9 
349 
4S8S 
would be much cheaper aud better to have a 
yard for the hens. It is cheaper to fence them 
in than to fence them out. We can sow Burr 
clover in their yard,and thus secure good green 
pasture for the hens. n. b. bridges. 
Starkville, Miss. 
BRIEFS. 
Celery —As usual, I find that Boston Market 
has kept better than any other variety, white 
or red. For winter use, celery should be sown 
about the end of April, or early in Ma}\ Sow 
in the open ground or a cold-frame, aud mere¬ 
ly shade a little from warm sunshine. 
M itloof is a large-leaved form of chicory, 
and a capital winter vegetable for use in sal¬ 
ads. Sown in May or June in rows like car¬ 
rots, it forms strong roots before Winter, and 
is not liable to run to seed. We lift it at the 
same time wo lift our other roots in the Fall, 
store the roots in sand in the cellar, and, as we 
pack a lot together heads up, in moist earth 
in deep boxes, and bring them into a warm, 
dark place, growth soon begins, and heads of 
y ellow leaves are pushed up. These are the 
parts we eat. 
Snap Bea ns —For the very earliest and latest 
I like "VI hite Flageolet, not because it is the 
best buan (for it isn’t); but because its pods are 
aljout fit to eat by the time most other sorts 
come into bloom, Mohawk and Valentine 
among green-fleshed sorts are my stand-bys. 
The stereotyped advice is -‘sow once every two 
weeks during Summer for succession.” Well I 
dou t go by that advice; instead, I sow twice 
every week from the end of April till the 
first of September, and I am never without 
beans from Juno till October anyway, aud I 
always have them brittle and tender. 
Succession Sowings. —Take peas or beans 
or corn, for instance: many people sow the 
mid-season and late varieties of any of these 
at the same time, and in this way secure a suc¬ 
cession. Well, this is au easy way of doing it. 
hut a very uncertain one. Take peas, for in 
stance. My plan is to sow Alpha twice a 
week from the end of March till into May, 
and Champion from early April on. My May 
Alphas will come in in time to catch on to the 
April Champions, and so on. 
Many V arietiks, except or experiments 
sake, are a nuisance. When you have deter¬ 
mined what variety bast suits your land, stick 
to it. Take com, for instance; you don't want 
an extra-early variety, un intermediate, aud a 
late. If you think again of three or four days 
in earl wees worth growing on extra early vari¬ 
ety, then well aud good; if not, sow but one 
variety, and each succeeding week till August 
put. in a few more seeds of it, and it will give 
you au uninterrupted supply of coni from 
July till October. No coru that I grow gives 
me better satisfaction than Concord. Now, 
neighbor Lucas complains that it isn’t as good 
with him as are some other kinH< 
Asparagus.— I began euttiug April 21st, 
and shall continue to cut till the first of July’ 
Asparagus is the farmer’s vegetable. As a 
farm crop it is one of the surest, most market¬ 
able aud profitable that he con grow. For 
home use there iR nothing better. Once set 
out, the plantation is good for 20 years, aud 
wo cau euitivute it entirely by horse power. 
It comes in iu Spring when wo have very 
little other, if anything, in the way of fresh 
green vegetables. Spinach in the open ground 
does not always winter well, neither do Ger¬ 
man greens; the cabbages stowed away over 
W inter are about used up, or have begun to 
rot, and the early cabbage won't be iu for 
some time yet. Unlike peas or beans that last 
so short a time, asparagus lasts iu good eut¬ 
tiug condition for nine or ten weeks, uud we 
needn’t bother about successions. Asparagus 
comes in at the time when we are busiest with 
our other crops, and then all the care it ueeds 
is to cut aud eat. Before the asparagus season 
is over we have cabbage aud cauliflower, peas, 
beans, spinach aud other vegetables. 
Farmers needn’t growl about bother with 
gardeu truck so far as asparagus is concerned. 
It is cheap enough to 1 login w ith. A thousand 
two-year-old plants cost only *S to $10, aud a 
thousand plants would set out a row 700 yards 
long, or seven rows 100 yards long. He may 
sow the seed and raise his own plants. Plants 
at three years old will yield a fair cutting; at 
four years a full crop. 
Long Island, N. Y. william falconer. 
I ii a \ e found that fall-sown spinach is easily 
killed with kindness. The books tolls us to give 
the young plants a slight covering of leaves or 
ether litter for winter protection. Three 
years ago, I covered a large bed after the 
most approved method, and every plant win¬ 
ter-killed. Some plants that came up by nc- 
cideut outside of the bed were saved. Smce 
then I have not protected fall-sown spinach, 
and almost every plant has survived. 
