378 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
May 20 
tion becomes deplorable when we find the representa¬ 
tives of rich city dealers passing these farms by on 
their tours in search of horses suitable for general 
purposes, and which bring remarkably high prices in 
the city markets. 
Horses Dealers Prefer. —The horses which the 
dealers have chosen, of late, have been, for the most 
part, trotting-bred stallions which have been trained 
for years, and have made their mark on the track, 
although without any extraordinary records. These 
horses have been gelded, their tails shortened (docked), 
their feet heavily shod and their heads checked up in 
stylish harness, in order to make them pass muster as 
salable high-steppers. Truth to tell, such horses 
have been highly successful, and have found ready 
buyers at exorbitantly high figures; but it has been 
the city dealers, rather than the breeders and farmers 
who were the original owners, who have made any 
money out of them. The country has been pretty well 
scoured of this class of horse, the dealers confess that 
there are few if any more extraordinary animals of 
this sort now to be found, and in view of the great 
demand for stylish high-steppers, the problem which 
has now to be solved is how profitably to produce 
horses of the style and character which the market 
demands. 
The small farmer who is alive to his advantages, 
will at once ccmpare the situation here with that of 
the small farmer in England, France and other 
European countries, and will quickiy recognize that 
the solution of the problem rests entirely in his own 
hands. In the first place, let it be thoroughly under¬ 
stood that the farmer is the only man who can breed 
and raise coach horses profitably. Other 
people may deal in horses, and make some 
money out of them, but no man can actually 
produce carriage horses of the style and finish 
now demanded, and raise them until they are 
ready at four or fiveyears old for the city mar¬ 
ket, at anythicg like the margin of profit 
that the careful and painstaking farmer can, 
who starts with the proper class of brood 
mare, mates her wiih the proper class of 
stallion, and makes the mare earn her own 
keep while she is carrjurig her foal, and, 
with the exception of a short period after 
foaling, continues the mare at light work 
until the foal is weaned. The foal, too, can 
be put to very light work on the farm as it 
approaches three years of age, and so be¬ 
comes gradually used to harness, without 
any extra expense for training, by the time 
a purchaser is found for it at a fair sum, say 
between $-100 and $600 or perhaps more, and 
this for a yourg horse in the rough, but 
with the shape and action such as the city 
dealer is looking for. 
Some Horse Types. —In order to present 
an object lessen to those farmers who may 
desire to make the horse-breeding depart¬ 
ment of their industry return as handsome 
profits as any other work in which they may 
he engaged, I submit some illustrations of 
specimens taken on the farm of Mr. A. L. Sul¬ 
livan, of Lincoln, Neb. Mr. Sullivan has been highly 
successful in his efforts to produce salable harness 
horses of the fashionable type, by using an imported 
Hackney stallion on selected native mares. 
Fig. 152 shows a poor mare of sour expression and 
bad shape, and one of the i ort which farmers should 
avoid, for while her foals, as seen in the picture, have 
been toppy and possessed of the requisite snap, they 
have been light in build, too long in body, and too 
high on the leg to catch the eye of a city dealer. 
Fig. Ip4 demonstrates clearly the pronounced char¬ 
acter of a foal by tbe Hackney stallion, in contrast to 
the sour-visaged and poor-looking colt next to the 
mare that was got by a cheap so-called trotting-bred 
sire. 
Fig. 153 shows plainly a capital stamp of brood 
mare, with good plain but sensible head, sloping 
shoulder, high wither, straight back, strong loin, and 
fair hind quarter, and with body set on stout, short 
legs. This sort of mare is frequently found on small 
farms, and in such a mare, the owner has a gold mine, 
if he did but know it. It is from such mares that the 
fortunes of many prosperous English and French 
farmers have sprung, and to them are traceable some 
of the most fashionable carriage-horse sires now liv¬ 
ing. Mares of this class boast no fine trotting blood, 
perhaps, neither have they ever produced anything 
sensational for racing purposes, but they have the 
identical frame out of which to produce foals of the 
desired character, similar to the foal shown in Fig. 
