August :u 
TUB RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
594 
hands, and I might add that very little is offered for 
sale, both of which facts seem to point to the con¬ 
clusion that farmers are pretty well satisfied with 
their condition. Another fact which has an import¬ 
ant bearing upon this subject is, that our banks are 
at a loss what to do with their money. Bank officials 
say that while a few years ago farmers were their 
principal borrowers, they now cut no small figure as 
depositoi's. This would seem, at least, to be a con¬ 
tradiction of the rather gloomy view of the farming 
industry here as the writer puts it. Perhaps I ought 
to say that our location is about 20 miles farther 
south, and what he says with regard to the enhance¬ 
ment to double its former value of his own farm by 
the planting of fruit trees, applit>s also to much of 
the land in our own immediate section. The fruit in¬ 
dustry is assuming large proportions. I^arge commer¬ 
cial orchards are quite common, and the area is 
widening with each successive year. Several have 
sold their peach crops, and about all the apple crop, 
consisting of thousands of barrels, has already been 
purchased by New York and Philadelphia firms at 
paying prices. _ _ _ boyeu. 
ABOUT A RURAL TELEPHONE ASSOCIATION. 
Two years ago, when H. W. C., of The R. N.-Y., 
was dn Ohio, he was greatly interested in the eon- 
struction of a small rural telephone line, and the 
more so from the fact that he saw the president of 
the company digging holes for the poles. He re¬ 
marked that it was a sight to see the president of a 
telephone company in a hole. That little company 
is now a pretty lusty rural line, and of it, and its 
connections, 1 wish to write. By reference to the ac¬ 
companying map of Geauga County, O., a rude sketch 
lis made to show something of the system that now 
covers completely not only Geauga County, but the 
north pant of Portage, and east section of Cuyahoga 
counties, including the small city of Chagrin Falls, 
having its connections with all of the large indepen¬ 
dent lines east, west and south. About 18 months 
ago the five small companies represented that were 
doing business in Geauga Co., Chardon, Burton, Staf- 
foi-ds, BaJinbridge and Chagrin Falls, formed an asso¬ 
ciation for mutual benefit and protection, and fought 
out to a finish an attempt of the “Bell’s” to put them 
out. Tlien it was shown thalt the toll that each com¬ 
pany levied upon the other for service, was practically 
an even-up affair, and the five companies established 
a system of free transmission of messages, so that 
now a subscriber in one company has the free call of 
any other box, in the association, although each com¬ 
pany maintains and equips its own lines independent 
of the others. This proved a great feature, and the 
lines were, and are now being extended with great 
rapidity. There are from 40 to 100 ’phones in each of 
the townships, and including the Garrettsville 
company, which is to become a part of the associa¬ 
tion, the total number of ’phones reaches something 
over 1,500. Of these, fully 1,000 are in the homes of 
farmers. In addition, the companies are connected 
with all of the great independent lines, with the Lake 
Shore lines to Erie and Buffalo to the northeast, the 
Mahoning Valley lines to Pittsburg and the east, on 
the south wtith the United States lines, and Citizens’, 
and to the wes't through Cleveland with the great 
Cuyahoga company, the greatest of the Bell’s riva’s, 
the connections with Cleveland giving about 8,000 sub¬ 
scribers there alone that can be called from any 
’phone in the association. 
In this Geauga Association a uniform charge is 
made of $12 per year per ’phone, and no extras, when 
transmission is made over outside lines, and a mini¬ 
mum rate is then secured. In the territory covered 
it is said that there is noit a firm, store, physician’s 
office, or stock dealer’s office but what has its ’phone, 
and the amount of country business done over the 
wires is a surprise. Often it is small and common¬ 
place, but all the more reason that it should not take 
hours of time to transmit it when the ’phone helps do 
it “in a minute.” The construction of these lines is 
thorough, the best of North long-distance ’phones are 
used, metallic circuits, and the exchanges are put up, 
and maintained as well, and with as prompt service 
as the city lines. The Bell lines cross the counny, hut 
are not allowed to maintain exchanges. While re¬ 
ports come that in places mutual and other forms of 
companies are giving satisfaction, there is no desire 
here from any quarter to question but that the pro¬ 
prietary lines are the best plan, leaving the renter of 
a ’phone free of concern, and giving him at really a 
nominal sum the best of service possible, and without 
unknown costs and expenses to be met. .Ml of these 
company lines are owned by a few persons, and the 
stock is very hard to buy. One line—the Stafford—is 
the individual property of the constructor, and is, 
for the capital stock, a very valuable piece of ptoperty. 
