1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
7i9 
THE BELGIAN HARE BUSINESS. 
Experience of a New York Man. 
The breeding of Belgian hares for market purpose?, 
in other words for table use, is not a successful ven¬ 
ture. The people of our country have spent thousands 
of dollars over Belgian hares; it is simply a craze. 
To begin with, you cannot market them except in 
cold weather, as people will not buy them in Summer, 
and we have the expense of keeping them all Sum¬ 
mer to sell in the Winter. They have eaten their 
heads off, probably by Fall they have caught cold, 
and when they do it is hard to cure them. You have 
got to nurse them like babies, inject medicine up their 
nostrils two or three times a day, and then you can¬ 
not save them sometimes. It is no trick to breed 
hares, as they will breed every six weeks at the out¬ 
side, but it is like buying a fast horse; your expense 
does not begin until after you get the horse. The 
cost of the horse is nothing; it is the care after you 
get him that costs, and that is the same way with 
hares. The people who eat wild rabbits will not buy 
Belgian hares, as they cost too much. Wild rabbits 
sell for 25 to 35 cents a pair; you cannot raise Bel¬ 
gian hares for that price apiece. They have to be 
cooped up all the time or they won’t do well, and you 
cannot feed them on all green stuff; if you do it will 
kill them. Oats and clover hay are the best feed for 
them, with occasionally a dandelion or carrot. Tn? 
coops must be kept clean or the animals will get sick. 
A person keeping 100 or 200 hares needs a man with 
them all the time, and he has all he can 
do all day long if he takes care of them 
light. Of course the fanciers who raise 
them to sell tell great stories and get 
great prices sometimes, but I don’t think 
one of them with all their high prices, 
can show a profit after all expenses are 
paid. We have a man in our city who 
went into it heavily, advertised in all the 
papers, and got big money for lots of 
them. This Spring he tore down his coops 
and what he could not sell he gave away 
and gave it up with the loss of a thou¬ 
sand or two. 
As fun for boys hares are all right. My 
boy got the craze and I bought him a pair 
of does, imported stock; paid $75 for 
them. One had eight young, the other 
four. I had a carpenter build a set of 
coops that cost $50. Now the first month 
he had $125 invested and stock on hand 
12 young hares and the two does, a very 
good beginning. It was not long before 
he had 50, and then trouble began. It 
was feed all the time, and his stock grew 
so fast in number I found one of my men 
in the store was spending most of his 
time upstairs taking care of them, and 
my boy was losing interest in them, so I 
stopped that and cleaned them out for 25 
cents each, and that did not pay for the 
feed they ate, but I was satisfied with 
the cost, as the boy did not want any 
more hares. Belgian hares for table use 
are a failure, and anybody who has tried 
it will tell you so. For eating there is 
nothing that can beat them; they are m 
comparison to a wild rabbit what a capon is to a 
chicken; white meat and very tender, but only fit 
to eat in cold weather. frank a. Rogers. 
Buffalo, N. Y. 
PROTECTION AND A SURPLUS OF SKUNKS 
In 1901 the Legislature passed a law protecting 
skunks in this locality, a copy of which law follows: 
Mink, skunk, muskrat and foxes.—The close season for 
mink, skunk and muskrat in the counties of Cattaraugus, 
Chautauqua, Oneida, Madison, Otsego, Wayne, Cayuga, 
Livingston, Jefferson, Chemung, Chenango, Genesee and 
Wyoming shall be from May first to October thirty-first, 
both inclusive, except that there shall be no open season for 
skunk in the count// of Chautauqua prior to the year nine¬ 
teen hundred and six. Muskrat houses shall not be in¬ 
jured or destroyed at any time. The close season for 
foxes in said counties, except Cayuga, shall be from May 
first to September thirtieth, both inclusive. The pro¬ 
visions of this section do not apply to the acts of an 
owner or possessor of lands thereon, or to the territory 
of a city or incorporated village. 
