1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Ashes for Wheat; Crimson Clover. 
IF. R. B., Turner, N. Y.— 1. What-is the best 
combination, chemically, and the propor¬ 
tion of each for fertilizing a clay loam soil, 
with more or less stone, to be seeded this 
Pall with wheat? 2. I have been thinking 
of using unleached hard-wood ashes, which 
I can have delivered at about $8.30 per ton, 
but I am in doubt as to what should be 
added to get the best result. Is it safe to 
sow Crimson clover as late as the middle 
of September, in this section? 
Ans. —1. If you can obtain first-class 
unleached ashes at $8.50 per ton, we 
would advise you to use them. An ex¬ 
cellent combination would be two parts 
by weight of the ashes, and one part of 
fine ground bone. We would not ad¬ 
vise you to try to mix the bone and 
ashes before applying them. They do 
not mix well, the ashes being too dry 
and powdery for the bone. Broadcast 
the ashes before harrowing, and drill 
the bone in with the wheat. From 200 
to 300 pounds per acre of the bone 
should give good results. 2. We do not 
advise the sowing of Crimson clover in 
your latitude as late as the middle of 
September; the chances would be all 
aga/inst its living through the Winter. 
Ants and a Pear Tree. 
H. A. C., Allentown, Pa .—I have an An- 
gouleme pear tree, about 15 feet high, that 
Is suffering from the attacks of some insect 
which is eating away the cambium under 
the outer bark. Lately I peeled off all the 
loose bark, washed the tree with a weak 
solution of carbolic acid in hot water, then 
smeared it over with mud, to which I 
added a little lime to make it stick better. 
Under the loose bark, I found many ants, 
and one or two quite small worms; those 
were all the insects I could discover. Do 
you think the ants did the mischief, or are 
they simply following up the work of some 
other destroyer? What treatment do you 
recommend to stay the evil and save the 
tree? It looks thrifty otherwise, has borne 
a good deal of fruit, and is bearing a much 
larger crop than usual this year. 
Ans. —I am quite sure that ants were 
not the primary cause of the condition 
of H. A. S.’s pear tree. I know of no 
ants in this part of the country which 
attack living, healthy wood in this man¬ 
ner. Doubtless, the bark of the tree 
had been injured in some way, so that 
borers or other insects, or possibly, some 
fungous disease, got a foothold, and 
finally formed a suitable place for ants 
to frequent. Without seeing the tree, I 
could add nothing to the treatment given 
it by its owner. m. v. s. 
• 
Killing Ants in the Soil. 
IF. F. It., Allentown, Pa .—I have a very 
small vegetable garden, but I make good 
use of it. In some places, particularly 
where I am obliged to raise my lettuce, the 
soil is so full of small ants that the place 
is worthless. The ants eat off the lettuce 
near the roots before it is an inch high. I 
ought to put in my Fall crop very soon. 
Can you recommend anything that wifi kill 
the ants, and not make the soil worthless? 
Ans.— The only method I can suggest 
for clearing the soil of ants is to make 
some holes in the soil with a sharp- 
pointed stick or iron bar, a few inches 
in depth, and then pour into each hole 
an ounce or so of carbon bisulphide, 
quickly closing the hole with earth, or 
better, a chunk of sod. The fumes from 
this liquid will quickly penetrate all 
through the soil, and be sure death to 
all animal life. The fumes will soon 
pass out of the soil, and will not in¬ 
jure it in the least. The liquid is very 
destructive to all vegetation it may 
touch. If the nest of ants can be found, 
it will be a simple matter to punch sev¬ 
eral holes in it, and treat it with the 
bisulphide. It might be practicable to 
employ the sponge and sweetened water 
method in this case. m. v. s. 
Broadcasting Cow Peas; Wireworms. 
O. S., La Plume, Pa.— 1. I sowed a piece 
of ground to cow peas in May, and have a 
fair growth of peas, but a bigger growth 
of pigweeds, barn grass and pusley. Is 
not this a serious objection to sowing them 
broadcast? My ground will be completely 
seeded to the above-named weeds, and it 
seems to me that such a crop of weeds will 
use up too much plant food. 2. I have a 
piece of ground badly infested with wire- 
worms. Would this fact be an objection 
to setting it to strawberries next Spring? 
Ans. —1. We have never had this 
trouble with cow peas when broadcasted 
at the rate of five pecks to the acre. 
With a perfect stand, the cow peas will 
usually crowd the weeds, and smother 
them, at least keep them back so that 
they do pot form seed. It is certainly 
an advantage in many ways to drill the 
cow peas, and keep them well cultivated. 
If this field could have been taken in 
time, before the weeds went to seed, we 
would have run the mower over it, cut¬ 
ting off both cow peas and weeds. This 
would have destroyed the weeds, while 
the cow peas would have made a sec¬ 
ond growth before frost. 2. Wireworms 
do not seem to trouble the roots of 
strawberries as do the white grubs. 
