S88 THE RURAL MEW-YORKER. JUME.lf 
even by the addition of great quantities of 
inert absorbents, with me shows good effects 
from the first application. It is surprising to 
see how quickly young corn plants will find 
it when merely plowed in moderate quantities 
into washed sterile clay soil. There is no 
doubt in tny mind that grain-fed dung is 
quicker in its effects than dung from cattle 
fed on hay or straw alone. The addition of 
the urine has a marked influence on the activ¬ 
ity of the mauure. c. s. o. 
Foristell, Me. 
Items of evidence showing that Hoisted ns 
combine to a wonderful degree the character¬ 
istics of beef and milk cattle, are the weights 
of the following descendants of Empress:—Hol¬ 
land milk record, 109 pounds in one day; 
American milk record, 19,714 pounds! ounces, 
in a year. Her dam’s record in Holland is re¬ 
ported to be 114 pounds in one day. 
Founds. 
Empire, out of Empress.weighs 2,450 
Emporium, 7 mos. 1 day old, out of Empress, 850 
Pledge, fi yrs old. out of gr. daughter of Empress, 1,720 
Bull calf, day he was calved, out of gr. (laugh 
ter of Empress. 188 
Ofanto, 6 mos. old, sired by gT. son of Empress, 702 
Oswego, N, Y. DUDLEY MILLER. 
As a soiling crop, rye has some merits, but I 
do not consider it by any means equal to 
clover or coru where these can lie grown suc¬ 
cessfully. A fair crop of hay can be made from 
rye, if it is cut at the right time—just when 
coming into bloom. It will make a profitable 
hay crop in localities where Timothy and 
clover do not succeed. It would make a good 
hay plant for the South. For Winter and 
Spring pasture for sheep or calves, rye is ex¬ 
cellent. It can be pastured with us, in the 
Spring until Blue Grass and clover are well 
started, and then make a fair crop of grain. 
We find the hardiness of rye to be one of its 
strongest recommendations. It will grow and 
flourish about anywhere, and on soils too poor 
to grow beans. k. b. 
Kankakee Co., Ills. 
I have eaten fresh grapes of my own raising 
nine months of the past year, commencing 
with Champion and ending with Diana. The 
grajH>s were kept in hard-wood sawdust, in 20- 
pound grape baskets in an ordinary cellar. 
Victoria cuttings fail to grow alongside of 
others. Buds did not even swell while those 
of other vines grew. The buds were not well 
developed or matured. T. a. p. 
So. Bend, Ind. 
In putting up a wire fence the corner post 
must be well braced to stand the pull given in 
stretching. We take a brace 14 feet long and 
put in the second post so that, the brace will 
just come to its foot. Then stretch a wire 
from the foot of corner post to the top of sec¬ 
ond post. Place top end of brace just under 
where the top wire w ill come. Posts braced 
in this way, will not “raise.” To stretch the 
wires, w T e brace the corner posts as above de¬ 
scribed. Drive a wagon about eight or 10 feet 
past the post you want to stretch to, with the 
inside wheel on a liue with the fence. Let the 
tongue down, and drive a post-bar into the 
ground at the end of the tongue. Fasten the 
tongue at the bar in the ground—a stay chain 
is best for the purpose. Put a piece of board 
or a wagon-jack under the hind axle of the 
wagon so that the wheel nearest the line will 
clear the ground. Fasten the wire to the 
spoke or hub and turn the wheel until the 
wire is as tight as desired, and then staple it 
securely. My man and I have stretched and 
stapled a mile of fence—three wires—in this 
way in one day. On level land one quarter of 
a mile can be stretched at one time. 
Chase Co., Kan. W. L. B. n. 
Some agricultural papers tell us that ashes 
sifted over currant bushes, will kill or drive 
away the currant worms. I have tided it four 
times with good unleached hickory ashes, and 
it w ill not do any such thing. My worms fat¬ 
ten on this treatment. My plan is to pick off 
every leaf that has turned red and rolled up, 
and burn them. If you can’t do it yourself, 
hire some boys to help you. “Workman” 
talks about “oniony” milk in a recent issue. 
