666 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
OCT. 4 
FARMERS’ CLUB—DISCUSSION. 
“Spraying Fruit Trees.” 
E. M. N., Fort Hamilton, L. I., N. Y.— 
In a late Rural 1 notice another short ac¬ 
count of the benefits derived from spraying 
fruit trees with arsenical poisons. For some 
time the paper has been advocating the use 
of these poisons; but as yet such advocacy 
has not borne fruit if we may judge from 
the neglected trees in every fruit-growing 
district. In this neighborhood on Long 
Island I do not think one grower has sprayed 
a single tree, as at present all are most un¬ 
sightly, many are almost leafless and the 
twigs are almost matted together with in¬ 
sect webs. If, as The R. N.-Y. has often 
stated, London-purple or other insecticides 
will remedy this evil at a very small cost 
in money and labor and at the same time 
give a good return for the outlay in in¬ 
creased quantity and enhanced quality of 
the fruit, while also preserving the vigor 
and beauty of the trees, if this be true, it 
is incomprehensible why all owners of trees 
do not take advantage of such palpable ben¬ 
efits. Either they do not read the papers 
and are ignorant of the recorded successful 
experiments, or they are too easy-going to 
take any steps to destroy insect pests. 
“Agricultural Depression” Again. 
John Warr, Vineland, N. J.— In look¬ 
ing at the placid and venerable face of our 
worthy friend C. S. Rice, on page 581, I am 
reminded that his article on Agricultural 
Depression, page 528, is worthy of a few 
comments. 1 fully agree with his assertion 
that the “ ad.vance or depreciation in price 
(of the farm) is of no great importance to 
the owner;” but in keeping up fertility 
the soil is of prime importance. Hence 
I am inclined to believe that too much 
stress is put upon the “value” point., by 
most of our writers when discussing the 
question: “ Does farming pay ? ” Friends 
Rice and Terry tell us that it does, and 
back their assertions with undisputed facts 
and figures, showing the successful results 
of their own labor and experience. The 
former, from the tenor of his article, would 
have us believe that, if there were less ex¬ 
travagance, there would be more success, 
and endeavors to prove the truth of his 
assertion by making comparisons between 
the prices of to-day and those of the ante¬ 
bellum days, and concludes that by the 
adoption of the best methods of cultivation 
and “ practicing strict economy ” (Italics 
mine), the farmer would be able, not only 
to retain his home, but to save money. 
While this may be true in some cases in 
special localities, I contend that there is 
overwhelming proof that the great mass of 
those who now stand in imminent danger 
of passing into a tenant class, have been 
driven to this plight by low prices, dis¬ 
criminating taxation, an insufficient volume 
of the medium of exchange, and the rapac¬ 
ity of railroad corporations, and, I may 
add, the farmer’s inability through lack of 
storage facilities, to hold his produce until 
needed for consumption, and, with all due 
deference to our worthy friend, I feel con¬ 
vinced that with corn at 15 • cents per 
bushel, no amount of scientific farming or 
parsimonious living would materially 
chauge the present situation. According 
to our friend’s own showing, the advances 
in prices of his products, say from 1810 to 
the present time, with the exception of the 
short interim during the war, have been 
glaringly insufficient to meet the require¬ 
ments of his changed environment, and so 
long as this is the case our worthy co¬ 
laborer can rest assured tnat his ear will be 
pained with the cry of “Agricultural De¬ 
pression” or “Farmin’ Don’t Pay.” The 
law of evolution is omnipotent and un¬ 
changeable, and we could as reasonably ex¬ 
pect that the moon could in six days be 
made into a live, inhabitable planet, as to 
expect that the American farmer will go 
back to the domestic wool-carding, cloth- 
weaving period; for the eternal decree is 
onward and upward. Friend Rice says 
that these changed conditions and the 
needs they bring, are “ a necessity only as 
custom makes it such.” In my opinion the 
“ necessity ” is the product of an inevitable, 
all-pervading law, by which he, like others, 
is controlled, whether he wills or not; but 
the farmers who are surrounded by “costly 
furniture, splendid musical instruments, 
fine carriages, sleighs and harnesses” are 
not so numerous as they ought to be; for 
if there is any one class of toilers more de¬ 
serving of these things than another, 1 
think it is the industrious, toiling, plod¬ 
ding farming community ; for by nature of 
his occupation, the farmer is debarred from 
a great many of the pleasures accessible to 
others, which tend to cheer and lighten the 
burdens of the toiler, but which to the 
farmer are like angels’ visits, “few and 
far between,” and though he may, in the 
near future, secure “perfect combination ” 
to protect himself from utter annihilation, 
he will never witness the benign effects of 
the law of equity until the barbarous com¬ 
petitive system, which now curses our 
social fabric, is entirely wiped out. But 
years and years of trial and tribulation 
must be his ere that will come to pass ; for 
“the mills of the gods grind slow,” but 
ever the right comes uppermost and ever 
is justice done. So let. us all, especially 
our young men, be of good cheer, do our 
duty, as becomes intelligent citizens, take 
heed of the wise precepts and examples of 
our brothers Rice and Terry, and also the 
valuable counsel and help of The Rural. 
