674 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 5 
small packages are used. Like canned fruit, juice 
will not keep long after being opened. The sedi¬ 
ment can be largely retained in the bottle if carefully 
poured. Pressed pulp gives more sediment than 
drained pulp. john w. spencer. 
Chautauqua Co., N. Y. 
Grape Juice for Vinegar- 
will Juice from ripe grapes make good pickling vinegar” 
If sc, please give process. How long will it take to make 
It? L. n. 
Broad Ripple, Ind. 
Grape juice will make vinegar. Speaking in a 
broad way, I would say that all grapes raised east 
of the Rocky Mountains contain a small amount of 
sugar as compared with the grapes of Europe or the 
Pacific coast. To promote development of acetic acid 
about 10 pounds of cheap sugar would better be added 
to a 50-gallon cask of grape juice. Give exposure to 
air by open bung and with same temperature develop¬ 
ment will be similar to cider vinegar. The color of 
grape juice vinegar is very attractive for table use. 
It is very strong and will bear some dilution, it con¬ 
tains some free tartaric acid, which makes pickles 
soft. I know of no way of elimination available to 
the average farmer. This tartaric acid is one of the 
sources of supply of cream of tartar used in baking. 
j. w. s. 
Hauling Juice for Wine. 
I have a vineyard eight miles from town. Will the 
wine be affected by extracting the grape juice on the 
farm and hauling in barrels to the city before fermenting? 
Will several (tw'o or more) kinds of grapes make as good 
wine mixed as if kept separate? G. h. k. 
Knoxville, Tenn. 
G. H. K. can haul his grape juice the eight miles 
with no probable interference with later fermentation. 
In answer to the second question I would say that I 
am not an expert in wine making. If I were I should 
feel obliged to ask the gentleman to go with me out 
back of the church under the horse sheds where I 
could whisper the little I know. I should do this out 
of deference to the strong temperance views of the 
senior editor of the R. N.-Y. Yes, some kinds of grape 
juice can be mixed to advantage in quality of the wine 
but not all kinds. Experts call it “marrying." Makers 
of champagne and past masters in wine making claim 
to have it down very fine. It is a kind of matrimony 
of which I know only by hearsay. j. w. s. 
The Business Side of H. 
I would like Information from some one who knows 
about the manufacture of sweet grape Juice (unfermented 
wine). The size of plant required to use two to four 
tons of grapes per day, expenses for help, expense of 
bottles, method of keeping the juice, etc. J. t. m. 
Forestvllle, N. Y. 
I would advise you to visit the establishments of 
Gerey Reckman, Brocton, N. Y.; the Fenner Grape 
Juice Company and the Welsh Grape Juice Company, 
Westfield, N. Y., and the Gleason Company and F. N. 
Randall, Ripley, N. Y. You will find that some of the 
above companies have investments of over $50,000 in 
plant and stock. I think you will find that selling is 
more than manufacturing. Unless you have ample 
capital and good executive ability, you will be like a 
village wagon-maker in competition with a wagon 
factory. You may think there is a big margin be¬ 
tween a gallon of grape juice at 12 cents and 14 cents, 
which would make a fair price for our grapes, and 40 
cents for a quart bottle as is paid when passed over 
the counter of a drug store. So there is, and no doubt 
some one finds the business profitable, but is is a 
question if a novice would find it so during the firvSt 
year, and perhaps not the second in the business. I 
doubt if any of our present day manufactures can 
be adequately described by pages of information that 
will lead to profitable results without personal ex¬ 
perience. The above establishments are 15 to 22 
miles from your home, and a visit to them will give 
you more live information than a volume of The R. 
N.-Y. If I wishea to engage in the business I would 
either spend a year in the employ of one of the most 
successful firms, or go into partnership with some 
reliable man who had. j. w. s. 
A WORM THAT ‘‘HAS WORMS.” 
I send a worm that I picked from my tomatoes; it is 
covered with some kind of moth. Will you explain what 
it is? F. K. 
Bates, N. Y. 
Although we told the story of one of these worms 
that “have worms” in The R. N.-Y. several years ago, 
as it is an interesting story that all ought to know, 
and as we succeeded in getting the fine picture, shown 
in Fig. 303, of the specimen sent in by F. K., for these 
reasons we will briefly repeat the story, and hope the 
picture will help to impress it on the reader’s mind: 
The caterpillar is one of those large, formidable- 
looking but perfectly harmless green Tomato worms. 
It looks as though it had been rolled in rice which 
had been coated with glue, and the kernels had ad¬ 
hered to its back. Naturally these caterpillars have 
a sickly gait, and well they may. These white ob¬ 
jects projecting from the skin of the caterpillar are 
not eggs or seeds, as some have supposed; but each 
one is a cocoon within which there will be found a 
white maggot developing into a tiny four-winged fly! 
How did the cocoons get into such a curious posi¬ 
tion? It happened in this way: When the cater¬ 
pillar was about half grown, one of these minute flies 
espied it and, hovering over it, darted down upon it, 
and at each dart, inserted a minute egg through the 
skin of the worm. Bach little fly is supplied Vkith 100 
A WORM THAT “ HAS WORMS.” Fie. :I03. 
or more eggs, and usually she does not stop until the 
poor, defenseless worm has received nearly the whole 
stock. The worm doubtless wriggles as each egg is 
pricked through the skin, but it can do nothing to 
prevent the deadly work. In a short time these tiny 
eggs hatch into white maggots, which thrive and 
grow fat at the expense of their host that is all the 
time eating ravenously. And how can the poor worm 
grow much with 100 or more greedy little moutns 
A FARM ABTOMOBILE. Flo. 301. 
at work within its body, absorbing the food as fast 
as it is assimilated? 
