302 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
April 26 
a short time, and I will explain it in another article. 
You can raise such trees even in pots or wooden tubs 
if no garden is available. The finest of apples and 
pears can only be produced in perfect and faultless 
condition by such form-trees. 
There are hundreds of thousands of little garden 
patches a'round private residences of all classes which 
may be too small to allow the planting of even a sin¬ 
gle standard tree, while a garden surrounded by four 
walls, each of which is, say but 12 feet long, will per¬ 
mit on each wall if unobstructed, nine apple or pear 
trees (the former on Paradise, the latter on quince) 
trained as “vertical cordons” at the small distance of 
16 inches from tree to tree, or 36 pear or apple trees 
around the four walls less whatever room is taken up 
by doors. At a distance of two to three feet from 
these rows could be planted several horizontal cor¬ 
dons (trees being bent while growing) at a point 16 
inches above the ground at a right angle and trained 
parallel to the ground, and there would still be room 
for several spindle and spindle pyramid trees. I have 
at present 38 different varieties of pears, about half 
as many apples, and am experimenting as to their be¬ 
havior in this country, under different climate and 
other conditions from those of Europe. It is a hobby, 
not a business with me, and a branch of horticulture 
sadly neglected, if not wholly unknown, at least in 
this part of the country. henry r. wirtii. 
Providence, R. I. 
MAPES, THE HEN MAN. 
Some Henhouse Suggestions. 
I purpose building a chicken house 100 x 15 feet, placing 
it in a bank, and using the upper part for wagon shed 
and store room, walling up with stone and cement. On 
the front is a small stream, which would enable me to 
have running water through entire length. The front 
would face south. How should this house be subdivided, 
and how many chickens could I safely carry? I pur¬ 
pose putting hot-water plant in house, and could extend 
to chicken house with a small additional expense. Would 
this be advisable? k. m. 
North Branch, N. Y. 
PLAN OF CONSTRUCTION.—In a building of the 
size proposed, I should advise an alley-way four feet 
wide along the entire rear wall. This hall will be 
found a great convenience in feeding, etc., especially 
in bad weather. The floor space thus used cannot 
be put to better use. Assuming that there are to be 
no windows in the rear wall, the partition dividing 
the hall from the pens will need to be made of wire 
netting, in order to get sufficient light. The doors 
leading from the hall into each pen should also be 
made with light basswood frame covered with wire 
netting. The remaining space should be divided into 
pens by building wire partitions every 10 or 12 feet, 
and build a medium-sized window in front for each 
pen. No doors will be needed in front except small 
openings for hens to pass out into runs. It will be 
often convenient, however, also to have a door large 
enough for a man to pass out into the runs from 
each pen. As to capacity of such a house, I should 
not hesitate to put 50 hens in each pen, making 500 
hens for the 10 pens, 10x11 feet each. It will need to 
be well ventilated, however, with so many hens as 
that. I doubt the advisability of heating with hot 
water as proposed, from a standpoint of profit. Where 
artificial heat is used, we wish to guard against mois¬ 
ture as much as against cold. A couple of coal stoves 
in the long hall would be less expensive, and would 
give a more drying heat than hot-water radiators. 
THE INCUBATOR LAMP.—In taking care of an 
incubator or brooder lamp, the greatest care should 
be exercised to guard against fire. I always use the 
hinge burners, and trim and fill each morning. Turn 
the cone over the wick back, and draw a sharp knife 
quickly across the top of wick, after blowing out the 
flame, holding the knife firmly down on the top of 
the wick tube. This removes the soot and charred 
end of wick. If wick is charred for any distance 
down in the tube, turn it up and draw the knife 
across the top of the tube again. A good knife will 
readily cut the charred end of wick, and leaves it 
perfectly straight and even with top of tube, which 
is hard to do with a pair of shears. Now apply the 
match at once, while the burner is still hot, and 
avoid any danger of the fiame “running up” and 
smoking, after you leave it.. Most accidents of this 
sort are due to lighting a cold burner, if the burner 
is hot when you light it, the flame will stay where 
you put it. 