155, which was produced by the native mare in Fig 153 
This is the kind of foal that city dealers and their 
representatives are lookirig for, and which they are 
spending hundreds of dollars in traveling expenses to 
locate. When found, they make a deposit upon such 
foals, and keep track of them until about ready to 
break to fashionable harness. As much as $250 have 
been deposited on such a foal a year old by a city 
dealer, and $800 is nowadays not an exorbitant price 
for the dealer to pay for such a foal at three, rising 
four years old. It will be apparent to the merest 
tyro in breeding that such a foal has all the character 
of a stylish harness horse, even as a weanling. Its 
head has good expression, and is gracefully carried on 
a naturally arched neck, the shoulders are well put 
in, the legs are straight and well formed, the body is 
well rounded, and the hind quarters are elegantly 
formed, the thighs show unusual development, and 
tbe hocks fairly well let down, so that, when the colt 
matures, he may be counted upon to be “ close to the 
ground”; in other words, he is set on short rather 
than long legs Given even ordinary high action, 
there can be no doubt whatever about such a colt’s 
future. Every city buyer who sees him will bid for 
him, so that the farmer who breeds such may always 
safely count upon a good market for all he can pro¬ 
duce. 
In this way, a mare such as shown in Fig. 153 is 
al ways a source of income to her owner in spite of the 
fact that she is not of the recognized trotting type, and 
cannot produce a fast colt. The mare need have only a 
little speedy blood in her veins, indeed it will be all 
the better if she has never been speeded on a track, 
for then the chances are that her action will be 
straight and true, if a bit slow, and she will show no 
tendency to spread behind, a defect which would spoil 
the sale of a stylish carriage horse. 
Hackney Stallions l'or Farmers.—Inasmuch as 
the importers of English Hackneys are now complet¬ 
ing arrangements to place young, high-acting Hackney 
stallions in the hands of farmers in the various horse- 
breeding sections of the country, the opportunities 
for producing such colts as pictured in Fig. 155 will 
be many, and the service fees are to be placed so low 
as to appeal to all classes of farmers who possess 
mares of the desired character. a h. godfrf.y. 
Late Asst. Sec. American Hackney Horse Society. 
ODD THINGS ABOUT THE SOIL. 
FORMATION OF PLANT FOOD FROM SOIL 
Soil Grains Inclosed in Filins of Water. —A 
pebble lifted from tbe wa + er comes forth w th a thin 
layer surrounding and inclosing it, wetting its sur¬ 
face. In all moist soils, each grain is encased in a 
similar water film, and it is the combined weight of 
the water films in each cubic foot of soil which meas¬ 
ures its water content. A lump of rock salt lifted 
from the water, like the pebble, has a layer of water 
surrounding it, and if, at first, this film is pure water, 
very soon it becomes saturated with salt dissolved 
from the surface of the lump. In the same manner, 
every grain of soil yields up to the water film invest¬ 
ing it a small portion of its surface. 
Some soil grains are much more readily soluble than 
others in the water surrounding them, but none can 
entirely withstand its action, and so the soil water is 
a very complex solution containing a small amount of 
very many substances, and from these plants take 
what they need. 
The Larger the Surface, the Faster the Solu¬ 
tion.— All are familiar with the fact that the more 
finely salt or sugar is divided before being put into 
water, the more rapidly does it dissolve ; the reasen 
for this is found in the fact that tbe aggregate sur¬ 
face in contact with which water may come is in¬ 
creased in proportion to the extent of subdivision. 
On this principle, tbe fine-grained c’ay soils dissolve 
more rapidly in the soil water than do those of the 
coarser-textured sandy ones; and this difference is 
one of the reasons why a clayey soil will ordinarily 
yield larger crops without the aid of fertilizers. 
