demonstrated that there is no certainty of a 
crop of auy kind without irrigation, for it is 
sure not to rain when crops most need moist¬ 
ure, and the hot winds burn up corn as a gen¬ 
eral thing; so, with hail, chinch bugs, hot 
winds and drought, this is the most miserable 
country that the sun ever shone on. The 
water was turned into the canal for a week or 
so last spring and every one thought he 
would raise a crop, but all at once the Arkan¬ 
sas river went dry and remained so all sum¬ 
mer ; but about two months ago the dam 
settled a number of feet and caught the un¬ 
dercurrent, and that soon filled the canal with 
water in abundance, so we poor grangers can 
get water all over our farms and next year 
will tell the story. If a success, this land is 
worth §100 per acre. c. l. s. 
Pleasant Valley, Lincoln Co., Dec. 
17.—We hope for more rain next season 
than we have had during the past, so that we 
can raise at least enough to eat. For the last 
two years farmers have failed in everything 
in this section, and starvation or heavy in¬ 
debtedness stares th»m in the face, all owing 
to the lack of a little rain at the right season. 
I don’t see how any farmer can do without 
the Rural. I nr sure it costs me nothing. 
The seeds alone have been worth more than 
the^cost of the paper. Success to the Rural! 
h. R. M. 
New Hampshire. 
South Sutton, Dec. 15—It has been a hard 
season for farmers in this section. A late 
spring, an early frost, and a wet fall damaged 
all the crops one half, except hay. Stock, too, 
is very low in price and there is no demand. 
All around here times are pretty hard with not 
much help and high wages. 
We prize the Rural very much indeed, and 
it brings to this home many pleasantly spent 
hours. i£ B Ci 
New York. 
Forestville, Chaut. Co., Dec. 21.—The 
past season has been one of mixed results. 
Grapes, which were a large crop, brought the 
farmers of this county over §800,000. By 
the way, the grape business has made rapid 
strides here for five years past. Land which 
a short time ago could have been had for a 
song, is now selling readily at §100 to §150 per 
acre. Potatoes and corn were good crops; 
oats fair; hay light; consequently fodder is 
scarce and high. A great many farmers are 
1 filing off their stock at low figures, which I 
fear they will regret doing when the dairy 
season opens in the spring. What can farm¬ 
ers do without the cow, the sheep and the ox? 
How is the fertility of the farm to be main¬ 
tained? Can it be done with commercial fer¬ 
tilizers alone? Men who have tried doing so 
tell us no. Then, why sell the cow? It seems 
to me that farmers must be blind or out of 
their heads, who sell their stock thinking that 
by so doing they can sell all the products of 
the soil, taking everything off and putting noth¬ 
ing bark, and yet hope to prosper. The cow is 
the great balance-wheel of the farm. Take 
her off, and the little wheels will soon stop 
still. It takes a long time to reclaim old, 
worn-out land that has been farmed by these 
anti-stock fanatics. 
Brother farmer, do unto your farm as you 
would have your farm do unto you, and the 
rural crown of prosperity will deck your brow. 
C. H. F. 
Altamont, Albany Co., Dec. 2L.— 
Although 1 have been a subscriber for the 
Rural for only about six months, yet t think 
it is the grandest paper of the kind that I 
ovei saw. Altamont is a charming summer 
resort about 17 miles west ot Albany, at the 
foot of thejHelderbergh mountains. Farming 
in this section is rather mixed, hay and grain 
being the most important. Crops the past 
season were fair on the whole. Potatoes were 
a failure with some ; apples in some parts of 
the county were plentiful. 
Prices range about as follows—corn, 80 
cents; oats, 43 cents; wheat, 85 cents- rye 
05 cents per bushel. Potatoes §1 25 and 
apples §1.50 per barrel. Hay from §10 to §14 
per ton. AYages are fair; farm hands get 
from §17 to $20 per mouth. j, H> K 
fenniylHnl*. 
Elizabethtown, Lancaster Co., Dec. 24.— 
Farmers were able to plow this fall" until 
December 13 th. Scarcely any snow has fallen, 
and at present there is every indication that 
tail- weather will continue at least to the end 
>t the year. Butter is getting scarcer and 
higher every year in this vicinity, owing to 
creameries being built every few miles. 
1 hese send teams out among the farmers to 
gather the cream and milk. One creamery 
alone at a small village called Ridgeville has 
seventeen teams employed. Butter is 33 cents 
Per pound; eggs, 24 cents per dozen; lard, 11; 
wheat, §1 per bushel; corn, 55; oats, 35^ 
potatoes, 50 cents. Tobacco, one of our chief 
products, has been nearly all sold, some sell¬ 
ing as high as 20 cents per j pound for Havana 
seed. Nearly every farmer slaughters four to 
eight hogs and one or more cattle for his own 
use, always turning some of the meat into 
pudding and sausage, which cannot be ex¬ 
celled and rarely equaled in quality by any 
other section of country. w. G. 
