AUS. H 
200 bushels per acre and find ready market. 
I speak of what I know, for I have planted 
50,000 peach, 20,000 apple and 10,000 pear 
trees, and many thousands of small fruits in 
Howell County, and they are succeeding as 
well as similar plants have done in any place 
I have ever planted them. Some of them are 
bearing now and the next three years will 
show hundreds of car-loads of fruits from 
some farms. Lands are cheap, ranging 
from 82.50 to 88 per acre. Water is plentiful 
where lands are used for stock. Timber is 
abundant. Lumber is cheap, and every in¬ 
ducement is ready for any good, hard-working 
man who wishes to make a home. There is 
plenty of good society and schools and there 
are churches in all the older portions of the 
country and more are being built in the newer 
parts. I do not believe that any man, with 
good health and a few hundred dollars, can do 
better than settle in Southern Missouri. The 
country is well adapted for stock purposes and 
especially for sheep. Health is good; land is 
high and dry, and although the climate is not 
perfect, and the land is not a Garden of Eden, 
yet there one will find a thousand advantages 
more than on our Western plains. The next 
five or ten years will see such wonderful 
growth in Southern and Southwestern 
Missouri when its advantages are known that 
thousands will wish they had opened their 
eyes to its eligibility and not gone 500 miles 
farther off instead of settling there. 
FUNGI ON APPLE AND CEDAR TREES. 
G. L. M., Glendale , Va .—What is the name 
of the disease affecting the inclosed leaves of 
apple trees and a remedy therefor ? The dis¬ 
ease has killed 20 per cent, of my young trees. 
Ans. The leaves are affected with two 
species of parasitic fungi, one of which is im¬ 
mature and cannot, therefore, be determined. 
By far the greatest injury to the leaves is due 
to a fungus now popularly known as apple- 
leaf rust, a species of Roestelia, which is quite 
common throughout the Middle and Eastern 
States. This fungus causes pale yellow 
blotches on the leaves: while the immature 
species, above referred to, produces dark 
brown, definite, circular spots. The Roestelia 
as it appears on the apple is but one stage in 
its life history, another form appearing earlier 
in the season on cedar trees causing the 
growths commonly known as “cedar balls.” 
This form on the cedar is regarded as the first 
stage of that appearing later upon the apple, 
and it is oelieved to be the condition in which 
the fungus passes the winter. In the spring 
the cedar balls give rise to numerous spores— 
bodies analogous to seed—and when these fall 
upon the young apple leaves, and the proper 
conditions of moisture and heat are present, 
they germinate by sending out slender tubes 
which penetrate the tissues and ultimately 
develop into the Roestelia. The spores pro¬ 
duced by the latter fungus m turn find their 
way to the red cedar and developing there 
produce the “cedar balls.” The only means 
of combatting the disease, which a knowledge 
of its life history suggests, is to destroy the 
cedars in the vicinity of the orchard, or if 
this treatment cannot be adopted, collect and 
burn the cedar balls in spring before their 
spores are shed. Perhaps by making applica¬ 
tions of some fungicide to the apple leaves in 
spring, before the spores from the cedar balls 
come upon them, the development of the 
Roestelia may be prevented, but so far as we 
are aware no experiments have been made to 
determine this question. 
CHECKING GRAPE-VINE GROWTH, ETC. 
F. M., Naples, N. Y. —1. I have about 100 
eight-year-old Concord grape-vines set out eight 
by eight feet, which make too much wood and 
are hard to be managed. I trim them from six to 
seven long canes to the vine; can their 
strength be reduced by cutting off some of 
their tap roots without doing them any harm, 
and when can it be done ? 2. Or is it better 
to graft some other variety on them, and what 
kind would be best to graft on them, besides 
Delaware, Catawba and Rebecca 'l 3. Where 
can I get a good sprayer for spraying Paris- 
green and water on grape-vines, potatoes and 
small shrubs ? 
Ans. —1. Any arrangement that would re¬ 
duce their vigor so as to effect the desired ob¬ 
ject would lessen their fruitfulness and the 
fruit would be of inferior size. The Concord 
is naturally a rampant grower and we can’t 
interfere with its nature and have it do its 
best. Your soil may be richer than is neces¬ 
sary. A poorer soil, in this case, would be 
your only remedy. Of course, root-pruning 
or summer pruning would impair the vigor of 
the vines, but we cannot recommend it. 2. Of 
course, the Concord could be grafted to any 
other variety, but it would be an experiment 
to try which would cost you years, unless you 
know which varieties, other than those you 
have, would succeed in your vineyard. 3. The 
Field Force Pump Co. of Lockport, N. Y., 
make a good outfit for this purpose. If you 
have the pump and fixtures you can get the 
Cyclone or Nixon nozzle of any of the large 
seedsmen. 