It is useless to write of the advantages of tlie ’phone 
to the country dweller, and how <a ’phone once put 
into a house, is rarely ever taken out. The social life 
over the wires is a great feature to break up the far- 
apart element of farm life, and brings all the people 
into acquaintance, and often friendships, that would 
have otherwise been unkncfWn. joun could. 
Ohio. 
FARM NOTES FROM NEW JERSEK 
STRINGFELIXIW PLANTING.—About four years 
ago I set a few trees of apple, pear, plum, 
quince and cherry, after trimming them severely, 
bhth root and branch, but they were not trimmed 
as much as Mr. Stringfellow advised. I was 
afraid to follow his ins^tructions implicitly. They 
were set in the Spring, and all grew the first year. 
The next Spring one of the two cherry trees (both 
sweet varieties) failed to come out in leaf, and the 
other one died before Fall. All the other trees are 
s'tlll living, and have borne fruit. Not all of the 
apple trees nor all of the pear trees have borne, but 
the quinces and plums and some of the pears and 
apples have borne. Since I set these trees I have tried 
other trees, mostly of forest varieties, that came up 
where not wanted, with the genuine Stringfellow 
method, and they have invariably grown. I have set 
a walnut tree that was two inches in diameter in a 
hole made by a crowbar. It came up in the garden 
and grew there three years. Then its immense tap 
root and all of its surface roo'ts—some of which were 
10 feet long—were cut off, the trunk cut off below the 
branches and the stub jabbed into a crowbar hole. It 
is growing. A year ago I ordered six apple, three 
dwarf pear, three plum and three cherry trees 
through a nursery agent. They were delivered early 
in October. I trimmed them as closely as Mr, String- 
fellow would have done, and se^t them in the ground 
without so much as watering them. The entire Fall 
was extremely dry, the Winter was dry cold, and the 
ground bare nearly all the time. One apple tree did 
MAP OB' TIIK RURAL TELEPHONE SYSTEM. Kio. 2fil. 
not live through the Winter. All the others started 
to grow, but the two sweet cherry trees have since 
died. The sour tree (Montmorency) is still living, 
and has made a fair growth. The pear trees have 
made great growths and the other trees have done 
well. I believe this is the way to set dwarf pear trees, 
but doubt whether sweet cherries will do well by this 
method of planting. 
CORN CULTIVATION.—I planted one-half of a 
nine-acre field with corn May 24, and was driven from 
the field by a shower. Rains continued so frequently 
that it was two weeks before the ground was again 
in good order for planting. I planted in rows, fur¬ 
rowing but one way. When we went to plant again 
the corn that had been planted was not yet up, but 
the weeds were making a fine start. Much of the 
ground was literally purple with young hlack-heart. 
Last year I used a steel-tobthed horse rake as a 
weeder, and was well pleased with the results. I tried 
it on this field, but the rains had packed the ground 
so much that the rake wheels would not sink in the 
soil, and the rake did no good. Those weeds must be 
killed, or there could be no (K)rn, and I plowed the 
field for corn. I hitdhed the team to a six-beam, 
spike-tooth harrow, and harrowed across the rows 
just as though it had not been planted. In a few days 
I gave it ano'ther harrowing. The corn first planted 
was then mostly up, though uneven and pale in color. 
It was next gone over with the horse rake, which now 
did a little good. A week later it was ag-ain harrowed 
with the spike harrow and the cultivator started. It 
was cultivated twice and plowed twice with a one- 
horse plow. I now have a very fine field of corn, but 
with all the ‘Tormenting” I have given it there are 
still a few ragweeds and black-hearts in it. Had it 
not been for the harrow the corn would have been 
swamped by the weeds, for 1 know of iio other i)rac- 
tical method by Wliich those corn rows could have 
befm approximately cleaned. Not one hill in a hun¬ 
dred was injured by the three harrowings. 
New Jersey. u- o- uiRus. 
THE STORY OF PLANT GALLS. 