He can make sure of one thing at least—he has 
been eating genuine butter for once. No 
“oleo” would be flavored in that way. Don’t 
dig up the garlic, let it stay and thus make a 
sure test for pure butter. Or would you rath¬ 
er have the “oleo” without the gallic? 
Brightwood Ind. w. H. L. 
Sl)cqi 
Notes from the Western New York Farm. 
LAMB FEEDING. 
EARLY VS. LATE-CUT HAY. 
Although I have before spoken of the ad¬ 
vantages of early-cut hay, yet as the haying 
season is at hand, and the difference is so much 
in favor of early cutting, I again refer to this 
subject. I have in mind tw r o lots of clover 
hay: the one was of large growth with coarse 
stalks, and yet the lambs ate it clean, even to 
the coarsest stalks. The other was much filler 
and apparently much better, but the lambs 
would eat nothing but the leaves and heads. 
On tasting. I found the coarse stalks of the 
one filled with sweetness: stalks of the other, 
though much smaller, were coarse and woody. 
On inquiry I learned that the first, for fear of 
lodging, w as cut a little before it was in full 
bloom; while the other was left until regula¬ 
tion time, or until a half or more of the heads 
“were brown.” The first was cheap at the 
price (Ss.tM) per ton), and lambs would have 
wintered in goad order if fed only such hay 
and plenty of roots, and kept iu warm stables. 
The other would have been dear at. 80.00, and 
the lambs would not eat enough of it to have 
kept iu good condition. The sume is true of 
Timothy hay, only in a more marked degree, 
because a larger proportion of its nutritive 
value is contained in the stalks and stems. 
My father was once a firm believer in the 
superior value of well-matured hay, and would 
cut his only when at leu-st one-half the seed 
was ripe enough to grow. Once, when he was 
from home, I commenced the haying, and cut 
several tons when in full bloom. On his return 
the haying was stopped until, as lie thought, 
the proper season; when Winter came 1 was 
told that the reason for the stock eating the 
early-cut hay so much the more readily was 
because of its want of substance, making it 
necessary for them to eat the more of it. I 
could convince him that it w r as because of its 
greater palatabiiity, and that it was really 
better, only by an actual feeding test of several 
weeks’ duration. 
The philosophy of the difference is plain 
enough when wo consider the sequence of 
growth. The plant takes its mineral matter, 
including its phosphoric acid, its uitrogen, 
hydrogen, and oxygen, entirely from the soil, 
while its carbon comes mostly (probably en¬ 
tirely) from the air. Sugar, gum. starch, and 
woody-fiber, while, differing so widely in diges¬ 
tibility and nutritive value, are strikingly 
similar iu chemical composition, and are 
evolved in the process of growth the one from 
the other. When just coining into bloom 
grass contains a large proportion of sugar and 
gum, the more easily digestible; hut these, as 
the plants mature, are rapidly changed into 
starch, and later into woody fiber. In this 
condition not only do they become much less 
digestible and lose much of their nutritive 
value, but much of the nitrogenous matter is 
locked up in the close embrace of the woody 
fiber. 
It is really strange to hear the superiority of 
early cut hay so universally conceded by all 
cureful feeders, while nearly all hay is al¬ 
lowed to stand over until rijs.'. Probably 
one reason of this is, that with the most im¬ 
proved machinery it takes several days, and 
iu bad weather, weeks even, to cut all the 
meadow, and when people wait before liegiu- 
uiug until the grass is wholly lit, much of the 
crop is sure to get far too ripe before it is cut. 
Since I have so often in my own experience 
proven that lambs will not thrive to the best 
advantage on anything but the earliest cut 
hay, I would strongly urge upon every one in¬ 
tending to engage in lamb feeding, the im¬ 
portance of closely watching the meadows, 
and of cutting the elover even a little before 
the fields are in “full color.” 
Within two weeks we shall be cutting 
clover on an early rich field, and shall 
probably cut it three times this Summer, espec¬ 
ially “lamb bay.” It excels everything else 
for young lambs. 
