SIPT4 
574 THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
TT Sharpless of the honor due him as the 
originator of the Sharpless Strawberry, one 
of the most valuable ever discovered, I cannot 
think that Mr. Wilder was far from correct 
in mentioning Ellwanger & Barry as the in¬ 
troducers, for they prepared the first illustra¬ 
tions and colored plates, first exhibited it at 
the Nurserymen’s Association, and gave it a 
plaee in public esteem by recommending it. 
While they were not the only ones who were 
introducing it, they were the principal men, 
and did more to make it popular than all 
others united. Charles a. green, 
Rochester, N. Y. 
STRATAGEM AND PRIDE OF THE MARKET PEAS. 
In the Rural of July 24 we notice the fol¬ 
lowing paragraph in a letter from Mr. F. S. 
Wilson, of Des Moines C-o M Iowa: “I see very 
little difference between Stratagem and Pride 
of the Market Peas.” We can only assume 
from Mr. Wilson’s remark that he has not 
grown the peas himself, because if he had done 
so he would have discovered that there is as 
much difference between Carter’s Pride of the 
Market and Carter’s Stratagem a.s there is be¬ 
tween Carter’s Telephone and Telegraph 
Peas. Telephone and Stratagem are both of 
a decidedly wrinkled form in the dry seed, 
whereas Pride of the Market ami Telegraph 
are very properly classed amongst the round- 
seeded varieties, and are quite distinct in ap¬ 
pearance. JAMES CARTER & CO. 
London. C. W., England. 
CORRESPONDENTS’ VIEWS. 
When my boys got to be 14 years old I laid 
aside every week one dollar for each of them 
to be considered as wages. When they wanted 
some new clothes I took them into town and 
let them pick out samples themselves and get 
just what they wanted. The money for the 
clothes came out of their wage money, and 
other expenses were figured in the same way. 
The plan worked well in every way. My boys 
got an idea of business that has stuck to them. 
Too many boys are just tanght to lie and steal 
by their fathers. I know men who tell then- 
boys they must not touch an apple, or a peach, 
or any other fruit. Who over yet heard of a 
boy who could keep away from fruit when he 
really wanted it and it was right before him ? 
I wouldn’t give a cent for such n boy oven if 
he could be found. A wise man will have a 
barrel of fruit opened and tell the boys to go 
and get. what they want. If they do this there 
won’t be any sneaking about to get an apple, 
or any trying to hide the fact after the apple 
has been taken. Be fail' and honest with the 
boys if you want them to make men. 
Passaic Co., N. J. S. H. b. 
I have a few grape-vines that I bought for 
Lady that are like “E. M. C.’s,” page 547. I 
shall dig them up. What few ripeu are of no 
account. They must have been disseminated 
because of their color, a small greenish white 
berry. The chickens will hardly eat them. I 
wish I could get wool waste as cheap as “H. 
H.,” page 547. Hair is one of the best fer¬ 
tilizers for potatoes, and I think wool would 
be as good. J. M. M. 
Green Cove {Springs, Fla. 
Washington is a grand city, full of libra¬ 
ries and schools. It is a fine place to visit, but 
who would want to bring up a family there ? 
The whole spirit and sentiment of thepla e are 
averse to work. The poisou of indolence is in 
the very air. The children early learn to 
shirk. Their education teaches them that 
hand labor is a little “off color.” The higher 
schools try to fit children for getting a living 
without work. This is true, to a great extent, 
of all large towns and cities. When fanners 
rush to the cities for an education for tbeir 
children they often do themselves a positive 
injury. Stay on the farm. There is an edu¬ 
cation there worth far more than that you can 
get in the city. e. d. 
Fairfax Co., Va. 
Farmers who try to buy wit for their boys 
will find that it costs more than it comes to. 
A neighbor of mine has found this out to his 
sorrow. He started some years ago on a new 
farm and worked like a slave to bring it up 
into shape. He had a large family of boys, 
and they were all sent to school, Summer and 
Winter. The man said that as he never had 
any chance himself he proposed to give his 
boys every chance they wanted. Every one 
of them had to have a horse and buggy to 
drive by the time he was eighteen, with money 
to spend at every dance within ten miles. The 
man bought a new farm, giving security on 
his old place. The family was strong-handed 
lu the house aud out, if the boys had only 
been brought up to work. They had the nicest 
chance in the world to get a fine place, but in¬ 
stead of that they lost the whole thing. Those 
boys would not settle down to work at all. 