Evans City, Butler Co., December 25. 
—This has been a very wet fall and winter so 
far. Wheat was a fourth of a crop. Oats 
were good. Corn and potatoes full crops. 
Hay was only a half crop owing to drought 
in the spring. The acreage of wheat sown 
this fall was not so large as usual. This is a 
mixed farming country anyway. I like the 
Rural very much; it gives good information 
on farming and everything else. j. H. 
Vermont. 
Perkinsville, Windsor Co., Dec. 25—The 
past month has been one of exceedingly un¬ 
favorable weather. There has been no snow 
at all, excepting flurries, and traveling has 
been anything but pleasant on the frozen 
ground. Some snapping cold weather has 
been experienced, with high winds, and 
stock has suffered severely where the barns 
were not extra warm. Many of our farmers 
feel discontented because of the loss of the 
crops, but yet they have many things to be 
thankful for. No wood or lumber is moving 
yet, although much is being cut. Complaints 
are common against the ordinary dry wood. 
Unless dried under cover it is worse than 
green it is so badly damaged by wet weather. 
Even the wood worked up under sheds is 
faulty and moldy because of the dampness. 
The weather lately has been remarkably fair, 
but snapping cold. b. h. a. 
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
[Every query must be accompanied by the name 
and address of the writer to Insure attention. Before 
asking a question, please see If It Is not answered In 
our advertising columns. Ask only a few questions at 
one time. Put questions on a separate piece of paper. 
PORK GROWING IN THE SOUTH. 
W. K., Ontario, Kans.—I am thinking of 
going South to make a specialty of hog raising. 
After reading Henry Stewart’s article on the 
Southern hog in a late Rural, I want to 
know whether he refers to the Berkshire, 
Poland-China,Chester AA r hite,or Duroc-Jersey, 
or does he refer to the native rail-splitter? 
ANSWERED BY HENRY STEWART. 
The Southern hogs are unfortunate in their 
bringing up—so to speak—rather than in their 
progenitors. They are evidently descended 
from the best breed, the Essex and the Berk¬ 
shire mostly, for the majority are black, or 
black with remains of the Berkshire points, 
viz., white feet and a white spot on the face. 
There are a good many of the sandy or 
reddish-brown kind which may be the de¬ 
scendants of the old Red Berkshire or the Red 
Jersey or Duroc breed or of both. Having been 
much neglected, poorly fed, or not fed at all, 
except on the mast, they are small, thin, and 
great eaters, although making but little 
growth for the food they eat But it is a ques¬ 
tion.after all,if they are not the best hogs under 
the circumstances in which they are kept and 
the most profitable. At first sight of these slab- 
sided, long nosed and long-legged creatures 
with big jaws and thin, long necks around 
which the cracked bells are hung by straps so 
they can be easily hunted up in the woods, I 
thought they must be wretched things and 
utterly unworthy of one’s notice. But I have 
traveled considerably and have learned that 
it is not safe to despise the ways of the natives 
in any locality, “who are to the manner 
born,” and perhaps understand their own 
affaiis the best. And since then I have tested 
these hogs and have found them to be 
not only able to live where a high-toned, pure¬ 
bred, pedigreed pig would perish, but able to 
do well and make fair growth when well 
cared for. For instance, I purchased, as a 
test, a sow with seven small pigs for §7, and a 
boar for §5. These pigs ranged in a wood lot 
all summer, living on last year’s acorns and 
chestuuts, together with grass and roots of 
various kinds. They did quite as well as any 
better pigs I have had on clover pasture. In 
the fall, I put up the seven pigs to fatten on 
boiled potatoes, bran, corn meal and skimmed 
milk, and made over 700 pounds of pork at an 
actual cost of two cents per pound. The meat 
can be sold now readily for 10 to 14 cents a 
pound, which has been the ordinary price for 
bacon not as good as this for some years past. 
