7o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
FEB i 
ent and responsible position amongst men. 
I have obsered through a long business life 
that farmers have been as successful in ac¬ 
cumulating wealth as those in other pur¬ 
suits, and in an aggregate of equal num¬ 
bers, I think the farmers of this locality 
are ahead. One or two out of a 100 will be¬ 
come wealthy in trade, manufacture, specu¬ 
lation or professional life, while the masses 
remain poor. Many farmers in Western 
New York have gained by simple industry, 
$20,000, $30,000, or $50,000 in a lifo-time, and 
nearly all have something laid by besides 
the cost of living." 
- “RATS ” AGAIN. ' 
W. W. F., Waterville, Ohio.—I was 
considerably interested in reading the R.- 
N.-Y.’s “Rat Symposium,” as I have lately 
passed through a severe visitation of the 
kind to which it refers. I say “passed 
through,” because I am through with my 
troubles in that line—for the time being at 
least. This much-desired end was attained 
by an agency not mentioned by any who 
gave their experience—viz., a ferret. It 
was with a sort of don’t-tell-anybody-for-I- 
expect-I-am-sold sort of feeling that I pur¬ 
chased a ferret at the fair last September, 
but I had become desperate. Nearly everv 
day from March till September the crack of 
the shot-gun had resounded around my 
barn and hundreds of rats were destroyed 
in this manner, besides scores that were 
trapped and destroyed by dogs, clubs, etc., 
but their numbers seemed inexhaustible 
and T had about decided to discharge all 
my hired help and import a few Chinamen 
when T thought of a ferret. Two or three 
“applications of the remedy” were 
thoroughly effective. Two or three rat 
dogs are necessary to destroy the rats when 
driven from their holes by the ferret, and 
they must be taught not to molest the 
ferret—not as difficult a matter as one 
might suppose. The ferrets are also very 
useful in hunting rabbits, although the 
law in Ohio does not allow any one to use 
them for this purpose except on his own 
land. T think fruit-growers should de¬ 
mand a repeal of this law. I have for 
many years used a wash to prevent mice 
and rabbits from damaging my young 
fruit trees. It is composed of one ounce of 
carbolic acid and one gallon of strong soap¬ 
suds (if not strong, it will unite readily.) 
Then dilute with two or three gallons of 
water and apply to the base of the trunk. 
I have never had a tree injured where this 
had been applied. A few years since I had 
a row of pear trees, two years planted, 
standing along the fence where the high 
grass around them had fallen down and 
was full of mice. Closely adjoining the 
row of pear trees (five or six feet away) 
was a block of nursery trees under clean 
culture. This mixture was applied to the 
pear trees in the grass, but not to the apple 
trees on clean ground. The result was 
that not a pear tree was touched, while 
about 100 or perhaps more of the apple trees 
were barked more or less, some of them 
very seriously even in the second and third 
rows. 
ILLINOIS FARM ITEMS. 
E. R. H., LoAMI, III.—I have been very 
much interested in the articles on the cost 
of living, the manner of conducting farms 
and the other topical discussions which 
have appeared from time to time in the R. 
N.-Y.—one of the best of papers—and hence 
I give a few notes that may be of interest 
to other readers: 
I have a farm of 885 acres, of which 160 
acres are cultivated, and the remainder is 
in grass. T aim to “rotate” as nearly as 
circumstances will permit in the following 
order: grass, corn, oats, wheat; then grass 
again. Considerable manure that is pro¬ 
duced on the farm is used, but the main 
dependence for keeping up fertility is 
clover. I have been keeping accounts of 
receipts and expenditures, and taking an 
inventory the first of January, and in spite 
of the low price of almost everything that 
I have had to sell, and v/irious losses, I have 
much to be thankful for, and find that I 
have forged ahead a little. I have on hand 
of all aces, 23 horses, 57 cattle, 180 sheep 
and 91 hogs. Considering their cost and 
the outlay for their keep, sheep have 
paid the best and cattle the poorest 
of all my stock. Wheat has paid 
the best owing to a large yield (37 
bushels per acre), and oats the poorest of 
farm crops. I find that the profit for the 
year amounts to about three per cent, on 
the whole investment, and the net earnings 
of the farm—which include profit, a living 
for myself, wife and two children, money 
given to church and other causes, outlay 
for pleasure trips, etc.,—amounts toalittle 
over six per cent, on the whole investment. 
