THE RURAL HEW-YORKER. 
<59 
bad, give half-ounce doses of carbonate of 
ammonia in one-balf pint of cold water every 
three hours until relieved. If the breathing 
becomes difficult and there is danger of suffo¬ 
cation, the paunch must be punctured through 
the abdominal wall on the left side, at a point 
equally distant from the point of the hip and 
the last rib, where the swelling is most promi¬ 
nent and the skin very tense. The best in¬ 
strument for this purpose is the trocar and 
canula. But in the absence of this, a pocket- 
knife with a narrow, two-inch blade, may be 
used. Plunge the blade in the full length and 
hold it in the opening until a long quill can be 
introduced to allow the escape of the gas. 
This should be held in position until the gas 
ceases to escape. There is very little danger 
in this operation, and almost any one can 
safely perform it. The diet should be light 
for at least two or three weeks. Roots or 
scalded bran once or twice daily will be ex¬ 
cellent. 
HOW MUCH SEED POTATOES. 
J. V. C., Lysanaer, N. Y.— In planting po¬ 
tatoes for flat culture, how many bushels of 
seed are needed per acre? I never took such 
interest in farming as I have taken since I be¬ 
gan to read the Rural. 
Ans. —The question in the above can not be 
answered. All depends upon the size of the 
potato, the number of eyes to be planted, the 
number of eyes in the variety of potato and 
the distance apart. The best way to find out 
is to count the potatoes in a barrel, and 
multiply the number by the number of pieces 
each potato will give. Then estimate the 
distance apart at which it is proposed to plant. 
If to be planted one by three feet apart, 
14,520 pieces will be required for an acre. 
HOW TO GET THE LARGEST POSSIBLE YIELD 
FROM ONE POTATO. 
C F. P., Brenner, Kan. —How can I get 
the most out of my sample of the R. N.-Y. 
No. 2. potato? Would it be advisable to plant 
in a hot-bed and transplant, or should I cut the 
tuber in pieces with, say, two eyes to a piece? 
I am anxious to get the best results possible. 
Ans. —The best (largest) quantity can be 
obtained by sprouting the potatoes in a hot¬ 
bed and planting the sprouts until the tubers 
are exhausted. 
THE RURAL TRENCH SYSTEM OF POTATO 
PLANTING. 
.7. IF, Oglethorpe Club, (no address ).—1. 
Could the Rural’s method of planting pota¬ 
toes be profitably used on about 10 acres ? 2 
What potato fertilizer did the Rural use in 
its late “ potato contest ?” How much ammo¬ 
nia, potash, and phosphoric acid did it con¬ 
tain ? 3. What is the Rural’s theory as to 
putting half the fertilizer in the trench, mix¬ 
ing it with the soil, tuen planting the seed- 
pieces and putting the other half of the fer¬ 
tilizer above the “ seed,” instead of putting 
the whole amount in the bottom of the trench 
and mixing it with the soil ? 4. What is the 
best tool with which to open the trenches 15 
inches wide? 5. How should barn-yard manure 
be applied ? 
Ans. —1. Yes. 2. We use a fertilizer which 
is guaranteed to analyze 3)4 per cent, of 
nitrogen, 12 per cent, of phosphoric acid and 
six per cent, of potash—the potash being in 
the form of a sulphate, the phosphoric acid in 
bone (not rock) and the nitrogen from blood, 
sulphate of ammonia and nitrate of soda. 3. 
It was done in the way of an experiment. If 
we were raising potatoes as a regular farm 
crop, we would apply all the fertilizer broad¬ 
cast and harrow it in before plowing the 
trenches. 4. A shovel plow, costing about six 
dollats. Any plow can be used by throwing 
a furrow both ways thus forming a trench. 
5. If the land is level we should apply it in the 
fall and plow it under. Then plow again in 
the spring, returning the manure to the sur¬ 
face in great part. 
INFLAMMATION IN A HORSE’S EYE—“HOOKS.” 
