1P00 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
831 
SOME NEEDS OF PORTO RICO. 
Great Demand for Trained Teachers. 
One cannot reside long in Porto Rico, nor even 
travel extensively on the Island, without realizing 
that it has sadly lagged behind in the march of civili¬ 
zation. My first impression of its great undeveloped 
agricultural resources, received on a sea journey 
around the Island eastward from the capitol, San 
Juan, to the busy little port of Arroyo on the south, 
was deepened by subsequent residence and frequent 
trips. Barring cane growing on the large estates, 
agricultural methods and tools are of the crudest. The 
native plow, largely used in the interior, exhibits 
scarcely a perceptible improvement upon the crooked 
si»ck of primitive man. This implement, with one 
clumsy handle, and the point shod with an iron 
sleeve, is the sole breaking tool of hundreds of culti¬ 
vators, while tne majority of the rural peasantry lack 
both plow and animals to draw it. These sad sons 
and daughters of toil periorm the work of clearing, 
breaking, planting and cultivating with two simple 
tools, the machete anu the hoe. The huts of these 
"peones,” or laborers, are fashioned with some skill 
from materials growing near at hand, and are as sim¬ 
ply and as quickly built as a bird’s nest. The diet of 
the peon famines is scanty and poorly prepared. Most 
of them raise some sweet potatoes or yams of an in¬ 
ferior quality, and possibly beans, cassava, upland 
rice or corn. Business conditions have been much 
improved by the liberal tariff provisions of the For- 
aker act of last Spring; and the change of money 
completed August 1 will be a benefit. Much good had 
already been accomplished by the military govern¬ 
ment. x\. large amount of road had been built, which 
at once furnished employment to needy laborers, and 
opened up the means ol communication with certain 
isolated sections. Great attention has already been 
given to the establishment of public 
schools, in which a fair proportion of 
American teachers have been employed, 
whose special duty has been largely 
teaching English. This work has been 
highly appreciated, and it is said that 
many more schools are to be organized 
during the year to come, with the larger 
amount of money at command. They 
are sadly needed, as not over one-third 
of the children of Porto Rico are pro¬ 
vided with school facilities. 
A MANUAL TRAINING SCHOOL 
NEEDED.—Education will be far from 
proving an unmixed good to the youth 
of Porto Rico if it is not made essential¬ 
ly practical. The vast majority of the 
beneficiaries of these schools will spend 
their lives in some branch of tilling the 
soil. Merchandizing has been, and still 
is, monopolized by the Spanish, who 
send to Spain for their young “depen- 
dientes,” or clerks. The situation ur¬ 
gently calls for governmental aid in 
building up and extending the agricultural and horti¬ 
cultural interests, by various means; an important 
necessity is a normal school for training native teach¬ 
ers, where a strong emphasis would be laid upon prac¬ 
tical instruction in the various arts of the farm, the 
dairy, the fruit garden, the kitchen, the laundry, and 
the other departments of household labor and domes¬ 
tic science. Such an institution should oe promptly 
established by the Department of Education and lo¬ 
cated near San Juan. In connection with this normal 
school there should be an extensive farm, well stocked 
with improved breeds of the various domestic ani¬ 
mals, and with modern hand and horse tools, as well 
as a fruit and vegetable garden, and a nursery for 
useful and ornamental plants, as well as workshops 
for the teaching of carpentry, forging, etc. The peas¬ 
antry of Jamaica are far better provided with a va¬ 
riety of good fruits and flowers than are the same clas.; 
in Porto Rico, which is doubtless due chiefly to the 
good work of the Botanical Department of the Colony, 
and to the dissemination of plants from Hope and 
Castleton Gardens. Teachers who have had such 
training will be able to direct school gardens where 
the operations of vegetable gardening and fruit grow¬ 
ing can be practiced by the pupils after the excellent 
manner of some of the German intermediate schools. 
AN AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION.— 
An agricultural experiment station should be prompt¬ 
ly established to investigate and attempt to solve the 
knotty problems which confront the cultivators of 
Porto Rico. There is a murderous-looking insect in 
parts of the Island, probably a mole cricket, which is 
extremely destructive in certain sections. Burrowing 
below the surface of the soil, it cuts off the delicate 
stems of young plants and destroys the small roots of 
crops as vigorous even as the sugar cane. A detec¬ 
tive entomologist is needed to study the life history 
of this little thief, as well as of other numerous in¬ 
sects, and ascertain how they can best be combated. 