I have felt discouraged on account of the 
prices and the impossibility of getting 
efficient household help, and I have some¬ 
times tried to sell the farm ; but a careful 
estimate shows that if all we have, had 
been continuously invested at eight per 
cent., we would have been no better off 
financially than we are, unless we had 
lived more cheaply. What a pity that 
some of the women and girls that work in 
large cities at almost starvation wages can 
not be induced to go to the country where 
they would have better homes, better pay 
and in a great many cases less labor than 
at present. Will some of your writers who 
have facilities for testing the matter (I 
have not) givens some figures on the com¬ 
parative cost of keeping sheep, horses and 
cattle, both on feed and in pasture? 
AN OBSERVER’S NOTES. 
W. G. W., Tyrone, Pa.—I am much 
pleased with a new and very simple 
method of clearing plants of the green fly 
(aphis) which is such a universal devastator 
of window plants in early spring. Tobacco 
smoke if confined among the plants for some 
time is effective, if not too hot, and if the 
smoking be repeated often enough, but it is 
very objectionable to the nostrils and lungs 
of most ladies. I have adopted the plan of 
putting some coarse tobacco or tobacco 
waste (stems) into a small iron pan with 
some water, and placing it under the af¬ 
fected flowers which are in a small green¬ 
house. Every day, as long as any living 
aphis is to be seen, I put a lump of iron 
weighing two or three pounds into the fire, 
and when it is very hot I remove it into 
the tobacco pan covering it with the wet 
stems. The steam kills the fly, but benefits 
the foliage and is much less objectionable 
than smoke, and more easily controlled. 
I have often scorched plants when using it 
against aphides but there is no danger in 
using a mild steam. 
A circular in regard to disinfection has 
lately been issued from the office of the 
General Director of the Pennsylvania Rail¬ 
road— Charles E. Pugh, Philadelphia—and 
distributed and posted along all the con¬ 
nected lines, which adds to the high merit 
of excellent management of those roads. 
It treats the subject from the sanitary 
point of view and under four heads—clean¬ 
liness, water supply, disinfection and in¬ 
fectious diseases: and the plain, sensible 
directions given have the approval of the 
Pennsylvania State Board of Health. For 
the convenience of the employees, and for 
securer good effect, a disinfecting mixture 
is supplied on requisition upon the com¬ 
pany’s laboratory in Altoona, for use in 
cases in which fire may not be applied. The 
sulphates of copper and iron are the most 
approved ingredients and these are now so 
largely used for suppressing mould and 
fungoid growth generally on plants, cellar 
walls, etc., as to be readily obtainable. 
The sulphate of zinc, being white, is a val¬ 
uable ingredient in sanitary whitewashing 
and renders the wash more durable both in 
color and substance. These sulphates are 
waste products at many mineral reduction 
works and can be obtained in quantity at 
nominal prices. 
MILK IN A WELL. 
O. H. S., Ellicottville, N. Y.—During 
the whole of the past season I practiced 
with very satisfactory results what I be¬ 
lieve to be a novel way of raising cream 
from milk by suspending it in a well 33 feet 
deep, and in which the thermometer regis¬ 
tered a temperature of 45 or lower. I set 
the milk in deep covered pails. I fixed a 
rope and windlass to turn with crank, so 
as to let the pails down into the water. The 
well went dry in July, and remained so un¬ 
til the middle of October, but during that 
time I let the pails down nearly to the bot¬ 
tom. The cream rose all right whether the 
weather was wet or dry. It was cool and 
thin, just as it is in all cool creameries where 
deep setting is practiced. I put the morn¬ 
ing’s milk in the well; took it out at night, 
and put the night’s milk in and took it out 
in the morning, and dipped the cream off 
as soon as the vessels were taken out 
of the well, and set the milk away in any 
temperature for 12 hours; then there was a 
thin skimming of cream which I took off, 
and was satisfied that I had got all the 
cream. « 
I have weighed the milk and churned 
three different times in the past season ; the 
two first times it took 19 pounds of milk for 
a pound of butter. This was in July, when 
the cows were on grass. The last time was 
in September, when they were fed on plant¬ 
ed corn in the ear. Then 18}£ pounds of 
milk made a pound of butter. The cows 
are grade Jerseys. I feel well satisfied with 
the results from putting the milk in the 
well, and I know that if I had an ice-house 
filled with ice for nothing, I could put my 
milk into the well and take it out with less 
trouble than would be incurred by going 
to an ice-house and getting the ice to keep 
the milk at the proper temperature by the 
ice process. I now believe that should I 
increase my dairy, and this well should not 
be sufficient to cool the milk so that the 
cream would rise, I would make another 
hole in the ground for that purpose. 