The rules of horticulture do uot always 
hold good. For instance, I read not long 
ago, an article ou ferns, written by one of 
our best, florists, in which the writer said 
that it was utterly impossible to grow ferns 
without thorough drainage of the pots ; 
still a lady of my acquaintance succeeds ad¬ 
mirably iu growing different species of this 
l>eautiful plant in large sea-shells, which have 
not the shadow of an aperture for drainage. 
Again we are told that it is useless to try to 
keep squashes through the Winter except in a 
dry, and moderately warm place. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact, however, I have kept the past 
Winter a sample of the Hubbard Squash in a 
room connected with the greenhouse, iu which 
tho atmosphere has often been so damp that 
the eaves of my father’s bam were lined with 
a row of the large mud nests of this interest¬ 
ing bird. But for several years past, I have 
not seen a single swallow’s nest, either on my 
father’s barn or elsewhere. It seems to me 
that the almost total disappearance of the 
swallow from our bams within so short a 
period, is a very strange circumstance. 
The neatest covering I have ever seen for 
benches in a green-house is moderately fine 
sifted gravel. It has a singular appearance, 
and the additional advantage that the roots 
of plants, creeping out of the ‘ bottom of the 
pots, do not attach themselves to it, as they 
do to sand or earth. e. s. goff. 
|)omologiavl. 
THE ARKANSAS BLACK APPLE. 
Specimens of the Arkansas Black Apple, 
illustrated at Fig. 209, were brought to this 
office by our friend, J. B. Rogers,of Essex Co., 
ARKANSAS BLACK APPLE. From Nature. Fig. 209. 
the condensed water has run down the walls, 
which are non much mildewed. This squash 
remained sound until after the first of April. 
Why is not the celeriao more esteemed? I 
regard it as one of the best vegetables we have 
for late winter aud spring use. The flavor is 
more marked and delicate than that of celery, 
and it lacks the striuginess that the latter 
vegetable has when cooked. Packed in saud 
during the Winter, the roots remain plump, 
aud the flavor becomes more delicate the 
longer they are kept. It may bo grown with¬ 
out hillmg up, aud is as easily kept as beets or 
parsnips 
What is the objection to covering the bulbs 
of onions with earth while they are growing 
N. J., who got them during a visit to St. 
Louis. The apple is large, conical, a little 
oue-sided and very heavy. Indeed, it is the 
heaviest apple of its size we have ever seen. 
Stem medium, three-quarters of an inch long, 
slender, planted in a narrow, regular cavity 
of medium depth. Calvx small, closed in a 
small, shallow, uneven basin. Color a dark 
red, shading on the sunny side almost into 
black, the whole surface irregularly marked 
with light-yellow dots. Tho cavity is a little 
inclined to have russety patches in it. Skin 
the densest and most resisting we have ever 
seen on an apple; where broken or cut the 
edges are almost as sharp as a knife. Core 
small and having few seeds a yellowish shade 
of white. Flesh very firm, fine-grained, 
breaking and juicy, aud though so hard, by 
ARKANSAS BLACK APPLE. (Cross Section.) Fig. 210. 
Last season I made the experiment of lulling 
up tho rows of a small plat of extra early rod 
ouious when the bulbs were about half grown. 
1 could not see that the size of tho bulbs was 
diminished, while the quality was eertaiiQy 
better than iu tho same variety grown in the 
usual way. The bulbs were more tender, 
sweeter aud milder. They were slightly soft, 
but kept nearly as well as those not hilled up. 
I am glad to note that public opinion is be¬ 
ing aroused against the wholesale destruction 
of the smaller birds to gratify tho demands of 
fashion. By the way, what bus become of the 
barn swallows? 1 can well remember when 
no meaus tough. Quality very good. Flavor 
pleasant, something like that of the King. A 
desirable market apple. 
Dijnslnuuin). 
BUTTER MAKING AS A BUSINESS AND 
AS A CHORE. 
While I am a farmer and interested in the 
welfare of every branch of farming, it seems 
to mo that the Rural is over-zealous in its 
defence of butter against oleomargarine. For 
my part, I consider the “oleo” much better 
than the Rural paints it, and the butter—the 
bulk of it—much worse. As between “oleo” 
and average butter, I prefer the oleo, and am 
confident that a large majority of those people 
who are limited to one or the other, have the 
same preference. To clear myself of any sus¬ 
picion of perverted taste or pecuniary bias on 
the subject, I will say that I, farming in Kan- 
sns, buy my butter of a dairy in Michigan, and 
have it sent me by express, a tub at a time, as 
I need it. Does the Rural realize what dis¬ 
gusting stuff country butter often proves to be, 
or how carefully the best oleo is prepared? The 
ingredients of the latter are no secret—they 
are nothing but good butter, tallow and lard. 
