March 21 
194 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
V 
his cows away to a neighbor’s “scrub bull”; they 
call him a Jersey because he is small—all that kind of 
cattle are Jerseys around here—and the neighbor is 
paid by bringing his long-nosed, lop-eared sows to 
my Berkshire boar. 
One time about a year ago, father and a man who 
was helping him at the time, let out one of my best 
cocks, a Dorking, to see him fight with one of his. 
When I came to the house from work at night, they 
told me about it in great glee, and laughed at me be¬ 
cause his old “Bramin”, as he called his rooster, 
made the Dorking run. My Dorking died the next 
day ; I had been offered $7 for him that spring. 
The only encouragement I have to try to have some¬ 
thing nice, is from my mother. She gives me words 
of advice, and helps all she can, often feeding my 
poultry when I am away at work, and trying to make 
things pleasant. But father is one of those persons 
who are very “set” in their ways, believing that the 
way grandfather did is good enough for them and 
theirs. He will not submit to having things any dif¬ 
ferent from the way in which he places them himself, 
so I am about discouraged. You know there is a say¬ 
ing, “ Like father, like son.” Do you or your readers 
believe in it ? a Michigan boy. 
SEX IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 
HOW IT MAY BE DETERMINED. 
In a “seminary” lately held by Prof. Roberts, 
Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station of 
Cornell University, a number of interesting observa¬ 
tions on the government of sex in animals, were 
reported. It had been found on Roanoke Island, off 
the coast of Georgia, where the 
land consisted chiefly of ‘‘ swamps, 
swine and poor commons,” that 
the swine, when killed, proved to 
be largely males. Further obser¬ 
vations made along the line of 
cattle, showed that, where the 
conditions of existence were hard, 
food scarce and poor, and weather 
unkind, male calves largely pre¬ 
dominated. Prof. Roberts refer¬ 
red to a time in the West when 
the difference in price paid for 
sheep in favor of ewes, was so 
great that all the farmers wished 
to breed only ewes, that their at¬ 
tention being directed to the study 
of sex, they discovered that ewes 
were the offspring of flocks in 
which the most vigor and vitality 
were found, and that the lambs 
born late in the fall or under un¬ 
favorable conditions, were chiefly 
males. 
A student who was pursuing the 
subject scientifically, stated that 
in the Sandwich Islands, the male 
sex largely predominated among 
the natives, and that this was char¬ 
acteristic of all peoples where the 
race is dying out or depleted in vitality. From 
foreign‘statistics, it was shown that in cities where 
the physical labors are not so wearing upon the 
body and where the food is better, even among 
the poor, than among the country peasants, the 
female sex predominates. He also spoke of plant 
life, in which a tree, like the ash, or cucumber vines, 
bearing both male and female flowers, will pro¬ 
duce female flowers on the topmost shoots, on 
branches exposed to the sun, light and warmth, 
while those parts of the tree deprived of these influ¬ 
ences, produce staminate flowers. Moreover, when a 
plant is growing rapidly, the inflorescence will be 
chiefly, if not wholly, pistillate ; but check the 
growth, and male flowers will appear. In experi¬ 
ments made with tadpole embryos, which were sex¬ 
less, so far as could be determined, it had been found 
that, by feeding the embryos well, the result would 
be a largely female tadpole crop, and that by with¬ 
holding food, the sex would be largely male. Similar 
experiments with guinea pigs were in process of 
investigation. 
Prof. Roberts reported some experiments in hemp, 
where the plants were planted at various distances, 
and those which had most room in which to grow, 
and consequently, more food and sun, produced most 
pistillate flowers. When in Holland, he had been 
struck with the preponderance of female calves in the 
heids, and upon inquiry, learned that it was the cus¬ 
tom of the dairymen to place a male calf at the head 
of a herd, and at the end of the year, dispatch that to 
the butcher and fill its place by another equally youth¬ 
ful sire. When bulls were retained for six or seven 
years, the progeny of the herd would be largely male 
calves. 
