THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
Address _ _ 
RURAL PUBLISHING CO., 
78 Duane Street, New York City. 
SATURDAY, JAN. 11, 1879. 
We will be pleated to send one or more copies 
of the Rural New-Yorker/ ree to any of our 
subsoribers sufficiently interested in its welfare 
io be uniting to hand them to their neighbors for 
inspection. An intimation by postal card will 
suffice. 
Our readers who apply will have the Beauty 
of Hebron potato sent to them separately, be¬ 
cause to send this with seeds makes an awk¬ 
ward package, and also, because the seeds may 
be forwarded at any time regardless of the 
weather, while the potatoes may be injured by 
frost. We mention this for the reason that our 
friends receiving the potato only, may think 
the rest of their selection has been overlooked. 
We earnestly request that all letters containing 
money, or any communication intended for the 
Business Department of the. paper, be addressed 
to The Rural Publishing Co., and not to any 
individual. We cannot otherwise guarantee the 
prompt entry of names upon our books , or the 
acknowledgment of money. 
Our readers are particularly requested to 
read the particulars of our free seed distribu¬ 
tion on p. S3, under publisher’s notices, before 
ordering seeds. 
We offered, some time ago, to sell the cuts 
used in this Journal for twelve cents the square 
inch. Many have requested us to send proofs 
of our cuts. As we have upwards of ten thou¬ 
sand, we could not undertake to do so. Per¬ 
sons wishing to purchase, must select from 
files of the Rural New-Yorker. 
Applicants for seeds will please observe that 
the postage on any possible selection of ten 
sorts of seeds, is neyer more than five cents. 
A onb-cent stamp suffices /or any selection 
of ten varieties exclusive of the Beauty of 
Hebron potato , Pearl Millet and Defiance wheal. 
If the first of these-three is included in the list, 
(hen a two cent extra stamp is needed, and if 
the second and third are included, an extra two 
oent stamp is also required. 
HOG CHOLERA. 
The disease known as hog cholera has, 
within the last quarter of a century, ex¬ 
tended its limits to Buch a degree as to 
be little less than a national calamity. It 
appears from time to time in nearly every 
State in the Union, and causes annual 
losses reaching at times the enormous 
amount of twenty to twenty-live millions 
of dollars. 
We say the disease has been extending 
its limits, and we wish to call particular 
attention to this fact. Thirty years ago it 
was unknown in the New England, Mid¬ 
dle, Southern and some of the Western 
States ; why is it that none of these dis¬ 
tricts are at present free from it? We 
know that hundreds of those who will 
read this question stand ready with an 
answer—but scarcely two will agree. 
Some will claim that it is caused by errors 
of diet; and even here there is a variety 
of opinions ; one will say, too much corn 
—an excess of carbonaceous elements in 
the food. Another is ready with an op¬ 
posite opinion : too much clover—an ex¬ 
cess of nitrogenous elements. Another 
class harps on high breeding, pampering, 
and weakened constitution ; while still 
others are equally sincere in the opinion 
that the cause exists in the restricted 
range, over-crowding and tilth to which 
many hogs are subjected. Each man will 
Btand ready with facts to prove that he is 
right, and that a. proper application of his 
views will rid the country of this dreaded 
malady. 
But whence comes this variety of opin¬ 
ions ? Are facta so deceptive as this ? 
No ; facts are not deceptive ; it is simply 
the careless observation and explanation 
of facts that make so much trouble—it is 
the accepting for a fact that which is not 
a fact. If a man’s hogs escape the dis¬ 
ease while his neighbors’ die of it, he at¬ 
tributes this to something he has done to 
prevent it—he has fed them ashes, or 
coal, or soda, or copperas; or he may 
claim this immunity is due to his breed, 
which has a better constitution, or he has 
fed them corn, or clover, or buttermilk; 
or his land is clay instead of sand ; his 
hogs have been on Bod instead of stubble, 
or his field is surrounded by an oak fence 
instead of a chestnut one. In the pres¬ 
ence of all these conditions, however, how 
does he decide which has actually been 
the preventive one ? There is no use m 
disguising the matter, he simply guesses 
at it—ana then publishes to the world as 
a fact that which is only a guess. His 
hogs have escaped—there is the tact; 
why they have escaped is and must be 
guess-work till a large number of cases 
are observed, all of which point in the 
same direction. 
