71 8 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 14 
HOW FROST INJURES CORN. 
Get It Into the Silo at Once. 
We are asked to tell just how a hard frost Injures 
growing corn for fodder. Is It best to cut frosted corn 
at once, or will it improve by standing if not quite ripe? 
HOW JACK FROST BITES—The exact nature of 
the injury which occurs to a plant or a fruit when it 
is frozen is not fully understood. The injury is be¬ 
lieved to be the result of the tendency which water 
has when freezing to form into crystals, which ex¬ 
pel from among them all foreign substances. Every 
farmer is familiar with the fact that when a wet soil 
freezes during the night of a heavy frost, in the Fall 
or Spring, the water in the soil is drawn together 
into long and interlocking ice needles, which crowd 
the soil particles aside so completely that when the 
ice thaws again in the sun the surface may show 
that it has been very much disturbed by the freezing. 
Now, when the tissues of a plant freeze, especially if 
this is severe, it is supposed that the water asso¬ 
ciated with the tissues of the plant, with the proto¬ 
plasm of the cells, and in the sap, tends to form into 
pure crystals of ice, and that these crystals may grow 
and elongate in such directions as completely or 
partly to rupture the cell walls. Then, if the thawing 
out is rapid, so that the ice melts rapidly before the 
water has time to be reabsorbed in the protoplasm 
and in the tissues of the plant, it leaks out, and the 
great loss of water and the evaporation which follows 
destroy the life of the plant. If, on the other hand, 
the thawing is very gradual, so that the water, when 
it melts, may be reabsorbed into the tissues, the 
wounds which are produced in the cells may be so 
small that they readily heal, and the plant is not 
killed. 
FROST MEANS DEATH—When corn fodder, is 
badly frosted, it almost invariably follows that the 
thawing out is so rapid that death necessarily results 
to the leaves which have been injured in this way, 
and the best method to follow in caring for such 
fodder is to cut it as quickly as possible, and get it 
into shocks, if it is to be fed dry, or to put it at once 
into the silo, if ensilage is to be made from it. 
The fundamental principle to follow in putting any 
material into the silo, is to do it while the cells of 
the plant are yet full of sap, because if they are al¬ 
lowed to dry as" they will after freezing, and as they 
do when they reach full maturity, air takes the place 
of the sap in the cells, and so a much larger amount 
of air is carried into the silo in a form in which it 
cannot readily escape. As a consequence, there is 
necessarily a much larger loss of dry matter, on ac¬ 
count of greater fermentation, and a possibility of a 
larger growth of molds, through the excess of air 
which the dry tissues carry in. With this statement 
made it will be readily understood that the applica¬ 
tion of water to over-dry material going into the 
silo can be only a partial remedy, as it cannot wholly 
expel the air which has taken the place of the sap. 
Much of the water will be absorbed, it is true, in 
time, and the air expelled by it, but unless this takes 
place before the material is compacted in the silo, 
the expelled air is still there to permit fermentation 
and molding to go on. [prof.] f. h. king. 
POTATO WITH A RING IN ITS NOSE. 
A few days ago, a friend who was digging some 
potatoes, came across one with a wire ring through 
it, and sent it to me as a curiosity, and, as it is too 
much of a one for me, I hand it over to you for an 
explanation. My friend, a man of strict integrity, has 
assured me personally that there was no trick in the 
thing, and just as he found the tuber he sent it to me 
by one of my sons. How that ring got in the 
potato is what I want you to determine. I suggested 
to my friend, that some boy, having an idea of a joke 
in his mind, may have fixed tne thing, when the 
potato was growing, but I can’t see how the wire 
could have been twisted around so well as it is. I 
have several potatoes on my mantel, connected to¬ 
gether by what we call here Wire grass, but for 
which you have another name. I have seen, I think, 
a dozen potatoes, in my life, bored through by this 
Wire grass, and sometimes two by the same root. 
If it strikes, in its growth, an eye straight in front 
of it, the result is that the potato is perforated. 
St. Mary’s County, Md. j. Edwin coad. 
R. N.-Y.—A picture of this potato is shown at Fig. 
265. The wires extended nearly three inches longer, 
but have been cut off to save space in engraving. The 
wire does not form a true ring, but has been broken, 
so that it does not quite meet inside the potato. Our 
explanation is that the small potato encountered the 
wire in the soil, and grew through the small opening 
in the wire. As it grew larger, it developed inside 
the ring, pushing up against the wires on either side. 