The Surface of Soil Grains in an Acre very 
Large. —A marble an inch in diameter has a surface 
of 3 1416 square inches, and the s nallest number 
which wo ild completely fill a cubic foDt would be 
12X12X12=1728. while the aggregate surface of the 
marbles would be 1728X3 1416 or 5428.68 square inches, 
in round numbers 37 square feet An acre of such 
marbles four Let deep would have an aggregate sur¬ 
face for holding water and for solution to take place 
upon equal to 4 X 37 or 148 acres To reduce the 
diameter of the marbles to one-tenth of an inch would 
increase the aggregate surface per acre tenfold; to 
decrease the diameter to on i-hundredth and to one- 
thou'andth of an ineh would increase the total sur¬ 
face a hundred and a thousandfold respectively. 
That is to say, the amount of surface in an acre of 
soil four feet deep, were the grains one-thousandth 
of an inch in diameter, wou'd exceed 148,000 acres. 
It is upon such broad surfaces as these that the water 
in fertile soils is re'a'ned and prevented from drain¬ 
ing rapidly away. It is upon such broad surfaces 
that the ash ingredients of plants are dissolved. It 
is only these enormous expanses of thin sheet water 
in the soil which makes it possible for sufficient 
oxygen from the air to penetrate it, and keep 
it sweet and wholesome for the roots of 
plants and the bac‘eria which turn the 
insoluble organic matter into available ni¬ 
trogen for higher plants. f. h king. 
Wisconsin Experiment Station. 
THE BAHIA ORANGE AND L. C. TIBBITS 
The recent statement in The R N.-Y. and 
some other papers that Mr. L C Tibbits, 
of California, who is now in a house of pub¬ 
lic charity, “ Gave the seedless orange to the 
world,” is not entirely correct. Tt is evi¬ 
dent that the variety known as Washington 
Navel, or more properly, the Bahia, is meant. 
The latter is the true name, as it was and 
should have been first given by Mr. William 
Saunders, of Washington, D C. It is to him 
that the world is indebted for this orange 
more than to any one else, although Mr. and 
Mrs. Tibbits, too (the latter now deceased) 
were instrumental in bringing it prominently 
before the public in California. The facts 
are as follows : 
During the Civil War, a woman who had 
been sojourning in Brazil, told Mr. Saunders 
that she knew of an orange at Bahia, Brazil, 
that exceeded any other variety she had ever 
tasted or heard of. He sent there and had 12 
trees propagated by budding, and sent to 
him in 1870. They all grew, and some of them are 
yet bearing fruit in the orange hou«e at Washington. 
None of the original trees was sent out to the public, 
but all were kept there and used as stock from which 
to propagate by budding. Many young trees were 
budded from them, and sent to Florida and California. 
Early in 1873 Mrs. Tibbits was in Washington just 
previous to going to her new home at Riverside, Cali¬ 
fornia. Mr. Saunders offered to give her some trees of 
this new and untried orange, and she most gladly ac¬ 
cepted two trees. She and her aged husband planted 
them beside their cottage, and when they bore fruit, it 
was found to be equal to the most extravagant reports 
of its quality and size, and the trees were very pro¬ 
lific in that section. The trees sent to Florida pro¬ 
duced equally good fruit, but they did not bear well. 
This is why many fruit growers thought there was 
more than one variety in the lot of trees imported 
from Brazil; but the difference in fruitfulness came 
from climatic causes, as has been most thoroughly 
proved by many years of experien;e in all the orange¬ 
growing sections of the country. It has, also, been 
said that there was only one tree at the Tibbits place, 
and that it was unlike the other trees bearing the 
same name. But this is a mistake, for I have gath¬ 
ered and eaten fruit from these two trees, and had 
their history direct from Mr. and Mrs. Tibbits, also 
from Mr. Saunders. Besides, I have critically exam¬ 
ined the trees of Bahia in bearing in many parts of 
Florida and California, and compared them and their 
fruit in many ways, and found them to be identical, 
except in variations caused by climate, soil and culture 
This orange is truly seedless, and utterly devoid of 
pollen, and the pistils are, also, deformed in such a 
way as to render seed production from the pollen of 
THE WASHINGTON NAVEL OR BAHIA ORANGE. Fig. 156. 
