VOL. XLIX. NO. 2089. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 8, i89o. 
PRICE, FIVE CENTS. 
$ 2 .oo PER YEAR. 
rEntered According to Act of Congress in the Year 1890 by the Rural New-Yorker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.) 
PROFESSOR S. W. JOHNSON. 
F OR 34 years Professor S. W. Johnson 
(an excellent likeness of whom we 
present to our readers at Fig. 32) has been 
prominently identified with the agricultural 
interests of the country. During this long 
period he has been an earnest, steadfast, 
hard-working student and investigator of 
the various sciences connected with agricul¬ 
ture, has made many valuable contributions 
toward the literature of the subject, and 
by his efforts and powerful advocacy has 
been a pioneer in introducing several meas¬ 
ures of local and uational importance,which 
have already greatly benefited the farmers 
of the country, and are certain to be of 
vastly more advantage to them when every¬ 
where adopted and developed to their full 
extent. 
Though of Connecticut parentage, S. W. 
Johnson was born at Kingsboro, Fulton 
County, New York, on July 3d, 1830. Four 
years later his family emigrated to what 
was called the “Black River Country” in 
Lewis County, where his boyhood was passed 
on an extensive, fertile and well-managed 
farm, a circumstance which has had much 
influence on his subsequent career, as he be¬ 
came familiar with and interested in agri¬ 
culture at an early age. After a rudimen¬ 
tary course of study at the common school, 
his education was continued at the Low- 
ville Academy, the Yale Scientific School 
and, during 1853, 1854 and 1855, at the Uni¬ 
versity of Leipsic. Then for some time he 
continued his studies under Liebig, Von 
Kobell and Pettenkof at Munich, and 
afterward passed over to England where 
his acquisitions were increased under 
Frankland. Such a course of study afforded 
the best possible foundation for a useful 
and distinguished scientific career. 
From an early age the subject of this 
memoir exhibited an aptitude for teaching, 
and even before his departure for Europe he 
had taught for a short time in a common 
school and in the New York State Normal 
School, and on his return to America in the 
fall of 1855, he became chief assistant in the 
laboratory of analytical chemistry at Yale. 
Next year he was promoted to the position 
of Professor of Analytical Chemistry, and 
his addiess that year before the Connecti¬ 
cut State Agricultural Society, on Frauds 
in Commercial Fertilizers, led to the adop¬ 
tion of the measures now in force in Con¬ 
necticut and many other States to protect 
the buyers of those articles. In 1857 agri¬ 
cultural chemistry was included under the 
title of his office, and he was appointed 
chemist to the State Agricultural Society, 
and during 1857, ’58 and ’59, made reports 
on commercial fertilizers, which greatly 
extended the knowledge of the nature and 
usefulness of these aids to agriculture at 
the same time that they acted as a salutary 
check on frauds in their sale. 
When the State Board of Agriculture 
was established in 1866, Professor Johnson 
was appointed a member and served two 
years, when he resigned the position, but 
■was at once appointed its chemist, an office 
he held for the next three years, during 
which he continued his reports on fertiliz¬ 
ers. As long ago as 1873 he strongly advo¬ 
cated the establishment of a State agricul¬ 
tural experiment station, and his efforts in 
this direction were crowned with success 
by an act of the legislature in 1877, when 
he became a director of the station. 
For many years the station was confined to 
two small rooms, and the appliances and 
works of reference were for the most part 
loaned by Yale College or borrowed from 
the Professor’s private laboratory and li¬ 
brary. Besides his regular lectures and a 
long series of official reports, which have 
been models for works of their kind, the 
labors of Professor Johnson have included 
many prized contributions to the agricul¬ 
tural press and the publication of many 
valuable works on his specialties. Of these, 
the most widely known are “ How Crops 
Grow,” “How Crops Feed,” and “Peat and 
its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel.” 
The first extended biographical sketch of 
Professor Johnson, with a portrait, was 
given to the public by the Rural New- 
Yorker in its issue of March 1, 1879. Since 
then he has been fully occupied in teaching 
theoretical, agricultural and organic chem¬ 
istry and in the oversight of the Connecti- 
PROFESSOR S. W. JOHNSON. 
cut Experiment Station. The only consid¬ 
erable literary work he has undertaken, 
beyond that required for the experiment 
station, has been the revision of his most 
popular work, “How Crops Grow,” which 
can no%v be read in German, Swedish, Ital¬ 
ian, Japanese, and in two Russian trans¬ 
lations. 
floriciiltfiral. 
HARDY HERBACEOUS SPHLEAS. 
WILLIAM FALCONER. 