FERTILE EGGS.—One of the first requisites for 
successful rearing of chicks is to’ get good fertile 
eggs. At the high prices ruling for eggs this season 
it hardly pays to put them in an incubator unless rea¬ 
sonably sure of a good hatch. I waited until after the 
hens had been able to get out on the fields a few days 
(March 1) before starting my incubators. Eggs were 
selling for over 40 cents per dozen about that time. 
Bulletin No. 71 of the West Virginia Station, tells of 
some experiments along this line. Duplicate flocks 
were selected, and one flock given free range, while 
the other flock was confined to the house and yard 
where wintered. Three times as many eggs were 
found to be infertile from the confined flock, as from 
the flock at liberty. Seventy-six per cent of the eggs 
laid by the hens at liberty hatched, while only 51 
per cent of those laid by confined hens hatched. This 
agrees with my experience. 
INCUBATOR TEMPERATURE.—A little common 
sense is as useful in handling an incubator as else¬ 
where. The temperature in the egg chamber will al¬ 
ways be found higher in the upper portion of the 
egg chamber than it is lower down. The colder the 
outside temperature, the greater will be this varia¬ 
tion. This fact should be borne in mind when run¬ 
ning an incubator in which the thermometer is sus¬ 
pended above the eggs. The loss of heat by radiation 
accounts for this. For this reason I run my machine 
with the suspended thermometer at 104 to 105 degrees 
during the cool weather of March and April. As the 
weather grows warmer, it is gradually lowered to 
103 degrees, as directions call for. My first hatch was 
made in 1901 at 103, as directed, and was poor, re¬ 
quiring about 22 days. Since then I have allowed for 
loss of heat by radiation, with success quite uniform. 
WARMTH OF BROODER.—This difference of tem¬ 
perature at the floor, and higher up, is still more de¬ 
cided in brooders. A brooder that has a temperature 
of 90 degrees at the floor will often be as hot as 110 
degrees a few inches higher up. Look out for this in 
building and operating a brooder. Aim to keep it so 
that the chicks can find the desired warmth by sim¬ 
ply stiffening the muscles of the legs and lifting the 
A SWISS MILK CARRIER. Eis. 114. 
head a little higher, or by sitting down a little closer 
to the floor. By doing this you will avoid all danger 
of crowding, sweating, etc. Some of my early experi¬ 
ences with brooders were enough to discourage a less 
persistent hen crank. I have sat and watched them 
huddle, and smother each other by the score. They 
seem to have a knack of wanting to press the back 
of the neck against something warm, when they get 
chilly. If the warmth is found close to the floor, 
and the flock is small, bottom heat may be satis¬ 
factory. Woe to the chick, however, that tries it 
when there is a crowd of chilly mates just behind 
him ready to crowd their necks down towards the 
source of warmth also. It is much safer to be obliged 
to stand on tip-toe, in order to reach a warm spot. 
Give us top heat in the brooder as well as in the in¬ 
cubator. A chick can stand cold feet and a warm 
head better than it can a cold head and warm feet. 
o. w. MAPES. 
AN ANTIDOTE FOR TREE FRAUDS. 
I was interested in H. E. V. D.’s article on page 206 
entitled “Another Fruit Tree Fraud.” He has the 
facts as near as anyone can give them, but I thought 
it wouldn’t be out of place for me to give a few per¬ 
sonal notes. I live right in the section that was can¬ 
vassed by the agents of that Ohio nursery firm. One 
of them called on me, but your timely warning, sev¬ 
eral years ago, saved me from being gouged by this 
smooth-tongued fellow. Lots of my neighbors were 
victims; several bought strawberry plants at about 
$1 per dozen, and when they came the plants were all 
dead and dried, not one grew that I know of, nor did 
the nurserymen replace them. They did replace some 
trees that a neighbor got, but these also failed to 
grow. Whether it was the fault of the nursery or the 
planter I don’t know, but I do know that they cost 
four times as much as go®d trees can be bought from 
our nurserymen for. When the agent approached me 
and gave his prices I asked if he wasn’t selling $50 
and $100 orchards on certain conditions. He told me 
he was, and had sold quite a number. I, of course, 
wanted to know why their trees were so much higher 
in price than our nurserymen were selling them for. 