RHUBARB AND ASPARAGUS. 
II. L. S., Yankton,I)ak. —What are the best 
varieties of rhubarb and asparagus for home 
use ? Where can I purchase the plants ? 
What is the proper time to set plants in the 
fall? 
Ans. We prefer spring to fall for new 
beds. If set in the fall, it will be well to cov¬ 
er the bed with a mulch of old short manure 
at least four inches in depth. It is doubtful 
if the “best” kind of asparagus is known. 
We have doubts whether the kind known 
as Conover’s Colossal is not as good as 
any. The size of the shoots depends 
in a great measure upon the situation, 
care, manure aDd cultivation giveD. 
Years ago the R. N. Y. raised Moore’s Cross¬ 
bred, Argenteuil and Red Dutch to find there 
was little difference in favor of any. We are 
now raising Smalley’s, Conover, Palmetto, 
Barr’s Mammoth and Moore’s Cross-bred side 
by side. The Palmetto and Barr’s are highly 
praised by some as distinct and superior kinds. 
Plant the sets as soon as frost kills or withers 
the tops. Linnaeus is the earliest—Monarch 
the best rhubarb in our estimation. The roots 
may be planted in the fall or spring as pre¬ 
ferred. If in the fall, plant as soon as the 
leaves are killed by frost; if in spring as 
early as the land can be put in order. 
FRUITS FOR SOUTHEASTERN DAKOTA. 
D. B. C., Eden, Dak. —What kind of apple 
trees would be likely to succeed here? What 
iron-clads have been tried in this section? 
What kind of “tame” plums are as hardy as 
the “wild” plums so abundant here? What 
other kinds of iron-clad plums are likely to 
prove hardy here in Southeastern Dakota? 
ANSWERED BY PROF. J. L. BUDD, 
Queries like this cannot be answered intelli¬ 
gently. In that part of Dakota, and generally 
in the bluffy sections of the loess formation of 
the Missouri Valley, varieties may live and 
bear in a satisfactory way on the elevated 
ridges and divides, that utterly fail by winter- 
killing or blight on the rich, corn-growing, 
bottoms and valleys. Of the varieties common 
to the nurseries, that do well on about all 
soils, the following list will be safe: Straw¬ 
berries, Crescent, Downer’s Prolific, Green 
Prolific, and Windsor. Raspberries, Shaffer’s 
Tyler, and Souhegan. Grapes, Worden, 
Moore’s Early, and the Concord, if the latter 
will ripen. Apples, Oldenburg, Whitney No. 
20, Wealthy, and the Russians recommended 
by the Northern Iowa Horticultural Society. 
Plums, De Soto, Wolf, Wyant, and Rolling- 
stone. 
FERTILIZER FOR WHEAT. 
B. K. A., New Providence, Pa. — I’ve 
not enough of manure for my wheat land ; 
where can I get fertilizers ? What kind should 
I use ? 2. How many pounds per acre ? 3. 
Shall I drill it in with the grain or plow it 
under ? 
Ans.— 1. Buy of any well-known fertilizer 
firm a complete fertilizer for wheat, and state 
whether your soil is light or sandy. A first- 
rate article will cost not less than 840 per ton. 
Do not buy any incomplete fertilizer uuless 
you have good reason for believing that your 
soil does not need a complete fertilizer. A 
low-grade fertilizer or even a first-rate article 
of bone or potash or ammoniated phosphate 
or superphosphate is just as likely as not to 
show no effect whatever. Probably your 
land needs bone ; probably it needs potash ; 
probably it needs nitrogen. But it also pro¬ 
bably needs all, in which case any one will 
ivill not pay. 2. Not less than 500 pounds to 
the acre. 3. Do not plow it under. The R 
N.-Y. would advise you to sow it broad-cast 
before harrowing. 
Miscellaneous. 
W. G.,Davenp>ort, Iowa .—I send the Rural 
by to-day’s mail, two tubers of Early Rose 
potatoes that are “scabby;” a sample of the 
soil in which they were grown is also sent. 
They were planted according to the Rural’s 
Trench method, with 1,000 pounds of Mapes’ 
Potato Manure to the acre in the drill, to¬ 
gether with some flowers of sulphur. While 
insects do often cause scab, this, I believe is 
caused by a fungus. 