(See page 82.) 
APART from the many beautiful garden 
shrubs known as spirtea, we have a select 
set of herbaceous perennials that are also 
spirseas. We are all familiar with the S. 
(properly called Astilbe), Japonica, the sub¬ 
ject of our illustration—see Fig. 33—which 
is the one so extensively growm by florists 
in greenhouses in winter and spring for its 
snow-white, fleecy blossoms. But it is per¬ 
fectly hardy and lives along and blossoms 
in the borders in our outdoor gardens year 
after year. The florists force it in winter 
simply because it submits readily to this 
treatment, and its blossoms are a desiderat¬ 
um during the winter months. There is also 
a variegated-leaved form, a good deal used 
in gardens for bordering flower plots, and 
it blooms just as w r ell as the plain green¬ 
leaved sort. 
Another astilbe, called A. rivularis, of 
much ranker growth than the Japonica, is 
From a Photograph. Fig. 32. 
not infrequent in our gardens, but it isn’t 
very hardy in the North. It has yellowish- 
white or reddish flowers that appear about 
midsummer. 
Now we come to the true spirceas. Com¬ 
monest among them is the English Meadow¬ 
sweet. (S. Ulmaria), which is very hardy and 
grow’s in dense mats, and has yellowish- 
white flowers on leafy stems, two feet high. 
There is a variegated-leaved form of it quite 
common in our gardens; and there is a 
double-flowered form. Its blossoms are 
pure white, and without the dinginess of 
the single one, and the plants grow hardly 
as rankly. It is perfectly hardy, quite com¬ 
mon, and one of our finest perennials. 
Spiraea Filipendula, commonly called 
Dropwort, is another European species 
plentiful in our gardens. It has tuberous 
roots, clumps of fern-like leaves, and yel¬ 
lowish-white flowers in bunches on stem 
about two feet high. There is also a double- 
flowering form, smaller in all its parts, 
whose flowers are snow'y-w’hite. This is not 
only the best form, but one of our choicest 
of hardy flowers. 
Spinna lobata, often called S. venusta, is 
our native Queen of the Prairie; at the 
same time, it is a very beautiful garden 
plant. It usually runs about three to five 
feet high, and has panicled cymose flowers, 
more or less of a pink or rose color. 
Spira?a palmata is a Japanese species be¬ 
longing to the Queen of the Prairie section, 
and one of the most beautiful of the whole 
race. Its flowers are rosy-crimson, in am¬ 
ple cymose panicles, and appear towards 
midsummer. It grows about two to three 
feet high. In Europe it is largely grown as 
an outdoor garden plant; also in pots for 
forcing in greenhouses. Sometimes it does 
well in America, at other times it does not. 
With us it behaves “ middling,” but not 
as well as do the other kinds already men¬ 
tioned. There is also a white-flowered va¬ 
riety of it. 
Spiraea Aruncus is the Goat’s-Beard of the 
Catskill and Alleghany Mountains, and a 
bold and handsome plant it is for certain 
positions in the garden. Planted in good 
ground, in|an open or shady place—in fact, 
naturalized wherever one w’ould plant 
tawny or yellow’ day lilies, the Goat’s-Beard 
will thrive nicely, but it isn’t choice or 
neat enough for small gardens. 
The cultivation of all of these s,. .„eas is 
very simple; all they want is deeply-loose, 
common garden soil, and the spreading ones 
should be lifted, divided and replanted 
every few years. In the fall I cut over the 
old flower stems, and scatter some rotted 
manure over an3 about them. This treat¬ 
ment is neater than letting the old stems 
remain under the disguise of protection, 
and I ahvays postpone forking the ground 
about them till spring. 
Spiraea‘Japonica, S. Ulmaria and S. Fili¬ 
pendula bloom early in summer, and S. 
lobata and S. palmata. about midsummer. 
They increase moderately fast, and are read¬ 
ily propagated by division of the clumps in 
early spring or early fall. They are never 
increased from cuttings, neither are they 
artificially, from seed. 
P amolugictxl. 
RULES FOR PRUNING 
FRUIT TREES. 
Opinions of Veteran Orchardists. 
FROM J. J. THOMAS. 
To increase growth by pruning, do it 
when the tree is dormant, or before the 
buds swell in the spring. By reducing the 
number of the shoots, the growth of the 
rest is increased. If the pruning is done 
when the tree is growing or in leaf, the 
growth will be checked. But if the amount 
cut aw’ay be small, little check will be given, 
or if the land is rich and cultivated and 
the growth very strong, a light check will 
do little or no harm. These general rules 
will apply to all kinds of trees. 
