392 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
JUNE i4 
Publishers Desk. 
A Waiter Must Always Serve. 
COME BOYS, WHERE ARE YOU ? 
Bear in mind, you boys, who 
think of trying to secure that 
free scholarship, that it will not 
be necessary for you to send the 
entire 200 subscribers before you 
start at college. For 75 subscrip¬ 
tions the R. N.-Y. will pay your 
expenses at college for one term. 
You can secure the balance dur¬ 
ing the winter vacation, our Free 
Education circulars tell the whole 
story. Now, boys, this is your 
chance. We know what we are 
talking about when we tell you 
that a college course can be made 
to pay you well. You will never 
have a better opportunity than 
this. Come, we offer stout¬ 
hearted, energetic boys a chance 
to show the world what they are 
made of. The boys who accept 
this chance will never regret it, 
that we will guarantee. Come 
boys, why are you not at work 
on your club ? A lot of others 
are, and will doubtless do well. 
“ Do you take the Rural New-Yorker?” 
asked one prominent nurseryman of an¬ 
other at the meeting in this city. 
“ No,” was the repiy; “ I am too busy to 
find time to read it.” 
“You ought to take it. Any nursery¬ 
man who doesn’t take and read it is be¬ 
hind the times. There is no other agricul¬ 
tural paper published which is so up with 
the times in horticultural matters !” 
I think.the R. N.-Y. the best paper I have 
yet found. I do not know how it can be 
improved. I am glad it has started a 
weekly index. j. w. H. 
Warren, Me. 
It seems to me that the Rural is itself 
answering its inquiry as to how it could be 
improved, in every issue, and any sugges¬ 
tions I could make would probably be 
realized by the paper of its own accord, as 
I have noticed that any particular informa¬ 
tion I would like to obtain is very apt to 
appear in the next issue. c. H. A. 
Exeter, N. H. 
The Rural New-Yorker is a great 
teacher; the work It is doing is simply im¬ 
mense. It is a friend to honest trade, and a 
terror to wrong doers. w. s. B. 
Rio Grande, N. J. 
I have been taking the Rural only a few 
months, but in that time it has been worth 
many times the price paid for it. Success 
to it ! G. w. c. 
Mount Jackson, Va. 
I am well pleased with the paper. I don’t 
want it stopped at the end of the year at 
any price. F. w. f. 
Ascutneyville, Vt. 
I regard the R. N.-Y. as at the head of 
the list of farm journals, and it is doing 
more to day to enlighten and elevate the 
followers of agriculture, the most noble 
and useful employment, than any other 
paper in our country. Long may it pros- 
perl R. J. w. 
Greensburg, Pa. 
The Rural is “ all right,” the best paper 
of its kind in America. j. L. s. 
Birch Bay, Washington. 
During a year’s trial of the Rural I have 
found that it is both progressive and prac¬ 
tical in all its departments, and it is in too 
able hands for any criticisms of mine to 
add to its worth. Were it in the home of 
every farmer, read and properly heeded, 
there would be less cry of “ farmin’ don’t 
pay.” Intelligence and industry combined 
will, even at present, make any farm 
pay, and a good agricultural journal is as 
necessary to a successful farmer as are good 
tools to a proper cultivation of the soil. 
Luther, Mich. A. A. M. 
Readers will kindly bear in 
mind that the R. N.-Y. clubs with 
all respectable periodicals and 
will guarantee to them the low¬ 
est possible combination rates. 
We cannot afford the space 
which a standing list in detail 
would require. The following 
may serve as illustrations : 
R. N.-Y. and the New York Weekly 
World, $2.25. 
R. N.-Y. and the Chicago Inter-Ocean, 
$2.50. 
R. N.-Y. and Harper’s Magazine, $5. 
R. N.-Y. and The Century, $5.50. 
R. N.-Y. and American Garden, $3. 
R. N.-Y. and Christian Union, $4.50. 
Live Stock Notes. 
A Sale of yearling thoroxighbred horses 
from the Haggin ranch will take place in 
• New York June 16. About 100 animals will 
be offered, mostly colts from Sir Modrid 
and Darebin. This season’s lot is called the 
finest that ever left the ranch. 
Monet in Mules. —One of our subscribers 
in Humphreys County, Tennessee, writes as 
follows about his mule and horse stock: 
“ I keep two mares for work and for raising 
mule colts. In five years they have had six 
colts each. I lost four out of the 12, however. 