W hat better is the lat that comes out of a 
cow’s udder than the suet of her loins, or how 
is good lard, so manipulated as to be palat¬ 
able, more objectionable on the biscuit than 
in the biscuit? 
Let me outliue the history of that grade of 
butter which suffers most from competition with 
oleo. It is manufactured in small lots by tired 
housewives, ignorant of the best methods, pro¬ 
vided with inadequate appliances, having no 
ice in Summer, uo spring-house, no “milk 
room” but a tin safe in the kitchen. This mea¬ 
ger product, prepared at such a disadvantage, 
by hands perhaps already over-tasked by other 
work, is sold or traded to the “store,” where 
it is packed with other lots from the neigh oor- 
hood, of all colors, streaked, yellow and pale; 
the over-salted, under-salted, milky, hairy and 
bald all go together, and the mixture is corn 
signed to the city commission merchant. The 
bulk of that butter goes to the “bull butter” 
men; who mix it, rework it, wash it, chum it 
in sweet milk (as oleo is churned by the way) 
sweeten it, color it uniformly and make it 
quite presentable. They put it in a neat pack¬ 
age, just as oleo is packed, and mark it with a 
lying brand “Rock Spring Dairy”—when, in 
truth, it had its second birth in a sub-cellar of 
the city. Both oleo and “bull butter’ - are im¬ 
provements: they are frauds ouly when they 
pretend to be what they are not. 
There are cheats in all goods; shoddy cloth, 
paper leather, chicory coffee and oleo butter. 
I should like to see everything sold on its 
merits, and marked with its true name; but I 
have no expectation that butter can be given 
exceptional immunity ia this respect, or be 
freed from imitation by laws. The greatest 
possible help for it would seem to be in the 
hands of the butter-makers themselves, and 
would be simply to make all the butter “gilt- 
edged”! Then where would the oleo come in? 
Why, the dairymen in their independence of it 
could emulate the farmers of Colorado who are 
said, by irrigation, to carry their indifference 
to rain to the point of making faces at the 
clouds. 
Is there anything chimerical in the sugges¬ 
tion that all the butter that is made might just 
as well be made good: No appreciable ad¬ 
ditions would bo required to the “plant;” the 
same cows would do, the same pastures, the 
same feed and even less labor—and compared 
with all these the expeuseof necessary fixtures 
would be a bagatelle. The principal require¬ 
ment would be to bunch the cows into dairies 
large enough so that butter-making would be¬ 
come a business instead of a chore. 
Is it not the case that where people make a 
business of butter-making, they commonly 
make it good? Is it uot also the case that 
where they commonly make it as a “chore,” 
they commonly make it poor? The man who 
makes my butter doesn’t care whether oleo is 
branded at all, or colored green or brown, 
or given away. His clientage is secure. His 
goods are uniform,reliable,gilt-edged. He gives 
his mind to his business and finds enough in it. 
Wyandotte Co., Kans. edwin taylor. 
R- N.-Y.—Tho Rural has never uttered a 
single word in excuse of poor butter; it has 
printed numerous columns urging improve¬ 
ment in the manufacture of butter, and tell¬ 
ing how to accomplish it. It has never denied 
the existence of a vast, deal too much miser¬ 
able stuff, deserving the aameof grease rather 
than of butter ; but how can the manufacture 
of a genuine article be improved by the fraud¬ 
ulent substitution of a counterfeit commodity ? 
This fioor stuff generally comes from people 
who must make that or nothing, because they 
have neither the time, conveniences nor, above 
all, the knowledge and skill to turn out a - 
better article. The low prices they get for 
their butter, o\v mg to the competition with 
counterfeit products, instead of stimulatiug 
them to improvement, discourage them and 
lead to greater carelessness. Since the intro¬ 
duction of bogus butter has t he production of 
inferior genuine butter decreased beyond 
what might naturally have been expected 
from progress in dairy education, the intro¬ 
duction of improved dairy appliances, and the 
extension of the creamery system? Had 
bogus butter never been invented, would not 
till these agencies for improvement have been 
just as active and effective as they are now ? 