They went driving round over the country 
and let their father hire help. The result was 
that he could not meet his payments aud had 
to give up. That is what comes of this way of 
thinking that our sons must have an easier 
time than we had. That is all nonsense. 
There is no reason why a farmer should make 
a slave of himself in order to keep his son in 
luxury. It is tough kuoeks, the rough rub¬ 
bing against the world, that make a man: 
and it is most mistaken kindness to try to pay 
a boy’s way for him. old fogy. 
Hardin Co., Ky. 
This year we have had all the fruit we could 
eat. We began with strawberries and are now 
eating apple sauce. We have fruit on the table 
at every meal; not a little taste for each one, 
but a regular dish. We have had no sick¬ 
ness. I figure that we have saved at least $20 
in the meat bill since May. We are all 
healthy and fat. Fruit-eating not only brings 
good temper and comfort, hut it saves dollars. 
Orange Co., N. Y, w. l. 
Different people have different hobbies re¬ 
garding health. I have mine. Some people 
want one kind of patent medicine and some 
another. I take my medicine in the shape of 
plenty of fruit, lots of cold water and a coarse 
towel. The fruit I eat. A part of the water 
I drink, but the most of it goes on the outside 
of the skin. I never could begin the day’s 
work right without a bath all over with cold 
water. In ten minutes I can sponge myself all 
over and rub myself iuto a glow. Those 10 
minutes do me more good than tm hour more 
in bed would do. When I come in to dinner, 
with clothes just dripping with perspiration, I 
don’t sit right down to the table as I am. In 
10 minutes I can rub myself all over with a 
coarse towel and change my underclothing. 
The wet clothes, hung out in the sun, will be 
all right for the next day’s change. I enjoy 
my dinner far more than I would if I sat down 
wet and hot from work, and the 10 minutes’ 
time is never lost. This practice pays me 
well, aud I would not discontinue it for any¬ 
thing. ( am well satisfied that there are 
dozens of diseases that can be nibbed out of 
the system with a coarse towel if they are only 
taken in time. Try it, farmer's, aud see if it 
doesn’t pay you. h. k. b. 
Worcester Co., Mass. 
Bund <To}ncs. 
FARMING IN THE MOUNTAINS OF 
WEST VIRGINIA. 
CHARLES A. GREEN. 
One of the advantages of traveling is the 
sense of satisfaction one feels with his own 
home on returning. We are apt to suspect 
that our farm is beset with undesirable 
features: it is too liigh or too low, too distant 
from the city, too saiuly, too clayey, too thist¬ 
ly, too stony. There is always some draw¬ 
back which at times we lose sight of, then 
again behold with all its depressing influences. 
If the reader is dissatisfied with his farm, let 
him come to these farms on the rough moun¬ 
tain sides of West Virginia, and he will be 
forever contented. The farmers of many of 
the fertile farms of the Eastern States, as well 
as the garden-like prairies, complain of small 
incomes and hard times, Let. t hem come up 
here and learn how people, often hnudicapned 
with large families of small children, or poor 
health, live on a tenth of their income. A 
farmer who has scratched a living here for 17 
years was visited yesterday. His shanty is 
400 feet above the Cheat River. Going up is 
like climbing a ladder, the rounds of which 
are rocks, stones and stumps. The path was 
made by a water-spout that burst near the 
farm house with a noise like the roar of a can¬ 
non, tearing holders and huge trees from the 
mountain-side. The farmer with two little 
boys and two girls, the elder 15 years of age, 
is plauting beans in a field large in their eyes, 
but to me like the corner of a kitchen garden. 
He marks the ground with a plow that re¬ 
sembles those used iu Egypt in the time of 
Joseph and the seven years’ famine. It had 
been a shovel-plow, but the point had been re¬ 
duced by wear until it was about the size of 
my hand. The soil was lumpy and soddy,and 
might have been as well prepared by the old 
long-nosed breed of swine. Hill-sides adjoin¬ 
ing, as stec| > as the steepest roof, were planted 
to eoru and potatoes. I would not risk culti¬ 
vating them, fearing my horses would misstep 
and roll to the bottom. 
Squirrels wore destroying the freshly planted 
crops, though fought with poison as we fight 
rats. Grasshoppers cut down the pastures and 
meadows, and storms make gullies through 
the yielding earth. A long, lank man was 
splitting rails under the scorching sun for a 
fence to keep the cows out of the corn. No 
barns were visible—simply coops and cribs. 
