Jam ®optrs. 
NOTES FROM THE RURAL GROUNDS. 
Amelanchlcr Canadensis, var. Alnlfolia. 
(Dwarf Juneberry) 
[See first Page for Illustration,] 
We have had a single plant of the Dwarf 
Juneberry for five years and the more we see 
of it, the more we like it. In bloom it is as 
pretty as many of the Spineas which throng 
every garden, and in fruit it is one of the most 
luscious-looking shrubs in cultivation. Now, 
when we eau procure ornamental plants— 
whether shrubs or trees—that are in every 
way as ornamental as those which do not 
bear edible fruit, why not give them the pref¬ 
erence? Exochorda (Spirrea) grandillora is a 
shrub everywhere praised for its beauty. Its 
flowers are larger than those of our Dwarf 
Juneberry, and It grows to twice the size, be¬ 
ing, indeed, when fully grown, a small tree. 
But iu other respects it is in no wise superior. 
The leaves of both plants are similar, resem¬ 
bling those of the Pear. Now, the Dwarf June¬ 
berry is in fruit far more attractive than 
Spiraea grandiflora is in bloom, so that counting 
the fruit as worthless, we should still prefer 
the former, could we have but one. But the 
fruit is edible. It is sweet and juicy, and 
while twice the size of huckleberries, is not in¬ 
ferior to them. It begins to ripen the latter 
part of June, and continues for ten days or 
more. The berries or pomes or berry-like 
pomes, are first green, then nearly white, then 
red, then purple and finally, when fully ripe, 
a dark blue. Often all of these colors are seen 
upon a single raceme and our readers may 
judge for themselves that when, as at present 
(July 2), in the specimen before us, a peck or 
more of this fruit is ripening upon a single 
bush, not over five feet high or in diameter, 
it is as ornamental as any plant can well be. 
We havo compared Spiraea (Exochorda) 
grandiflora with the Juueborry, because, bear¬ 
ing a decided resemblance to each other, the 
less meritorious is praised right and left, and 
engravings of it or colored plates appear from 
time to time in our leading horticultural mis¬ 
cellany, while the more meritorious (as w r e 
think) is seldom cultivated or noticed. 
Amelanoiiier Canadensis, the botanical name 
of the Juneberry, varies remarkably. Gray gives 
half a dozen different varieties of which ours 
most nearly resembles Aluifolia. We have just 
selected leaves 10 show their dissimilarity, and 
we find the following forms or outlines; orbi¬ 
cular, ovate, oval, obovate, oblanceolate. spatu- 
late, oblong and elliptical. All are mucrouate— 
some nearly entire, some finely, some coarsely 
serrated—some serrated only near the apex, 
some half way, some entirely down to the 
petiole. Our drawing of a branch was made 
July 5. 
Pen Fancies. 
It is sometimes hard to account for the sin¬ 
gular fancies that are entertained by those 
who purchase seeds. One of these is that 
green seed peas are better than buff seed peas. 
The difference is, that the former are gathered 
before they are fully ripe, so that they after¬ 
ward maintain a greenish, fresh appearance, 
while the latter are gathered not until fully 
ripened. It is known to all experienced seeds¬ 
men that a larger proportion of the buff, 
bleached or whitened seeds will germinate; 
that they produce stronger plants, and that 
they are less liable to rot in the ground. Nev¬ 
ertheless. the demand is for the green seed, 
and seedsmen order their stocks accordingly. 
So, with regard to weevil-eaten peas. This 
question is as old as the question whether 
wheat does or rnay turn to chess, and older, 
for aught we know. We have asked the ques¬ 
tion of at least fifty fanners: -“What propor¬ 
tion of weevil-eaten peas will grow ?” and we 
have received the same answer from every one , 
etrauge as it may appear to the thoughtful 
reader: “All will grow." Our late experi¬ 
ments, No. 2 of which we now place before 
our readers, bIiow that the vegetative powers 
of all weevil-eaten peas are weakened; that 
the proportion which will germinate depends 
upon the injury that the cotyledons have sus¬ 
tained, and that this depends upon the age and 
size of the pea. 