Of the eight living I have sold five for 
§212.50, and have on hand one four-year-old 
worth §135, and two over a month old that 
will sell for §100 this fall, if I decide not to 
keep them.” 
An “ official estimate ” in Russia places 
the number of wolves in the European part 
of that country at 170,000. In several prov¬ 
inces the breeding and training of wolf 
hounds is a very important industry. Some 
of these fierce dogs were sent to the Cana¬ 
dian Northwest, but were found to be a 
little slow to capture the coyotes which 
abound there. It is now proposed to cross 
these dogs with the greyhound. Many of 
us fail to realize how carefully and ex¬ 
tensively dogs are bred in England and 
Europe. 
A Bigger Calf. —On page 298 we gave 
an account of a calf which weighed 138 
pounds at birth. Mr. S. N. Franklin, of 
Cayuga County, N. Y., thinks he can beat 
this story, and sends us the following note : 
“ Several years ago my grade Durham cow 
dropped a bull calf that weighed 152 pounds. 
It was converted into a steer, and was fed 
all it could eat until it was two years old, 
when it was led three miles, put on the 
scales, and weighed 1,865 pounds and sold 
for §140. His dam gave 70 pounds per day 
of milk which made 22J^ pounds of butter 
in seven day3.” 
Mr. J. S. Woodward informs us that he 
likes the Dorset sheep all the better the 
longer he keeps them. They are very pro¬ 
lific, and the lambs grow rapidly and fatten 
readily. The Dorsets seem to have more 
intelligence than other sheep, too. One of 
Mr. Woodward’s ewes dropped triplet 
lambs while in a pen with other sheep 
She got her lambs into one corner and 
kept the other sheep away from them until 
morning. Mr. Woodward is a silo enthu¬ 
siast. Five years ago he did not believe in 
silage. Now he says the silo is the only 
place for the corn crop. 
Writing about live stock insurance, 
Savage & Farnum say : “ We do not insure 
the lives of our animals; we insure them 
against fire and lightning in a fire insur¬ 
ance company. We do not see any reason 
why a live stock insurance company could 
not do a good business if conducted on bus¬ 
iness principles, with sufficient working 
capital. We do not believe it would be ad¬ 
visable for the average farmer to insure the 
lives of his animals except in the case of 
high-priced stock. The trouble heretofore 
has been that all live stock companies 
charged a higher premium than owners 
felt they could afford to pay.” 
The Rural New-Yorker learns that 
authority has been given Prof. Georgeson 
of the Kansas Agricultural College, to sell, 
from the college herd, 13 Short-horn cows 
and heifers, including three yearling Short¬ 
horn bulls, six Jersey cows and heifers and 
the Polled Angus bull, with the privilege 
of purchasing with the proceeds a trio of 
Holstein cattle and a trio of Shropshire 
sheep. This indicates a change in the pol¬ 
icy of the farm management. Instead of 
beef-making with dairying as a side issue, 
dairying with beef as a side issue will now 
be followed. The Short-horns are very 
strongly represented in Kansas, and there 
are many who believe that the college 
would do better to try and develop a herd 
of dairy Short-horns. The purchasing 
of Shopshire sheep indicates a change from 
wool to mutton. 
Four-thousand-pound Steers. — Prof. 
G. E. Morrow, of the Illinois Agricultural 
College, writes the R. N.-Y. as follows: 
“ I hope Mr. Moore, owner of the pair of 
grade Short-horn oxen illustrated in the R. 
N.-Y. of May 24, will be kind enough to 
submit definite evidence of the correctness 
of the reported weight—8,030 pounds. If 
this is done, I think he will have the honor 
of being recognized as the owner of a 
heavier pair of cattle than have ever been 
known before. For many years I have 
heard of steers weighing 4,000 pounds or 
more each, but I have never been able to 
see one. Each year the Illinois State Board 
of Agriculture has offered a prize of §75 for 
the heaviest steer exhibited at the Fat 
Stock Show in Chicago. I think a trifle 
under 3,200 pounds is the heaviest weight 
recorded. Of course, a steer would not 
weigh quite so much there as at home. 
