36o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
May 13 
Short Stories. 
Two Pension Letters.— A friend sends 
us the following correspondence which 
was printed in the Waterville (Maine) 
News : 
A few -weeks ago, IJecry Johnson, of Winslow, 
a veteran of the War of the Rebellion, wrote the 
following letter to the Pension Department: 
The following communication 
Is written in relation 
To m: delayed application 
For an augmentation 
Of my pension appropriation— 
Some sort of explanation 
Of so much hesitation 
And continued procrastination 
A year after application 
Before an order for examination 
Reached its destination 
I went before the board without perturbation. 
They correctly reported my situation— 
It was a total prostration 
Of my physical organization. 
I also received from them this information, 
In utter consternation, 
That cataracts were causing a cessation 
And soon a termination 
To all visual observation. 
In my crippled situation 
I have labored in desperation 
To protect from want and starvation 
My ten children, my appropriation 
To the strength of the Nation 
And to increase its population. 
My age is 77, near the termination 
Of my earthly probation, 
Twenty years a widower, more than half a gen¬ 
eration. 
Charity furnishes me a habitation 
And a portion of my daily ration 
Blindness denies me the gratification 
Of reading any newsy mention 
For general information 
And but for my daughter’s kind ministration 
I should be driven to desperation. 
She prepares a frugal ration, 
Reads to me some new publication, 
Leads me for exercise and recreation, 
Attending my daily wants is her vocation. 
If I could obtain an increased remuneration 
To keep me from want and privation, 
It would give great consolation. 
Unlil my life’s termination, 
I would not indulge in solicitation 
B'or its further continuation. 
You reject this application, 
The poor-house my destination, 
HENRY JOHNSON. 
He scon after received this reply. 
Department of the Interior. 
Bureau of Pensions, 
Washington. 
Mr. Henry Johnson, Winslow, Me.: 
Sir: In response to your letter of recent date, 
relative to your claim for increase of pension 
Certificate No. 205,463, as late Sergeant Co. K, 
9th Maine Volunteers, it gives me pleasure to in¬ 
form you that increase of pension at the rate of 
$24 per month, commencing November 18,1898, the 
date of your medical examination under your 
claim for increase has been allowed. This allow¬ 
ance is subject to a deduction of all payments 
made since that date, on the certificate which 
you now hold. 
The new certificate will be issued within a i'ew 
days, and forwarded to the Pension Agent at 
Augusta, Me., who will transmit the same to you 
with the necessary vouchers for payment 
I deeply sympathize with you in your unfortun¬ 
ate physical condition, and hope that the in¬ 
creased allowance of your pension, to which you 
appear to be justly entitled, will serve to “ keep 
the wolf from the door ” during the remainder of 
your life. Very respectfully, 
H. CLAY EVANS, 
March 8 , 1899. Commissioner. 
The Japan plums, Gold, Ogon, Willard, 
and Chabot or Orient, have stood —26 de¬ 
grees with no apparent injury to blos¬ 
som buds, while Red June buds are al¬ 
most entirely killed ; Burbank has a few 
and Abundance more, on some trees a 
goodly number. A sprinkling of buds 
promise to bloom on Satsuma. Almost 
no bloom on Prunus Simoni, while Acme 
apricot promises a full bloom. No 
peaches. A s y. 
Memphis, Mo. 
Bald or Bearded Wheat —During 10 
years, the bearded varieties of wheat 
tested by the Ohio Experiment Station 
have yielded 31 7 bushels; the varieties 
of smooth wheat for the same period 
h ave y ieldc d 31.1 bush els per acre. These 
averages include most of the prominent 
varieties of wheat grown in this country. 
In 1894, the Illinois Station found that 
37 plots of bearded wheat averaged 35, 
and 30 plots of smooth 36 8 bushels per 
acre. It is my opinion that considerably 
more than half the wheat raised in Ohio 
is of the bald varieties. Some millers, I 
believe, claim that the bearded varieties 
make better milling wheat. So far as I 
know, however, this has not been estab¬ 
lished. While there are undoubtedly 
many exceptions, still I believe it will 
hold in a measure to-day that in general 
the bearded varieties do relatively better 
on the lowlands, and the smooth or bald 
varieties relatively better on the up¬ 
lands. THOMAS F HUNT. 
Ohio Agricultural College. 
