48S9 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
407 
CATALOGUES, ETC., RECEIVED. 
P HOSPHATE MEAL.—Some few weeks 
ago the R. N.-Y. called attention to 
some remarks made by Ex-Mayor Hewitt of 
this city regarding the basic process of mak¬ 
ing steel. The introduction of this process in¬ 
to this country will have a great Influence 
upon the agriculture of the South and East 
because it will cause the production, in vast 
quantities, of a new phosphatic fertilizer. 
This Thomas basic slag or Thomas scoria, is 
already being sent here from Germany. The 
South Carolina Experiment Station conceived 
the idea of testing it by the side of “ floats ” 
or finely ground S C. rock phosphate. In 
Bulletin No. 5 we find an account of an ex¬ 
periment with these two fertilizers on oats. 
The importer who furnished the new fertilizer 
thus speaks of it: 
*' It is obtained from the so-oalled Peine- 
Thomas scoria through the dephosphorization 
of pig-iron, after the patented method of 
Sidney Gilchrist Thomas. The depbosphor- 
ization of the iron takes place by melting the 
iron with lime in a current of air, a proceed¬ 
ing by which pig-iron, rich in phosphorus, is 
converted into steel, free from phosphorus 
(ingot iron). In this manner the phosphorus 
of the pig-iron is converted into phosphoric 
acid, which, uniting with the lime added, 
f irms phosphate of lime. The melted mixture 
of phosphate of lime, with the excess of lime 
and combinations of the iron and mancanese, 
obtained by this proceeding, is called Thomas 
scoria. It is brought into the market for the 
purposes of agriculture, in a finely ground 
state.” 
Analyses of this substance made at the 
station showed 21.46 and 26.60 per cent, of 
phosphoric acid. It was tried side by side 
with “ floats ” and showed a slight but steady 
superiority. This substance is destined to 
greatly influence American agriculture. 
Jacksonville Auxiliary Sanitary As¬ 
sociation. —This Association has issued a re¬ 
port of about 300 pages, giving a history of 
the terrible epidemic of 1888. The report is 
in the form of a diary giving an accurate 
description of the growth and gradual decline 
of the plague. Following this are reports of 
financial, sanitary and other committees. It 
is to be supposed that Jacksonville was clean¬ 
er than ordinary Southern towns, yet when 
the fever broke out the town was full of bad 
smells and dirty places that served admira¬ 
bly as plague breeders. The committee met 
with a severe obstacle in their w^ork in op¬ 
position from those who objected to having 
dirty places cleaned up. Crowds of idle men 
congregated in the streets breeding disorder 
and trouble. It was found necessary to pro¬ 
vide work for these men, and a good propor¬ 
tion of the funds sent from other localities 
were spent in paying these idlers for work at 
cleaning the city and digging drains and 
ditches. In every case of local calamity it is 
found necessary to provide work for the un¬ 
employed who are thrown out of work the 
moment the general business of the place is 
interfered with. The recent terrible calamity 
at Johnstown shows this There, thousands 
of men who depend for a living on their 
wages from day to day were thrown suddenly 
out of work. They stand in need of wages 
rather than of charity, and the money so 
generously contributed by others will be paid 
to them in return for their services in clearing 
away the wreck. This wise plan was follow¬ 
ed at Jacksonville with excellent results. 
This pamphlet ought to be sent to every town 
in the Gulf States, and the public officials of 
such towns should be compelled to lead it 
through. All through that dismal fever 
siege there ran a streak of humor. The fol¬ 
lowing telegram was sent to a Jacksonville 
merchant by a brother at the North: 
“Dear John:—Keep cool. Don’t worry. 
Trust in Providence. Keep taking pills and 
you will pull through all right.” 
Report ok the Commissioners of the 
State Reservation at Niagara —This is 
the fifth report of this commission. It details 
the work done during 1888, contains some in¬ 
teresting facts about the Falls of Niagara, 
and also five beautiful photo-engravings of 
views taken from both American aud Cana¬ 
dian shores. 
Insects Injurious to Fruits.— This is a 
new edition of the celebrated work by William 
Saunders, reduced in price and with informa¬ 
tion carried down to the latest facts. This 
has long been known as a standard publica¬ 
tion and farmers aud others who wish a cheap 
and comprehensive treatise on entomology 
will be thankful for this new edition. It is 
published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Phila¬ 
delphia, price $2.00 
Insect Life. —No. 11 of this publication is 
sent from the Department of Agriculture. 
Ihis magazine is mainly devoted to technical 
information for advanced students of emo- 
mology, put there aie in each number bits 
of practical information that any one who 
kuows what au insect is can understand. 
Here are a few found in No. 11; A correspon¬ 
dent states that a toad placed in a room will 
clear it of cockroaches. Notwithstanding 
the frequent reports of serious injury from 
bites of spiders, it is not thought likely that 
any American species can cause much injury. 
Varieties of spiders are found in New Zealand 
and in Russia that inflict dangerous wounds. 
