1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER.' 
A Deposit of Bat Guano. A Stone Whip.— The Chicago Record mense schools of these fishes feed all 
M. M. h Alva, Okla.—We have discovered 'tells of the mule drivers who guide their Summer in the shoal waters of the small 
b "Lf. U ,?. n °i n long teams over the stony mountains of bays and inlets along the coast of Vir- 
Feru: ginia and neighboring regions. No fish 
Beside his long whip, which is handled that I have ever tasted, not excepting 
with great skill and accuracy, he carries the famous Brook trout, is better flavor- 
a bag full of small stones as an auxiliary, „ -_, T . .. 
and shies them at the leaders with an aim f* 01 m ° 1G frGG fr ° m bones ’ From tbe 
that David himself could not have excelled. Iatter P art of the Summer until the 
Indeed, he can touch the tip of the ear of water begins to get cold in October, is 
the leader of his eight-mule team nine the time to catch them. Gill nets are 
times out of 10 with a pebble not bigger 
than a pigeon’s egg, and can hit any other 
part of the body of any other beast in the 
team with unerring skill. 
We have known western drivers to 
3.76 practice this plan—sometimes with little marshes to the deep water, often jump- 
Peruvian guano is not extensively potatoes. They throw at the leaders, in £ a foot or two above the surface, 
used in this country now, yet for some and just as the missile strikes the horse. They feed almost entirely at night, and 
purposes it is highly prized. It con- shout his name. This makes him start this is the time to set the nets near a 
or mind the lines quickly. 
a cave which has been only partially ex 
plored, but sufficiently to enable us safely 
to estimate the amount of the deposit 
available, at not less than 200 carloads 
within the next six months. We have so 
far been unable to ascertain the com* 
mercial value of the product. How does 
it compare with other guano? 
Ans.— Nine samples of bat guano 
from Texas averaged, as compared 
with Peruvian guano, as follows: 
Nitro¬ 
gen. 
Peruvian guano ....7.85 
Bat guano .6.47 
Pot¬ 
ash. 
2.61 
1.31 
Phos. 
Acid. 
15.26 
commonly used, as the fatbacks are very 
easily alarmed by any noise, and will 
rush at the slightest sound from their 
feeding grounds in the edge of the 
tains not only the excrement of birds 
which live largely on fish, but also the 
bones of dead birds. This, with bones 
of dead fish, give it a high proportion 
of phosphoric acid. Bat guano also 
contains some of the dead bodies of 
bats, and will be bought on guaranteed 
analysis by most fertilizer manufactur- 
Process Butter. —Dairy Commission¬ 
er Grosvenor, of Michigan, tells how this 
stuff is prepared: 
Unsalable dairy or creamery butter, 
bought at a low price in the Spring and 
Summer, is melted and the butter fat 
drawn off. The curd originally present 
school and try to drive them into it, 
where they are held by their gills, if not 
so small as to go through the meshes. 
I have helped catch thousands in this 
way, sometimes working in the water all 
night. It is royal fun. But their habit 
of jumping makes it possible to catch 
them in a boat. By carefully moving a 
337 
COLD 
Is made n using or selling the Nagley Automatic 
TRANSPLANTER. 
Used in transplanting Tobacco. Cabbage, Celery, 
Tomatoes, Sugar Beets, Sweet Potatoes, Strawber- 
berrles and other plants. Potato planting attachment 
extra. Absolutely guaranteed to do the work. Write 
for prices. NAGLEY MFC. CO., Lyons, N. Y. 
COUNTRY 6ENTLEMAN STRAWBERRY. 
#50 in Gold for First and #35 for Second Prize 
for the TEN HEAVIEST BERRIES grown in 1901. 
Berries U >4 inches in circumference. Perfect flower, 
shape and foliage. Offered for the ilrst time at $2 
per dozen, delivered free. R. N. LEWIS, 
Red Hook, N. Y. 
QWEET POTATO PLANTS - Jersey Yellow, 
#1.50 per 1,000. Vineland Bush, *1 per 100, by mail. 
Also other varieties. Send for circular. 