Sir Walter Raleigh Potato.— I gave 
it no extra care, and so have no great yield 
to record ; but it is in everyway satisfac¬ 
tory as a late potato, and if its future con¬ 
duct be the same as during the past two 
years, with me at least, it is a stayer. I 
sincerely thank The R. N.-Y. for giving 
its subscribers so good a thing, though 
it is but one of the many examples of its 
work in the interest of its “family.” I 
wouldn’t know how to do without it; it 
is very common to get a single number 
that would be cheap at the price of a 
year’s subscription. 8 G. 
Racine, Pa. 
The West Gaining —Every report from 
the West indicates a return of prosperity. 
Kansas is the State where the ebb and 
flow of immigration indicates good or 
bad times. They sing this song in Kan¬ 
sas just now. 
They’re a-comin’ back to Kansas; 
They’re crossin’ on the bridge; 
You can see the mover wagons 
On the top of every ridge. 
On the highways and the turnpikes 
You can hear their wagons hum, 
For they’re cornin’ back to Kansas, and 
They’re cornin’ on the run. 
If they have a short wheat crop this year, 
there will be a change in the tune, if not 
in the i ong. 
The Paragon Chestnut. —There was 
a statement in The R. N.-Y. recently 
that some persons consider the Paragon 
chestnut a seedling of the Japan species. 
It is a mistake. It belongs to the Euro¬ 
pean class entirely. Mr. Thomas Meehan 
informed me, many years ago, that W. 
L. Shaffer, of Germantown, Pa , grew 
the original tree from a seed secured by 
him from one of the Spanish chestnut 
trees in bearing in Philadelphia It was 
thought at one time that it might have 
some mixture of the American species in 
it, because of the good quality of the 
nuts, but its seedlings, together with 
the character of the tree, leaves and 
burrs prove this suspicion unfounded. 
h. e. v. D. 
A Remarkable Pear Tree is to be 
seen in Dublin, Ireland, trained flat upon 
the front wall of a house in the fine resi¬ 
dence part of the city. It is a Jargonelle, 
and was planted in 1815 by Sir Philip 
Crampton, a distinguished surgeon. The 
tree has now attained a height of 60 
feet, and covers the entire house front. 
Last year, 1,700 fine pears were gathere d 
from it, and it has produced as many as 
4,000 fruits in a season ; but it is now 
impossible to thin the fruit properly. 
The tree is planted in a sunken areaway, 
paved over, so that no cultivation can be 
given, but a small sewer runs near, and 
most of the root! seek a way into this. 
It is not uncommon to find, in Great 
Britain, peaches, paars, nectarines and 
apricots, trained in this way upon home 
walls, and the effect is very beautiful 
when the trees are in bloom. 
Pony Refrigerators —Several years 
ago, I saw the pony refrigerators in the 
Philadelphia market, and was so im¬ 
pressed with the superior condition of 
berries arriving from the South in these 
small refrigerators, that I determined to 
experiment in that line for myself. I 
took measurements, and had a mechanic 
here make me three such carriers, hold¬ 
ing about 130 to 150 quarts each, and 
having a galvanized pan with ice in it in 
the top of the box I sent one to Phila¬ 
delphia, one to New York, and one to 
Boston, but in each case received most 
discouraging reports. The boxes had, 
evidently, been rolled over and over, 
notwithstanding the fact that each one 
was stenciled in large, plain letters, 
“ Strawberries ; this side up with care ” 
Each box had good handles, and could 
have been easily handled by two men. 
But I was informed that the railroad 
men did not like them, and the result 
was that I had to pay extra freight and 
take reduced prices for my berries. I am 
satisfied that this is the best way to ship 
berries to market, and sooner or later, 
it will become the rule here, as it now is 
in the South. a. w. slaymaker 
Delaware. 
Mulching vs Cultivation. —On page 
321 of The R N.-Y. is a query concern¬ 
ing straw mulch for melons. We raise 
considerable wheat, and have a good 
many old straw stacks ; these are favor¬ 
ite spots for melon growing, and often 
enough for a large family are raised 
around one straw pile. I have seen 
more than a dozen large watermelons 
raised from a single seed planted in a 
half bushel or so of field soil carried up 
to a damp spot on the side of a stack, 
and once saw nearly 40 good-sized pump¬ 
kins raised in the same way. This leads 
me to believe that melons can be grown 
with success by mulching with straw ; 
the roots will take care of themselves in 
or under the wet straw, and the vines 
will simply outdo any other vines that 
grow on the bare soil. We always rai'e 
plenty of melons by planting a seed now 
and then in the tobacco hills ; the vines 
seldom do any injury to the tobacco, and 
the shade of the tobacco is a benefit to 
the melons if a very dry season. After 
three families used all the melons they 
wanted from a half acre tobacco patch 
last Fall, the boys hauled over 150 mel¬ 
ons of large size to the hogs, and lam 
sure that the tobacco made 1,000 pounds 
per acre. c D. L. 
