THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
CONDUCTED BY 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
78 Duane Street, New York City. 
SATURDAY, OCT. 4, 1879. 
Applicants for seeds are requested not to 
stick their stamps to the letters. This prac¬ 
tice causes us much trouble and the stamps 
are often destroyed in the attempt to sever 
them from the paper. Leave them loose in the 
letters. 
AN IMPORTANT QUESTION. 
a larger market by making smaller 
cheeses. 
Although the price of cheese will proba¬ 
bly rise temporarily this fall and, per¬ 
haps, the coming winter, still the prospect 
seems gloomy for our present produc¬ 
tion. In view of the difficulty of enlarg¬ 
ing our market promptly by either of 
these means, the sensible course in the 
present emergency seems to lie to adopt 
the other of the above-named alternatives 
—to curtail our cheese production. To do 
this to advantage,however,wiUnecessitate 
the substitution of some more profitable 
industry by those who are unwilling to 
work for nothing or at a loss and enter¬ 
prising enough to step out of the trodden 
path when it has become too encumbered 
for progress. What shall this other in¬ 
dustry be—long wool raising, as Col. 
Curtis elsewhere suggests, or what ? 
-» » ♦ - 
MORAL EDUCATION. 
slowly but steadily, must inevitably lead 
to an enlarged use of animal food. Des¬ 
pite occasional reductions of the wages of 
laboring people, the tendency of these is 
constantly upward, and with higher 
wages will come a more generous meat 
diet. If Europeans used only as much 
meat as we use now in proportion to the 
respective populations, their present 
meat supply would be entirely inade¬ 
quate. The fact that our present export 
of live stock to Great Britain is constant¬ 
ly increasing, in spite of the restrictions 
upon it, is a pretty certain guarantee of 
the permanence of the trade. In view, 
therefore, of this growing market, it is the 
duty of our farmers to improve their 
stock steadily, and this can be done 
effectually only by the use of pure-bred 
sires; for the introduction of good blood 
into a herd by this means will often in¬ 
crease its value 25 per cent, in a few 
years, 
-♦-*--«- 
Hardy Begonias are becoming very 
popular in England for bedding purposes, 
They are found in a number of colei's, as 
scarlet, yellow, buff and white. They are 
propagated by seed, which, if sown early 
in the spring in boxes in the greenhouse, 
produce plants that may flower in the fall; 
or cuttings maybe taken in the fall, kept 
growing during the winter in-doors and 
planted out next spring. These plants 
bloom in the fall, and will continue to 
bloom profusely, even after the frost has 
destroyed other bedding plants. They 
seem especially well adapted to shaded 
and partly shaded places where other 
bright bedding plants refuse to do well. 
The roots are tubers and may, in the 
middle latitudes, be left out all winter by 
giving them a good covering with soil and 
jitter. .In the N orthern States they may 
be taken up, packed in boxes, and win¬ 
tered, like Dahlias, in a frost-proof cellar 
or similar place. Under pot culture they 
also succeed well, and may be kept in a 
cold-frame, like Violets, for winter flow¬ 
ering. 
-- 
BREVITIES. 
Jamabuki is Ihe native name of the hardy 
shrub Rhodotypus kerrioides, as we learn 
from the London Garden. 
Our Potato Number will be issued, prob¬ 
ably, Oet. U th. All articles intended for that 
number should be in the editors’ hands prior 
to Oct. 5th. 
During the week ending 8ept. 6, there 
arrived in England from this country and Can¬ 
ada. 1.827 head of cattle; 0,140 sheep, aud 389 
pigs ; also 3,295 quarters of beef, and 030 car¬ 
casses of mutton. 
Australia and New Zealand are among the 
very best customers of England for her choicest 
breeds of cattle, sheep, and horses, preferring 
chiefly the Short-horns among the first and 
the Clydesdales among the last. 
Are other animals besides man sensitive to 
ridicule ? Certainly some of them are; for in¬ 
stance, dogs often show that they are hurt at 
being laughed at, while the sportsman’s feath¬ 
ered prey strongly object to be made “game” 
of. 
All packages sent to us containing fruit, 
flowers, etc., to be named, must be prepaid iu 
full. And our friends must remember that if 
any writing whatever is contained in such 
packages, they must be be prepaid at the rate 
of letter postage, if sent by mail. 
Those English farmers that came out to 
Texas a couple of weeks ago, are reported to 
have brought an aggregate sum of 8If/),000 
between the 80 of them, or nearly $2,000 a- 
piece, to say nothiug of the skill experience 
and lusty strength with which they enrich this 
country. Long live such immigration! 
The Yellow Wood, the subject of several of 
our illustrations tbls week, never produces 
fruit in England. Though tardy in its spring 
leafage, it holds its lea vcb and they retain their 
fresh, green color until after frost. We have 
uever before seen faithful portraits of the 
leaves, flowers and fruit of this beautiful, but 
little known tree. 