This matter of protecting skunks here has com¬ 
menced to stir up the residents of the county in op¬ 
position to it as much or more than the recent dis¬ 
cussions in The R. N.-Y. to the effect that the laws 
protecting robins should be repealed. It is a common 
occurrence for farmers and village residents to lose 
as many as 50 young chickens in a night, and by set¬ 
ting traps they find that the skunks are without ques¬ 
tion the cause of the trouble. Even our Jamestown 
and Dunkirk papers (city papers) tell of policemen 
seeing skunks at night right in the business sections 
of the cities. A neighbor of mine who is a taxider¬ 
mist tells me that skunks increase very fast when 
protected from the hunter, and this must account for 
the alarming increase in their number in less than 
two years of protection. The scent of the skunk can 
be noticed in almost every block in our villages any 
evening, and it has come to be a daily topic of con¬ 
versation of the number of skunks seen in the even¬ 
ing or early morning. No doubt this law was passed 
with the intent of protecting skunks for the amount 
of good they are credited with doing in eating moles 
and grubs and the like, the same as the robin was 
protected because it was a song bird, without any re¬ 
gard for the amount of damage they might do in a 
hen roost or in a cherry tree. The county papers and 
farmers are now unanimously in favor of the repeal 
of the law. reader. 
Chautauqua Co., N. Y. 
THE NEED OF PRACTICAL FORESTRY. 
One of the ti’ade inequalities to me not understood 
is the first cost of coal at the mines and the cost of 
transportation. A carload recently purchased of 
steam coal is billed at the mines at East Brady, Pa., 
at $1.25 per ton. The railroad puts on a tariff of $2.40 
per ton to Deer River, a distance of about 300 miles. 
The first cost is all out of proportion to the total 
value delivered. We must have it, however. We burn 
large quantities of wood for factory and creamery 
purposes, as a rule using the wood and coal com¬ 
bined. There seems to be economy in this method 
where an engineer is not at all times looking after 
the heater. The soft coal does not so easily pack to¬ 
gether and thereby lose much of the heat. For farm¬ 
house purposes alone, where a small piece of timber 
land, not over 20 acres, is attached to the farm, the 
fuel problem is not serious. This area, given good 
care, will more than supply the fuel. Most farms in 
northern New York have this advantage at present. 
Many have burned coal on account of its convenience 
and cheapness. Much trouble is also experienced in 
getting wood cut. These reasons combined are re¬ 
sponsible for an increased growth of timber upon the 
farms during the last 25 years. They are therefore in 
a condition to meet the high price of coal, without 
materially suffering. A sensible system of forestry 
must soon follow, not only in our great timber lands, 
but also upon the small farm holdings. 
A field of timber is now as valuable in net returns 
as a cultivated field. The timber growth upon worth¬ 
less agricultural lands in portions of the Adirondacks 
is quite rapid. Twelve years ago B. B. Miller of Low- 
ville built a cottage in the Fulton Chain locality. A 
splendid grove of small pines was standing near. 
Some of the largest were cut for building, and are not 
over five inches in diameter. To-day the largest trees 
are ready to cut, being large enough for available saw 
timber. The pulp-mill owners of spruce lands are al¬ 
ready advisedly making strenuous efforts to cut avail¬ 
able timber only, thereby making room for the growth 
of small stuff. I have personally inspected large 
tracts that were nearly denuded 25 years ago that to¬ 
day carry a rich growth of spruce ready for paper. 
Spruce forests are to-day the mainstay of paper¬ 
making, and the owners feel the same necessity of 
carefully husbanding the energy of these forests as 
the up-to-date farmer does who knows that manure 
and plant food have during the past been quietly but 
surely slipping away. h. e. cook. 
THE CLARK GRASS PLAN AGAIN. 