H gginsport, Ohio 
Central New York Notes. —Never 
was Spring more welcome than this 
year, after a dreary, rather than fierce, 
Winter. Here in Onondaga County, our 
lowest temperature was hardly more 
than 10 degrees below zero, and the 
Spring opening shows scarcely a sign of 
injury by cold. The failure of peach 
trees to open the fruit buds is not, I 
think, to be attributed to the Winter, 
but rather to the severe visitation of 
leaf curl last Summer. This is shown 
by the abundant blooming of certain 
trees that were exempt from the curl, 
and further by the full bloomiDg of the 
apricots and the Japan plums. 
Our first open blooms were visible 
April 23, on the apricots. April 27, the 
Burcank plum began to show white, on 
the 28th the Abundance, and April 30 the 
Satsuma was coming out very full. Red 
June and nale are not yet bearing. Not 
an inch of the Japan plum wood has been 
lost on any of these varieties since 1889. 
As for Satsuma, I have the highest 
opinion of it, notwithstanding the gen¬ 
eral adverse criticism. Give it proper 
ripeness, and no richer plum could be 
desired. None is so nearly equal to the 
nectarine. But it must be dead ripe to 
be endurable. It was our only Japan 
variety that bore fruit in 1898. 
The extensive planting of apricots and 
Japan plums in certain sections of the 
State is giving an additional element of 
dainty adornment to the early Spring. 
On a two days’ trip out in Monroe and 
Livingston Counties, I found very fre¬ 
quent patches of pink and white in the 
landscape where the cherries and native 
plums were yet dormant as to bloom. 
JOHN T. ROBERTS. 
SCRAPS. 
Dr. IIalsted told ua eeveral months ago that 
we should not wait for a sure sign before begin¬ 
ning spraying. If we are going to spray at all, 
it is time to get at it, before the insects and the 
diseases appear. Put power into the pump ear¬ 
ly, and aim to kill; that is half the battle. 
A friend in Missouri says that he is over 6D 
years old, and never planted corn except in drills. 
The first half of his life was spent in northern 
Ohio. He kept all the sheep the land would sup¬ 
port, and the sheep kept the land clean of weeds. 
Neighbors who kept no sheep were obliged to 
check their corn in order to keep it clean, and 
they raised smaller crops. Where he now lives, 
our friend says that when he has a piece of clo¬ 
ver on land in good condition for drilling, he 
plants it himself; if he thinks it needs check¬ 
rowing, he rents it to somebody else. He says 
he has found renters, after the second crop, with 
their horses’ tails tied up in oilcloth, and about 
15 bushels of corn and 20 bushels of burrs to the 
acre, in spite of checking. 
“The land is being depleted, and the day of 
commercial fertilizers is drawing nigh.” Thus 
vrites a subscriber in Illinois. It may, perhaps, 
be true that phosphoric acid, and to some ex¬ 
tent, potash, are needed now, on many western 
farms. With cow peas and clover, however, it 
will be a long time before nitrogen should be 
needed on western grain and dairy farms. 
Michigan Peach Notes.— We. are situated on 
what is known as the Francisco Summit, 65 mileB 
west of Detroit, the highest point between De¬ 
troit and Chicago, and one of the best peach 
sections outside of the peach belt protected by 
the waters of Lake Michigan. Our trees suffered 
but little from the cold weather; there are many 
live buds that stood from 15 to 22 degrees below 
zero in my orchard of 1,500 trees. There are a 
great many peach orchards all through here 
bought of a nursery company of Tadmor, Ohio, 
that did not prove true to name. Good judges 
have placed my damage in that respect at $5,000. 
There are others as bad, some varieties being 
nine-tenths wrong, and what makes it worse, 
so many are perfectly worthless. I am glad to 
see that H. W G., page 239, has his trees in his 
own nursery and doesn’t have to depend upon 
such firms for trees. I think H. W. G.’s trees 
will hardly sprout above the ground, even though 
not frozen below the snow; trees almost always 
sprout from the roots or below the buds; that 
has been my experience in peach culture for the 
past 34 years. e- s. c. 