L. E. D., Annapolis Junction, Md. —Over 
the right eye of my young horse a skin has 
been growing for some months. It started at 
the inner corner and it isn’t attached to the 
ball, but slips over it; it sometimes covers the 
sight. A neighboring horse doctor, after 
examination, pronounced the trouble hooks, 
and cut a portion of the skin off. Since then 
it has grown very fast, and now it is nearly 
as large as it was before it was cut. What is 
the malady and what causes it? What 
should be the treatment? 
ANSWERED BY DR. F. L. KILBORNK. 
There is probably chronic inflammation of 
the eye, the result of some injury or disease, the 
nature of which we are unable to give from 
your description. The skin you mention as 
growing over the right eye, and which your 
“ doctor ” pronounced “ hooks,” is a natural, 
membranous rotection or covering for the 
eye, which is always preseut in the horse, aud 
can be seen in the inner angle of the eye at 
any time. This natural protector of the sen¬ 
sitive surface of the eye is the Membrana 
nictitans, commonly called the “third eye¬ 
lid” “ winking eyelid," or “haw.” The use 
of this membrane is to extend or protrude 
over the eye for the purpose of removing 
dust and any foreign bodies that chance to 
pass the eyelids proper. It probably also 
serves to moisten and keep the surface in a 
healthy condition. Inflammation in the eye 
and a few diseases may cause this haw to be 
temporarily protruded, as in the present case. 
The proper course of treatment is to reduce 
the inflammation, when the haw will usually 
return to its natural position. The person 
you employed to treat your horse should be 
designated by his proper title “ quack,” since 
it is only ignorant quacks that still follow the 
old barbarous practice of cutting out the haw 
or “hooks.” Besides being painful, and de¬ 
stroying one of the natural protectors of the 
eye, the operation is very often injurious, and 
rarely if ever followed by any good results, as 
practiced by such operators. Without know¬ 
ing the cause of the trouble, we can only give 
general treatment which may or may not be 
successful in this particular case. Give the 
horse five drams of Barbadoes aloes to open 
the bowels. Then cover the eye with a light 
bandage and keep it wet with a solution of 30 
grains of sugar-of-lead and 10 grains of mor¬ 
phia, in one pint of water—the solution to be 
milk-warm when used. Watch the eye 
closely and report results and condition in two 
or three weeks. 
RATIONS FOR MILCH COWS. 
T. O., Sharon, N. Y .—What is a well bal¬ 
anced ration for milch cows, composed of the 
following grains, with Timothy as fodder— 
oats and peas; oats and rye; oats, peas aud 
of foods, we must take into account not alone 
the nutritive elements of the foods, but also 
their effect upon the digestive organs, and, 
most especially, their effect upon the quality 
of the butter. The first consideration is 
chemical in its relation to the question; the 
others are physiological, and cannot be consid¬ 
ered Irom a chemist’s point of view. For this 
reason we sometimes fail to realize our ex¬ 
pectations in feeding cows for milk, and es¬ 
pecially for butter. It is a well known fact 
in physiology that the fats of food are emul¬ 
sified in the process of digestion by intimate 
mixture with the pancreatic fluid, and are 
absorbed by the intestines and pass directly 
into the blood. As they are not subject to 
change in the blood, they must pass at once 
into the tissues and the milk glands, and thus 
affect the character of the butter of cows and 
the fat of animals fed for meat. It is thus 
that the fat of pork is made soft when the 
pigs are fed on beech nuts, of which the oil is 
very limpid and fluid; while it is harder when 
the pigs are fed on peas than when they are 
fed upon corn. The very same thing applies to 
butter, and explains why some foods make 
white and soft butter, while others make yel¬ 
low, firm, and well flavored butter. In my 
very careful and long-continued experiments 
I have found that foods affect the butter 
in the manner following: 
Buckwheat bran: white, crumbly butter. 
Linseed oil-meal: soft, oily, flat-flavored. 
Bran and middlings, both wheat and rye: 
light, rather soft. 
Corn-meal: firm, yellow, high-flavored. 
Cotton-seed meal: hard, rich-flavored and 
yellow. 
