding the biggest blade to her throat 
that they can wield. The blade in ques¬ 
tion is labelled ‘poor farming.’ Those 
who have her by the neck ‘rob the soil and 
never pay;’ the company at one arm 
‘farm without manure,’ those at the other 
‘force the soil to produce grain only,’ and 
the whole proceedings are directed by 
the strongest man of the lot, who is the 
‘grain speculator.’ Happily, they are all 
Lilliputian in comparison with strong Gul¬ 
liver. Dame Nature is still alive, though 
suffering, and will recover from the ef¬ 
forts that are being made to strangle and 
destroy her.” 
Great interest is being manifested in 
the Rural’s potato wager. It is a new 
thing. People are fond of new things, 
particularly when they can study the de¬ 
tails and get the benefit of success or fail¬ 
ure without expense to themselves. That 
is just what Rural readers can do as re¬ 
gards this potato wager. The Rural 
means to succeed if it can and it is grati¬ 
fying to learn that many of our readers 
are confident that we will succeed. Quite 
a number of stories of neighborly discus¬ 
sions on the subject come to us. Neigh¬ 
bors of some of our strongest supporters 
are sure we will fail. Our friends gener¬ 
ally make this reply: ‘ ‘I have faith enough 
in the Rural to make this proposition; 
you take the paper one year or six months 
as you choose; if the Rural fails I’ll pay 
for the subscription and if it wins you 
pay for it yourself.” Now this is busi¬ 
ness. As we said, the Rural expects to 
win. It will do its best to win, and its 
faith is strong enough to guarantee protec¬ 
tion to all who make the above proposition. 
If it does not raise potatoes at the rate of 
700 bushels per acre it will itself pay the 
subscription price on all subscriptions 
which its friends may make themselves 
responsible for as above indicated. Npw, 
friends, we will do our best. Here is a 
chance to increase the Rural family. 
Senator Palmer’s agent, who started 
last winter to import a number of Per- 
cheron and Arabian horses for the pur¬ 
pose of forming a new breed by crossing 
the two races, has just cabled that he has 
utterly failed to obtain any Arabians. On 
his arrival at Damascus, a few weeks ago, 
he learned that a firman had been issued 
by the Sultan prohibiting the further ex¬ 
portation of horses because of the proba¬ 
bility of war, in which they would be 
needed. The Sultan, however, revoked 
his firman in favor of the Senator. It is 
usually stated that pure Arabian horses 
are never disposed of except as gifts to 
great personages, or for war; but the 
agent found no difficulty in buying any 
number of them. The only cause of his 
failure, as he cables, was that every horse 
shown him, on pushing into the desert as 
well as in Damascus, was spavined, ring¬ 
boned, wind-broken, blind, or afflicted 
with some other disease to which horses 
are subject. Only one horse did he 
see that appeared worthy of transporta¬ 
tion to this country, and on closer exami¬ 
nation that, too, was found to be un¬ 
sound. Hence the Oriental part of the 
enterprise was given up in despair; but 
the agent has secured at La Perche 24 of 
the finest Percheron horses ever exported, 
and will soon enrich our breeding stock 
with them. The failure to obtain the 
Arabians for the purpose intended will, 
most likely, be no loss to the country or 
the Senator, for the general impression is 
that such a cross would be injudicious, 
especially as it was intended to cross 
ponderous Percheron stallions on small 
Arabian mares. 
Eugene Lynn Spotts, American dry- 
goods clerk, is to be a competitor of Louis 
Pasteur, French scientist, for the $125,- 
000 offered by the Government of New 
South Wales for the destruction of the 
rabbits that are devastating that colony. 
Pasteur proposes to inoculate some rab¬ 
bits with chicken cholpra, which he de¬ 
clares harmless except to birds and rab¬ 
bits, and let the affected bunnies spread 
the disease among their race. Spotts pro¬ 
poses to effect the same object by inocu¬ 
lating a lot of disease-spreading rabbits 
with a disease peculiar to the race, and 
which cannot affect any other animal. He 
was in Australia last year, and studied 
the rabbit problem there, and on the of¬ 
fer of the reward in December he started 
an investigation in the line of Pasteur’s 
proposed remedy, and discovered the rem¬ 
edial disease which, he says, is slowly but 
certainly fatal. He has been in commun¬ 
ication with the Australian authorities, 
and on their invitation started for Sidney 
last Thursday,with 36 inoculated bunnies 
to which he will add, in California, 
enough to last on his trans-Pacific voyage. 
In spite of Pasteur’s declaration and ex¬ 
periments many believe his anti-rabbit 
remedy would be dangerous for other ani¬ 
mals, an objection to which Spotts’s rem¬ 
edy is not open; while if it is as effectual 
as its inventor claims it is, it will clear 
the Australian colonies of the rabbit 
pests within a year. It is hard that any 
country should suffer from a surplus of 
food that can be neither eaten nor de¬ 
stroyed ; but as it is a struggle for exis¬ 
tence between quadrupeds and bipeds, 
our sympathies are with the bipeds. 