I have carefully read everything I have seen in The 
R. N.-Y. as to seeding by the Clark plan, and so far 
as I remember every success followed seeding after 
plowing and thorough harrowing. I do not under¬ 
stand that to be the Clark plan. Unless I have been 
reading all wrong for years, Mr. Clark’s idea is that 
the soil is “right side up,” and all that is needed is 
thorough tillage of the surface, plenty of seed and 
plenty of fertilizer. Had I plowed my two acres last 
Summer when the grass was off, and harrowed and 
sowed it within a week, instead of going over it four 
or five times a week for a month with a disk harrow 
the result would probably have been different, but 1 
shouldn’t have thought of its being the Clark plan. I 
did just that last year with half an acre, sowing tur¬ 
nip seed with the grass seed, getting a fine crop of 
turnips and three times the grass that the harrowed 
piece yielded. I have an acre sown the same way this 
year; can see a big crop of turnips now, and would 
not give any man a dime to insure me a crop of grass 
next year. If I had a piece of mellow loam or peaty 
land I should not be afraid to try the Clark plan 
again, but not to any great extent on the 
land I have. And still the failure may 
be only a coincidence. The seasons of 
1900 and 1901 were. Summer and Winter, 
exceedingly unfavorable for young grass, 
no matter when or how it was sown, while 
this has been an exceptionally good sea¬ 
son. I have clover sown with oats last 
Spring, that is now half knee high, and 
so thick that it needs pasturing off, much 
of it. while last Fall and the Fall before I 
had to hunt for clover in oat stubble. 
In a previous letter I spoke of being 
puzzled to know what became of the ma¬ 
nure and fertilizer I put on the Clark 
piece. Where the stable manure went 
clover is coming in quite freely, and there 
is a sprinkling all over the piece, but I 
have struck another puzzle. We had that 
piece under the harrow at odd times for 
nearly a month, and when the seed was 
sown it was, on the surface, as mellow as 
an onion bed. I naturally supposed that 
any weed seeds that might be there had 
sprouted and been killed. When the grass 
seed came up I noticed in two places quite 
a distance apart something that looked 
like clover so thick that it covered the 
ground. Apparently some one had spilled 
a lot of seed that the harrow had spread 
for a rod or two lengthwise of the field. 
No one owned up to spilling any grass 
seed, so I waited events. In the Spring 
that stuff grew up ahead of the grass into 
a weed resembling what we call “pepper 
grass,” except that the seed pods were lit¬ 
tle flat triangles instead of being circular. 
It occupied the ground and ripened and died a month 
before we cut the grass, so that we threw out all we 
could when we raked the field. To-day those two 
patches have a fine crop of rowen, many times as 
much as there is on the field generally, and I own up 
to being puzzled to know why. Had the stuff been 
left to rot on the ground or cut early to prevent its 
gomg to seed there would seem to be some excuse for 
that rowen, but it was all raked off with a horse rake 
and thrown where it chanced. If that weed is a sub- 
soiler I would give more for a peck of the seed than 
to know how to sow grass seed George M. Clark’s 
way, but perhaps again it is only another coincidence. 
Connecticut. r, s. hinman. 
The Connecticut Experiment Station examines 
samples of food and fertilizer sold in the State. When 
the goods are found to be impure or below guarantee 
the names of the makers are printed, so that all may 
see them! Last year they found two bogus feeds, 
one the “Choice Eclipse,” made by the W. R. Mum- 
ford Company, of Chicago, and the other known as 
“C,” from D. C. Comstock, of Providence, R. I. These 
feeds contained about 25 per cent of ground corncobs, 
but were sold as “pure wheat feed.” The dealers 
probably told some great story about the special value 
of this stuff. They charged the same price for it that 
was asked for a pure feed containing to the ton 140 
pounds more protein and 25 pounds more fat! it is 
a good thing to tag such men with their own brand! 
Sunlight kills germs, and printer’s ink kills rogues! 
THE DIANA GRAPE. Fig. 294. See Ruraeisms, Page 722. 