Will Weevil - Eaten Peas Grow t Experiment 
No 2. 
One hundred weevil-eaten peas were planted 
in a drill, nearly three inches deep, on the 
afternoon of June 23. The peas had been 
soaked in water for several hours previously. 
The variety was Philadelphia or one closely 
resembling it. The soil was moist and rich 
and we have since had sufficient rain to keep it 
so. July 10—17 days—but one pea had ap¬ 
peared above the ground and that looked as if 
it needed a doctor. 
Standard Currants and Gooseberries. 
Many of our readers will remember the 
Standard Gooseberries and Currants that were 
exhibited at the Centennial, These were graft¬ 
ed upon stocks of the Missouri Currant four or 
five feet high. Laden with fruit, they attract¬ 
ed much notice. Four years ago we purchased 
six of these plants. Two of them were half¬ 
THE t URAL UEW-YORKERo 
standards ; that is, the stocks were about two 
and a-balf feet high. One of these was grafted 
to Currants; the other to both Gooseben ies 
and Currants. The rest were full stardards, 
two grafted to Gooseberries, one to Currants 
and one to both. 
The Currants grow finely and bear well. A 
Currant bush, growing upon a perfectly straight 
and slender stem, five feet high, and loaded 
with its bright red fruit may be conceived as a 
very curious and pleasing object. But the 
Gooseberries mildew, both leaves and fruit, so 
that they just manage to live, and that is all. A 
few days ago, however, we saw in the grounds of 
a neighbor, five miles distant, these sume stand¬ 
ard Gooseberries laden with fruit, and there 
was no appearance of mildew whatever. The 
fruit was the largest of the foreign sorts—some 
specimens measuring over four inches in cir¬ 
cumference—that is, horizontal circumference, 
and not from stem to apex. These beautiful, 
miniature trees were growing in a sandy soil 
somewhat shaded by apple trees ten feet to 
the south of them. 
-- 
TOKUN FARM NOTES. 
K. GOODMAN. 
Ilow to become a practical larruer is the 
aim of many young men of position and wealth, 
and yet they hesitate to set about acquiring 
the necessary knowledge in the only correct 
manner. If they have been graduated at some 
literary institution and are well up in their 
chemistry and other physical sciences, the 
best method is that pursued on the continent 
of Europe where educated young men belong¬ 
ing to families in good positions, remain for 
a time as pupils or managers on some large es¬ 
tate. In Germany any visitor to the large farms 
need not be surprised to see as superintendent 
the son of a banker, a baron or a rich land¬ 
owner, who has been grounded in the theories 
of the profession at an agricultural college 
and is now training himself for the practical 
direction of an estate of his own. If he has 
not received any instruction in agriculture— 
generally, if he has—he commences at the 
bottom, drives the cart and grooms the horses, 
guides the plow and so arrives by degress at 
a knowledge of all the machinery and pro¬ 
cesses, and in no wise differs from the other 
workmen except that he takes his meals at 
the table of the owner of tbe estate and lives 
with him indoors as an equal. Oue eau hardly 
appreciate at its true price the light continental 
literature—such novels for instance as “Reneh 
and Franz" (Le Bleuet) of Gustave Haller, 
or “ Seed Time and Harvest” of F. Reuter, 
without a knowledge of this state of things; 
and even in England a young man of the up¬ 
per classes expecting to iuherit an estate, does 
not consider his dignity compromised in per¬ 
forming the work of a farm laborer and doing 
the necessary “chores,” as we should say, by 
which methods he can alone acquire that prac¬ 
tical knowledge which will fit him to manage 
his own estate. Instances of the same way of 
learning the details of the farm are not com¬ 
mon among the sons of persons ol wealth and 
station in this country, democratic as our 
society pretends to be, but tbe examples 
of Mr. Burnet proprietor of Deerfort Farm 
whose profitable production of pork and but¬ 
ter, has placed him in the front rank 
of successful agriculturists, and of Mr. E. 