Then we shall have the comforting assur¬ 
ance that there will come such modification 
and amelioration as will make life more 
tolerable and more worth the living, and 
the weak, either bodily or intellectually 
will not be pushed ruthlessly to the wall. 
“ Do Varieties Run Out?” 
W. H. A., Burnside, Conn.— Well, do 
breeds of animals runout ? Not more than 
varieties of plants, I believe, provided the 
same amount of selection is practiced. All 
breeders of animals see the necessity of 
selection, knowing that like produces like, 
and that their reputation is dependent on 
their products. Not so with the plant 
propagators, however. Plants must con¬ 
tend with the weather, different soils and 
other things to a much greater extent 
than our domesticated animals. The prop¬ 
agator can take advantage of this. If the 
nurseryman sends poor plants to his cus¬ 
tomers and they do not thrive, 90 per cent, 
of those customers will not know whether 
failure was due to poor plants, or bad 
weather, or the treatment they received. 
Consequently nurserymen pay little atten¬ 
tion to the selection necessary to keep a 
variety up to its original standard of excel¬ 
lence. Competition reduces their profits 
and they must produce cheaper, and the 
result is the deterioration of varieties. The 
nurseryman is not alone to blame, how¬ 
ever; for not one grower in a hundred who 
uses his own plants, practices any selec¬ 
tion. Excellent varieties are introduced 
each year, but a few seasons’ trial proves 
them weak in constitution. They “ run 
out ” at the start. The Wilson is running 
out. So will the Sharpless and every 
other variety of strawberry, since the con¬ 
stitution of all is rent by the present 
methods of propagation. 
Difficulties in Hybridizing. 
Reuben C. Hart, Litchfield County, 
Conn. —My experience leads me to believe 
that few originators of hybrid, and cross¬ 
bred fruits aad flowers are careful enough 
in their attempted crosses to be able to give 
with justice in positive language the par¬ 
entage of their seedlings, unless the latter 
themselves show strong evidence of such 
parentage. My method of crossing straw¬ 
berries and raspberries has been to open 
the flower buds when they look about ready 
to open of their own accord, and remove 
the stamens with sharp-pointed pincers 
made for the purpose, after which I inclose 
the bud in a tissue paper bag and fold the 
mouth of this and pin, inclosing the flower 
tightly in one corner. Later the same day 
or in a day or two afterwards, I remove 
the bag and touch the pistils of the in¬ 
closed flower with stamens of the variety I 
wish to be the male parent, choosiDg those 
that show plenty of pollen. After this I 
replace the bag and allow it to stay on 
until the seed is ripe. I also write on the 
bag the name of the cross. One might in¬ 
fer that this method would give seed of un¬ 
doubtedly true parentage ; but such is not 
the case ; 1, because the bag is not sealed 
insect-proof over the bud operated upon (I 
have several times known ants to enter 
bags that I had pinned on with care); 2, 
because buds and blossoms from which the 
pollen was taken were not protected from 
insects, wind, etc., to prevent adulteration. 
If the pollen be applied by a brush, knife, 
or other instrument, the latter should be 
free from other pollen and the ground in 
which the seedlings are grown later on 
should be free from foreign seeds of a 
similar kind. 
Thinning Grapes; Good Varieties. 
Benj. Buckman, Sangamon County, 
III.—The proposition that by trimming 
and thinning grapes as many pounds of 
fruit and those of more salable appear¬ 
ance and size may be grown upon fewer 
clusters is no doubt correct. I also think 
that by judicious trimming we partially 
avoid the rot; yet by too much or too late 
cutting the vine is enfeebled and sooner 
succumbs to a severe winter and to Insects 
and other foes. Whether this thinning will 
pay is another question, and no doubt will 
depend on circumstances. 