The field of hand-picked Diehl-Mediterran¬ 
ean Wheat is a sight. It was sown with a 
scant bushel per acre, but is now over waist- 
high. as “thick as a mat,” and bids fair to go 
away above 40 bushels per acre. This is a 
magnificent wheat, and its introduction has 
been worth millions to the country; yet being 
a crossbred, it still sports, and requires care¬ 
ful selection by hand-picking to fix its type so 
as to be uniform. This field lias been hand¬ 
picked twice, and I am anxious to see if it 
will still show' “bald heads.” 
Yesterday I tried the Aspinwall potato- 
planter, made at Three llivers, Mich. It opens 
the furrow, drops the pieces of potato, one in 
a place, and at any distance from 10 to IK) 
inches apart, puts a little soil, then the fertil¬ 
izer, and then more soil on the seeds, leaving 
a ridge from two to three inches above the 
level of the surface. It does not miss one bill 
in 50, and seldom drops more than one piece 
in a place. One man and a team planted, 
using phosphate, five acres in a day easily, 
and could have done much more if crowded. 
I mention this, not to boom the machine or to 
puff the makers, but I can recognize merit 
w'hen I see it, and this machine shows the re¬ 
sult of much study, and is n jewel to every 
person raising a half dozen acres of this valu¬ 
able crop each year. It has almost human in¬ 
telligence, and I say success to the man who 
invented it. J. s. woodward. 
Niagara Co., N. Y. 
“WITCHES IN THE CHURN.” 
T. D. CURTIS. 
A correspondent writing from Cicero, 
N Y., says that he used a portable creamery 
during the Summer with good results, but 
w'hen cold weather came on he at times found 
it impossible to make the butter come. The 
milk was set at a temperature of 40 degrees 
for 12 hours, and the cream was kept at 00 
degrees until slightly sour, ami then churned 
at 02 degrees. He wanks to know what was 
the matter with the creamery, as when the 
milk was scalded and set iu pans there was no 
difficulty in churning the cream. 
There was nothing the matter with the 
creamery, so far as appears from these facts. 
The trouble was evidently with the temper¬ 
ature of the cream. As a rule, milk is more 
albuminous iu Winter, or when it is cold in 
the Fall and Spring, thau it is in the Summer. 
Chilling the cows by standing out in the cold, 
or by leaving a warm stable to encounter the 
cold air, or by gorging with ice-cold water, 
causes an excessive secretion of albumen iu 
the milk. Any sudden shock to the cow’s sys¬ 
tem, sickness of the cow, and other derange¬ 
ment for some reason cause this excess of 
albumen. Hence, we suspect t hat our corres¬ 
pondent's cow's in some way suffered from ex¬ 
posure to the cold; that this increased the 
proportion of albumen in the milk: that this 
albumen adhered to the butter globules and 
interfered with churning; that in consequence 
his cream was viscous and ropy and that 
scalding the milk when set in puns coagulated 
the albumen and left the butter globules free 
or freer to unite and coalesce iu the form of 
butter. If the milk had been scalded before 
setting in the creamery, it would have churned 
the same as when set in the pans—although wo 
do not know precisely what the effect is of 
ruuulng the temperature down to 40 deg.; in 
his pans it probably did not go so low. If he 
had diluted his cream with warm water quite 
considerably, we think It would have facilita¬ 
ted the churning, as would also churning 
at a higher temperature. If lie has such trou¬ 
ble again, let him try tin.' temperature of 04 or 
66 degrees, anti up oven as high us 70 degrees. 
It will do no harm, even if the butter does 
not come; if it does, bo will learn something. 
We have recently got some new light on 
the character of the butter globule. It has 
appeared ill the report of the New York 
Experiment Station. During last Summer, 
Dr. Babcock was experimenting with milk 
fate and other fats, and found that the milk 
l'ats are liquid globules, pure and simple,with¬ 
out membranous covering, and that at a cer¬ 
tain temperature they will break up by churn¬ 
ing, without changing their appearance iu the 
First Floor. 
Fig. 254. (See first page.) 
Second Floor. 
Fig. 255. (See first page.) 