Professor Peyritsch, of Berlin, is convinced 
that double flowers are frequently produced 
by the agency of mites whi.-h work upon the 
plant organs in their earliest stages. Dr. Tere 
says he has applied the bee-sting remedy to 
173 cases of rheumatism with uniform success. 
Australian authorities are to offer at all the 
agricultural fairs cash prizes for the largest 
number of heads or eggs of the English spar¬ 
row. In Tasmania, the farmers who neglect 
to fight the coddling moth with prescribed 
methods are prosecuted. 
Horses —This is the title of the latest pam¬ 
phlet issued by Smiths, Powell & Lamb,of Syr 
acuse, N. Y. Lakeside stock farm has been for 
years noted as the home of the largest herd of 
pure-bred Holstein-Friesian cattle in the world. 
Of late years preparations have been made to 
include the breeding of fine horses in the var¬ 
ious industries clustered at “Lakeside.” As a 
comequence the visitor may now find splen¬ 
did specimens of Clydesdale, Percherons, 
French Coaches, American-bred Coaches and 
Standard-bred trotters. These will be sold for 
breeding purposes or for driving purposes— 
either matched or single. It is hardly neces¬ 
sary for us to inform our readers that the 
horses they purchase at “Lakeside” will be 
well-bred,serviceable specimens of their breed. 
Smiths, Powell & Lamb do the sort of busi¬ 
ness that will not allow misrepresentation. 
Corn-Fed Pork for Kansas.— Professor 
E. M. Shelton, of the Kansas Experiment 
Station, issues a report of some experiments 
recently made in pig feeding. As our readers 
well know, Professors Henry and Sanborn 
have conducted “fat or lean” experiments 
which go to show that a farmer can, by feed¬ 
ing certain foods rich in nitrogenous substan¬ 
ces, produce pork with a larger percentage of 
lean meat than that contained in pork as or¬ 
dinarily sold. In these experiments young 
animals were fed. More recently Professor 
Roberts has conducted similar experiments 
with sheep and mature hogs,the result in each 
case indicating that “feeding for lean” is a 
possibility, though the profit of such feeding 
lias hardly yet been demonstrated. Now 
Professor Shelton comes along with a set of 
figures and facts that tend to mix things up 
sadly. 
Since the publication of the results of the 
experiments in Wisconsin, Missouri and New 
York, a renewed outcry against “corn-fed 
pork” has been ra'sed. By feeding milk,peas, 
cotcon-seed meal and other like foods hogs 
with an extra proportion of lean meat, were 
produced. The class of people who do the 
most talking want lean meat and a good 
many of them are will ing to pay extra for it. 
In the W est, where, by the way, the great 
proportion of American poik is produced, 
corn is the great hog food. As Professor 
Shelton says in this report: 
“ To the farmer of Kansas there is but one 
common, easily accessible carbonaceous food, 
Indian corn, while his choice of nitrogenous 
foods is necessarily limited to two, bran aud 
shorts. It is futile to talk to Kansas farmers 
of peas or even milk as general pig feed; the 
one is not generally grown and will not be, 
and the other could not be had in quantities 
sufficient to even moisten the corn fed to our 
swine.” 
As matters stood there was an evident 
movement on the part of consumers here, to¬ 
wards a still further discrimination between 
Eastern and Western-raised pork, because it 
seemed to be understood that Eastern farmers 
were feeding a greater variety of foods with 
a view to increasing the proportion of lean 
meat. So Professor Shelton conducted his 
experiment with a hope of seeing if Kansas 
farmers can afford to use shorts aud bran in 
the place of some of their corn. We should 
judge that Professor S. is not at all sorry 
that the figures of his careful experiment in¬ 
dicate that corn is still the most profitable 
food for the Kansas pig-feeder. 
The full details of the experiment are given 
in the pamphlet under review. They are too 
lengthy to be given here and they cannot 
well be condensed. We advise pig feeders to 
secure the pamphlet and study it. We call 
attention to the following summary with 
which Professor S. concludes his report: 
“The truth is.the great American staple.In- 
dian corn,is au incomparable grain food when 
used simply for fattening, or when judicious¬ 
ly blended with other foods in the process of 
gtowih and development of the animal. But 
it is w hen we consider the cheapness aud ease 
with which Indian corn is produced, due to 
its perfect suitardenes'i to American soil and 
climate, that i s superiority to all other forms 
of gram food becomes strikingly apparent. 
Thus a single acre yielding the quite ordiuary 
product ot 50 bushels of corn, would accord¬ 
ing to the facts of this experiment, produce 
513 pounds of pork. Moreover, m the case of 
the chief portion of the agricultural sections 
of the American continent, there is no other 
grain that is really available for meat-mak 
ing. It is futile to talk of using bran, shorts, 
barley, oats, milk or peas, in pork-making, 
upon a large scale. The instant that we are 
reduced to the necessity of using any or all of 
these foods as a substitute for Indian corn, 
our supremacy as a pork-producing nation 
will have passed to others. 