The Concord rules the market here at 
present; it sells in the flush of the season 
at two cents a pound, and would sell for 
less only that here a wine demand checks 
the fall, and this demand cares but little 
whether the bunches are large or small, so 
long as they are ripe. Three-fourths of the 
buyers here prefer the Concord to any other 
grape for table use. 
With very early or late varieties it might 
pay to thin ; but hardly, I think, with the 
Concord. For the earliest market variety, 
the Champion has had the lead so far. Al¬ 
though it has made more money for me 
than any other variety, yet it is very un¬ 
satisfactory in quality, and not to be recom¬ 
mended. Moore’s Early should take its 
place. Cottage would be still better, as it 
is a heavy bearer; but it has here the 
serious fault of ripening its berries un¬ 
evenly, so that the picking is deferred until 
the Concord is nearly colored. Next come 
the Worden and Concord, the latter fur¬ 
nishing nineteen-twentieths of the grapes 
marketed. Both bear heavily and both rot 
and crack; but they are the best we have 
here. We need a still later black variety ; 
but we have nothing except Norton’s Vir¬ 
ginia or Cynthiana, which although sal¬ 
able for wine, hardly meet the demand for 
table use. The Pocklington pays as well 
as any among the white grapes, the Niagara 
rotting too badly to be named here Among 
the reds I have found Wyoming Red and 
Perkins both desirable; the latter bears 
half as much as the Concord, seldom rots, 
never cracks, and handles well. It sells well 
for wine, and fairly for table use. It is 
not quite so hardy as the Concord and suf¬ 
fers somewhat from anthracnose and is 
deficient in quality. 
Among the newer varieties for market, I 
think the Woodruff promising, yet it has 
not borne as much as I would like, and the 
quality is not good; but there are plenty 
of people who are not judges of quality— 
and always will be—for a grape to be sweet 
is the main thing. Taste is a curious thing 
—it sports. A grape must be sweet, an 
apple must not. A miserably sour Olden¬ 
burg apple will sell at a fancy price, while 
a delicate and rare Higby Sweet can go 
a-begging. Of the Rogers varieties Goethe 
and No. 5 have done the best with me. 
Norwood has not been much behind. 
Triumph, a white grape, seems the very 
best late sort I know of for home use- 
bunch, very large; berry, large and of fine 
quality; vine, usually hardy at 20 degrees 
below zero. It is a good bearer ; but would 
not ripen much north of this. Missouri 
Riesling, a white variety, fruits heavily but 
rots somewhat. It lacks richness of flavor 
here, but is said to make good wine. I 
have some faith in Mason’s Seedling, 
white, but cannot speak of it definitely yet. 
The only grape I have ever seen that ripens 
earlier than the Champion, I bought for 
Florence, and fruited this year for the first 
time. It is short-jointed, rather a slow 
grower, and seems to bear heavily. It is 
much like the Champion in quality, but 
hangs and dries on the bunch. Here are a 
few that are neither satisfactory nor worth¬ 
less : Brighton, several of Rogers’s num¬ 
bers, Niagara, Rochester, Monroe, New 
Haven, Norwood, Norfolk, Progress, Cen¬ 
tennial, Hayes, August Giant, Amber, 
Black Defiance, Telegraph, Diana, Ca¬ 
tawba and probably Moore’s Diamond, as 
the berry seems to be attacked by a bitter- 
rot soon after ripening—something I have 
never seen before. Among those utterly 
worthless here are Duchess, Massasolt, 
Canada, Cornucopia, Amber Queen, El 
Dorado, Prentiss, Highland, Delaware, 
Irving, Ida, Linden, Belinda, Carlotta, 
Black Eagle, Croton, Early Victor, Pough¬ 
keepsie Red, etc. These are not worthy of 
a place here, even in an amateur’s collec¬ 
tion. 
Wheat Growing on a College Farm. 
Prof. C. S. Plumb, Indiana Experiment 
Station. —For years wheat has been grown 
on the farm of Purdue University in a 
practical way, with the one object, among 
others, of raising paying crops. In this di¬ 
rection the success has been manifest, and 
here is the way it has been done: 
The field is first thoroughly plowed in 
summer, usually in August. After plow¬ 
ing, the cultivator is used, and the land 
pulverized to the best of our ability. The 
course of the cultivator varies, according to 
circumstances, running at right-angles to 
the furrow, and also from corner to corner 
diagonally. Our prime thought, however, 
is to make the tillage thorough. At present 
we are using a 15-tooth Albion spring- 
tooth cultivator, more than any other. 