Those who propose to experiment in pitting 
green food for forage, should construct the 
pits at once according'to the directions we have 
several times given. A good experiment would 
be to divide the pit or silo into several com¬ 
partments and in each store a different kind 
of plant,—for example, Pearl Millet, corn, 
sorghum—so as to determine which would 
ensilage best. 
Some of our contemporaries call J. B. Lawes 
Professor—some Doctor. The truth is, Oxford 
University conferred upon him the degree of 
LL.D. Now for more than twenty-five years 
his name has been known as that of the most 
efficient agricultural experimenter In the 
world, and we have a feeling that Doctor or 
Professor applied to the respected name of J. 
B. Lawes belittles it. 
A Berlin official report lately Issued shows 
that from August 1, 1878, to August 1,1879, 
about 5,000 haras, 60 sides of bacon, 500 
shoulders of pork, and 125 roulades were ex¬ 
amined. Of these there were reported to the 
police authorities containing trichinae, 109 
hams, Nil sides of bacon, 7 shoulders, and 4 
roulades. Tijcbiiuc were also found in two 
pigs slaughtered in Berlin. 
We have been saving seeds of the following 
grapes: Delaware. Lady, El Dorado, Martha, 
Iona, Secretary. Goethe, Wilder and Salem. 
We shall send a few of these to each member 
of the Rural Horticultural Club within a week 
or ten days. We advise our young friends to 
plant them at once in well-drained pots of 
good garden soil. The Youths’ Department 
will furnish all particulars. 
The hold that Blount’s corn has of the earth 
is remarkable. The. stalks average, in our 
plot of a quarter of au acre, scarcely less thau 
ten feet; while those in our usual field of corn 
are not over eight- Now during a recent gale 
which blew down about half of the corn in our 
part of the country, Blount's suffered the 
least. It is worthy of note also, that the corn 
iu our usual field was hilled up, while Blount's 
was not. 
Prof. Caldwell expresses the opinion in the 
N. Y. Tribune that taking into account the 
eminent fitness of the nitrogen in nitrate of 
soda for plant-food, aud the uniform good 
quality o£ the fertilizer, it would appear to be 
well worth while in many cases to use it. It is 
brought from the western coast of South 
America where there are immense quantities of 
it. A good deal comes from Chili—lienee the 
name of Chili Saltpeter. It is quoted here at 
$4 perewt. which would make the nitrogen 
cost about 26 cents per pound. 
At the recent exhibition in this city of the 
New York State Horticultural Society we had 
the opportunity of seeing the two new seedling 
grapes, Rochester and Monroe, produced by 
Messrs. Ellwuuger «fc Barry, of Rochester, N. 
Y. The bunch of each exhibited was rather 
small, but quite compact. Rochester is of a 
brownish-red color; the berry is small aud 
quite 6weet; but the skin is very thick and 
tough, which is u serious drawback to this 
otherwise promising variety. Monroe is black; 
berry, small, juicy and very vinous. It will 
not become popular as a dessert fruit, but as a 
wine grape it may prove good. 
From returns presented to them from time 
to time siucc January last, insurance men iu 
Liverpool have made some interesting calcu¬ 
lations as to the average percentage of loss to 
live stock, during the voyage across the ocean. 
Of cattle the loss uow is three per cent, of the 
number shipped : while that, of sheep is only 
two per ecut. The heaviest mortality is 
among pigs, which mmiuiits to ten per cent. 
The loss among all classes of auimals is much 
less now than when the live stock trade was 
established ; for then the deaths oJ cattle often 
amounted to 25 per cent. Now the animals 
have ample space, a*special attendant, and 
good care during the voyage; formerly they 
were huddled as closely as practicable and 
uearly left to shift for themselves during the 
passage. 
Within the past twelvemonth the Nihilists 
of Russia have set fire to several cities iu that 
country, and thus caused a number of deaths 
and much suffering and desolation. The last 
atrocity of the kind of which they have been 
guilty, is the burning of the city of Kiev, capi¬ 
tal of the most fertile province in the Ukraine, 
and situated on the Dnieper, 270 miles north 
of Odessa. The miscreants fired this city of 
70,000 inhabitants on a stormy night iu no less 
thau seven places, causing a large destruction 
of human life within the two days during 
which the flames raged, besides au enormous 
loss of property. If assassination and incen¬ 
diarism arc the best arguments Nihilism has to 
oiler in its own behalf, the sooner the follow¬ 
ers of this insensate gospel of destruction are 
themselves destroyed, the better for society. 