The wireworm either does not find the 
strawberry roots good eating, or else 
prefers the roots of weeds growing in 
the patch. 
Short Stories. 
A Butterfly Farm. —The commercial 
breeding of butterflies seems an extra¬ 
ordinary industry, but this is done by 
one English entomologist. The butter¬ 
flies, both British and foreign, are bred 
and mounted for collectors, and collec¬ 
tions are sold containing all the way 
from 10 to 10,000 specimens. The larvae 
and cocoons are placed in breeding 
cages, in glass houses of various tem¬ 
peratures. Many of the caterpillars are 
fed in the garden, on various trees, the 
insects being confined by a gauze cov¬ 
ering. Some rare and remarkable tropi¬ 
cal butterflies and moths have been bred 
at this place, among them the giant 
Atlas moth of Asia, whose wings are 
said to reach a spread of 10 inches. 
Four Wrong Principles. —Admiral 
Schley has an article in Leslie’s ivaonthly 
in which he describes the Santiago cam¬ 
paign. Among other things he says: 
Subsequently, in Porto Rico, I talked 
very frankly with Spanish officers. They 
said a great deal about their honor. We 
all admitted it. But one day I told them 
I thought there were four fundamentally 
wrong military traditions in Spain: First, 
the Spanish government thought that 
Spanish soldiers could fight without being 
fed; second, that they could be vigilant 
without getting sleep; third, that they 
could be loyal when they were not being 
paid; and fourth, that they were given a 
language so rich and sonorous and full of 
synonyms that they talked too much, and 
did not learn to fight. , 
There are some people who hold the 
first and second tradition about hired 
men, tne third about their wives, while 
they 'themselves are living examples of 
the fourth. 
A Potato-Bug Trust. —The daily pa¬ 
pers contain the following: 
Centre Moriches, N. Y., AHgust 25.— 
Potato bugs are impeding traffic on the 
Long Island Railroad. A train was com¬ 
pletely stalled here yesterday. The engine 
driving-wheels would not take hold. En¬ 
gineer Murray stormed, and Fireman Bill 
Price, with broom in one hand and a 
bucket of sand in the other, finally suc¬ 
ceeded in marrying driving-wheels and 
rails', and traffic was resumed. The bugs 
are a late-hatched crop; not finding any 
potato vines, they are in migratory mood. 
The dry weather makes the road-bed sand 
too crumbly for secure footing for the 
bugs, and they are taking to the rails in 
untold numbers. 
What with Potato bugs stopping 
trains, and refusing to be poisoned by 
Paris-green, the outlook is gloomy. 
Possibly the following note from our old 
friend, N. Hallock, of Long Island, may 
indicate hope: 
“About four years ago, we had a raid 
of Potato bugs during the month of 
August. These late bugs are the ones 
that hibernate, and are ready to receive 
the early potato in the Spring. During 
that raid, I wrote The R. N.-Y. of the 
fatal effects of the Petunia on the bug. 
We are now in the throes of another 
raid; there are Potato bugs everywhere, 
in the roads, on our walks, in our houses, 
in fact, everywhere that a bug of its 
size can get. A dish of potato peelings 
is soon covered by a mass of scrambling 
bugs; our tomatoes are stripped, so 
with the eggplants, though kept well 
64 f 
covered with poison, each one takes a 
little and nes, but so many come to the 
funeral, and partake of the funeral 
meats, that soon there is no meat left. 
Again my row of Petunias claims its 
own; the ground is completely covered 
with the dead. But I have found a sur¬ 
prise in that of a Delphinium formosum 
plant (I have but one) with only the 
margin of the leaves slightly eaten. 
The ground is absolutely covered with 
dead bugs. This seems to show that, 
on a short diet, they will eat outside the 
Solanum relatives. It is the first I have 
ever observed their doing so. 
“What the harvest will be next year, 
with all tnese bugs safely through the 
Winter, one can scarce conjecture. 
Why farmers do not kill this last brood, 
is a mark of tne average shiftless, 
happy-go-lucky way of ‘sufficient for the 
day is the evil thereof.’ ” 
The Gum Crop. —Reports from Maine 
say that the last of the spruce-gum crop 
for 1898 has been sent to market. It is 
the largest in the history of the State, 
amounting to about 30 tons, and valued 
at about $03,000. The business of gath¬ 
ering this gum has been reduced to al¬ 
most an exact science. The most com¬ 
plete outfits and tools are provided for 
the harvesters. After it is gathered and 
brought to the home of the organizer 
of the expedition, it is carefully assort¬ 
ed and packed, wnen it is ready for the 
city dealer. The dealers are said to 
practice much trickery in the packing 
of the gum for market, mixing the poor¬ 
er qualities with the best gum. A pe¬ 
culiar thing In connection with this 
business is the fact that the pickers ex¬ 
act a solemn promise from the buyers 
that they will not allow the gum to be 
manufactured and put on the market 
by a trust. One dealer, it was reported, 
was unable to get a pound of gum be¬ 
cause he would not make such a promise. 