Careful investigations should be carried on to see 
whether sisal, Manila (the fibrous species of banana 
from the Philippine Islands) and other tropical fibers 
cannot be profitably grown there. Fungous diseases 
such as mildews, blights and rusts exist in Porto Rico 
as elsewhere, and are liable to work havoc. These 
must be studied in their habitat by a skilled vegetable 
pathologist and remedies found. The researches of 
these scientists communicated through bulletins, cor¬ 
respondence and the public press, would greatly stim¬ 
ulate the farming and gardening interests. These two 
institutions, the experiment station and the industrial 
normal school should be placed together, and so co¬ 
ordinated that the future teacher may be imbued with 
enthusiasm for nature study, by contact with the 
scientific workers of the station. Such teachers could 
not fail to make their schools, throughout the Island, 
centers for the diffusion of agricultural knowledge. 
Some may consider Utopian the plan of spreading 
agricultural intelligence through the agency of the 
public schools, but Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Cornell Uni¬ 
versity, and his associates in charge of the scientific 
and teaching work in horticulture, provided for by 
the Nixon bill, have found them important centers 
for this work, and in some parts of Europe school 
gardens are conducted with marked success. Simple 
lesson leaves, in various kinds of nature study, are 
sent to the teachers for their guidance, whose chief 
object is to incite a close, individual study of natural 
objects and creatures with their life history. The 
teacher is urged to prepare himself to give similar, 
original lessons. A bureau of correspondence is 
started, providing for letters of inquiry to be answered 
by some one having the requisite knowledge. The 
recent visits of Dr. Seaman Knapp, and a little earlier 
the trip made by Mr. 0. F. Cook, of the Botanical 
Division, to Porto Rico, show that the Department 
of Agriculture is alive to this need, and it is to be 
hoped that the establishment by Congress of an agri¬ 
cultural experiment station will not be long delayed. 
If the peon of Porto Rico is to be lifted out of his 
present degraded position, a systematic effort must 
be made to assist him in owning a home, with a piece 
of land, as the beginning of his financial and social 
rise. England did this for the freedmen in Jamaica 
after emancipation in 1854, and the peasantry of that 
island are to-day far better housed and fed than the 
same class in Porto Rico. English judges have stood 
between the greed of the landlord and merchant class 
and the weakness of “the man with the hoe,’’ and 
what England nas done for the laborers in Jamaica. 
America must do in Porto Rico. Our new southern 
island has now a fair and permanent government. 
Business is rapidly reviving. The commerce of the 
Island is much greater this year than last. It only 
awaits the touch of American energy, skill and capi¬ 
tal, now sure to flow in, to reach its true develop¬ 
ment. F. M. PENNOCK. 
SEEDING GRASS WITH RYE. 
Here in this locality all grass seeds sown in the Fall 
seem to do better sown with wheat. Why this is so 
I am not prepared to say positively, but think it one 
of the two following reasons: The rye making a 
thicker mat on the ground before Winter may smoth¬ 
er the young grass out more than wheat would, which 
does not make such a mat. My second and best rea¬ 
son, and true belief is, that rye is a more thirsty plant 
than wheat; has a deeper and wider-spread root sys¬ 
tem; therefore sucks the moisture from under the 
young grass and in dry seasons causes it to die, and 
very often before Winter sets in. I am giving up the 
sowing of rye for soiling on this very account. If the 
Spring be at all dry the surface soil is so dry after 
plowing that seeds will not germinate in it. I have 
had considerable trouble in this direction the past two 
dry seasons. Wheat turned under does not show the 
same dried-out condition of the soil. In wet seasons 
—the Fall in particular—I don’t think there is much 
choice between the two grains for seeding to grass. 
If I could always have a reasonable amount of rain¬ 
fall during August and September I would always 
keep my grass seed in the bag tin after harvest, then 
plow the stubble, make a fine seed bed, sow the seed, 
roll with fairly heavy roller, then I am almost sure 
of a good crop of grass the following season. 
New Jersey. c. c. httlsaiit. 
POTATO SCAB AND GREEN MANURING. 