To illustrate how some of our writers 
succeed in making their theories plaus¬ 
ible, we will take the moat absurd of the 
preventive conditions mentioned. > A 
man’s hogs have escaped, and in seeking 
for the reason he observes their pasture is 
surrounded by an oak fence ; he hears of 
anotherperson'shogsescaping—investiga¬ 
tion shows they, too, were inclosed by an 
oak fence, while most of the neighbors 
have ueed chestnut. At another place 
the animals which were not attacked were 
within a chestnut inclosure—this fact is 
incomprehensible, but it cannot over¬ 
throw the other facts which he has col¬ 
lected, “ the majority must rule,” so it is 
not recorded ; but he continues his inves¬ 
tigations, accepting those facts winch 
agree with his opinions and rejecting all 
others. Is it any wonder that he soon 
has an array of facts which prove that an 
oak fence will prevent hog cholera ? Ki- 
diculoue as this may appear on paper, it 
is just what some very intelligent men 
have been doing for years ; it is the land 
of research that has been filling column 
after column of our agricultural journals; 
and such men have influence and thous¬ 
ands accept their doctrine! 
We can point to instances, however, 
where none of the causes so ofteu invoked 
were present, and yet the hogs died to the 
same extent as elsewhere. The fact is, no 
breed is exempt, no section is so salu¬ 
brious as to he free, no conditions of diet, 
of surroundings, of range, appreciably les¬ 
sen the death rate. The disease is a con¬ 
tagious one, and as long as we neglect the 
essential cause of the disease—the conta¬ 
gious germs—so long we will sutler from 
it. No diet will prevent one from con¬ 
tracting small-pox or yellow fever ; nor 
can any preventive measures be efl'ectual 
short of limiting the production and 
spread of such germs, and destroying 
those already existing. 
It is now certain that a part of the com¬ 
mission appointed under Act of Congress 
to investigate this disease, will recom¬ 
mend measures for stamping Stout; ana 
to accomplish this result, wo must have 
further Congressional action—action which 
will not be taken unless a united demand 
is made for it. As a people, we are 
always ready to investigate—but very 
often we stop with the investigation. Let 
ns remember that no amount of invest¬ 
igation can free us from this disease, un¬ 
less we enforce the measures which are 
indicated. To stop with the investigation 
is like sending for a doctor in a case of 
serious illness and expecting to be cured 
without taking his medicine or following 
his recommendations. 
An expenditure of a small part of the 
sum annually lost from hog cholera, will, 
in a few years, free the greater part and 
possibly all of our country from its rav¬ 
ages. Shall the expenditure be made ? 
Shall such a pressure be brought to bear 
on Congress as to force thiB action, or will 
we strain at the gnat and swallow the 
camel ? 
his account in writing summaries for the 
Annual Register, and Canning in making 
jokes for the Anti-Jacobin. All these 
things ‘ tell up.’ They are columned and 
figured and entered to our credit; and 
some day the balance is declared, and we 
draw the splendid capital. ” 
The worst feature of our times is the in¬ 
disposition on the part of young and old, 
male and female, to that steady toil that 
is the price of all solid success. The ter¬ 
rible failures, the great break-downs of 
character, the defalcations, the pecula¬ 
tions, the swindles, great and little; yes, 
and the robberies and burglaries occur¬ 
ring all around us, are the fruits, natural 
and legitimate, of the refusal to drudge 
on in the path of honest, patient, useful 
work. Our prisons and alms-houses and 
mad-houses are full of the wrecks of men 
and women who would not drudge. 
The power of steady, patient and con¬ 
tinuous work seems to be lost among a 
large class of our people. The education 
anu the example of the past twenty years 
have been unfriendly to the homelv vir¬ 
tues. of which perseverance, and patience 
are not the least. “ Nothing is denied 
to hard work “ everything comes at 
last to him who can wait ”—“ learn to la¬ 
bor and to wait”—are three aphorisms 
that seem to have become obsolete and 
forgotten, yet they embody the sound 
wisdom that has grown up out of the ex¬ 
perience of all past ages. Shutting the 
eyes to them wall not blot out their truth, 
though it makes it useless to us. 
It. is among the farmers more than any 
other class that the old-time virtue exem¬ 
plified in the willingness to drudge, vet 
remains. It is from amongst them that 
must come out those wlio are to re¬ 
place the failures of the past generation 
among the professional and business 
rankB. Let them come fully grounded in 
the understanding that the only royal 
road to honor, fame and happiness lies 
far across the apparently weary waste of 
“drudgery.” But, like the “Great 
American Desert,” it is not as bad as it 
seems. Moderate compensations attend 
the patient traveler on his way. There 
are restful stations, refreshing springs, 
some grass and many flowers along the 
path. 1 And when the summit of the “ di¬ 
vide ” is reached, there is a glorious out¬ 
look that can be gained in no other way. 