From a private letter from W. R. Lazenby, 
of Cornell University, wc take the libe rty to 
publish the following extracts: 
“ I have just returned from visiting some of 
the agricultural colleges in the west, and 
have garnered some rich treasures of ob¬ 
servation and experience. I saw much to 
gratify and please. Am more and more 
convinced that the advantages of any one 
section are just about counterbalanced 
by some disadvantages, and a great deal more 
depends upon the prison titan upon the pUwe. 
I have yet to find a locality where idleness is 
compatible with thrift, or where men grow 
rich by doing nothing. Many of the institu¬ 
tions visited—notably the 111. Industrial Univer¬ 
sity, Mich. Ag. Coll, and Iowa Ag. Coll.—are 
meeting the demands of the West very fully and 
very satisfactorily. 
We have been traveling among farmers a 
good deal of late, and find that many of them, 
do not know what the difference is between 
hone superphosphate and bone phosphate. 
They call both phosphates as if they were merely 
different brauds of the same fertilizer. We 
have many times explained the difference in 
these columns at length. It may be well, how¬ 
ever, to state in a lew words that they are 
essentially the same in fertilizing constituents, 
with the essential difference that the phosphoric 
acid of the superphosphate is immediately 
available to the plant, while in the phosphate 
it, is not. If immediate effects are desired, 
therefore, use superphosphate of lime or bone 
superphosphate which Is the same thing ; viz., 
bone dissolved In sulphuric acid, ff slower 
and more lasting effects are desired, use phos¬ 
phate of lime or bone phosphate or bone flour, 
which are all the same. 
All over England local emigration societies 
are being formed, all affiliated with “The 
Workingman’s National Emigration Society.” 
Their object is to aid members to emigrate 
either to this country, to Cauada or to Austra¬ 
lia or New* Zealand. Any workingman may 
join on the payment of three, six, nine or 
twelve cents a fortnight. At intervals a cer¬ 
tain number of members are chosen by ballot 
who arc entitled to a grant of XI0 if goiug to 
Australia or New Zealand, and to X6 if coming 
to America. The money is paid to the ship¬ 
ping agent, however, to prevent misappropri¬ 
ation. Those who have no intention of emi¬ 
grating themselves are urged to contribute, 
maemuch as the departure of others will have 
a tendency to raise their own wages and better 
their condition by rendering their services of 
more importance. From present indications 
it would seem that the exodus from that coun¬ 
try is only commcnciug. It, is highly proba¬ 
ble, therefore, that the tide of British immi¬ 
gration will soon set iu rapidly ou our shores. 
Our capacity for expansion, however, is prac¬ 
tically unlimited, and we cun extend a cheerful 
welcome to all labor-seeking newcomers, who 
will soon add to the number, power and pros¬ 
perity of our citizens. 
It seems to be agreed ou nearly 
all handB that there is about as much 
loss as gain in cheese production at the 
present prices. By this condition of the 
industry the farmers of the country are 
the only actual losers. The factorymen 
take care to make a profit of some sort 
even from their patrons' losses, while the 
long line of middlemen between the pro¬ 
ducers and consumers pocket enough to 
check the consumption of the latter, and 
thus aggravate the misfortunes of the 
former. 
Several causes contribute to the pres¬ 
ent depression of this branch of farm indus¬ 
try. For our enormous exports of cheese 
the British working classes have been 
the chief customers, and the working 
olaeses of Great Britan are now so hard- 
pinched by the depression universal 
there, not in agriculture alone, but iu all 
sorts of industries, that they have often 
to be thankful for the bread without the 
cheese, or with a much smaller chunk of 
it than usual By the middle and upper 
classes, who also use cheese liberally, the 
home-made sorts, or varieties imported 
from the neighboring Continent, are 
more highly prized than the great bulk 
of that received from this country. We 
have been catering to the taste and pock¬ 
ets of the masses, and, unfortunately for 
us and them, the emptiness of the latter 
now prevents the free indulgence of 
the former. Owing to the falling-off in 
the purchases consequent greatly on this 
restriction, our supply w ould be too large 
for the production of even a few* years 
back, and is much too large, to be profit¬ 
able, for the present make. To secure 
“ paying ” prices, therefore, either our 
markets for cheese must lie enlarged, or 
our production of it curtailed. 
The two most practicable ways of in¬ 
creasing our sales seem to be, first, to 
make a greater variety of cheese, so as 
to tempt more liberal purchases by appeal¬ 
ing to a wider range of taste, and, second, 
to create a greater home demand for this 
highly nutritious kind' of food. As re¬ 
marked by Mr. Stewart elsewhere, the 
chief or only difference iu factory cheeses, 
is that between the good and the bad; 
while there certainly -would be a wider 
opening for diversity in each of these 
kinds, and for the production of several 
intermediate sorts, should cheese be 
more extensively made under the vary¬ 
ing conditions that exist on our farm 
dairies. Is a return, then, to home 
cheese-making the only means of obtain¬ 
ing this desirable diversity of product; or 
will not the factories vary more, here and 
there, the character of their make ? 