F. Bowditeb, also possessor of'a large estate, 
and noted as a Jersey breeder, both of Mas¬ 
sachusetts. may be cited as prominent and 
instructive cases of voung men ambitious to 
stand at the head ol their profession and also 
to make their farming pay, apprenticing 
themselves temporarily with one of the best 
practical farmers of their vicinity and per¬ 
forming the same work as the ordinary hired 
laborers, and thus using lowliness as young 
ambition’s ladder, but when the uprnost round 
was once attained, not scorning the base de¬ 
grees by which they did ascend. 
If the young aspirant to agricultural “hon¬ 
ors” is not a graduate of any literary in¬ 
stitution, he cannot do better thau take a 
course of theoretical and practical instruction 
iu oue of the agricultural colleges endowed by 
the United States Government and established 
by the States, and if it is conducted as it should 
be, he will acquire a knowledge of the sciences 
connected with farming and a theoretical and 
to some extent a practical knowledge of the 
pursuit itself, which he can put in operation, 
and improve, as the young Germans do, by tak¬ 
ing charge of some land-owner’s farm and 
doing personally the work for a season, or of 
his own if he prefers to be at once master and 
servant, as most Americans do. Agriculture, 
though young as a science is old as an art, and 
our young men of wealth who are atten¬ 
tive to “ the frivolous work of polished idle¬ 
ness," to use a phrase of Sir James Macin¬ 
tosh, but yet worthy of better employment, 
may with profit study tbe ways of even such 
ancients as the country gentlemen among the 
Greeks who revelled iu their snug country 
boxes and pleasant acres and did not disdain 
to don proper attire and share in the necessary 
labars of the farm, many of them in fact, 
like Ulysses's father or our New England farm¬ 
ers, being arrayed in “weeds all torn and 
tattered fit for homely deeds.” But they 
knew a “hawk from a handsaw,” had an eye 
for thoroughbred horses and cattle, swine and 
fowl. Xenophon, who was both a good general 
and fanner, wrote a treatise on horsemanship 
which is good authority at the present time, 
and his precept on the training of the noble 
animal “ never use Mm ill through anger'' is 
worthy of all time, and a good horse cost 
money then as now. Bucephalus, of Alexander 
fame, is said to have been purchased for 5 * 1200 . 
A pair of mules cost $120. Those old farmers 
didn't hesitate at paying big prices for the 
best breeding animals; rams from Spain at 
$1,200 ; $1,000 for a milk-white boar, and dur¬ 
ing the Peloponnesian war sucking pigs were 
held as high as $32 each. Alcibiadcs’s dog whose 
tail he cut, according to Plutarch, to make the 
Athenians talk about that and not of himself, 
cost him $1050, uot quite equal to the price of the 
queen at the N. Y. bench show, ticketed $50,000! 
As the average price of a good acre of laud in 
Attica was about thirty dollars, a country place 
was not very costly, nor were they of great 
extent, that of Alcibiades beiug only seventy 
acres, and any one possessing three hundred 
acres of frontier land, was esteemed an im¬ 
mense land-holder. 
Then these hearty old fellows, like their Eng¬ 
lish successors, lived mainly out-of-doors walk¬ 
ing or riding ou their farms and superintend¬ 
ing the details of all the work aud studying 
whether any improvements could be made, aud 
carrying theta out so far as could be done with¬ 
out any knowledge of the science of farming ex¬ 
periments. “For in all" says one of them, 
“that we can discover by our experiments 
upon soils we are sure Of the truth of what ice 
see." Provided, we may add, these experiments 
are continued long enough, and all the con¬ 
comitants attended to with the utmost ac¬ 
curacy. They also followed the sports of the 
chase, racing, cock and quail fighting, wrest¬ 
ling and boxing matches, and after the daily 
bath or at the end of the day, when the labor 
was over, reclined at a table richly spread. 