Steers have been shown there which were 
claimed to have weighed 3,500 pounds, but 
they did not weigh so much there. At the 
Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, a 
steer was shown with a claimed weight of 
4.500 pounds. When officially weighed the 
scales showed 2,862 pounds. Weights of 
3.500 pounds, or possibly 3,600 pounds, seem 
well authenticated. It would be very in¬ 
teresting to have such evidence as all 
would count conclusive, substantiating the 
extraordinary weight reported for Mr. 
Moore’s oxen.” 
Fast-walking Horses. — A movement 
is on foot to encourage breeders of draft 
horses to institute a “ fast-walking record ” 
similar to the records that have proved so 
valuable to breeders of trotting stock. 
John W. Aiken, of Scipio, New York, 
has the following to say about the matter. 
“Anything that creates an interest in a 
record for fast walking horses must do good. 
I believe fast walking is a matter both of 
breeding and training. Colts can be trained 
to walk fast by being led alongside a fast¬ 
walking horse or behind a fast-walking 
team. As soon as old enough for the har¬ 
ness, each should be driven with a fast¬ 
walking mate until the habit is firmly es¬ 
tablished. A very large percentage of draft 
animals, however, need no particular train¬ 
ing in this direction. Medium-sized Per- 
cherons are, as a rule, remarkably fast 
walkers. Fast walking is of particular 
value to most purchasers of draft stock.” 
Misfit Breeding.— The R. N.-Y. is in¬ 
formed that many Western farmers seem 
to have lost their heads over the success of 
Mr. Williams who bred Axtell and Aller- 
ton. It is claimed that these horses derive 
almost all of their excellence from their 
sires, the mares having been of quite ordin¬ 
ary breeding. This fact has led many 
owners of good farm mares to breed them 
to trotting stallions in the hope of securing 
a “flyer” that will pay the mortgage on 
the farm in 2:15 time. Of course, thousands 
of these mares have been mismated as they 
have been taken to the nearest stallion 
without much regard to his weight, color, 
shape or pedigree. The Breeder’s Gazette 
well says that “this is not the first time that 
Bohemian oats have been bought by the 
farmer for undue gain. Seeds have many 
times been sown the cost of which the crop 
did uot realize. There will be more paid 
out in trotting stallion fees this season In 
Iowa than the entire crop of colts from the 
misfit unions now being made will bring 
when put upon the market.” The loss to 
the farmers will be considerable and the dis¬ 
gust and disappointment at the failure to 
produce salable horses will be beyond 
measure. 
Solid-Hoofed Hogs.— There has been a 
considerable amount of talk about the 
“Aristotle” or solid-footed hog. The 
writer has seen quite a number of these 
“mule-footed” hogs in the South where 
they are numerous enough to escape being 
curiosities. The following note from Mr. 
Talbot, who is breeding this hog, may in¬ 
terest our readers. “ This hog was formerly 
a bone of contention between many nat¬ 
uralists, some maintaining that it did not 
exist and consequently that many other 
statements of Aristotle could not be de¬ 
pended upon. All doubt, however, is now 
dispelled. The “ Aristotle ” is the best hog 
I have in a lot of nine breeds, with which I 
am experimenting. One experiment con¬ 
sists in selecting a typical specimen of 
each breed and blending the blood of the 
whole in order to secure a composite type 
showing the improvements due to the ad¬ 
mixture of the different breeds. I am not 
positive, but think that the cloven-hoofed 
hog is simply the result of an abnormal 
freak, or " sport,” in some pigs in early 
times, and that the swine-herder, in order 
that he might be respected by the herders 
of cattle or cloven-hoofed animals, perpet¬ 
uated the results of this "sport” by inter¬ 
breeding animals similarly distinguished, 
in order; that his craft might in time be 
raised to a higher place in society. Per¬ 
haps he lived before Jacobs’ successful ex- 
eriments in coloring animals before their 
irth, and, though not as successful as he 
expected, still he must have been en¬ 
couraged in his undertaking by a fair 
measure of achievement.” 
BRITISH DRAFT BREEDS. 
Blair Brothers, of Aurora, Ill., who have 
long been noted as breeders of the English 
breeds of draft horse, send us the following 
notes to explain why they pin their faith to 
the breeds they handle: 
“We began handling imported horses 
about 14 years ago. We first began with 
the Clydesdale horses at a time when we 
considered them the best horses for produc¬ 
ing large draft animals suitable for city 
work. In 1882 we began handling the Eng¬ 
lish Shire horses as well. Since that time 
we have handled and imported a great 
many horses of both of these breeds, and 
consider them by far the best draft horses 
in the world. 