J. T. Roberts, of Syracuse, N. Y., recently sent us 
samples of a grapevine on which the curious growth 
shown at Fig. 262 had developed. Prof. Slingerland 
gives the following interesting account of the work of 
this gall insect: 
Abnormal growths are not uncommon on many 
plants, and often they are of curious shapes. They 
may occur on the roots, trunks, branches or leaves of 
the plant, and they are often called “galls.” In many 
cases insects are the cause of these galls, inside of 
which they live and develop. Children are familiar 
with the ball-like enlargements common on the vsteras 
of goldonrod, and one can scarcely find a leaf on an 
oak tree that does not bear one or more kinds of lit¬ 
tle galls; dozens of different kinds of these galls may 
be found on almost any oak tree. Usually the galls 
are named from their peculiar shapes, thus we have 
a curious “pine-c/one” gall on willow, “bullet” and 
“star” galls on oak, and “trumpet,” “filbert,” “apple” 
and “tomaito” galls on the grapevine. These grape¬ 
vine galls are among the most striking and peculiar 
of insect galls. The galls found near Syracuse and 
shown in Fig. 262 are the “filbert” galls of the grape¬ 
vine; from 10 to 40 of these galls may be found in a 
single cluster from one to two Inches in diameter. 
These “filbert” galls are woolly, greenish growths, 
which have a fleshy, juicy, subacid interior. The 
mass of these galls springs from a common center at 
a point where a bud would naturally be found, and 
are thus an abnormally developed grape bud. Cut 
open one of the galls and a single elongated cell or 
cavity Will be found in the center, containing a soli¬ 
tary orange-yellow maggot about one-eighth of an 
inch long. This little maggot will eventually trans¬ 
form into a minute gnat resembling a mosquito. 
It is a remarkable fact that each species of gall¬ 
making insect infests a special part of one or more 
particular species of plants, and the gall produced by 
each species of insect is of a definite form. Hence, 
when an entomologist who has studied these insects 
sees a familiar gall, he knows at once what species 
of insect produced it. Naturalists have speculated 
much as to the way these galls are made to grow. It 
has been supposed that at the time the egg of the 
insect is laid there is deposited in the tissue of the 
plant with it a drop of poison which causes the ab¬ 
normal growth. By this theory the difference be¬ 
tween the galls of different insects was explained by 
supposing that the fluid pr'ouuccd by each species of 
insect had peculiar propeities. There are certain 
kinds of galls which may be produced in this way. 
Thus it is said that the wound made by a certain saw- 
fly in the leaves of willow causes an abundant forma¬ 
tion of plant cells, and the gall thus formed attains 
its full growth at the end of a few days, and Before 
the larva has escaped from the egg. But with gall 
flies the gall docs not begin to grow until the larva 
has hatched; but as soon as the larva begins lo feed 
the abnormal growth of the plant commences. In 
this case, therefore, if the gall is produced by a 
poison, this poison must be excreted by the larva. 
There exists in many kinds of gall-flies an alterna¬ 
tion of generations; that is, the individuals of one 
generation oo not resemble their parents, but are like 
their grandparents. m. v. slinoekland. 
SOWED CORN FOR FERTILIZER. 
On page 389 Prof. John Craig gave the inquirer, H. 
W. M., a very unsatisfactory answer in regard to 
plowing down corn. He says: “There might be diffi¬ 
culty in getting it well incorporated with the soil and 
well packed down if the season should be dry,” 
neither of which is the case on either clay or sandy 
soil. I have brought up the poorest Kinds of land 
with corn. Plow the poor land in the Fall; as soon 
as dry enough in the Spring lime it very heavily. 
Then harrow thoroughly from May 10 to May 2o (ac¬ 
cording to latitude). Sow your corn, not less than 
three bushels, using 200 or 300 pounds fertilizer to 
the acre. I prefer four bushels if sown by hano. Roll 
it and let go until about August 20. If it gets too 
large get at it sooner. After trying the usual way 
of getting down big clover I tried the roller same way 
as plowed. This , put it down flat; all went under 
slick as a whistle. I then put it in rye and fertilized 
it, 200 pounds to the acre, sowe<l four bushels, plowed 
it down the last of May, plowing the same as 1 had 
the corn. My neighbors said I must be crazy for 
plowing down such nice rye, but it went down. I put 
it in po'tatoes; had a good crop; fertilized imtatoes. 
Next Spring I put it in oats and seeded it to Timothy 
and clover, 15 quarts to the acre. We had 40 bushe.s 
of oats per acre, and the next season (the present) we 
cut close to three tons of good hay per acre, and the 
sod looks w'ell, nicely matted all over. I wondered 
for years before why the plan had not been more 
generally tried. 1 intend trying another plan, prac¬ 
tically the reverse, but I expect the same results, 
have a poor field which will be put in rye this 1*3. , 
limed and fertilized; will plow it down in May, put 
it in sowed corn, plow it down in August, put part m 
wheat, and seed it. fl'he other I may try Clarks sys¬ 
tem of seeding to grass; wtill know the system by that 
time, as I am ^ing to try it this Fall. s. b. Arthurs. 
Pennsylvania. 