With the lamentable exception of not bolding 
the fair sex in proper esteem and giving the la¬ 
dies equal and just rights and privileges, lhe 
great country gentleman appears to have been 
well up to the comforts and enjoyments of life 
as we appreciate them, and our young men of 
leisure may profitably study him as a good ex¬ 
ample. 
Berkshire Co., Mass. 
.farm (gronomij. 
HISTORY OF A POOR FARM.-No. 12. 
Ilow Should Manure he Used t 
“ 1 saw you plowing in manure to-day," re¬ 
marked Mr. Martin; “ you don’t practice what 
you preach. I have heard you tell our old 
friend here and his son, William, that manure 
should be ulwa 3 ’s spread on the surface.” 
“ So I believe it should,” I replied; “but 1 
am uot the first by any meaua who does uot live 
up to hiB professions. There are some occa¬ 
sions upon which even the best men go astray, 
and I may be excused a lapse now and then as 
well as they. I could not help it. A beginner 
on a poor farm must do many r things which 
he would not if he could avoid it. The manure 
was fresh and long, with some straw in it; the 
cellar was full aud required to be emptied, aud 
the com needed it—what could I do ?” 
“ I think yon did right," remarked my old 
neighbor ; “ manure ought to be well covered. 
I have always plowed it in and would now, 
but you have talked William over to your 
ideas, and he will put it on the top and harrow 
it in, or put it on the sod." 
‘ * Look over there,” said I. Across the road 
was a meadow of the old gentleman’s which 
had been pastured in the fall and the spring, 
and it was spotted over with hummocks of 
tall grass where cows’ droppings had fallen. 
“ What makes those bunches of tall grass ?" 
“ Well; those are where the cows have drop¬ 
ped,” he replied. 
“And the grass is twice as thick aud tall in 
those spots as elsewhere; it was top-dressed 
there, wasn’t it ?” 
“ Well, I guess sohe replied. 
“ I think that is enough, so far as grass is 
concerned,” said I. “Now let us consider 
about plowed ground. The purpose for which 
we manure our fields is to feed the crops, and 
I think we agreed once, that if tbe crops are 
fed when they are young and growing the most 
vigorously, they will thrive the better for it. 
If we don’t feed them then, they start slowly 
and become stunted, and frequently never re¬ 
cover through the season. When the plants 
are young the roots are small and near the 
surface; if the manure Is five or six inches 
down, or a foot away upon one side, it takes 
some time for the tiny and weak roots to find 
or reach it, and this operates the more disad¬ 
vantageous^ because tbe roots are weak for 
want of food and may actually perish, and 
many do parish, by starvation, before they can 
reach the food. Suppose a hungry man were 
told that a supply of food was buried 100 feet 
or more in the earth, and as soon as he dug 
down to it, he could cat and drink and be filled. 
He would probably die of starvation before he 
could procure it. I think it is just so with 
plants ; only the work they have to perform is 
more exhausting, aud they are more likely to 
starve in their endeavor to perform it than in 
the ease of the man." 
“There is another view of the case,” re¬ 
marked Dr. Jones. “ The soil is a great oxi¬ 
dizer. There is no more active disinfectant 
than earth, aud the process of disinfecting Is 
simply one of oxidizing or combustion. This 
was remarkably well shown by Dr. Voelcker 
in some experiments with the soil taken from 
some earth closets, in which it was found, that 
after the earth had been used several times, 
and might have been expected to have con¬ 
tained a large quantity of nitrogen from the 
accumulated manure, on the contrary, it was 
very little richer than at first, aud the nitrogen 
had largely disappeared. It is a well known 
fact iu chemistry that exceedingly porous 
bodies, such as charcoal, earth, and especially 
spongy platinum, possess a remarkable ca¬ 
pacity for absorbing oxygen aud other gases 
from the atmosphere, condensing them, and 
causing chemical changes in them. Now, 
while so far as regards the action of the soil, 
when it is in a miuute state of divisou, upon 
nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen, we have not 
sufficiently accurate knowledge to form a clear 
opinion, yet we know that a large portion of 
the organic matter in the soil disappears, to¬ 
gether with its resulting chemical constituents; 
they go and we cannot trace them. If this 
happens with animal and vegetable matter of 
one kind, it must be so with matter of auother 
kind, as common manure.” 