JAN. 44 
be carried to excess and the whole phys¬ 
ical system break down under it ; still 
“ It is noble—’tis God-like to labor.” 
We should not forget to mention music, 
and dancing. There are no more profit¬ 
able hours in a household, whose members 
are so fortunate as to be blessed with mu¬ 
sical talent, than those spent in its use. 
Probably there is nothing that aids more 
in binding closely the family ties and pro¬ 
moting family love and harmony than mu¬ 
sic ; and they are worthy of condemna¬ 
tion who, having the power to make music 
either vocal or instrumental, do not culti¬ 
vate it. 
Of dancing we are not earnest advocates 
further than in the home circle and among 
children. Here it may undoubtedly be 
indulged in, not only without harm, but 
with profit. We prefer therefore if danc¬ 
ing, as very generally practiced at the 
present time, is to be commended, it 
bo done by other pens than ours. 
- ■*-*-*■ -- 
BREVITIES. 
DRUDGERY. 
Everybody dislikes the continuous la¬ 
bor which is styled “ drudgery.” Drud¬ 
gery, as the word is usually understood, 
means working whether you like it or not, 
and working steadily at a task until it is 
done. We say it is universally disliked, 
and yet no great thing can be accomplish¬ 
ed without this same steady work. Drud¬ 
gery, steady perseverance through tliick 
and thin, carries the day and takes the 
prizes right away from genius, talent, wit 
and skill that cannot or will not drudge 
for them. “Is there anything in the 
world,” asks Thackeray, “ that cannot be 
accomplished by sheer hard work ? Grant 
to any man, high or low, a sound natural 
capacity, and may he not aspire, with a 
reasonable degree of certainty, to the very 
grandest prizes which the Heads of the 
Houses of Life have to confer ? May he 
not say to his will: * Yon are my steed, I 
mean to saddle and bridle you. I shall 
spare neither whip nor spur, and you 
must carry me to the great goal. Be 
your name Hare or Tortoise, you and I 
must win the race. ’ Believe me that noth¬ 
ing is unavailing towards the great end, 
so long as it is work. The making of sun¬ 
dials and toy windmills helped Isaac New¬ 
ton towards the Principia. Bacon was 
not wasting his time when he wrote about 
laying out gardens. Brougham took 
something by his motion when he sat 
down to furnish nearly an entire number 
of the Edinburgh Review. Burke found 
EVENING AMUSEMENTS. 
The long muter evenings are here, 
when the boys and girls in the country, 
yes, and the men and women, too, are 
saying, “What can we do to amuse our¬ 
selves to-night ?” Reading and study ean 
be done to such an extent as to become 
wearisome : “all work and no play makes 
Jack a dull boy.” The mind needs relax¬ 
ation as well as the muscles ; and no less 
work, mental or physical, will be accom¬ 
plished if an occasional hour be given to 
diversion and entertainment. Lyceums, 
lectures, singing-schools, and an occa¬ 
sional sleighing party in the Northern 
States give opportunities for the meeting 
of young people ; but we are thinking 
more particularly of home affairs, and of 
cold stormy evenings when only the fam¬ 
ily assemble, or perhaps a near neighbor 
or two drop in. How shall the hours be 
passed agreeably, amusingly and enter¬ 
tainingly ? . * , 
It is only a few years since of games tor 
children there were only Fox and Geese 
—Twelve-men-Morris Hull-gull—and a 
few more of the same sort. Cards were, 
as a rule, not allowed, but exceptions 
were sometimes made if nothing wickeder 
than “Old Maid” was played. But the 
number of games and amusements adapt¬ 
ed to homes is yearly increasing, and 
there are now bo many that the trouble is 
which to choose. 
There are few games in which some¬ 
thing more than mere amusement does 
not find place. Mere games of chance, of 
which there are very few, are-not enter¬ 
taining. Take Dominoes, for instance, a 
game in which children can find much 
pleasure, and still one which to play 
well requires good memory and sound 
judgment. In Checkers (or Draughts), 
and Chess, there are no chances involved. 
Thought, foresight, calculation, caution, 
all the mental faculties must, be brought 
into action by those who would play either 
of these games even passably well. At 
Backgammon much depends on the cast 
of the dice. So much is chance ; but the 
proper moving of the men requires intel¬ 
ligent consideration. In such games as 
Authors—Busby and the like, those with 
the best memory are winners of the game. 
Temperance in all things should be the 
rule. Amusements may easily be carried 
to excess and time wasted by them that 
could ho well spent in some other way. 