FRANK S. NEWCOMB, Vineland, N.J. 
ers. They will demand, first of all, a * n the butter is rejected, thereby removing low skiff into a school that is feeding, 
guarantee of the soluble nitrogen in the ^ilk^s nl-'added To this^utter * nd then makIn S a by striking the 
guano. The experiment station at Still- fat and stirred in so as to be evenly mixed Doat or the water with an oar, or by any 
water, Okla., will analyze the guano for throughout, when the whole mass is cooled other means, they will make a wild rush, 
you. These deposits are very deceptive. 
They are usually made in quite thin lay¬ 
ers on large mounds in the cave. It ap¬ 
pears to be a solid hill of guano, but the 
proportion is often not much greater 
than the rind of a thick-skinned orange. 
quickly, so as to prevent the separation of leaping clear over the skiff sometimes, 
the “butter oil.” This milk soon sours. and some of tliem landing in it Iq Qn ^ 
the casein therein is coagulated, and thus , , , _ 
there is provided an artificial curd which evenin & m y IO er caught 333 of these 
contains a percentage of nitrogen about fishes in a small skiff in this way, over 
the same as that of the curd of real dairy and about his oyster beds, having no one 
The Hope Farm man will miss it if he 
tries to raise a garden where those hogs 
have rooted; they will so puddle the 
ground that it will take it a long time 
to get in shape. I have been there sev¬ 
eral times, and even on our light lands 
it takes two years at least to get land 
in good shape. c. f. a. 
Claremont, Va. 
R. N.-Y.—We judge that this is right. 
The soil in the pig yard is packed down 
hard as a floor. We think that it could 
be plowed and limed, and then left to 
break up so as to grow a good crop of 
corn. After that we think it would be 
suitable for a garden. Lime has a re¬ 
markable effect on these tough, hard- 
packed soils. After all, the hen is the 
best animal to go before a garden, and 
the worst one to get into it. 
Short Stories. 
Texas Farm and Ranch prints this 
bit of rare good sense: 
If a man should hire a lot of laborers, 
and point to the field and say “go to 
work,” without direction or supervision, 
he would be called a fool, fit for an idiot 
asylum; and yet thousands of men do just 
as silly a thing, when they depend on mere 
physical energy for results. The various 
members of the body, the limbs and bones 
and muscles, are common laborers, and 
their work amounts to little if the over¬ 
seer, the brain, shirks its duty. 
That is true, and it is also true that 
the farmer makes a mistake when he 
does not go to the scientists for help. 
These men study the forces of Nature 
for him, and he can use their knowledge 
if he will. 
Irish Silage. —The following note is 
found in the Farmer’s Gazette, published 
in Dublin, Ireland: — 
The silage system has of late years been 
but very little heard of in this country. 
Fifteen or 16 years ago considerable quan¬ 
tities of green grass were preserved by 
this system in many parts of the coun¬ 
try, but nowadays the plan is but very 
little availed of, though there are still a 
good many districts in which farmers re¬ 
sort to this method of preserving the 
produce of some of their rough meadows. 
Judged by the trying test of the survival 
of the fittest, silage-making has proved 
anything but the great improvement on 
hay-making that some of its advocates 
were at one time wont to claim for it. 
Indian corn is not grown in Ireland, 
and “silage” there means green grass 
put in pits or stacks without drying. No 
wonder such stuff “is little heard of.” 
America is the great silage nation. 
butter. The butter fat of this renovated 
butter does not materially differ from or¬ 
dinary butter fat in any of its chemical 
properties. 
Our name for this stuff is deviled but¬ 
ter. It is in one way a more dangerous 
fraud than oleo. In fact, it is likely 
to help him. They are thought to jump 
better sometimes if a lantern is kept in 
the boat, but I never noticed much dif¬ 
ference in this respect. When the salt 
water is full of phosphorescence, and 
the fishes are jumping and rushing 
that a good deal of oleo gets into market through the water in all direction's, it is 
in the “process” butter packages. 