■ ■ —»» 
“White Grease” is a product made 
from dead animals of all kinds by ferti¬ 
lizer concerns. It is bleached and deod¬ 
orized and made to look really handsome. 
White grease is also a name given to the 
product rendered from hogs’ heads, en¬ 
trails, etc. During the Congressional 
lard investigation this week, eviderce 
was given that certain prominent oppon¬ 
ents of cotton seed oil-lard are accustomed 
to use white grease in the manufacture 
of their “pure lard.” It was also shown 
that a number of packers are selling meat 
under false pretences by branding should¬ 
ers as hams and thereby getting higher 
prices for the deception. A lot of these 
“extra sugar-cured hams,” “choice sugar- 
cured California hams,” “cottage hams,” 
“picnic hams,” etc., were brought before 
the committee, from which the canvas 
was removed, disclosing only shoulders, 
and not hams. Professor Wiley, Chem¬ 
ist of the Department of Agriculture, tes¬ 
tified that he had obtained pure lard by 
rendering the heads and entrails of hogs; 
that there was no way of distinguishing 
“dead hog” grease from pure lard; that 
he would as soon eat compound lard as 
pure lard; that “dead hog” is as good as 
any other, and that there is nothing harm¬ 
ful in the white grease produced by 
rendering together dead hogs’ entrails, 
heads and hair. A world of mischief to 
our foreign trade in lard will result from 
the disclosures of its composition by this 
investigation, unless stringent measures 
were promptly adopted for distinguish¬ 
ing the pure, cleanly, wholesome product 
from all other sorts in our home and for¬ 
eign markets. 
“A FARMERS' TRUST.” 
A movement has been started by the 
farmers of Kansas looking to the organi¬ 
zation of a Farmers’Trust, to include far¬ 
mers, stock raisers and feeders of the 
Northwestern States and Territories of the 
Mississippi Valley. To bring about an 
organization a convention of farmers and 
stockmen has been called to meet at To¬ 
peka on Monday, May 1. The scheme 
looks to the establishment of ten central 
agencies—Chicago, Cincinnati, Kansas 
City, Indianapolis, Omaha, St. Louis, 
Cedar Rapids, St. Paul, Milwaukee and 
Louisville. These agencies are to do all 
the selling of the association for which 
they shall be paid stated commissions. 
The territory tributary to these commer¬ 
cial points is to be divided into eight prin¬ 
cipal districts and subdivided into sub¬ 
districts by counties. This movement is 
a good one, but the term Trust applied 
to it is a misnomer. So far as telegraphic 
information received this morning goes,it 
is merely an association for decreasing the 
expenses and increasing the profits of its 
members by reducing to a minimum the 
charges usually exacted by middlemen of 
all kinds. In a Trust the property of the 
members becomes the property of the 
Trust, certificates of which are received 
by the owners in payment thereof. In the 
proposed association the farms and their 
products continue to belong to the origi¬ 
nal owners. A Trust seeks extortionate 
profits by limiting production to keep the 
supply equal to or below the demand, and 
by controlling all the goods of the kind 
in the country, it can put an arbitrary 
price on its wares. None of these objec¬ 
tionable monopolistic features are present 
in the new scheme. The only legitimate 
advantage of a Trust is that by combining 
interests it economizes expenses, and this 
is the only feature of an ordinary Trust 
in the projected organization. Success 
to all such projects; but down with all 
Trusts! 
INTEGRITY NEEDS INVESTIGATION. 
Utt onest Old Dick Tate,” for 21 
JLLyears State Treasurer of Ken¬ 
tucky, so highly esteemed by all for his 
ability and integrity that no one in his 
party has for years ventured to oppose 
his re-election, having fled to Canada 
after embezzling at least $250,000 of the 
State’s money, the Legislature has passed 
a resolution calling for a full and imme¬ 
diate investigation of all the State offices. 
This is a good measure, but very tardy. 
Tate’s defalcations have extended over 11 
years, and if such an investigation had 
been ordered at any time during this 
period, or even if the auditor and other 
State authorities.had done their duty in 
the matter, detection must have stopped 
the dishonesty long ago. 
Why should the proposed investigation 
be confined to the State offices? Why 
should it not extend also to all municipal 
offices in the State? And why should not 
other States and other cities take a lesson 
from Kentucky and at once institute 
similar investigations? Then, again, why 
shouldn’t every corpoiation and business 
firm from one end of the country to 
another do likewise? And why should 
the courts order investigation into the 
condition of all trust funds? It is very 
doubtful whether there has ever been a 
time when there has been such shameful 
dishonesty among those who have the 
financial interests of others in charge. 