Acquired qualities were not transmitted. A pre¬ 
potency in animal life along certain lines, as for milk 
in Jersey cows, style as in the Morgan horse, or for 
color as in the Holsteins, would be reproduced every 
time. The father gave external form to the progeny, 
and the mother internal characteristics, as evidenced 
in the production of the mule and hinny. Dark-haired 
animals were prepotent in color. The effect of change 
of climate was sometimes very marked in emphasiz¬ 
ing prepotency, as was shown in the Jersey cows when 
first introduced into New England, when the flow of 
their milk was so much increased that they seemed 
in danger of being exterminated through exhaustion. 
But by careful breeding, to modify this prepotency, 
the United States have now better cows than are to 
be found in the Island of Jersey. The same has 
been the outcome with horses, the American roadster 
excelling all others. But in regard to the prepotency 
of sex which seemed to be very marked in some fami¬ 
lies, for example, of the human species, where the 
children were all girls or all boys, it had been fre¬ 
quently observed when the health of either parent, or 
of both, began to fail, and their prepotency, to a cer¬ 
tain extent, had lost some of its virility, that the sex 
of their subsequent offspring would change, so that 
it was reasonable to suppose that change in sex could 
be produced by reducing the vitality of one or both 
parents, or in case of long-reduced vitality, to raise 
it, by better living, more outdoor life, chaDge of 
climate, etc. In many individual cases, no such re¬ 
sult might seem apparent ; but from large observa¬ 
tion, and the mass of statistics, the inference to be 
drawn is, that females are the product of Superior 
conditions, so far as food and salubrious surround¬ 
ings are concerned, and males, of corresponding in¬ 
ferior conditions, so that the control of sex seems to 
be chiefly a matter of food, or lack of food. Prof. 
Roberts concluded with the opinion that the discovery 
of the law of sex depended rather upon the intelli¬ 
gent observers in animal breeding, than upon the 
work of scientists in laboratories. m. w. f. 
BONE VS. ROCK PHOSPHATE. 
“THE AGRICULTURAL VALUE OF BONE MEAL.” 
Bulletin 35, of the Massachusetts Experiment Sta¬ 
tion, contains a summary of the results of certain ex¬ 
periments conducted in Germany for the purpose of 
comparing bone meal with other phosphates as a 
source of phosphoric acid. Among other conclusions 
arrived at from these experiments, are the following : 
The superior value which has hitherto been accorded to undis¬ 
solved bone meal as a fertilizer, is due solely to the nitrogen 
which it contains. 
Undissolved bone meal as a phosphate fertilizer is no more 
valuable than are the raw mineral phosphates. 
Hereafter it must be classed with the latter, rather than with 
high grade phosphates containing available phosphoric acid. 
As a phosphate fertilizer it yields no better results than mineral 
phosphates, whether tried alone or with superphosphate, on 
loams or sandy soils, on soils rich or very poor in phosphoric 
acid, whether with grains or with turnips, mustard, or other cru¬ 
ciferous plants; either in the first or in succeeding crops. 
These conclusions are so different from what we 
have heretofore been taught, that few students of 
agricultural chemistry will care to accept them with¬ 
out further proof. The following opinions are from 
American authorities : 
From Prof. E. B. Voorhees. 
We have made no experiments in which bone has 
been compared with the various ground mineral 
phosphates. In our experiments conducted in 1885 
and 1886, upon corn, rye and wheat, in which fine 
ground S. C. Rock or “floats” was used as representa¬ 
tive of the raw mineral phosphates, it was shown 
that with one exception, namely, upon the peaty soils 
of the great meadows in Warren County, this mater¬ 
ial did not cause an increase in crop. This result is 
quite the reverse of that which practical farmers have 
obtained from the use of bone 
New Jersey Experiment Station. 
From Dr. H. W. Wiley. 