R. N.-Y.—Now then, good dairy people, 
is this a sensible practice, or would scream¬ 
er pay better ? 
A WOMAN ON THE POTATO CONTEST. 
Mrs. O. J. Putnam, Worcester County, 
Mass.— Our potato contest is ended and 
the prizes are awarded. I, for one, feel as if 
I must thank the R. N. -Y. and its judges 
for the good services they have rendered to 
us ladies in reading over 500 reports and in 
awarding 200 souvenirs to the successful 
competitors. It was a task I would not 
envy or care to accept. Judging from my 
own standpoint it was done satisfactorily 
to us all. My prize was “one pound of 
Read’s Red Giant Potato” “ not yet intro¬ 
duced,” and I am laying plans for a great 
deal of comfort to be obtained from plant¬ 
ing and caring for it next season. It seems 
like going back to the bloom of girlhood and 
youth to take one’s self away from kitchen 
and household work to spend a short 
period of recreation among the growing 
plants. It rests us so that we can go back 
to our cares in the house and accomplish 
more on account of our short absence 
than we would if we had worked uninter¬ 
ruptedly at “housework” all the time. 
Some of my friends say that they do not 
see how I find time to attend so much on 
my chickens, flowers, potatoes, etc. I don’t 
find it—I take it. I gain in strength by 
being out in the air and golden sunshine 
and that makes my labors seem lighter. To 
be sure, I did not gain first, second or third 
prize, but I did gain in health, which I con¬ 
sider of more importance than money, “for 
who would part with health for money.” 
At the outset I knew that we here in New 
England, would stand a small chance for 
any of the large yields in competition with 
our Western sisters. But, as all see, old 
Massachusetts did not put her hand to the 
plow and look back. Oh no! push is one of 
her mottoes and she captured “ five ” prizes 
out of the few entries she made, which I 
think is more than some of our more 
favored potato States can boast of. 
POISONING DOGS. 
G. W. D., Monticello, N. Y-—I am 
sorry to see men at the farmers’ institutes 
advise the putting of poisoned meat in 
their fields to kill neighbors’ dogs, in order 
to protect sheep. Why not as well set a 
loaded gun‘in their yard at night with the 
string drawn across the path leading to 
their house as a guard against burglars ? 
There are more burglars than sheep-killing 
dogs; but every dog that crosses a field is 
not an outlaw, nor is every man who 
comes to the door at night a thief. Neither 
is the prevalence of dogs the cause of the 
decline in sheep-raising, as stated by some 
parties. Sheep were kept in this country 
extensively and at a profit when the large 
number of bears and wolves made it im¬ 
perative to house them every night. Every 
man who has lived 50 years with his eyes 
open half the time has seen the sheep in¬ 
dustry wax and wane a number of times. 
It is all a question of dollars and cents. 
When sheep can be kept at a nice profit, 
flocks will increase so fast as to “"’amp the 
business in three years as in times past. 
So don’t play any mean tricks on your 
neighbor; he will have a chance to get even 
and when his day comes he may make you 
very weary. 
FEEDING SHEEP. 
C. C., Watkins, N.Y.—I have never seen 
any self-feeding device that I would use in 
feedingsheep under any circumstances. Any 
one acquainted with the habits of sheep 
knows that they are very sensitive about 
touching feed that has any odor like that 
imparted by the breath of animals, or any 
disagreeanle smell about it. This trait 
would render self-feeders unprofitable. I 
would feed sheep twice a day, at regular 
intervals and in troughs. In fattening 
sheep it pays to feed at regular periods, as 
the animals eat and then lie down, and do 
not expect feed every time the farmer comes 
into the yard. All feeding troughs should 
be kept dean and free from moisture. 