Ans. —This not at all what the R. N.-Y. 
calls “scab.” The potatoes are sprinkled 
with little pimples, so to speak, just such as 
would be caused if the skin, during growth, 
were punctured with a pin. If the new bark 
of a tree were similarly punctured, the same 
thing would occur. These pimples, however, 
as our friend, thinks, may be caused by a 
fungus. We cannot say. 
G. L. M., Undale, Va .— I would like to 
get two boys, 13 ami U years old, from Castlo 
Garden, to raise on my farm. How should I 
proceed to get them ? 
Ans. You had better write to Superintend¬ 
ent Jackson, Castle Garden, New York, stat¬ 
ing just what you want, and giving full par¬ 
ticulars as to your locality, etc. If you are 
not specially anxious to secure foreigners, you 
might be able to get such boys from the 
Children’s Aid Society, New York City. The 
boys you would be likely to get from the lat¬ 
ter place are younger than the ages you give. 
They will be city boys, whose parents are 
either dead or unablo to care for them. 
W., Schoharie, N. Y. —1. Where can I get 
seed of the Thousand-fold rye ? 2. What is alka¬ 
line bone ? 
Ans. —1. B. K. Bliss & Sons, of New York, 
introduced it some eight years ago. Mr. Bliss 
is now with W. W. Rawson & Co., of Boston, 
Mass., and you had better communicate with 
that firm. 2. It is bone to which potash in 
some form has been added. 
Subscriber (no address).—1. Is it safe to 
feed green oats and straw to horses just from 
work ? 2. How long should oats remain in 
shocks before they can be stacked, when they 
are to be fed without thrashing ? 
Ans. 1. No. 2. Until the straw and grain are 
perfectly dry. A week in fair, windy, drying 
weather is sufficient. 
V. M. Ii., Kent Co., Del. —What is a cheap 
paint that will make a board roof water¬ 
tight ? 
Ans. —Two coats of the oxide of iron paint 
will be the best coating; but a board roof is a 
poor one at the best. 
II. P. N., Nichols, Conn. —What is the best 
winter sweet, long keeping apple which is 
productive and large ? 
Ans.—T he Hartford Sweeting covers these 
requirements as well as any single sort, though 
not of the highest quality. For quality, 
Danver’s Winter Sweet is preferable. 
J. E. C., llydetown. Pa —Does the Rural 
know anything of the Mooney Plum ? 
Ans.—T he R. N.-Y. has never before heard 
of the Mooney Plum. 
II. A. M., Fidalgo, Wash. Ter. —The 
Woodason bellows, advertised in the Rural, 
are an excellent implement for the purpose 
you mention. 
DISCUSSION. 
THE FARMER’S PARTNERS. 
A. R. Malvern, ONT.--Does farming pay? 
has often been asked in the Rural lately. I 
would say it does, and pays well; not the 
tillers of the soil, they get a living, but there 
are others dependent on the success of farming 
who get more than their share of the profits. 
Farming now in America is a partnership; the 
tillers of the soil make their clothing, imple¬ 
ments, etc., and team their produce to market 
less every year, a thing desirable in itself as 
thereby the cost is lessened. Our manufac¬ 
turing and transporting partners would pro¬ 
bably resent being called farmers, although 
they are visible proofs of the profits of farm¬ 
ing. One of our partners, J. A. C., presented 
part of his case in the Rural of July 14 which 
1 would recommend to my fellow farmers to 
study. First he objects to foreign competi¬ 
tion—is he any better than we are? We have 
to compete with everybody that has food to 
sell from the potato-fed and rack-rented Irish¬ 
man, to the starving, naked and ignorant 
Egyptian and Indian, and we must meet this 
competition as long as we export an agricul¬ 
tural surplus. Again, J. A. C. pays his female 
employees from 89 to $12 per week; are we to 
be taxed that ho may pay more for an inferior 
class of work than our own wives and daugh¬ 
ters can earn? He insinuates that we are pro¬ 
tected by the duty on potatoes, and that if the 
duty was removed we might stop growing 
them. Why any farmer’s boy knows that if 
we did not grow potatoes we would grow the 
more of something else to export. The state¬ 
ment that there are thousands of barrels of 
potatoes unmarketable in Northern N. Y. 
shows that our railroad partners must make 
farming pay pretty well when their shipping 
charges are more than the potatoes are worth 
at N. Y. City. 
A MODEL COUNTY FAIR. 
J. H. D., Washingtonville, N. Y.—Dr. 
Hoskins’s sensible article on Judging at Agri¬ 
cultural Fairs, is timely and should be care¬ 
fully read by all fair managers. To the ex¬ 
ceptions where fairs are well conducted noted 
in the Doctor’s article, we must add the 
Orange County Agricultural Society. I be¬ 
lieve no fair is more fairly or successfully 
carried on than this one. The exhibits are of 
the very highest order in all tho departments. 