Men who have studied this matter say that the grass 
does not grojv through the potato, but that the tuber 
grows around the grass. We all know how the shape 
of the tuber is often changed by growing against a 
stone or a bard lump. Some of our friends might 
take this potato and proclaim it as a variety suitable 
for anchoring a wire fence! 
IS PORK UNWHOLESOME FdOD? 
It Produces Some Lively People. 
The editor of a prominent New York daily, in a 
recent signed article concerning the general superior¬ 
ity of the Jews over the various Christian nationali¬ 
ties, credits their well-known greater immunity from 
disease, and consequently lower death rate, in great 
part to their abstention from the use of pork as an 
article of diet. In his capacity of general instructor 
to the universe he must needs give reasons why the 
flesh of the pig is unwholesome. Says this knowing 
editor, in effect: “The hog suffers from chronic indi¬ 
gestion, and like the dog, he does not sweat, and con¬ 
sequently is not fit to eat.” 
The fact that pigs generally have indigestion is new 
indeed to the great army of expert hog feeders. Hogs 
have a few diseases, it is true, but if one gets sick he 
generally dies, and that settles the matter, but as long 
as he is able to eat he digests his food without trouble. 
The powerful digestion of the hog is one of Nature’s 
wonders. When killed, his stomach furnishes the pep¬ 
sin that relieves the ills of dyspeptic humans. As to 
piggy’s inability to get into a perspiration, it would 
be just about as consistent to object to him because 
he has a kink in his tail, and can’t lash the flies from 
his flanks. Nature has provided the pachyderms, to 
which order the hog belongs, with very effective kid¬ 
neys and sound lungs, which is more than can gen- 
THE POTATO AND THE WIRE. Flu. 265. 
erally be said of the modern cow. These blood puri¬ 
fying organs, together with large groups of sudorific 
glands on the inside of the foreleg, are sufficient 
to keep him in comfortable condition in the hottest 
parts of the earth. He and his thick-skinned rela¬ 
tives, such as the elephant, rhinoceros, etc., are uni¬ 
versally esteemed as food by the natives of the vari¬ 
ous localities in which they occur. Notwithstanding 
the unreasonable prejudice against the flesh of swine, 
sound pork is the principal feature in the diet of the 
most energetic peoples of the earth. 
The writer, during many years’ practice of medi¬ 
cine, never met with a case of sickness caused by eat¬ 
ing properly-cooked pork, but has seen plenty of in¬ 
stances of bad effects following the use of veal and 
some other flesh foods. Some people fancy pork 
products specially disagree with them, but when we 
get down to the facts, some other cause usually pre¬ 
sents itself. The flesh of the pig requires more time 
for digestion than other meats, on account of the in¬ 
termixture of fat with the muscular tissues, but there 
can be no reasonable doubt that it possesses a better 
balance of nutriment, and taken in the long run is a 
more effective supporter of the vital forces. 
There are several reasons apparent why the Jews 
have better average health. They are generally non¬ 
producers, avoiding all laborious and exhausting oc¬ 
cupations, and engaging in those commercial pursuits 
classed by the life insurance companies as “preferred 
risks.” For thousands of years the Hebrews have 
heeded the sanitary regulations formulated by their 
great lawyer Moses, but the rejection of swine’s flesh 
is certainly the least essential part of these common- 
sense rules. The meats they are allowed to consume 
have always been carefully inspected and killed by 
experts, under the guise of a religious rite. No “bob 
veal," tuberculous cows, nor “embalmed beef” for the 
Jews, and it is reasonable to suppose they now dis¬ 
criminate against deviled butter, oleo, filled cheese, 
and other nauseating imitations of animal products. 
w. v. F. 
A TALK ABOUT ALFALFA. 
Its Great Value for Ohio. 