What breed of horses is best suited 
for crossing on the common mares of 
this country, the object being to produce 
colts that.sell well ? Weconsiderjtne Eng¬ 
lish Shire and^the_ Clydesdale horses .the 
best adapted for that purpose. The Clydes 
and Shires are the oldest established breeds 
of draft horses in the world. They are 
very uniform in color, being almost invari¬ 
ably bays, browns and blacks. They excel 
other draft breeds in as much as they are 
closer to the ground, with more size and 
substance, and with more and better qual¬ 
ity of bone, and fully equal in other re¬ 
spects. Their strength and weight are so 
distributed as to make them the best 
adapted for heavy pulliDg. It is much 
more profitable for farmers who are farm¬ 
ing in a general way to raise large draft 
horses than any other class. We consider 
breeding to light or trotting-bred horses a 
lottery. Sometimes a farmer will get 
something that proves to be very fast, and 
that will sell for a good deal of money ; but 
such cases occur only once perhaps in a 
thousand times. There is nothing more 
unsalable in the horse line than a small¬ 
sized colt, that will bring perhaps §75 or 
§100 to §125, when he becomes four years 
old. In breeding to draft horses, the 
progeny are reared with very little trouble, 
and are eagerly sought after by the buyers. 
If farmers would breed to the very best 
imported draft stallions they could find, 
they would find the offsprings the most 
profitable class of horses that they could 
raise. Breeding to draft Horses is much 
more certain than any other. Our farmers 
here get from §175 "to §275 each for good 
draft geldings. 
While we recommend the Clydesdale 
and Shire horses, and consider good 
specimens of those breeds the best 
adapted for producing large draft work 
horses for the city, yet we would pre¬ 
fer breeding to a good Percheron than 
to a poor Clydesdale or English Shire. 
It always pays to breed the best, even if 
the cost for service is a little more. Many of 
the farmers out in this country have made 
a great deal of money by breeding to our 
draft horses. There are a great many draft 
stallions through this section, and farmers 
breed to them almost entirely, and yet the 
resulting draft colts are sought after so 
eagerly by the buyers that it is often really 
In writing to advertisers please always 
mention the Rural. 
CABBAGE PLANTS. 
FOTTLER’S DRUMHEAD, LARGE H LAT DUTCH, 
LOUISVILLE DRUMHEAD. We are willing to place 
our strains of above In competition with any grown. 
Per 1,000, $1.50; 5,000 or more at $1.00 per 1,000. 
CELERY PLANTS, .Tune 20, White Plume, Golden 
Heart, 500 for $1.00; 5.000 or more at 81.50 per 1,000. 
M. GARRAHAN, Kingston, Pa. 
Rlnstrated 
“OSGOOD” 
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U. S. Standard 
3 TON tQR _ Uther sizes propoi 
i i ■ i ■■■ WUJI low. Fully W 
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Sent on trial. Freight paid. 
Other sizes proportionately 
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Send for circulars 
and catalogue. 
General Advertising Rates of 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
TIMES BUILDING, NEW YORK. 
The following rates are invariable. All are there¬ 
fore respectfully informed that any correspondence 
with a xHeui to obtaining different terms will prove 
futile. 
Ordinary Advertisements, per agate line (this 
utzod type, 14 lines to the Inch).SO cents 
One thousand lines or more,within one year 
from date of first Insertion, per agate line, 25 “ 
Yearly orders occupying 10 or more lines 
agate space...25 “ 
Preferred positions.25 per cent, extra. 
Reading Notices, ending with per 
line, minion leaded.75 cents 
Terms of Subscription. 
The subscription price of the Rural Nbw-Yorker Is 
Single copy, per year.#2.00 
“ ** Six months. 1.10 
Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and 
German}, per year, post-paid.#!L04 (12a. Gd.) 
France. 3.04 ( 16 <* fr.) 
French Colonies. 4.08(21% fr.) 
Agents will bo supplied with canvassing outfit on 
application. 
Entered at the Post-offle. at New York City, N. Y„ 
a* second class mall matter. 