This has been a bad mast year so that 
hundreds of pigs have died in the woods of 
starvation, which, however, is not unusual, at 
least the deaths, for, when mast is abundant, 
the pigs die of cholera, so that this experience, 
as regards the profi of feeding swine here, is 
not unusual at all. Last year I made an esti¬ 
mate of the cost of growing pork here, for the 
State Agricultura Department, aDd I put the 
cost at three cents per pound; while pork has 
always sold for five years past at from 10 to 
| 15 cents a pound. AYith ordinary care in 
I breeding these native pigs which seem fitted 
by nature for their environment, ranging 
them in the summer and fall and feeding 
some milk along with the mast when abun¬ 
dant, and with bran and com when it is 
scarce, they will, I am sure, in spite of their 
naturally, or, more truly in fact, unnaturally 
poor and woebegone looks, make more profit 
than any other pigs in any other place I 
know of. As the South, and especially the 
mountain region of it, is especially well 
adapted for the dairy—I am selling butter for 
35 cents per pound which does not cost, all 
expenses told, five cents—and pork growing 
will go exceedingly well with it by the use of 
skimmed milk, I am confident this business 
alone or combined with the dairy would 
afford a very handsome profat. There are 
many wild hogs, upon rough parts of wood¬ 
land, which have escaped from cultivation, as 
might be well said, and which have never had 
any other food for years than the mast, the 
Bunch Grass and the roots, nor any other 
shelter than hollow trees and beds under 
shelving rocks—very good shelter, too, by the 
by. If the native hog does so well, I think 
civilized Berkshires, fed upon the easily grown 
clover pastures and the nuts in the woods 
with milk only added, in average years would 
furnish pork for less than two cents per 
pound. My §12 venture has given me §70 
worth of meat, with the sow and boar on hand, 
and a second litter now weaned and worth, as 
they run, §14; the total cost has not been more 
than §3, and §3 more will carry the stock to 
next fall, when, with a good mast year and 
another litter due in the spring, there will be 
§100 in sight, with no cost except the feeding 
with skimmed milk. This is a true, unvar¬ 
nished tale of pork growing in the South. 
BITTER OR SALTY MILK. 
W. IT., Albion, Idaho .—My three-year-old 
Holstein cow had a calf when 22 months old, 
and has never thrived since. She has a good 
appetite but is very thin, and her milk has 
always had a bitter taste, and it is now salty 
in addition, besides being quite dark in color. 
She is fed good Alfalfa hay with a change to 
wheat and oat hay with a bucket of cut oats 
in the sheaf. What should be done for her? 
ANSWERED BY DR. F. L. KILBORNE. 
Bitterness of the milk may result from sev¬ 
eral causes. Perhaps the most common cause 
is that due to the change in the milk which 
often takes place during the last two to four 
weeks of the period of gestation. Cows usually 
dry off naturally a few weeks before coming 
fresh again, but a few cows, mostly heavy 
milkers, will continue the flow of milk up to 
the time of calving. In such cases the bitter 
or salty milk warns you that the cow is soon 
to be fresh again, and that she ought to be 
dried off as soon as possible. Dairymen usu¬ 
ally dry their cows off at least four weeks 
before they are due to calve. Certain foods 
will give to the milk an unpleasant or bitter 
taste. In such cases the remedy is simply to 
give a change of food, or to reduce the quan¬ 
tity of that portion of the feed that gives the 
milk the undesirable flavor. Unhealthy, foul 
stables and surroundings may give a flavor 
to the milk even before it can be removed 
from the stable or milking yard. Particu¬ 
lar attention should be given, not only 
while the milk is being drawn, but 
after it is set, to make sure that it is not ex¬ 
posed to the foul gases from putrefying ani¬ 
mal or vegetable matter of any kind, or kept 
in close, foul quarters. Fresh milk is very sus¬ 
ceptible to the presence of such odors and 
gases, and will readily absorb a sufficient 
quantity to acquire their odor or flavor. 
Disease of the liver in which there is re¬ 
absorption of the bile into the blood, may 
give a more or less bitter taste to the mil k, 
In the present case we would advise drying 
the cow off. Feed more liberally. Give a 
ration of grain twice daily—to be made up 
largely of middlings and shipstuffs or bran, 
with ground oats if convenient, and but little 
corn—with one-half pint of ground flaxseed 
or linseed cake. If the cow is to come fresh 
soon, wait until after calving before giving 
further treatment. Then if the trouble con¬ 
tinues, or if the cow is not with calf, give 
three-fourths of a pound each of Epsom salts 
and common salt with one ounce of ginger, as 
a drench dissolved in warm water. After the 
bowels have moved, give the cow, twice daily, 
in the feed two heaping tablespoonfuls of 
the following powders: Sulphate of soda 
and powdered gentian root each two pounds, 
niter one pound. 
COLT CUT ON WIRE FENCE. 
G. C., Summit, Ohio .—My six-months-old 
colt ran into a wire fence about two weeks 
ago, and cut off the extensor muscle about six 
inches above the knee. I dressed the wound, 
drew the lips together with stitches, bandaged 
it and put the animal in a sling just so that it 
could rest on its feet if it chose to do so. But 
in a few days somehow in struggling, it broke 
the stitches, and gradually the wound opened 
until now there is a wide gash between the 
edges of the skin. The fleshy part underneath 
has somewhat filled up ; but the part of the 
wound below where the skin was severed, has 
bulged out so that there is a prominence a 
thick as the palm of the hand and almost as 
large, the flesh being apparently healthy. Is 
it likely that this prominence will, m healing, 
draw back into the wound and heal without 
much of a scar, or will it remain as it is ? AVhat 
would have been the best mode of treatment 
from the beginning, and what from this on * 
Is the colt likely to be ruined for the road ? 