The pickers and lumbermen consider 
all trusts things of evil, and enemies of 
labor. 
THE FOOD FOR PLANTS. 
Last week, while talking with an in¬ 
telligent farmer, the question of feeding 
plants came up. This man said that he 
understood that scientific men generally 
agree that 95 per cent of the bulk of 
most plants came out of the air. He 
said this was proved by the fact that 
big plants have been grown in water 
where no soil ever was applied to the 
roots. He then said that, if this is so, 
it demonstrates that our old ideas of 
feeding plants were wrong, and all we 
need to get big crops is to get the plant 
well started in the soil, and see that it 
does not suffer from water. He thought 
this proves that we had been spending 
too much money in buying manure and 
fertilizers when, by stirring the soil so 
that the water could get into it to better 
advantage, we could feed the plant suc¬ 
cessfully. 
A man who stood by, explained the 
matter in this way: “It is true,” he said, 
“that the great bulk of the plant comes 
from the air, and never passes through 
the soil at all; so you might say that the 
great bulk of a man conies and goes 
through his lungs, irom and into the 
air. A man cannot breathe through his 
stomach, neither can he take lood into 
his system through the lungs. These 
three kinds of nourishment must be sup¬ 
plied: the air through the lungs, and 
the water and the solid food through the 
mouth. In tne same way, the plant 
must have these three kinds of food: 
The water which comes through the 
For the land’s sake — use Bowker’s 
Fertilizer.— Adv. 
roots, the part of the plant which passes 
away on burning, which comes from the 
air, and that part of the plant which is 
left as ash, which can enter only through 
the roots, and which must come either 
from the soil or from something added 
to the soil. It is evident that since ash 
will not burn and pass away into the 
air, it cannot be brought out of the air, 
but must be supplied from the outside. 
There is an abundance of these asn ele¬ 
ments in the soil if we can only make 
them available to the plant. This can be 
done to a slight extent by plowing, cul¬ 
tivating or draining the soil, and it can 
be done by growing such crops as clover 
and cow peas, which make some of this 
mineral matter available, and hold it in 
an available form for other crops. What 
we cannot obtain in this way we must 
supply artificially as fertilizers or ma¬ 
nures.” 
This seems to cover the ground very 
well, and it well shows how farmers are 
feeling and groping their way along 
into this matter of agricultural science. 
Many of them have arrived at scientific 
conclusions without exactly understand¬ 
ing how they were reached, and when 
once the principles are made clear to 
them, they are always able to apply 
these principles in a practical and help¬ 
ful way in raising their crops. 
Potash. 
T^ARMERS should know its 
value and its importance 
in a fertilizer to be applied to 
their grain crops. 
Our illustrated books which 
tell what Potash is, how it 
should be used, and how much 
Potash a well-balanced fertil¬ 
izer should contain, are sent 
free to all applicants. Send 
your address. 
GERMAN KALI WORKS, 
93 Nassau St., New York. 
Profits of Farming 
GARDENING AND FRTJIT CULT UR A 
depend upon Good Crop** and they In 
turn upon Good Fertilizers. The 
uniformly best fertilizer for all Crops 
and all soils Is made by 
The Cleveland Dryer Co., Cleveland, C 
Materials Supplied }or “ Home Mixing." 
Jadoo Fibre and Jadoo Liquid 
Will give you Early Crops and Large Crops 
of Vegetables or Fruit. Send for Catalogues 
and be convinced of the merits of these 
new Fertilizers. 
THE AMERICAN JADOO CO., 
815 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. 
85 
A RUINED 
GARDEN, 
flower bed, green house 
or lawn may be the result 
of a few hours oi>eration 
of an active, energetic 
mole. The remedy 1» to 
catch them on first signs 
of appearance. 
"0ut-0-Sight" 
MOLE TRAP 
catches him every time. It’B 
guaranteed to do that. Can be 
set anywhere—under glass, In 
the hot bed, &c. Sample trap 
_ J Ct8. by mail, or have your dealer 
order for you. It is not like others— 
It I. better. Descriptive matter 
on traps mailed free. 
ANIMAL TRAP CO. 
10 /leek St., Abingdon, II 
tic trap 
ealer 
rs— 
Buy Your Fertilizers directi * 1 
Save Money! No Salesman’s Expenses: No Middleman’s Profit. Our enttro prs4tll 
goes from Factory to Farm. Write for free samples and book. 
WALKER, STRATMAN A OO., Pittsburg, Pa. 
