738 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
November 13 
the tip with a light trough of wood, to keep off the 
direct rays of the sun. In two or three years, he has 
a stem 16 or 18 feet long and about one inch in diam¬ 
eter. Then the tip end is turned up and the buds are 
permitted to form branches in line with the trunk, so 
as to make a fan-shaped top which is fastened to a 
stake. In winter, the top, is turned over so that it 
lies on the ground, and is covered with boards. Fig. 
310 shows just how the trees are trained. 
I asked Mr. Macomber for a list of varieties that he 
considers best suited for culture in Grand Isle Coun¬ 
ty, and he gave the following : 
IIomk Usk Only —Peck’s Pleasant, Wagener, Swaar, 
Pomme Gris, Rawle’s Janet, American Golden Russet, 
and Talman Sweet. 
Home and Market. —Spitzenburg, Red Canada, 
Fameuse, R. I Greening and Northern Spy. 
Sale Only.—B aldwin. 
Mr. Macomber believes in having a large assort¬ 
ment of apples for home use. Some of the best eat¬ 
ing apples are not good market varieties, for one rea¬ 
son or another, but that should not prevent a farmer 
from having the best he can provide on his own table. 
I showed this list to Mr. T. L. Kinney, one of the 
leading apple growers on the Island. As a practical 
man growing apples for a profitable market only, Mr. 
Kinney said that he would cut the list down to four 
varieties as follows: McIntosh Red, R. I. Greening, 
Northern Spy and Baldwin. 
Mr. Kinney went on to speak of the difference in 
habits of growth shown by different varieties. The 
Northern Spy, for example, does best on an open 
limestone soil, while Baldwin will often thrive on 
closer and more compact soil. On the west side of 
the Island, in a limestone soil, Northern Spy does 
well, while on the east side, Baldwin does better, 
chiefly because the soil is different. But I will de¬ 
scribe Mr. Kinney’s practice and the general practice 
on the Island next week. h. w. c. 
PEACH TREES WITH THE YELLOWS. 
NEW TBEES IN OLD HOLES. 
One of our readers in Connecticut sent us the following ques¬ 
tions. As there seetns to be more or less controversy among 
authorities regarding this matter, we would like to have you tell 
us what you would do in a similar situation: 
“ I have a young peach orchard, and have had to dig up sev¬ 
eral trees that had the first symptoms of yellows. I dug around 
the trees, cut off the roots, and hauled off the trees and burned 
them. Will it do any harm to set out new trees next spring in 
the same holes ? Part of the roots of the old trees are in the 
ground, running down so straight that they can’t be got out. If 
the vacant places be filled at all, they must be put in the same 
places to keep the lines straight enough to cultivate. Would the 
new trees be liable to take the yellows from the roots of the old 
trees left in the ground ? ” 
Plant Something Else in the Holes. 
I have no confidence in the success of such an 
undertaking, unless, possibly, in the case of one-year- 
old trees which were pulled out before they had 
thoroughly poisoned or affected the ground. I know 
it has been claimed from Michigan that success has 
followed such a replanting, but I have tested it here 
to my full satisfaction, and have not yet succeeded in 
raising healthy trees where the diseased ones had 
been taken out. Better replant the vacant places 
with Japan plum trees, or else let them remain 
vacant until the whole orchard is gone ; then, after 
a few years of clean culture, replant the whole ground. 
Connecticut. j. h. hale. 
It would certainly be dangerous to the young peach 
trees to be planted where old ones had been taken 
out dead of the yellows. I would plant something 
else in the vacancies—plums, for instance. 
Vermont Experiment Station. f. A. waugh. 
Not Afraid of Yellows. 
Your Connecticut reader may safely plant fresh 
trees in place of those diseased with Yellows. There 
are hundreds of sound, healthy peach trees in this 
vicinity, several years in bearing, which were planted 
in spring, in place of trees diseased with yellows, 
which had been removed for this cause, the previous 
season. Trees thus planted, however, cannot be 
reasonably expected to make satisfactory growths, 
unless the more or less exhausted soil be refertilized, 
or replaced by fresh earth. t. t. lyon. 
Michigan. 