Not a week, hardly a day, passes without 
the revelation of gross financial turpi¬ 
tude on the part of men of the highest 
reputation—men prominent in political, 
financial, social and even religious affairs, 
and as a rule, the rascality has been going 
on for years while the guilty scoundrels 
have been enjoying the high esteem of 
the world; for the old saying is still true 
“no one has ever become very bad all at 
once.” It is just such high-toned, “hon¬ 
orable” rascals who get the opportunity 
of committing such crimes. Who would 
give such a chance to sc man of blemished 
reputation? Oh! what a world of sorrow, 
suffering, despair, and often death results 
to innocent parties from the reckless 
frauds of such wretches 1 If such an in¬ 
vestigation as we propose were made, how 
many now honored names would be dis¬ 
honored, and how much rascality that 
is sure to come to light later on, 
or that when finally detected, will 
for various seasons be hushed up, would 
be checked. It would be well for public 
and private morality; well for public and 
private interests that such an investigation 
should be made at once. No considera¬ 
tion for the feelings of those in p’aces of 
trust, should temper or delay it. If with¬ 
out blame, they should be glad of an op¬ 
portunity to demonstrate their spotlessness 
in this age of fraud; if culpable, they de¬ 
serve no consideration. 
- — 
BREVITIES. 
We have a bank of -snow on our proposed 
potato plot, that upon which the $50-wager 
trial is to be made, not less than six feet high. 
There is quite a demand for cuttings of 
peppermint. Few, if any, regular seedsmen 
offer them for sale. Those who wish to buy 
will doubtless be obliged to go to some pepper¬ 
mint grower. 
It looks as though the next poultry boom 
would be on the Pea-combed Plymouth Rock 
if we may judge from the interest awakened 
by the description and illustration given in the 
Rural last December. A Plymouth Rock 
with a comb that will not freeze! Is there 
anything more desirable? 
It’s a little mean to say, “I told you so,” 
and yet we can’t help saying, “Don’t you 
wish you had ordered your tools and seeds 
before the blizzard?” It will take business 
some little time to get back into the ruts. The 
delay in delivering your tools and seeds may 
hurt you. Be on time. 
The managers of the Wisconsin farmers’in¬ 
stitutes will close the season with a grand 
“round up” at Madison March 27-30. An ex¬ 
cellent programme embracing the cream of 
the papers read at the 80 or more institutes 
will be given. We learn that the institutes 
have been very successful. 
Have you ever started at a new job where 
there were so many things absolutely demand¬ 
ing attention that you could not tell what to 
take hold of first? This is about where we 
stand in reorganizing “Brookside” the new 
Rural farm. What do you do in such a case; 
take the first thing that offers and work at it, 
or do you spend a few days in studying out 
the situation and finding the most important 
things? 
An idea of the severity of the blizzard may 
be gained from the fact that it was not until 
Wednesday that communications could be had 
with points at the east end of Long Island. 
Many of the roads on the Island are even now 
almost impassable. This state of affairs is 
very discouraging to market gardeners, who 
usually spend much time at this season in 
hauling manure. This cannot be done now. 
Will it tend to increase the trade in chemical 
fertilizers this season? 
There is considerable discussion in some of 
the States, particularly Ohio, about the enact¬ 
ment of laws for licensing stallions. It is said 
that there are a great deal too many poor and 
unsound stallions, and a great deal too many 
farmers willing to patronize them on account 
of the very low fees. Thus unsound and 
worthless horses are multiplied and perpetu¬ 
ated to the great injury and loss of agriculture 
at large. It is proposed that duly authorized 
veterinary surgeons should pass upon the 
merits of all candidates for license, and that 
all poor and unsound stock should be excluded, 
and that none but licensed animals should 
serve in the stud, under a reasonable penalty. 
The license fee should be only large enough 
to pay expenses, without entailing any con¬ 
siderable increase in the fee for service. 
There should be a lien for the latter on the 
offspring of all licensed sires. This measure 
possesses several good features and is well 
worthy of free discussion. 
No garden operation is capable of yielding 
such permanent and at the same time such en¬ 
joyable results as the setting of a graft. Yet 
a mere child may do it, in little more than a 
minute of time, and with no other apparatus 
than a sound graft, a sharp knife and a bit of 
waxed cloth. Every garden book and paper 
tells how to graft; it may be a useful ad¬ 
dition to these directions to tell what not to 
do. Don’t let the grafts be either kept wet or 
allowed to get too dry before using them. 
Sorts of apple and pear which endure the win¬ 
ter perfectly are best used fresh, to avoid the 
risks of keeping in unpractised hands. Don’t 
use the thin, keen blade which is to pare the 
surfaces so as to meet closely, for any rougher 
cutting. Make only the end of the blade 
razor-sharp or the fingers may suffer. Don’t 
leave the least portion of the cut or joining 
uncovered with the wax, or the whole will 
gradually dry up and fail. In early grafting 
a string wrapped round the spiral strip of 
waxed cloth holds it from being drawn loose 
by strain of weather and often serves to bring 
the joined parts into close contact. It suffices 
if the line between the bark and the wood in 
the graft and in the stock coincide in one 
place if all else is right. Or if they simply 
cross each other union will take place. No 
other part unites. Grafts should be cut from 
the ripest of last year’s shoots which have had 
their leaves fully exposed to the sunshine. 
What is known as splice-grafting or whip¬ 
grafting is the easiest to perform, the safest 
for the tree or stock, and the least liable to loss 
from storm or from neglect of wild sprouts, 
which, if left growing round the graft, rob it 
and often effectually smother it. If strings 
are used don’t fail to cut them loose as soon as 
the buds open on the graft. 