A Hen’s Hearing. —We have heard of 
the “eye of the eagle,” the scent of the 
bloodhound, “the nose of the rat,” and 
other statements which mark various 
animals as specialists in the use of one 
sense or another. Now we are told that 
hens have a wonderfully keen ear. At 
Monon, Ind., dining cars are run on to a 
side track and swept out. The hens 
ranging in the vicinity gather around 
these cars for their dinner with clock¬ 
like regularity. The story goes: — 
These Wabash hens, so acute is their 
sense of hearing, can distinguish the 
whistles of the dining-car trains from 
those of the local passenger and the freight 
trains, or even from that of a locomotive 
running wild, and that they sit placidly 
on their nests or scratch gravel in a non¬ 
chalant way upon the approach of all loco¬ 
motives save those pulling the dining cars. 
And this is not all. These same hens can 
distinguish the whistles of the locomotives 
on the dining-car trains at incredible dis¬ 
tances, so that if one of these trains is 20 
minutes late, for instance, intending pas¬ 
sengers do not look at the blackboard bul¬ 
letin, but merely note the distance of the 
hens picking their way toward the cross¬ 
ing. It is asserted, moreover, that Hoos- 
iers thereabouts of a mathematical turn 
of mind have an easy system of setting 
their clocks and watches to railroad time 
by the movements of these sharp-hearing 
hens. 
Had we been asked to name the sharp¬ 
est ear we would, with our limited ob¬ 
servation of animal life, have suggested 
the ear of the hired man when the time 
for blowing the dinner horn has arrived! 
At any rate what may be called the 
“stomach nerve” always quickens the 
ear! 
Another Fish Story. —Last year a 
story was told in The R. N.-Y. about 
catching fishes by alarming them so that 
they jumped into boats. It is my turn 
to tell about something of this kind that 
I, too, know to be true, in rowing boats 
in some of the narrow streams of Kan¬ 
sas I have had bass of several species 
jump in the boats in their alarm and 
haste to get away. But here, along the 
Atlantic coast, we have the champion 
jumping fish, except the giant tarpon. 
It is commonly known here as fatback, 
and farther south as Jumping mullet. 
In size it ranges from six to eight inches, 
and is about the shape of a Speckled 
trout, and is the color of a herring. Im- 
a beautiful and exciting scene. 
H. E. VAN DEMAN. 
For the land’s sake, use Bowker’s Fer¬ 
tilizers. They enrich the earth.— Ada). 
Q EEI) POTATOES—It. N.-Y. No. 2 and Carman No.3 
w 7,000 bushels to offer; lirst-class. Price low. One 
bushel or a carload. A. J. Norris, Cedar Falls. Ia. 
QARM1N NO. 3 $0.50 
SEED POTATOES. * per bbl. 
Sir Walter Raleigh and Early Bovee $4.00 per bbl., all 
bbls. 4 bu. Dewey, the great cropper, per bbl. $fi 00 . 
Wholesale list free. GEO. A. BONNKLL.Waterloo.N.Y 
The Slag Phosphate 
is not in the Fertilizer Trust. □ We are 
still selling at old prices. Orders must 
be sent in early to receive prompt 
shipment. Address 
JACOB REESE, 
400 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
Nursery Stock 
can be made more profitable by forcing 
rapid growth so as to bring the trees 
into market a year earlier. This is done 
by the judicious use of 
Nitrate of Soda 
in combination with other agricultural 
chemicals upon the young trees. Rapid, 
healthy and certain growth assured. 
Try it. Write for free pamphlets to 
John A. Myers, 12-OJoh u St., New 
York. A 'Urate for sale by fertilizer deal¬ 
er's everywhere. 
Write at once for List of Dealers . 
Agricultural Chemicals. 
For lowest prices on Muriate and Sulphate of Potash, 
Kainit, other Agricultural Chemicals, Acid Phosphate, etc., 
address 
He American Agricultural Ciiemical Go 26 Broadway, New York, Jf. Y. 
>uL.Uiu.L\lm.L.Uu 
A RE always rich in 
ammonia and potash, 
and are, therefore, espe¬ 
cially adapted for Market 
Gardeners' use, and give 
phenomenal results in 
growing large crops of 
superior quality Potatoes, 
Onions, Cabbages, Mel¬ 
ons, Squashes, and gen¬ 
eral market truck. 