The objection often urged against the gen¬ 
eral fatness of corn-fed pork seems to me to 
have no sufficient foundation in the wants of 
consumers. It is true that towns-people gen¬ 
erally demand lean fresh meat, but work peo¬ 
ple, who are the chief consumers of pork the 
world over, demand fat meat, and of the salt¬ 
ed article will take no other: while with all 
classes pure lard is a staple article, for which 
they cheerfully pay a price such that the fat 
portions of the hog before “rendering” are 
more profitable to the butcher than the lean 
parts of the carcass. 
The results of our feeding fully-matured 
pigs in equal sets upon shorts, bran and corn 
meal during a limited forcing or fattening 
period may be briefly summed up as follows: 
1. The shorts-bran-fed pigs required for 
full ripening nearly or quite 25 per cent, more 
of time than was needed by the corn-fed series; 
but even when the feeding of tbe corn-fed lot 
was prolonged—to their great disadvantage— 
to a period equal to that occupied by the 
shorts bran-fed series it cost to make a hun¬ 
dredweight of gain from short--bran 25 cents 
more than was needed to make a like gain 
with corn meal alone. 
2. The corn diet, as compared with shorts- 
bran, had no unfavorable influence upon the 
vital organs, so-called, with the exception of 
the kidneys. The testimony upon this latter 
point, however, is not conclusive. 
3 The corn-fed pigs had stronger bones 
than those fed shorts-bran, and the quality of 
the bone tissue was distinctly tougher and 
more fibrous. 
4 The meat of the pigs fed corn was fatter 
than that made from shorts and bran, a fact 
iuily explained by their excess of gain, (98 
pounds) but the advantage ot either series in 
respect to the amount of lean meat, or in 
its distribution with the fat (marbling) was 
not distinguishable by the senses. 
5. The quality of the meat, as a whole, of 
the corn-fed pigs was clearly better than that 
of the shorts bran series, for cooking by boil¬ 
ing; the results obtained from roasting lean 
meat gave occasion lor a difference of opinion 
as to superiority in the quality of the meat of 
the two sets, while frying failed to show any 
advantage for either.” 
MAGAZINE REVIEW. 
P ROBABLY no private American citizen 
fills so large a place m the popular 
heart as George W. Childs of the Philadel¬ 
phia Public Ledger. A self-made man who 
has risen to affluence by his own exertions; 
his munificent benefactions; his princely hos 
pitality at Wootton have made his name a 
household word throughout the land. It is 
peculiarly gratifying to know that the pub¬ 
lishers of Lippincott’s Magazine have suc¬ 
ceeded in inducing Mr. Childs to contribute 
four articles of “Recollections” to that period¬ 
ical, the first of which is given in the June 
number, and which deals more particularly 
with his early life. The secret of his success 
is contained in this description of himself 
when but a boy: 
“When first at work in Philadelphia I 
would get up very early in the morning, 
go down to the store, and wash the pavement 
and put things in order before breakfast, and 
in the winter-time would make the fire and 
sweep out the store. In the same spirit, when 
books were bought at night at auction, I would 
oarly the next morning go for them with 
a wheelbarrow. And I have never outgrown 
this wholesome habit of doing things directly 
and in order. I would to day as soon carry a 
bundle up Chestnut street from the Ledger 
office as I would then. As a matter of fact, I 
carry bundles very often. But 1 understand 
that certain young men of the period would 
scorn to do as much.” What an example for 
the young 1 Gen. Lloyd Bryce presents “A 
Dream of Conquest,” a very ironical novel, 
complete in this number. In it he portrays 
the weakness of cur navy and coast defenses, 
and represents China attacking us with her 
powerful navy. Judge Albion W. Tourgee 
contributes another installment of “With 
Gauge and Swallow.” R. H. Stoddard 
gives some interesting reminiscences of 
Fitz-Greene Halleck. An article of special 
interest to women is “Social Life Uuder the 
Directory” by Anne H. "Wharton, which de¬ 
scribes the customs and costumes of that time. 
Madeline Vinton Dahlgren aud Miss J. K. 
Wetherill contribute respectively “Who was 
She” and “A Silent Minority.” There are 
several poems, “Monthly Gossip,” “Book 
Talk,” and other departments that go to make 
up an interesting number. 
miscellaneous Advertising. 
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Successors to R. H. Ajllen & Co., 189 Water St., N. Y. 
P erfection mole trap.-i. a. Baker, of Mag 
noila. Ark., writes that he has caught 19 Moles 
since last August. Please send me 20 more traps for 
my neighbors. It does Its work complete. Send for 
circulars. Address JOHN F. TURNER, 
4514 Main Street Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 
EXTRA! 
THE 
NEW YORK WEEKLY WORLD, 
12 Broad pages and 84 Long Columns, Pub¬ 
lishing each week a COMPLETE NOVEL by 
a Popular Author, and the 
R. N.-Y., 
FOR ONE YEAR, 
ONLY 
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