The judging, in nearly all cases, is done by paid 
experts, who are to be guided by a scale of 
points iu the published premium list. This 
expert judging is of great benefit. It avoids 
favoritism and teaches exhibitors to bring 
their stock and produce to a higher standard. 
A premium won at such a fair is genuine, and 
no visitor need feel any doubts as to which is 
the best cow or herd, chicken or pen of fowls. 
Add to this the absence of horse-racing and 
side shows, an average attendance of over 50,- 
000 people and a good surplus in the treasury, 
so that we Orange Co. farmers feel contented 
and extend a hearty welcome to all outsiders, 
exhibitors and visitors. Competition for pre¬ 
miums is not restricted to Orange Co., but 
extends to the country at large. 
N. H., Creedmoor, N. Y.—I see in the last 
issue of the Rural, that R. D. F. asks how to 
get rid of carpet bugs. I suppose he refers to 
what is known as the “ Buffalo Moth.” I have 
known them to be used up by the application 
of benzine. I once lived in a hired house that 
became so infested with fleas that we were on 
the point of moving out, when by accident I 
found that benzine was instantly fatal to 
them. They were bred in the cellar and were 
carried through the house on one’s clothes. 
Benzine was sprinkled freely through the fine 
rose of a watering pot, three gallons being 
used in two applications, and not a flea was 
found afterward. Persian insect powder and 
all other insecticides were useless. I have 
recommended benzine to many and I have 
never known it to fail for fleas, and I recom¬ 
mended it to a friend who was troubled with 
the Buffalo carpet moth with the same result. 
But use this caution—never use it in the even¬ 
ing when there is a light in the room, cr in a 
room with a fire in it, unless all doors and 
windows are opej and afresh breeze is blow¬ 
ing: even then it is best to put out the fire. 
There is no d'anger of its injuring clothing or 
carpet, color or texture. 
That pest of the housewife, bed-bugs, is 
easily got rid of in the same way, as the ben¬ 
zine will kill the eggs as well as the grown 
bugs. 
Garden and Forest says that the precepts 
which should be often repeated to farmers are 
not that trees produce rain, or that trees are 
sacred objects, which cannot be cut without 
offence to man and rature. The lessen they 
must learn, if they hope to ccmpete with 
farmers trained under more enlightened sys¬ 
tems of agriculture, are that sterile,rocky, 
hilly ground cannot loDg be tilled pi ofitably; 
and that such land can wisely be used only to 
produce trees; that the pasturage of dormstic 
animals in the woods, or on land suitable only 
for the growth of trees, is an expensive and 
wasteful system, as unsatisfactory from a 
pastoral point of view as it is fatal to the for¬ 
est; that trees arc just as much out of place in 
the strong level lands really suitable to per¬ 
manent tillage, as cattle are out of place in 
the woods. And they must learn, too, that 
woodlands can bo made profitable only when 
the same care is given to trees, with reference 
to soil and climate, as it is bestowed upon the 
selection of grain and other crops, and that 
the rules which nature has established for the 
perpetuation of forests must be studied and 
obeyed. 
Trickerv By Dairymen In The Elgin 
Market. —The Elgin (Ill.), Board of Trade, 
says the Times, makes no secret of the nefarious 
business carried on by the dairymen of that 
vicinity, who make this heretofore popular 
center the market for their goods. In a recent 
report, the cheese of that locality is graded in 
four classes: Cream, half-skims, enriched 
skims, and centrifugal skims. The enriched 
skims are made to the extent of 500 boxes or 
30,000 weekly, and sell for 5 % to 6 cents a 
pound. It is pretty certain that all this cheese 
is sold to consumers without any revelation 
as to its true character, and as it is only 25 per 
cent, less in value than tho “cream”or pure 
cheese made from whole milk, it is very 
clear that there is a large demand for the 
cheaper product by retailers, who sell it as pure 
cheese. If the manufacture of oleomargarine 
or other substitutes for butter is taxed to the 
extent of 8000 yearly as a license fee, and must 
be sold under its own distinctive name and 
character, why should not honest cheese- 
makers be equally protected against adulter¬ 
ated cheese? Tho States of New York and 
Pennsylvania prohibit the sale of “filled” or 
“enriched skims,” and the prohibition should 
be universal. Lard is the substauce by which 
the skimmed milk is enriched, and lard, in its 
turn, is enriched with cottonseed oil. 
Experiments with Wheat and Barley at 
Woburn.— “Sir J. B, Lqwes, writing i« the 