At fairs and dairy conventions a great 
deal has been said of late as to the ne¬ 
cessity of increasing the appetite for 
cheese among our countrymen; but. a 
pretty close outlook for the last couple 
of years has failed to discover a single 
practical step towards doing so, with the 
possible exception of the holding of that 
International Dairy Fair in this city. 
A fair price for a good article, land a size 
of cheese suitable for the immediate use 
of a single family, are two of the fore¬ 
most means for popularizing the product; 
but while cheese has been bringing at the 
factory only six to seven cents per pound, 
it has been retailing for from 12 to 14 
cents at the neighboring grocery, and 
for from 16 to 18 cents, or more, in city 
stores. And, worse still, the article, in¬ 
stead of tempting the purchaser to buy 
it again, is generally so poor that it les¬ 
sens his taste for cheese. Then, again, 
who with a moderate-sized family is will¬ 
ing to buy a forty or fifty-pound cheese 
to have much of it mold before it can be 
used ? ForJ one such man, hundreds 
would be tempted to pux'ohase a five or 
six-pound cheese. Yet no effectual pres¬ 
sure has ever been brought to bear upon 
retailers to moderate their greed, or upon 
factorymen to help their patrons to 
Intellectual education is the great 
panacea proposed for all social evils. It 
is advocated as the only means wherewith 
to check the progress aud work the final 
suppression of crime. Wliile it must be 
admitted that the tendency of education 
is to prove this statement true, it should 
not- be accepted wholly without qualifica¬ 
tion. Intellectual education becomes a 
blessing, a source of happiness, to the 
possessor and to the world only so far as 
the moral qualities keep step) with the 
intellectual in development. An unscru¬ 
pulous intellectual giant is a being to be 
feared and shunned rather than admired 
and sought; for though men of this kind 
ossess the greatest power to do, it is 
azardous to intrust them with oppor¬ 
tunity to nse their power. The many 
swindling railroad presidents, directors 
of mining corporations and insurance 
managers furnish sufficient proof of this* 
What, therefore, the world needs is 
not merely minds with great scope of ac¬ 
tion, minds that can conceive and carry 
out magnificent schemes, but they should 
also be awakened to the responsibility 
that is inseparable from power, to a sense 
of the obligation that trust imposes ; and 
this may properly be called moral educa- 
cation. The word, morality, hb com¬ 
monly used, is frequently given a mean¬ 
ing much too shrunken and narrow to 
convey all that it really comprises. The 
standard dictionaries ‘ define morality as 
the duties of men in their social character. 
This clearly includes all the points of , 
right and wrong, that turn up in human 
intercourse, and is not confined simply 
to a right private behavior. 
The world calls the man moral and 
honorable who is not lewd and degraded 
in his tastes, who leads an irreproachable 
life in his family relations, and pays due 
respect to society, though elsewhere, in 
order to enrich himself, he may cause un¬ 
told suffering and misery by fraudulent 
dealing. It is this riew of morality that 
in this country, perhaps more than in any 
other, should receive special consider¬ 
ation. It should be inculcated on tbe 
young that, though clothed with the 
mantle of respectability, it is no less im¬ 
moral to defraud others by tricks and 
sharp dealing than it is to be a common 
thief, drunkard or outcast from society. 
-- 
OUR CORN PREMIUMS. 
Competitors for the several hundred 
dollars’ worth of premiums which the 
Rural New-Yorker offered last Spring 
for the largest yield from the Blount’s 
corn which we sent to them, will soon 
begin to make their reports. We ask 
them to be as explicit as possible in their 
statements, since we desire to publish all 
of them that we can find space for, from 
winch any information of value can be 
gleaned. Our friends will, therefore, 
please state the kind of soil; whether it 
is sandy or clayey; the kind of manure 
used; how often cultivated ; whether the 
culture was hilled or fiah; whether in 
hills or drills ; how far apart; what special 
causes affected it injuriously or other¬ 
wise ; the greatest number of ears to a 
stalk, etc. We would state that in the 
awarding of premiums the strictest im¬ 
partiality shall be observed. We have 
nothing to do with the names of our com¬ 
petitors. but only with the largest well- 
authenticated yields. 
-- 
The future demandfor our meat 
supply is a matter of interest and impor¬ 
tance to all stock owners. Are our presen t 
European sales simply a streak of good 
luck, or are they likely to continue? There 
can be no doubt but t! ul our transatlantic 
sales, instead of diminishing, will in¬ 
crease. The population of Europe is in¬ 
creasing much faster than its meat sup¬ 
ply, while the improvement in the condi¬ 
tion of the lower classes, which is occurring 