If this farmer were called upon to pay a debt 
of $10, it would trouble him more to pay it 
than it would a New York farmer to pay $500. 
And yet this man is happy and contented. 
He knows of no better country, and would 
not exchange his farm for one in the Genesee 
Valley, with the New York Central Railroad 
given in place of a ehromo. He is a dignitary 
in the village church, and delights in telling 
how he “ousted a dirty-mouthed clergyman,” 
showing up his judicial capacity in managing 
the affair, shedding tobacco juice right aud 
left meanwhile, in a way to excite astonish¬ 
ment as to where the saliva all came from. 
He is sallow, long, lank and frowzy, with 
scant hair, straggling chin whiskers, long, 
bony hands, and yet, withal, he has an intelli¬ 
gent twinkle of the eyes, and is a good talker 
in his own vernacular. 
* * 1 Pertatuns es my crap. Ye can grow three 
hills of pertaturs wher ye can grow two of 
corn, and ye get three leetle ears of coni from 
a hill and half a peck o’ pertaturs. All the folks 
buys pertaturs, must hev pertaturs. I live on 
pertaturs. Pertaturs is the best crop as I 
grows.” How he gets his pertaturs down the 
mountain sides is more than I can explain. 
“Why don’t you plant the hillsides to grape¬ 
vines, my friend i You have just the soil, cl im- 
ate and exposure desired.” “Yas,” he replies, 
“but the law won’t let us make wine, and the 
folks hereabouts can’t eat grapes by the acker. 
But there’s Bill Bascomb over thar' as has 
made a heap o' money at it.” The truth is the 
man has no money to buy vines with, and 
lacks the necessary enterprise. It is a wonder¬ 
ful country for fruit, aud many are succeed¬ 
ing iu that line. This farmer sells his apples 
at $2.50 to $3.50 per barrel iu his village. He 
paid $2.50 for three apple trees. The price 
was $3, but $2.50 was all he had, aud the agent 
wisely accepted it in full. 
Rollsburg, W. Va. 
farm 0f.oa.oimj. 
THAT MANURE QUESTION AGAIN. 
Crude manure shouldn't be covered; surface 
manure as a trap for catching atmospheric 
fertility; best effects from surface manur¬ 
ing; manure as a mulch; a lost opportu¬ 
nity'; shortcomings of crude manure 
plowed under. 
the surface uever agaiu acquires the same un¬ 
yielding condition as before, blit Is disintegra¬ 
ted and crumbled. Of course these changes 
are very gradual; but not nearly so slow as 
one not accustomed to carefully observing 
them would naturally suppose. I have had 
occasion to reclaim some little pieces of al¬ 
most impermeable hard-pan, from which the 
surface-soil had been removed iu grading my 
grounds, and bave had an admirable oppor¬ 
tunity for noting the effects of different 
methods of treatment had my attention been 
called to the subject in season to have gone at 
the business systematically. As it is, I have 
no exact comparative data, but a much larger 
fuud of opinion than of proven facts to sup¬ 
port my theories. 
But to return to the second case: In this 
case the manure was applied in a crude, prac¬ 
tically undigested state, notwithstanding its 
frequent turning, and mixed mechanically 
with the cold soil, just when it was most 
needed to give the crop a good start. Plow¬ 
ing, ban-owing and cultivating the soil till 
doomsday will not convert a single particle of 
the manure into plant food. It may distribute 
it all through the soil where the rootlets may 
find it, but it is still unassimilablo until acted 
upon by some decomposing agent. Heat aud 
moisture are the ageuts we uuseien itic ob¬ 
servers recognize as most important. There 
is generally moisture enough in the soil but 
very rarely heat enough to accomplish this 
object. The result, is that only so much of the 
manure as is brought to. or very uearly to, the 
surface actually becomes available food, and 
that much slower than when more exposed. 
We hear a great deal said about the leaching 
of the manuro through the soil. It is a good 
deal more apt to leach out of the cold, damp 
subsoil than out of the more open, permeable 
surface soil. I might fill a whole page of the 
Rural with accounts of observations tending 
te confirm these conclusions but I trust I have 
written enough to awaken a lively discussion, 
or to draw the fire of some wiser investigator. 
o. s. BLISS. 
The hay crop is the chief crop of New 
England. There is more money in it for the 
labor expended, than there is in any other. 