It has been our practice to plant young trees in the 
places where old trees have died of the yellows, and 
with a liberal amount of plant food added to the soil, 
the trees made a good growth and were as free from 
disease as young trees planted on new land. Three 
generations of trees have been grown on the same 
land, or rather, two have been grown to maturity, 
and now we have the third lot of trees one year old 
growing in a very thrifty condition. I found this 
practice common among the peach growers in the 
vicinity of South Haven, Mich., where I visited this 
summer. I would practice this method of keeping up 
the orchard until the larger part of the trees were 
very old or nearly ready to be removed, when I would 
have a young orchard coming on in new land. Rota¬ 
tion is as necessary to the profitable growth of our 
fruit crops as of vegetables and grains. 1 have never 
dug up a diseased tree in which the roots were 
diseased, but generally, they are full and fresh until 
the top is nearly dead. According to my best obser¬ 
vation and investigation, the disease is confined to the 
trunk and branches. s. t. maynard. 
Massachusetts Experiment Station. 
No, it will do no harm unless there is a settle there, 
so that the lower roots stand in water in winter time. 
If the soil is dry, put in the trees and feed liberally 
with a fertilizer composed of, at least, 10 per cent 
potash from muriate, eight per cent of phosphoric 
acid from dissolved S. C rock or bone black, and six 
E3 Protein. dlFat. ■ Indigestible. 
THE COMPOSITION OF THE POTATO. Fig. 307. 
per cent of nitrogen from nitrate of soda Apply this 
every year, and if the ground is not wet, the tree will 
come out all right providing the top is well cut back 
the first three years. Do not be afraid of the knife 
about a peach tree’s top until it gets well into bear¬ 
ing, say for three years. edwin hoyt. 
Connecticut. 
At present, I am inclined to believe that there is not 
much danger of peach trees becoming infected with 
the yellows from being planted where diseased trees 
have been removed several months before. It is a 
common practice among successful peach growers to 
reset trees when it is necessary to maintain the uni¬ 
formity of their orchards, and often in such cases, 
the new trees show no signs of disease. To be sure, 
sometimes they die, but who can say then whether 
the disease entered the trees from the soil, or whether 
it came to them, as it did to those that previously grew 
in the same places, from some unknown source? 
In the spring of 1896, I set out 750 small trees ; 500 
of them were obtained from a well-known nursery in 
Maryland, and 250 from a nursery in New Jersey. 
The trees in both lots were about the same size—two 
to three feet; they cost the same price par 100, were 
set about the same time, were pruned alike, etc 
Symptoms of the yellows were soon discovered among 
^ Fiber. BAsh. 
WHAT THE CARROT IS COMPOSED OF. Fig. 308. 
the trees from the Maryland nursery, and one after 
another, they were removed and burned. Finally, it 
being evident that all of them would succumb to the 
disease sooner or later, what remained late in the 
summer were dug up and burned. At that time, the 
disease began to show on the trees from the New 
Jersey nursery that were nearest the others, and 
about 25 of these were also dug out and burned. 
Since then, perhaps 25 more have been treated in the 
same way. 
Last spring, another lot of trees were purchased, 
and the plantation was completed, the trees being set 
exactly where the others had been pulled out. Not 
one of the new trees has yet shown any indications of 
disease. Of course, it is possible that the first lot of 
trees did not have the yellows at all. The nursery¬ 
man from whom I obtained them writes me that such 
is the case ; that he is absolutely sure that his stock 
is free from the yellows, and I am not inclined to 
question his statement. However, whether the trees 
did have the yellows or did not, it makes no special 
difference ; they had the peculiar symptoms that are 
associated with the disease, and they were pulled 
out, destroyed, and other trees were set the following 
spring in exactly the same places, and the new trees 
are now all growing thriftily, and have shown no 
signs of the yellows whatever. If the trees from 
Maryland did not have the yellows, then it is prob¬ 
able that many other trees are condemned and de¬ 
stroyed that do not have it, and with this evi¬ 
dence at hand, the custom of resetting peach trees 
where others have been removed, seems a perfectly 
rational practice. 