It could use its leg tolerably well from the 
beginning. I have used nothing on the 
wound except water with a little carbolic 
acid in it. The animal has been healthy and 
in good condition all the time since it was hurt. 
ANSWERED BY DR. F. L. KILBORNE. 
We are not surprised that the stitches broke 
or sloughed out; because in the horse the 
tendency to suppuration is so strong, espec¬ 
ially in extensively ragged wounds or cuts 
that it requires a competent veterinary sur¬ 
geon to successfully stitch and bandage such 
a wound: and even then it not infrequently 
sloughs open. The prominence or swelling 
should mostly disappear as the wound heals • 
but a scar can be expected. The colt will 
probably not be seriously injured for the 
road. Possibly the limb may be slightly 
stiffened, but if the wound heals properly no 
permanent in j ury should result. Your treat¬ 
ment has been good. To remove the un¬ 
healthy granulations, or “proud flesh,” we 
would have preferred a stick of lunar caus¬ 
tic-nitrate of silver. Continue the use of car¬ 
bolic lotion—carbolic acid two to three parts 
water 97 parts-very carefully washing out the 
wound once daily. Then apply the bandage 
with gentle pressure, not too tightly and 
pads if necessary, so as to gradually draw the 
edges together. Always be sure to keep an 
opening at the lower part of the wound for 
the free drainage and discharge of the matter 
or pus. If the wound becomes unhealthy, and 
the healing appears to be at a stand-still, apply 
compound tincture of myrrh and aloes or a 
five-per-cent solution of the carbolic acid once 
or twice a week. 
DUTIES ON FOREIGN WOOLS. 
D. C. M. a, Cumberland, Ohio.— 1 . AYhatare 
the tariff charges on the different kinds of 
wool? 2. AYhat are the penalties for smu°-- 
ghng the different sorts into the United States. 
Ass.—1. Wools, hair of the alpaca 
goat, and other like animals, and 
manufactures of. “ uu 
Unmanufactured : 
Class one, clothing wools—that is to 
say merino mestiza, merz. o- metis 
wools, or other wools of merino 
lmm " ,i , irue or remote. Down 
clothing wools, and wools of like 
character with any of the preced 
ing, including such as have t>eeu 
heretofore usually imported imd 
the United states from Buenos 
Ayres, New Zealand. Australia Caw 
of Good Hope, Russia. Great Britaff 
Canada, and elsewhere, ami also 
a * wools not. hereinafter 
descr‘bed or designated in classes 
two or three: “ OBes 
Value SO cents or less per nnnns .. 
VftlllA ^ POUUll 10 OfS. 
... ° ^ 30 ‘ per P oun d b! cts. 
W ashed Wool: 
Value ibefo-e washing) 30 cents or less 
per pound ... r 
Value (before washing! over So'ceiits ‘‘ S ’ 
Scoured Wool: .lets. 
Value (before scouring) 30 cents or less 
per pound. ” 
Value (before scouring) over‘36'cents ° Jcts ' 
per pound. cents 
Class two. combing wools-that N "to Wc • 
say Leicester, CotswoM, Lmcolm 
shire. Down combing wiols, Can- 
ada «ong wools, or other like comb 
ing wools of English blood? Sid 
usually known by the terms herein 
used, and also all hair of the alpaca 
goat, anti other like animals- P ’ 
v^ e e "tUrii u as r r sag gc*. 
Cla-ss three, carper woo^s and all ~ ° <S ' 
other similar wools, su-h as Don 
skoi native South Ame-ican 
Cordova Valparaiso, nativeSmvrui’ 
and including all such woolsof like 
character as have been heretofore 
usually imported into the United 
!^i» s burkey. Greece, Egypt 
S> rfa, an-1 elsewhere- - » 
Value 12 ceuts or less per pound 
Value over 12 cents per pound - . t8 ’ 
Scoured wool, value < before scouringl 
over 12 cents per pound.. g) 15 t 
ner lb 
pi r !b 
per !b. 
per lb 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
per lb. 
2. The punishment varies in accorda 
with the character of the offence and 
circumstances under which it was committ 
In very bad cases the goods are forfeited, a 
in addition, a tine or imprisonment, or' b 
are imposed. In bad cases a forfeiture of 
goods usually suffices with sometimes a 