Right here comes in one of those mysterious things 
in nature that we so frequently meet among insects. 
The little maggots working inside the body of the 
caterpillar, understand perfectly well that, if they 
should attack a vital organ, their host would die, and 
consequently their food supply would be cut off. 
Hence, the maggots or parasites feed entirely and 
THE NEW PEACH, MISS LOLA. Fio. 30.5. 
See Ruralisms, Page 678. 
only on the juices and fatty tissues of the body, al¬ 
lowing the vital functions of their host to go on un¬ 
disturbed until his death. In every case, the parasitic 
maggots get full grown before the caterpillar has 
become so weakened that death ensues. The full- 
grown maggots then work their way through the 
skin on the back of their host, and at once spin 
around themselves the white cocoons, it is a very 
interesting operation to watch one of these parasites 
spinning its cocoon about itself. The cocoon finished, 
the parasite transforms within through a pupa stage 
to the minute fly, like its parent, which laid the eggs 
in the worm. When the fly has become fully formed, 
and is ready to escape from the cocoon, it deftly cuts 
around the upper end of the cocoon, and then pushes 
off the end, which opens like a little door, usually 
hinged at one side. The caterpillar usually lives but 
a short time after the parasites emerge from the 
cocoons. It is a curious sight to see one of these 
worms walking about with these cocoons attached to 
its back, as shown in Fig. 303, and one should never 
destroy such an afflicted worm, for it is carrying 
latent destruction for many more caterpillars. Near¬ 
ly 150 of the parasitic flies have been found on a sin¬ 
gle Tomato worm, and it seems strange that the para¬ 
sites do not check the pest to a greater extent than 
they do. Perhaps they, in turn, have their enemies. 
Such things often happen in the insect world. 
M. V. SLINGERLAND. 
AUTOMOBILES FOR FARM WORk. 
The London Market Gardener gives a description 
of what it calls a “petrol lorry,” which has been used 
for hauling farm crops to market. A picture of this 
vehicle is shown at Fig. 304. This machine does the 
work of six horses and will carry a load weighing 
4,500 pounds. On one occasion this machine carried 
two tons of tomatoes 16 miles to market, leaving 
home at three o’clock. This load was taken off, then 
the machine ran home and hauled a second load and 
reached home after 64 miles of travel as soon as the 
horse wagons, which left the farm at eight the pre¬ 
vious evening and made only one trip. The actual 
cost of fuel for these two trips was 75 cents. 
The machine shown at Fig. 304 is 17 feet long, four 
feet nine inches wide, with a space available for load¬ 
ing of 11x6 feet. A steel frame can be used which 
will carry three tons if desired. It ran 16 miles, carry¬ 
ing 2^2 tons in 2^ hours, part of the journey being 
up hills which required an extra horse on the wagons. 
The engine uses petroleum for fuel, and 10 gallons 
will run the loaded machine about 100 miles. The 
owner of this machine thinks that it will prove a 
great help to farmers in reducing freight and express 
rates for short distances. In one case he carried a 
load of 280 baskets of grapes to market at a total cost 
of $3.75. The regular railroad rate for the same 
distance was 12 cents a basket! It is quite likely that 
where the roads are smooth and the grades easy such 
machines will surely compete with the railroads suc¬ 
cessfully. In this country the roads are not all suit¬ 
able for such machines, but near the large cities they 
could doubtless be run so as to carry farm products 
quickly to market. The French and the English are 
ahead of us in this respect, but it will not be long be¬ 
fore Americans will take the automobile away from 
the city, and put it at work upon the country roads. 
TRAPS FOR THE HESSIAN FLY. 
On page 611 was printed a letter from S. W. Wadhams, 
of Niagara Co., N. Y., in which he gave his experience 
in sowing ‘‘trap crops” of wheat to attract the Hessian 
fly. We feel sure that our readers will be glad to know 
what Mr. Wadhams is doing this year, and so we print 
the following letter from him—dated September 14: 
I am using the trap strip again this year, and the 
object lesson, that the farmers in this neighborhood 
had from my experiment on last year’s crop, has so 
convinced them that they sowed their trap strips and 
are very willing to follow the suggestions of the ex¬ 
periment stations. We sowed two widths of the drill 
all around a 22-acre field, and two widths across the 
middle of the field August 20. The wheat is now 
four inches high, and is being rapidly covered with 
the eggs of the fly, which are plainly discernable un¬ 
der a glass. I find that some of the eggs are evi¬ 
dently being destroyed by some parasite. I also find 
that the eggs are being laid on oats sown as a cover 
crop following the early potato crop, and I believe it 
will pay to plow them under the same as the trap 
strips. We shall sow our regular crop October 1, and 
plow the trap strips under just before the last sowing 
appears above the ground. I emphasize plowing, 
since some of my neighbors have the idea that cul¬ 
tivating the trap strip up and resowing will answer 
the purpose. I do not agree with them, for I know 
that it is very essential thoroughly to bury the young 
plants, covered as they are with the eggs of the fly. 
We shall resow the trap strip, using a forcing fer¬ 
tilizer, as we found by experience last year that it 
was equally as good as the rest of the field. We are 
giving the wheatfield very thorough shallow cultiva¬ 
tion, thus giving us a compact seed bed with mellow 
surface conditions, and shall use a high-grade wheat 
fertilizer in connection with a top-dressing of barn¬ 
yard manure spread with the Kemp manure spreader, 
thoroughly cultivated in. As I intimated in my let¬ 
ter to Prof. Roberts, we shall plow the trap strip un¬ 
der at night, believing that by so doing we shall be 
able to destroy millions of the fly that will be still 
laying eggs at that time. From my observation and 
experience I am led to believe that no wheat is fly 
proof, but some is more resistant than others, on ac- 