Study may he carried to excess and the 
brain overworked until it becomes worn 
out or useless ; but study should not be 
condemned on that account. Labor may 
Poor seeds are dear at any price. 
Lanoshan fowls are the latest sensation 
among poultry fanciers. 
It was Edgeworth who deflued a fool as a 
man who never made an experiment. 
And now sticklers for grammar insist that 
the pests should be called trampers instead of 
tramps. 
Poultry enthusiasts talk about 200 and even 
225 eggs per year. So far as we kuow or have 
heard, a true, fair record would put an end to 
such misleading stories. 
We hear that Mr. Thomas Meehan, editor 
Gardener's Monthly, will bo a candidate for the 
Common-Council of Philadelphia. We do not 
believe the report. Politics and horticulture 
will not mix. 
Mr S. B. Parsons suggests, In notes to the 
Gardener's Monthly, mixing the Rctinospora 
with the Hemlock for hedges—which seems to 
us a suggestion of much value. The only set¬ 
back is that the latter grows faster than the 
other. Cutting back remedies this difference 
in a measure. 
The seedling culture of Abmilons is very in¬ 
teresting. We advise our tloricultuiallj in¬ 
clined readers to try it. The flowers especial¬ 
ly and also the leaves are different in almost 
eV0 rv plant. Crosses betweeu the w hites,such 
as Boule dc Niege and the orange Darwinii or 
Thompson! are easily effected. 
All who till the soil should look upon every 
dead animal and plant as 80 much food for an- 
imals and plants of the present or future. The 
deprivation of life is the beginning of decay, 
or, in other words, the beginning of a return to 
the miueral kingdom which supplies plants with 
what we call their ash constituents. 
There is but one plant, so far as we know, 
that potato beetles seem to prefer to the pota¬ 
to and that is the Matrimony Vine, Lyceum 
lmrbarutn. These grow from cuttings as readi¬ 
ly as Willows. If, as we presume, tho potato 
"■rubs and beetles would first iufest such a 
hedge, Paris-green might be applied to it in¬ 
stead of to the potato plants. 
New Hampshire’s late laws imprisoning 
tramps have completely rid that State of the 
vagrants. Venn out is following New Hamp¬ 
shire’s example with results equally satisfacto¬ 
ry. Providence has opened a wood-yard where 
the unemployed can earn fifty cents a day saw¬ 
ing firewood, and makes money by it from the 
labor of the industrious poor, but tramps do 
not ask the aid of Providence. 
So little public honor has hitherto been be¬ 
stowed on those whose labors have advanced 
the interests of the agricultural world that it 
is a rare satisfactiou to learn that L.0,000 
marks have been contributed towards the ex- 
H'.nses of a fine bronze statue to be erected at 
Munich, as a memorial to the late illustrious 
Baron Justus von Liebig, whose studies in 
agricultural chemistry have so largely bene¬ 
fited farmers everywhere. 
S 
Within a few days of the same date, chicks 
were hatched out at tho Rural Grounds from 
Partridge Cochins, Black Hamburgh* and Ply¬ 
mouth Rocks. The last mentioned were the 
first to lay —tlifc first ready for table use, ftud the 
first to mature. Of the brood of ten, two are 
black—larger than the others and the first to 
lav of the Plymouth Rock brood, lithe Ply¬ 
mouth ltoek can be considered a fixed variety, 
these two black hens may be considered 
“ sports,” or as reverting back to one of the 
original progenitors. 
The Canary Bird Vine is an annual with 
which our readers are familiar (Tropaeolum 
peregrinum). We remember to have planted, 
years ago, seeds of this as well as of the Bal¬ 
loon Viue (Oardlospermum halieacahum), 
the Muurandyu and Morning-Glories along a 
board fence, giving a southeastern exposure, 
lu duo time, they covered the fence, clustering 
upon the top and hanging over in en tangled fes¬ 
toons. Early in the morning this vine-covered 
fence, during August and September, presented 
a (sight more beautiful th^n can be described. 
Humbug.— We find that fluid extract of 
Eucalyptus globulus is having a large sale 
among driieiiat* for the cure of malarial disa* 
biUtics- We have uo right to assert anything 
regarding its febrifugal qualities, but we may 
be permitted to say that wo do no believe u 
has ever cured a case of chills and feyei or that 
it ever will. This tree has been much talked of 
because its roots Imbibe a large quantity "t 
water. Hence it was suggested to use at to dry 
up swamps. Hundreds of other trees would 
answer tue same purpose, fluid extract 01 
Weeping Willow will prove just as effective m 
assuaging grief as fluid extract of Eucaly p us 
globulus will be found in assuaging malarial 
disorders. 