“ Then you think the manure wastes in the 
soil?” said Mr. Martin. 
“ I don’t see how we can account for the dis¬ 
appearance of the nitrogen iu the earth-closet 
soil, nor for other well-known circumstances, 
without such a conclusion,” replied Dr. Jones. 
“ I have tried surface manuring aud plow¬ 
ing it in,” said Mr. Martin, “ and have found 
it best to adhere to the former practice. I 
don’t know so much about the theory, which 
seems very reasonable, but of the advantage of 
the practice I have no doubt.” 
“ I think you are right," I remarked, “ and 
1 am inclined to believe that Dr. Jones’s theory 
has sonic good basis. The majority of good 
farmers, who are apt to note cause and effect, 
keep their manure as near the surface as pos¬ 
sible, aud that they may do this, it is necessary 
that the manure should be fine and easily 
broken up. If long straw is used for litter, it 
is necessary to work over tbe manure to get it 
into good condition for harrowing into the 
soil; because it is impossible to spread long 
manure with the harrow, unless it Is a disc 
harrow. Long, fresh manure must be plowed 
in, and there is a disadvantage and a loss iu 
usiug it in this condition; but there is a loss 
also in keeping manure fermenting to prepare 
it for use, and the question comes up: how can 
we escape either of these losses ?’’ 
“Use fine litter,” remarked Mr. Martin. “ I 
think I would rather go to the trouble to cut my 
Btraw in the fodder cutter and bed my cows 
and horses with the chaff, than either to plow 
iu longmanurc, or to keep it idle for six months 
or more.” 
“ Dr. Voelcker has said that he is not satis¬ 
fied that any of the nitrogen of the earth-closet 
soil i6 lost by oxidation,” said Fred. “ He has 
distinctly disclaimed any such view.” 
“That may be.” replied Dr. Jones. “To dis¬ 
claim a particular opinion is not to oppose It; 
and I feel confident that Dr. Voelcker would, 
not go so far as to say that the view is not rea¬ 
sonable ; only it is not proved; and a truly 
scientific man will never say a thing is so, or 
will very rarely suggest any opinion, without 
good grounds for it. This process of nitrifica¬ 
tion, or oxidatiou of nitrogenous matters in 
the soil, is no new thing. Years ago, saltpeter 
was manufactured for war purposes by mak¬ 
ing beds of vegetable and animal matter mixed 
with earth, and leaving them to undergo this 
natural process. It has been recently discov¬ 
ered that the nitrification or oxidation is 
caused by the growth of a vegetable orgaui3ra 
or ferment in the soil; it has also been found 
that the same process goes ou in the growth of 
mushrooms in the beds of manure and soil 
usually prepared for their culture. But it has 
also been found that as soon as this oxidation 
has been perfected, tbe nitric acid thus formed 
immediately begins to be de-oxydized, and Its 
nitrogen escapes in a free condition into the 
atmosphere. It is, in fact, the final round of 
the circle, so frequent in nature. Nitrogen is 
brought iu some way from the atmosphere, 
and enters into combination with the organic 
substances; these decompose, and nitric, acid 
is formed iu the process; this is decomposed 
in its turn, and the nitrogen is returned to the 
atmosphere; thus ending the circle of changes, 
and ready to begin anew. It is a beautiful 
theory, and while it would be premature to 
speak positively about it, yet it seems to 
be a true oue. Let us take a short walk 
and look how this thing works In the field. 1 
have a field of oats for green fodder, which 