SCAB EXPERIMENTS.—Mr. Garrahan’s experi¬ 
ment with green crops (page 783) plowed down to 
check Potato scab, was not the success he desired, but 
the results reported should not keep him and others 
from making further trial of this plan. Experiments 
running through five or six seasons have convinced 
me that scab can be controlled by some slight souring 
of the soil. When a crop of rye and a crop of peas 
do not secure the desired results, it means only that, 
for some reason, enough acidity was not produced in 
that season, on account of weather, great alkalinity 
of that particular soil, or other unknown factor in 
the problem that prevents the production of acid. My 
faith is strong that when we get the acid, we make 
it difficult for the scab germs to thrive, and usually 
we can get the acid by plowing rye under in the 
Spring. By this method 1 have cleaned infested soil 
very effectually. Last Spring northern-grown seed 
was used for planting one field that had been fed with 
a crop of peas, followed by a growth of Winter rye. 
This seed was far from clean, and my faith in the 
souring of the soil weakened enough to make me treat 
a part of the seed with corrosive sublimate, but it 
was work thrown away. At digging time the crop 
from both treated and untreated seed was free from 
scab. In another field in which the same 
lot of seed was used on a rye sod there 
was some little scab, only proving to 
my mind that there we failed to get as 
much acidity. Continued experiment 
has been convincing that anything 
which increases soil acidity checks the 
Potato scab. In the last three years the 
Rhode Island station has obtained re¬ 
sults which show that any material that 
produces an excess of acid in the soil re¬ 
tards the growth of this fungous dis¬ 
ease, just as any material that “sweet¬ 
ens” a soil, like lime, favors the growth 
of the germs. A soil strongly alkaline 
may not be quickly affected by the rye, 
and even a neutral soil may respond 
rather slowly. My soil shows by test 
some acidity, and a single rye sod, turn¬ 
ed under when a foot high, is sufficient 
to clean out scab germs from the soil 
to a marked degree. 
ORGANIC MATTER AND MOIS¬ 
TURE.—The same writer makes the fact 
prominent that a soil well filled with decaying vege¬ 
table matter can produce a good crop of potatoes with 
very little rain. We had an exceedingly dry Summer, 
but when the peas, rye, etc., had been plowed under 
there was enough moisture to make a profitable crop. 
I haven’t the exact figures with me, but this field of 
Carmans averaged about 170 bushels of merchantable 
potatoes per acre, although there was not during the 
season a sufficiently heavy rain to settle the soil firm¬ 
ly in the row. The organic material makes the soil 
a better sponge for the holding of moisture. Where 
the planting is fairly deep, and is done with a ma¬ 
chine like the Robbins planter after both the shovel 
and the covering disks have been removed, so that the 
seed is very lightly covered, and where the soil is 
full of humus-forming material, the danger of damage 
from drought is reduced materially. 
GROWING PROTEIN.—L. A. Clinton’s statement 
that Alfalfa produces a large amount of food rich in 
protein accords with Prof. Voorhees’ statements to 
the New Jersey farmers at the institutes. On the col¬ 
lege farm one acre has produced over 26 1 / £ tons of 
forage in a year, fed to cows under the soiling system, 
and found by analysis and by feeding tests to be 
equivalent in protein to 7% tons of wheat bran. At 
present price of bran the value of this product is sure¬ 
ly up to an attractive figure. Prof. Voorhees believes 
that the dairymen can cheapen the cost of milk ma¬ 
terially by growing more of the protein on the farm 
in the various legumes, and thus reducing the feed 
bill. ALVA AGEE. 
How Canadians Feed Roots.—A cellar built in con¬ 
nection with basement under barn is considered best for 
roots, and they are kept from five to six months. Our 
cattle are generally on pasture during the Summer, and I 
feed them roots from about December 1 to May 1. There is 
not much market for roots in this section; not many grown 
for sale. Mangels sell for $4 per ton. I do not like 
turnips, only for young cattle. I have kept mangels in 
cellar under dwelling house until May in good condition. 
Turnips are sold at 10 to 15 cents per bushel. We pulp 
the mangels and put them on cut corn fodder, and feed 
twice a day s. m. c. 
Beamsville, Ont. 
CUTTING GLADIOLUS BLOOMS FOR MARKET. Fig. 322. Sef. Page 834. 