Give plenty of trough room so that the 
heavy sheep will not crowd the lighter ones. 
Feed no more than the sheep will eat up 
clean. T prefer'to'feed sheep under cover 
during'the winter season. 
CHEAP SILO, JAPANESE BUCKWHEAT. 
D. J. B., Dekalb, III.—Two years ago 
I built two tanks 11 by 14 feet, of two by 
six lumber beveled and hooped with six 
2 % by seven-eighths band—round would be 
better with right and left turnbuckles. 
They had wooden bottoms and were filled 
with ensilage corn cut in seven-eighths 
inch lengths and tramped tightly; when full, 
the masses were covered with tarred paper 
and three-inch boards cut to fit; on these 
I put 2,500 pounds of stone. When we were 
ready to use the silage it was found that 
the paper was as good as when put on, so 
I saved it and used it again this year. 
None of the silage was damaged in the 
least. This year the silage has kept as 
well, but it is more acid. The com was not 
so ripe as it was last year. I examined a 
16x32 foot silo 24 feet deep a few days ago. 
The sides had bulged about three inches 
and nearly two feet of the silage had been 
spoiled. That in the corners was bad too. 
The silage inside the bad layers was good 
and quite sweet. I intend to try Mr. Col- 
cord’s plan in a 16-foot tank next fall. I 
took the Rural’s advice and sowed 4 
bushels of Japanese Buckwheat and 
thrashed 275 bushels. 
COST OF INCORPORATING A CORPORATION. 
T. A., New York.— Tn the “Law” column 
of the Rural for January 18, it is stated 
that the expenses of incorporation, aside 
from the lawyer’s fees, vary from one to 
five dollars in New York. This is the 
charge according to Chapter 156 of the 
laws of 1882 and Chapter 284 of the laws of 
1887. The Secretary of State now charges 
for filing, recording and giving a certified 
copy under the Manufacturing Act, about 
$14: under the Business Act about $13. 
This is exclusive of the County Clerk’s 
charges of about 75 cents in either case. 
' Aside from these charges, hbwever, an in¬ 
corporation tax of one-eighth per cent, on 
the amount of the capital stock must also 
be paid to the State Treasurer. 
HALE’S EXPERIMENTS ON THE SAP IN VEG¬ 
ETABLES. 
“G.,” Blair Co , PA.—This old work (1726) 
eminently deserves a place in the library of 
every modern experiment station. Dr. 
Hales began his series of experiments on 
July 3, 1724, with the famous sunflower 
test, and one search led on to another until 
124 different experiments had been made. 
These are recorded in two volumes with 
illustrative figures, all curiously antique 
in orthography and phraseology, but in 
language as clear and plain as the mind of 
the ingenious author. Evidently in his 
day air and water were supposed to be 
simple elements; instrumental aids and 
conveniences were largely lacking : bladder 
and sheet lead had to be used where our 
gum serves so vastly better. Read even in 
the light we have now, the book is still ad¬ 
mirable and full of curious points of in¬ 
terest. An experiment not often quoted is 
that of the infusion of camphor, orange 
flower water, sassafras, etc., into the plants 
and trees. All parts retained the odor for 
weeks, excepting the fruit, in which it was 
never perceptible! The researches on dew 
began in utter ignorance of its reality. A 
fourth edition of this classic work was pub¬ 
lished in 1769, showing that it was ap¬ 
preciated well even in those days of few 
readers and very few students of natural 
phenomena. Natural science had but a 
dim beginning then. 
BT THE LATEST AND BRIEFEST. 
TnE new sweet pea Miss Blanche Ferry, 
offered in small quantities last year for the 
first, seems to be a decided acquisition. 
An objection to this captivating flower is 
that many of the best strains grow on 
vines four or more feet high. This needs 
no support. The flowers are pink and 
white, of fine substance, borne on long 
stems and produced in great abundance.... 
“Snow White” is a new gladiolus 
which we find in several of the 1890 cata¬ 
logues. The R. N.-Y. is not posted as to 
its origin. It is represented as the best 
white in cultivation. The color is of “a 
pure paper whiteness.” The spikes are of 
“good size, set solidly with the flowers 
from’bottom’to top.” It is further claimed 
that “for withstanding dews, rains, heat 
and sunshine, it is unequaled. ”. 