Oats: light, crumbly, poor-flavored. 
Peas; yellow, rich, soft. 
For quantity of milk, brewers’ grains, malt- 
close-jointed. It matured seed easily. The 
only advantage of this kind of sorghum over 
corn is a greater drought-resisting capacity. 
Otherwise corn is greatly to be preferred. Its 
culture is just like that of corn. Milo or 
Millo Maize is another absurdly-named sor¬ 
ghum. Its legitimate name is the Rural New- 
Yorker Branching Sorghum since it was first 
introduced to the trade under that name. It 
is a luxuriant variety of sorghum, that, when 
cut back, will not only continue to grow as 
fast as ever, but will send up two or three 
shoots for every stalk cut back. It is a 
grand fodder plant. It will not mature 
seeds in the North, and fails even in South 
Carolina during unfavorable seasons. To 
call these two sorghums by the names of 
Millo Maize and Kaffir corn is altogether ab¬ 
surd and misleading. 
GOLDEN QUEEN RASPBERRY, ETC. 
IF. A. D., Winnipeg .—The nurserymen all 
claim that the Golden Queen raspberry is of 
unexcelled beauty and firmness; but in a late 
Rural the statement was made that it isn’t 
good for market. I was thinking'of planting 
two acres of it on my farm in the province of 
Ontario for a market 100 miles away; would 
it be advisable to do so? 2. Will the Parry 
strawberry do well on light land; and will it 
bear shipment to a distant market. 3 i)o 
unleached wood ashes ana ground bone furnish 
everything needed by strawberries and rasp¬ 
berries? About 100 loads of leached wood ashes 
have been lying for many years within two 
miles from my farm; are they worth cart¬ 
ing* 
Ans. 1. The R. N.-Y. would not advise 
its friend to plant two acres of Golden Queen 
raspberry. Yellow is not a favorite color in 
the market and this berry is too soft—softer, 
decidedly, than the Cuthbert of which it is a 
sport. 2. The Parry strawberry is of good 
quality and fairly—only fairly—productive. 
It is firm enough for market. It needs rich 
soil and probably one that inclines rather to 
clay than to sand. 3. Yes they do. The 
leached ashes will give you lime and a little 
phosphoric acid—that is all. 
TREATMENT OF AN OLD NEGLECTED ORCHARD. 
C. F. A., Darien, Conn .—What is the best 
thing to do with a 20-year old apple orchard 
that has probably never been pruned or culti¬ 
vated since it was set out* Some trees have 
made a lair growth; but most of them are not 
over eight to 10 teet high, and not more than 
12 feet in spread of tops. Would it pay to 
try to briDg the t'-ees into bearing; or would 
it be better to set out new ones? 
Ans. —Much.depends upon the healthfulness 
or lack of it in the trees. If in spring it is 
found that they are loose at the base and have 
an extremely stunted appearance, it would 
be well to remove them. On the other hand, 
if they stand firmly and have not been at¬ 
tacked by the apple-borer and if they are free 
from the scale insect and other pests and 
maladies, being fairly healthy, cultivation 
may be judiciously given, and pruning the 
trees may yet yield good results. But the 
orchard will never De what it might have 
been with good culture and pruning from the 
first. If four-fifths to nine-tenths of the trees 
are condemned, it would be as well to clean 
out the whole, and, selecting some choice 
trees, start on new ground, pruning the trees 
and cultivating the orchard well from the 
beginning. 
BRAZILIAN FLOUR CORN. 
.4. F., Williamsburg, Ind. —1. How are 
flowers and other plants hybridized? 2. Is the 
Brazilian flour corn superior to common field 
corn? 
Ans. —1. We are constrained to refer our 
friend to back numbers of the R. N.-Y. for 
explicit directions. In brief, remove the 
anthers of one flower while they are imma¬ 
ture. Generally the floral leaves of tie bud 
must be opened in order to do this. Then pro¬ 
cure pollen from the flower with which it is 
desired to make a cross, and apply it to the 
pistil (stigma) of the other. To prevent the 
interference of insects or the wind, the mother 
flower should be covered. 2. The R. N.-Y. 
raised Brazilian Flour corn the first year it 
was announced. It is rather late for our cli 
mate. The ears are small, the grain white. 