Selling the whole hay crop is a dear way of 
making money. Most of the hay should be 
fed out on the farm, aud the manure put back 
agaiu on the land. The surplus can be sold 
in this way without robbing the land. 
Prospect, Me. f. k. l. 
The question submitted to the readers of 
the Rural of July 31 iu regard to the effect 
of manure spread in February, as compared 
with that spread iu April, is a very interest¬ 
ing and important one, though not entirely 
novel. Analogous—though hardly parallel- 
cases have been observed and noted before, 
very noticeable differences between the effects 
of surface manuring—more especially upon 
grass lands in Winter and in .Spring—have 
often been observed and discussed. I am sate 
isfied, from much experience and more obser¬ 
vation, that it is a gross mistake to cover any 
manure not digested by the use of chemicals, 
with earth. I arn not sufficiently versed in 
chemistry to understand why it is so, but I am 
certain that a larger proportion of the ele¬ 
ments of plant growth are set free from the 
same amount of crude manure when exposed 
to the free action of air and water than when 
covered by the earth, though hut very lightly. 
I have long entertained thiRopinion, though I 
do not know how well founded it may be, that. 
If the atmosphere does really contribute any¬ 
thing toward plant growth, manure upon the 
surface of the ground is the most effective 
trap for catching it, and that it acquires aid 
from that source in its own more complete 
digestion. Of course, the best effect upon the 
soil from surface manuring Is produced when 
the manure is kept, so moist as to be constantly 
giving out its soluble elements in the drip. Iu 
the case under consideration, the spread man¬ 
ure had been for two months dissipating its 
plant food, which had been taken up by the 
soil below it from the permeating solution. 
Meantime the manure in the heap had lost 
more or less by evaporation anil fermentation, 
and gained nothing from the atmosphere. In 
the one case the greater part of the plant food 
had been marie readily assimilable and dis¬ 
tributed all through the soil, where every root¬ 
let was able to find its due proportion. The 
friable condition of the soil was doubtless 
largely due to the action of the manure as a 
mulch, but not wholly. No amount of mulch¬ 
ing with a clean material will render a poor, 
tenacious soil friuble, though, by keeping it 
moist, It may render it less resistant to the 
plow, and more workable generally. But 
when the mulch consists of manure the whole 
effect is materially different. The pores be¬ 
come filled to a greater or less extent with the 
manure deposited by the water, aud the co¬ 
hesive power of the particle is reduced very 
considerably. Once acted upon by the frost 
£klt> Crops. 
CLOVER AS A FERTILIZER. 
WALDO F. BROWN. 
Objections to clover hay; ten years' experi¬ 
ment ; a two years' rotation ; worth of clo¬ 
ver turned under per acre; how to avoid 
failures in clover; when to sow clover ; evil 
of pasturing clover in the Fall and early 
in the Spring; Mammoth Clover most 
profitable. 
For more than a quarter of a century 
I have followed the rule of sowing clover on 
all small graiu, and yet, except when I cut it 
for seed, I make hut little use of the crop ex¬ 
cept as a fertilizer. Iu the system of farming 
followed in our Miami Valley we need but 
little hay, for every farmer has each year a 
large straw stack and abundant supply of corn 
fodder, which enable him to winter his stock 
well without hay, if he so desires. My objec¬ 
tions to clover hay are: first., the difficulty iu 
curing it well, ripening as it does with us early 
in June before the heat of Summer has come 
to dry the land thoroughly and give us good 
hay weather; and, second, that the work of 
cutting aud curing comes at the busiest season 
of the year when our corn aud other cultivated 
crops need all our attention in order that we 
may have them clean aud in good condition 
before wheat harvest. 
For the first, fifteen years in which I man¬ 
aged the farm I now own, I bought a large 
amount of manure at the village two miles 
distant, to keep my land up to a high state of 
fertility. As I noticed from year to year the 
fertilizing effect of clover, and compared it 
with manure, I became convinced that I could 
keep my land up as well with clover as by the 
purchase of manuro and with much less cost 
and labor. Ten years ago I set. apart twenty 
acres of my best land for an experimental plot, 
to determine whether I could grow a crop of 
grain every year and keep up the fertility 
with clover. I adopted a two years’ rotationi 
begiuing with wheat with which clover was 
sown, the latter being allowed to make all the 
growth it would after harvest, being neither 
pastured nor cut but plowed down either iu 
the Full or the next Spring. I find that unless 
the season proves very dry, I can grow a crop 
of clover to its full development, after bar- 