This is a “ bearing year ” for the yellows in Rhode 
Island, and nearly all who have peach trees are get¬ 
ting a crop of it. Not long ago, I was in an orchard 
of four acres from which 2.200 baskets of the finest 
peaches that have entered Rhode Island markets have 
been gathered this year. It is the third crop that the 
orchard has produced in four years. The trees have 
had the best of care ; when any have shown symptoms 
of disease, they have been dug up, and others have 
been set in their places. In this way, with proper at¬ 
tention to fertilization, the owner expects to continue 
the fruitfulness of his orchard for several years longer. 
R. I Experiment Station. L. f. kinney. 
THE POTATO AND THE CARROT. 
Last week, we gave some interesting statements 
about food, which were taken from a Minnesota 
Station bulletin. Now we give two pictures from the 
same bulletin, Figs. 307 and 308, which show the 
amount of water contained in vegetables. In round 
numbers, 75 per cent of the potato and 87}£ per cent 
of the carrot is water. It will be seen that there is 
just about as much water in an average carrot as 
there is in milk, and it is a singular thing that in one 
case, this combination of water gives a tough, hard 
“ solid ”, while in the other, it appears as a liquid. 
The milk has a feeding value, pound for pound, nearly 
three times as great as that of the carrot. In fact, 
the carrot is an expensive food to buy for human con¬ 
sumption, though it is of great value for horses or 
cattle. The potato contains much water, yet it is a 
valuable food product, and cannot well be replaced 
by other vegetables. Yet even these watery vege¬ 
tables are cooked in a wasteful manner. When car¬ 
rots are cut into small pieces before boiling, there is 
a loss of nearly 30 per cent of the food value. With 
potatoes, «the loss of nutritive matter is very small 
when the potato is cooked with the skin on. If peeled, 
the loss is least when the vegetables are put directly 
into boiling water, which coagulates the albuminoids 
on the surface, rendering them insoluble. The great¬ 
est loss occurs when the potatoes are peeled and 
soaked in cold water before boiling. In this case, the 
loss of nitrogenous matter varies from 46 to 58 per 
cent, while 25 per cent of the albuminoids and 38 per 
cent of the mineral matters escape in the cooking. It 
may be said that the unpeeled potato is really more 
nutritive than the peeled vegetable, because, when 
cooked without the skin, there is considerable loss of 
the mineral salts, and these, while not actually 
nutrients, are apparently necessary to health. The 
greatest loss of organic nutrients is due to abrasion 
while cooking. The French housewife who uses the 
water in which vegetables have been boiled as a basis 
for soups, is scientifically sound in her economy. 
THE LITTLE RED COW OF DENMARK. 
The Danes and Swedes have secured a large share of 
the English trade in butter; so much so as seriously to 
affect the business of the English dairy farmer. This 
trade became of so much importance that a committee 
of the English Agricultural Society recently visited 
Denmark and Sweden to learn, if possible, how the 
dairymen of these countries were able to make cheap¬ 
er or better butter than the English. It has been 
claimed, and is not often disputed, that the English 
have the best cows and the best pastures in the world. 
In order to give a fair comparison with English cat¬ 
tle, the Mark Lane Express prints a picture of a 
Danish red cow which we reproduce at Fig. 309. This 
is said to be a fair type of the cattle from which a 
large proportion of the Danish butter is made, and 
the following description of them will prove inter¬ 
esting : 
The cows are very much like Jerseys, of a coarser and slightly 
larger type, and red in color, but they do not possess such fine 
skins -as our Channel Islands or Ayrshire cattle. They have 
good-sized udders, but the teats are rather irregular in shape 
and position. A point much looked after in the cows by the 
Danish farmer is width between the ribs, which they regard as 
indicative of first-class dairy cows ; flatness of rib they do not 
mind. The general average of milk daily from these animals is 
40 pounds or 3*4 gallons, and they are dry about three weeks only 
each season. The bulls are darker in color than the cows, with 
ends black, and fawn on the shoulders, and they approach more 
like to a Sussex than do the females, They form a splendid race 
of cattle ; they are hardy, and have been much improved by 
preserving only the best milkers. For many months in the year, 
they are kept indoors owing to the severe weather which pre 