Francisco, Michigan. 
Quick Fertilizer. 
There is nothing in the American 
market to-day that acts so quickly and 
surely as a fertilizer as 
Nitrate of Soda, 
Apply to the surface in the spring. 
A small quantity does the work. 
Watch the crops closely and when 
they look sick or make slow growth 
apply the remedy promptly. Book, 
“Foodfor Plants,” tells all about it. 
John A. Myers, 12—0 John St., New 
York, will send you free copy on re 
quest. Nitrate for sale by 
BALFOUR, WILLIAMSON & CO., 
27 William St, New York. 
BURPEE 6est 
That Grow SEEDS 
Leading American Seed Catalogue 
for 1899,— Mailed FREE to all. 
A bright Book of 176 pages, with elegant colored 
plates aud illustrations from nature. Gives much valu¬ 
able new information. THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS 
in cash prizes. Write a postal card TO-DAY I 
W. ATLEE BURPEE A CO. PHILADELPHIA 
Thirty-Eight Tons 
EXCELLENT QUALITY OF ENSILAGE per 
acre, actual weight. Cost of seed only $1. Book 
telling all about it mailed free. ROSS BROTHERS, 
No. 102 Front Street. Worcester. Mass. 
EARLY BLACK COW PEAS. 
$2 per two-busbei big or $1.25 per bushel. 
It. S. JOHNSTON, Box 4. Stockley, Del. 
I" — —Japanese Barnyard Millet 
“ Ol Seed. Address 
Prof. Wm. P. Brooks. Mass. Agr.Col., Amherst, Mass 
^ POTATOES. Choice clean White 
^9 Ea EL \J Oats, 1U7 bushels per acre, 75c ba.: 
sample. 5c. postage. Good White Banner at 1 5c. bu. 
Bed Kidney, cho ce se^d. 000 bushels Choice Seed 
Potatoes. Sir Waller Raleigh. $3: (arman No. 3, 
$2.80; Rural New-Yorker No. 2, $2.70; Enormous, $3. 
Good Seconds, from $1.25 to $1 80 in sacks 105 pounds. 
Circular 35 kinds. We grow them. 
S. J. SMITH, Rural, Manchester, N. Y. 
CHOICE LARGE SEED POTATOES 
guaranteed true to name. A few barrels left of Sir 
Walter Ralegh. 3-bushel barrel $1.25; 4-bushel 
barrel. $4 25; Uncle 8am, Carman Nos. 1 and 3, at $1 
per bushel. Put up in 3 or 4-bushel barrels. Cash 
with order. Money Order Office Caledonia, N. Y. 
D. C. MCPHERSON SEED CO , 
Garbutt, Monroe County, N. Y. 
BLOODY BUTCHER 
Or Turkey Track Corn, is undoubtedly the earliest, 
large eared, long kernel corn grown. Bushel, $1 25; 
peck, 50c.; quart by mail, postpaid, 25c. 
Improved Learning, White Cap Yellow Dent, One 
Hundred Day Bristol, Cuban Giant Ensilage, Extra 
Early Huron Dent, Golden Beauty, Iowa Gold Mine, 
$1 per bushel; peck, 40c. New sacks free. These corns 
are all grown in Northern Ohio, and selected with 
great care especially for seed. Satisfaction guaran¬ 
teed. Write for prices on lots of 10 bushels. 
F. D. PIERCE, Box 43, Wakeman, Huron County, O 
Vegetable Plants. 
Make m mey by raising early vegetables. Our 
plants are guaranteed to be of good size, and to be 
grown from extra selected seeds. Tte largest estab¬ 
lishment in the United States devoted exc.usively 
to the raising of vegetable plants. The prices quoted 
below are for transp anted, weil-bardened plants. 
Per 100. Per M 
Cabbage plants ready March 15. $0.40 $3.00 
Tomato plants ready May 1 40 3 00 
Celery plants ready Maicb 15.40 3 00 
Pepper plants ready May 1.40 3.00 
Egg plant plants ready May 1 .50 4.00 
We raise all of the leading varieties. Stamp for 
catalogue. Cash must accompany all orders. 
J. E. HUTTON, Conyngham, Pa. 