Do you find that stable manure is valuable as a dress¬ 
ing for Alfalfa? I am raising Alfalfa in a small way, 
and have used stable manure on some portions of my 
tract, and have not been able to notice that it had a 
beneficial effect on the growth of the plant. Some por¬ 
tions of my tract have been so sandy that the drifting 
of the sand has cut off and destroyed the plants after 
they came up, and it was only after I covered it with a 
light coating of stable manure that I was able to get a 
stand. I have also used it to fill up and stop the wash 
in some gullies that were made by the irrigating water, 
before the plants had formed a strong sod. I have not 
found that the growth was better on these places than 
upon others, but it may be that upon the sandy portions 
the growth would have been much lighter if it had not 
been for the manure, and on the edges of the gullies the 
soil probably did not get as much benefit as farther down 
the hill, as the water would drain through the manure 
in the gullies to lower portions of the tract. The ma¬ 
nure was placed in the gullies for the reason that it 
would not wash out, and if filled with earth the earth 
would wash away. 
I have a tract that is quite gravelly and rocky, and T 
have thought of seeding it to Alfalfa, and using it for a 
sheep pasture. The tract is about 30 acres, and much 
of it is too rocky to mow. I have hesitated somewhat 
about putting it into Alfalfa, and putting sheep on it, 
fearing bloat. I have had but little experience with 
bloat, and that only with cattle, but have been told that 
it is quite fatal with sheep. You say that Alfalfa must 
not be pastured the first season. Would it not be as well 
to pasture it and to mow it? Can you tell me why it 
should not be pastured after frost? We pasture our cattle 
on it after frost, but not while the frost is on the plant, 
as at that time it is as likely to bloat as it is after a 
rain. R - w - s - 
Waterville, Wash. 
ANSWERED RY .T. E. WING, OTIIO. 
There are many strange things about Alfalfa. On 
our Utah ranch I noted, like R. W. S., that Alfalfa 
seemed little benefited by manures, but as it grew 
with astonishing rankness anyway, that is little won¬ 
der. In Ohio, on the other hand, manured soils, pre¬ 
ferably manured the year before sowing the Alfalfa, 
show a wonderful increase in vigor of the plants. I 
think that here the poorer soils of clayey nature, when 
well manured, are best for Alfalfa, provided the 
drainage goes along with the manuring. I have not 
yet experimented with top-dressing Alfalfa with 
manure, but see no reason why it would not be a 
benefit, provided the manure was thinly spread. In 
my experience it does not like a dense coating of any 
mulch, being easily smothered out. T prefer, there¬ 
fore, thoroughly to enrich the soil before sowing the 
Alfalfa, although in the case of drifting sands there 
is no question -of the wisdom of the thin mulch of 
manure. 
As to Alfalfa for sheep pasture, I hesitate to advise 
it, for with any careless shepherd there is likely to 
be a large fatality. Yet in our own case we have 
used it continuously this Summer, and our losses 
amount to one ewe and one lamb out of about 125. 
The survivors have thriven remarkably. Yet the gen¬ 
eral experience is that the loss is considerable. One 
secret of our success is that we have kept the sheep’ 
continuously on the pasture except during the heat of 
the day, when they would not care to graze. We 
have been especially careful not to let them get very 
hungry for it, and then allow sudden access to the 
field. Yet we would have lost a number if we had 
not attended to them rather closely; they bloated, and 
we relieved this by catching them, placing a stick in 
the mouth, and then holding the sufferers between 
the knees, pressing the gas out. In that way I have, 
by timely attention, within five minutes saved the 
lives of ewes that cost me $30 each. In only one in¬ 
stance have I used the trocar; the ewe died, and she 
was the only one lost. However, I do not think that 
the use of the trocar killed her, but attribute her 
death to a tremendous engorgement of Alfalfa, and 
impaction resulting therefrom. In New Mexico there 
is a man who keeps on his irrigated farm 1,000 ewes 
on 40 acres of Alfalfa. This seems incredible, but the 
climate is semi-tropical, the soil deep and rich, and 
irrigation water abundant. He loses a very small per 
cent, and keeps them on this pasture constantly, hav¬ 
ing learned that to take them out at night is likely 
to cause trouble. 
As to pasturing after frost. Alfalfa is likely to 
cause bloat, especially if the sheep eat it when frozen. 
The treading on the crowns of frozen Alfalfa kills 
the plants in Ohio. I do not know that it would be de¬ 
structive in drier countries. In Utah I have seen it 
endure for years, in the middle of a much-traveled 
road. After 13 years’ experience with Alfalfa, I am 
convinced that it is the most profitable crop that we 
can grow, either on our Utah ranch or our Ohio farm. 