I am unable to agree with the conclusions printed 
in Bulletin No. 35 of the Massachusetts Experiment 
Station, in respect to the, availability of the phos¬ 
phoric acid in bones. 1 am quite aware of the fact 
that the fertilizing effects which are produced by the 
application of raw bone, are not by any means due, 
in all cases, to the phosphoric acid thereof, but de¬ 
pend largely on the content of nitrogen therein. As 
long ago as 1882, while State Chemist of Indiana, it 
was shown in my laboratory that quite a large per¬ 
centage of phosphoric acid in bone, especially when 
finely ground, was soluble in ammonium citrate solu¬ 
tion. It could not be denied that phosphoric acid of 
this kind is available at once for the nutrition of 
plants. Aside from this, however, it is certain that 
fine-ground bone decomposes more rapidly than min¬ 
eral phosphates, and that for this reason its phos¬ 
phoric acid is more quickly and easily assimilated. 
Experience has further shown that, in general, 
fertilizing materials in an organic form, or that are 
derived immediately from some organic combination, 
are more readily assimilable than when in a purely 
mineral state. For the reasons given above, I 
am compelled to dissent from the conclusions of 
the Massachusetts experimenters 
which are based chiefly upon the 
results of experiments carried on 
fora single year, and on an ex¬ 
tremely poor sandy soil. It is evi¬ 
dent that the final value of the 
phosphoric acid in a bone meal, 
depends upon the completeness 
with which it is decomposed and 
dissolved. While the farmer is 
perfectly willing to look to the 
future, he cannot in reason be 
asked to apply fertilizers to the 
soil from which returns are to be 
received only after the lapse of 10 
or 20 years. In view of the knowl¬ 
edge that we possess of the rate 
at which bones decay, when finely 
ground and placed in a moist soil 
reasonably rich in humus, we are 
led to the conclusion that they are 
much more readily and quickly 
reduced to a condition in which 
they can be assimilated than is the 
case with oi dinary mineral phos¬ 
phates. By ordinary mineral phos¬ 
phates, I mean the apatites and 
hard rock tricalcium phosphates 
usually found in this country. 
There are mineral phosphates, 
however, which must be excepted from the above classi¬ 
fication. I refer to the soft, fine-ground phosphates of 
Florida, and to the natural iron and alumina phos¬ 
phates which are found in many localities. In experi¬ 
ments which I have conducted on vegetable soils, that 
is, those composed chiefly of decayed vegetable matter, 
I have found that the soft fine-ground Florida phos¬ 
phates act quite as well and as promptly as the dis¬ 
solved hard rock phosphates. If the conclusions of 
the bulletin to which you refer were confined to 
phosphates of the character mentioned above, I would 
not be able to dissent from them. 
United States Department of Agriculture. 
From Dr. E. H. Jenkins. 
The results given in the bulletin referred to are 
copied chiefly from the reports of Wagner and 
Maercker, both leading agricultural experimenters 
and authorities on all that relates to fertilizers. 
Maercker says, in summing up his work : “ One may 
look at the matter in any way he pleases, the result 
is always the same. In the first, second or third 
year’s crop, either with cereals or crucifers, on soil 
which is sandy, clayey or loamy, in a hot or cool sea¬ 
son, on a soil extremely deficient or only slightly de¬ 
ficient in phosphoric acid, everywhere the results are 
alike, i e., the availability of the phosphoric acid in 
bones, either raw, steamed or with glue extracted, is, 
in all cases, unsatisfactory and the author regards it 
as time wasted to carry the experiments further. It 
is high time to count out raw and steamed bone from 
the list of phosphatic fertilizers. Bone, like raw 
phosphates, needs manipulation to make it an active 
fertilizer, and the author believes that the future of 
the bone grinding industry lies in the preparation 
of articles whose efficiency has been demonst rated 
TYING MRS. HEN DOWN TO BUSINESS IN THE ORCHARD. Fig. 63 . 