From two to six ears are borne on each stalk. 
The grain makes an excellent quality of flour 
(see back numbers—Domestic Economy Edi¬ 
torial notes,and communications fromcontrib. 
utors) better than that of any variety of 
corn we have tried. 
THE AUSTRIAN PINE. 
IF. H. S., Oakrille, Can .—What sort of a 
hedge would Austrian pine make? Will it 
stand clipping back the same as the Norway 
spruce? How far apart should the trees be 
planted to make a wind-break? 
Ans. —Yes, they will stand cutting back the 
same as Norway spruce. We would not use 
THOROUGHBRED STALLION Q. C. Fig. 
Re-Engraved from the London Live Stock Journal. 
53. 
rye ? What alterations should be made for 
feeding young animals to the best advantage ? 
ANSWERED BY HENRY STEWART. 
The standard ratios of nutrients, while they 
have a general application to feeding cattle, 
horses and other domestic animals, cannot be 
applied with any certainty to the production 
of milk. In regard to this there is something 
to consider beyond the mere supply of a cer¬ 
tain quantity and kiud of nutritive elements. 
Digestion, assimilation, and the effect of 
the food upon certain organs must all be con¬ 
sidered, and in the feeding of cows these come 
before the mere nutritive elements of the 
food. In feeding for milk we undoubtedly 
require a large portion of fat and nitrogen, 
with a less proportion of such carbonaceous 
matters as starch. Thus the composition of 
the dry matter of 100 pounds of the best milk 
may be taken, on an average, as four pounds 
of caserne, four pounds of butter, four pounds 
of sugar and three-quarters of a pound of 
various mineral matters. In these substances 
we have about four ounces of nitrogen only in 
the 100 pounds of milk against eight pounds of 
carbon and water. Hence, for the purpose of 
procuring a large quantity of rich milk, one 
might suppose it necessary only to feed a large 
amount of fat in the food and so gain the 
largest product of butter. This, however, 
will not do in practice, for the animal 
cannot healthfully dispose of the food thus 
selected, because the digestive organs cannot 
prepare it and the blood which receives and 
distributes to the various organs the aliment 
assimilated, would be overloaded with the ex¬ 
cess and the animal would become diseased. 
Consequently, in considering the composition 
sprouts, corn-meal and bran,buckwheat-bran, 
wheat or rye-bran or middlings, corn or rye- 
meal stand in the order mentioned. Now, to 
come to the point of the inquiry as to the 
result of feeding the substances named, it 
would appear that oats anl peas mixed would 
be the best food that could be selected; and 
to reach the desired ration we might take 
400 pounds of oats and 100 pounds of peas and 
grind them together and get this nutritive 
ratio. 
Oats alone 1 to 6.1 
Peas alone 1 to 2.9 
4 of oats to 1 of peas 1 to 6. 
The mixture gives almost exactly the same 
ratio as oats alone, but as the effect of oats 
upon the butter is not desirable, the mixture 
of the peas is an improvement in this respect 
while it keeps the ratio in a healthful propor¬ 
tion. As a rule, whatever foods are best for 
the product of milk are best for feeding young 
animals which require precisely the same 
elements of nutrition as are found in the best 
mils. 
KAFFIR CORN AND “ MILLO MAIZE.” 
Subscriber (address mislaid .)—What does 
the Rural know about the culture and 
benefits of Kaffir corn and Millo Maize for 
forage, the after-growth serving for fall 
pasture? Farmers who have tried both in 
this State highly commend them. 
Ans. —The R.N.-Y. can speak of Kaffir 
corn only from its own trial. It grew to the 
hight of about five feet—one stalk. Some of 
the stalks were cut back and the second 
growth did not amount to much. The leaves 
are broad, like those of corn, and the stalk is 