The seed we plant is superior. Each year 
at thrashing time, our grain is run through 
the ordinary thrasher, and carried to the 
barn and placed in our bins. At the earliest 
opportunity this wheat is run through a 
fanning-mill and carefully cleaned and 
extra-graded. All the poor wheat and 
weed seeds are blown off by the fan, and 
the large sized gram passes off into one re¬ 
ceptacle, and a somewhat smaller size, 
though almost equally good for common 
markets, into another, each being run 
through sieves in grading. This largest 
grain is sold for seed wheat, and the next 
size is sold to the elevator men. This year 
we had 250 bushels of large-sized seed, 
which we sold at prices ranging from $1 25 
per bushel (to those who came for it and 
furnished sacks) to $2 according to the 
quantity taken; and the orders still keep 
coming, and almost every day money has to 
be returned. Our crop this year ran from 
25 to 35 bushels per acre, according to the 
variety. This wheat is sown with a drill, 
about two inches deep, in a field properly 
prepared about September 20bh. No manure 
is applied, as our fields go through a regu¬ 
lar rotation of wheat, clover, corn, oats, 
wheat, the corn field being manured at the 
rate of about 10 tons of stable manure per 
acre, and from this the wheat gets much 
benefit. 
The reasons why the average farmer does 
not grow larger crops of wheat are, 1, he 
does not give his ground painstaking, 
thorough tillage; 2, he does not give abun¬ 
dant manure for the crop to feed on, and, 
3, at harvest he runs the grain through the 
thrasher and disposes of it as soon as possi¬ 
ble without regard to quality, and does 
not use large, selected seed for his own 
planting. Many a load of wheat has been 
thrashed in this county and has gone to 
the mill in an absolutely filthy condition. 
A few weeks ago I was calling on a 
“ thrasher ” who was thrashing a large 
field of grain. The men were loading the 
seed from the machine to the wagon and 
drawing it to the market at once. There 
was a large amount of chess and weed seeds 
in it, and it smelled strongly of artemesia 
blossoms. On expressing my surprise that 
such wheat should be taken directly to 
market, I was told by this thrasher, who 
does the work for a large farming com¬ 
munity, that great quantities in much 
worse condition go to the grain elevators 
from the machine. 
If some of the farmers of these United 
States would grumble less and “ hustle ” 
more, they would make more money. They 
do not seem to think that any of the 
trouble is due to their own conduct. The 
times are hard all around, and all kinds of 
business are struggling, but the farmers 
who have an eye open to business, and are 
looking out for No. 1, grow more wheat 
than “five bushels on seven acres.” 
Potato Leaves and Blight. 
Edwin Taylor, Edwardsvillk, Kan. 
—The question lately asked by The Rural 
on this subject seems to assume that heat 
and blight go together. Do they f It has 
been cool and damp lately, but a letter 
just received, speaks of the writer’s patch 
of 35 acres of late potatoes that are suffer¬ 
ing from blight. However it may be with 
respect to “ resisting heat,” potato leaves 
of all widths successfully resisted blight in 
this neighborhood till a few years ago. 
Since it first appeared, all varieties that I 
have raised have been affected by some 
blight. No variety has been exempt, and, 
so far as I have noticed, none has been par¬ 
ticularly subject to it. 
Under the caption “ The Hybridization of 
Wheat” Samuel Wilson of Bucks County, 
Pa., hus these remarkable statements to 
make in The Farm and Fireside: “ Within 
the last 10 years considerable attention 
has been paid to the hybridization or cross¬ 
breeding of wheat. By hybridization is 
meant mingling the life or blood of one va¬ 
riety with that of another; or, in other 
words, inoculation or grafting. It may not 
be generally known that there are sexual va¬ 
rieties of wheat (male and female), the same 
as other plants and in animals. To hybri¬ 
dize or cross-breed these different kinds is a 
very laborious and difficult task, requiring 
great skill, a perfect knowledge of the hab¬ 
its and sexual traits of the plant, constant 
care, patience aud a long time to accomplish, 
so as to get results to pay for the time and 
labor spent. Only a few persons in the 