He pretended to give me several reasons; first, that 
they were budded on some particular kind of root 
that would outlive the ordinary ones used by nur¬ 
serymen; second, that the borers won’t get in them; 
third, that they never sold anything but five-year-old 
trees, but when I told him of the information l had 
of a firm doing a business something similar to his 
in the western part of Pennsylvania, which turned 
out to be a fraud (not saying his was), he wasn’t very 
long in hunting some more interested party, several 
of which he found. J. i. w. 
Fair view, Md. 
HABITS OF THE PLUM CURCUL/0. 
I have a few bearing plum trees of which the curculio 
and brown rot claim the greater share. I have tried for 
three years to detect the curctilio in his destructive work 
and to circumvent him to save part of the crop have 
stood at a tree for hours and watched for his coming, 
but so far have failed to see one on the tree, or at work. 
I have tried the jarring process without finding a Turk, 
as he is called. How do they get into the tree? Do they 
climb up the trunk after leaving their Winter quarters 
in the ground, or do they fly? T find, however, a larr"-> 
number of plums stung, and find the worm in the plum, 
but cannot trace and detect the source. g. r. a. 
Hancock Co., Me. 
The curculio and brown rot (Monilia) vie with 
black-knot as bugbears to the average plum grower. 
Both may, however, be controlled by using simple 
preventive measures early In the Reason. The curculio 
is a small, rough, grayish or brownish beetle about 
one-fifth to one-fourth inch long. It has two very 
distinct humps on the back and more or less distinct 
whitish or yellowish marks, also a very strong well 
developed snout with which it punctures the fruit. 
The beetle hibernates in the ground or under rubbish 
during the Winter, and appears very early in Spring, 
feeding upon the unopened buds or, later, upon the 
young leaves of plum, peach, cherry and sometimes 
apple and pear trees. Soon after the fruit has set, the 
insect makes a crescent-shaped slit with its snout and 
in this it lays an egg. After a few days the egg 
hatches and the whitish grub-like larva eats its way 
to the center of the fruit which—in case of the plum— 
soon falls to the ground. Fruit wTlieh is attacked later 
in the season does not always fall. By midsummer 
growth is completed and the larva? leave the decayed 
fruit and go into the ground to pupate—coming 
forth as mature beetles very shortly (three to six 
weeks) after. These soon go into hiding, and are not 
seen again until the following Spring. The larvae 
are beyond the reach of insecticides, but spraying 
with Paris-green (one pound to 200 gallons of water) 
before the buds open and again just before blossom¬ 
ing may destroy some of the beetles. In general, 
however, jarring the trees, if systematically done, 
is the surest way of fighting this pest. When dis¬ 
turbed the beetle folds its legs and snout under its 
body and drops to the ground, where it so closely 
resembles a bud or bit of wood that it is usually 
overlooked. If a white sheet is placed under the tree 
and the limbs suddenly jarred with a padded mallet 
many of the beetles may be collected and burned or 
scalded. They should be collected at once, however, 
as if undisturbed they soon take wing and return to 
the trees. The insects are usually rather more slug¬ 
gish in the morning, so that jarring is best done in 
the early part of the day. 
To prevent the fruit rot, see that the old leaves and 
dried or “mummied” fruits that remain from last 
year are raked up and burned. Before the buds be¬ 
gin to burst—which means at once —spray the trees 
with copper sulphate in the proportion of one pound 
to 25 gallons of water. After the fruit sets spray once 
or twice with Bordeaux Mixture and later, as the 
fruit approaches maturity, spray with the ammoniacal 
solution of copper carbonate, or with sulphide of 
potassium, five ounces to 10 gallons of water. 
Maine Exp. Station. w. m. munson. 
CARRYING MILK DOWN THE MOUNTAINS.— 
Fig. 113, taken from a bulletin of the U. S. Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture, shows the manner in which milk 
is brought down the mountains to the cheese factories 
in Switzerland, something of a contrast compared 
with the wagon load of 75 40-quart cans of . milk re¬ 
cently shown in The R. N.-Y. By constant training 
these men are able to carry a surprising weight with¬ 
out great fatigue. In this city we often see Italian 
women carrying on their heads great bundles of wood 
or sacks of rags for which most farmers would con¬ 
sider a horse and wagon necessary. 
