496 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
July 25 
CHEMICALS AND CLOVER ” HOLD 0U1 
THROUGH THE AGRICULTURAL. DEPRESSION 
With Some New Features Added. 
Part II. 
As was hinted last week, Mr. Lewis has made a 
little change in his system of farming. For many 
years, his plan was to keep as few head of live stock 
as possible. The hay was sold, as were many of the 
corn stalks, and stable manure was regarded as some¬ 
thing of a nuisance. The chemicals for the potatoes 
and the sod for the corn maintained the fertility of 
the farm, and increased the crops with each round of 
the rotation. 
Twenty years ago, the signs of the times showed 
Mr. Lewis that live stock husbandry would no longer 
support his farm. That was the beginning of the 
immense output of meat and dairy products from the 
West. Accordingly, he began to change his system 
of farming until the steers and the cows largely dis¬ 
appeared from the farm, and chemicals and clover 
took their place. Grass and grain were sold instead 
of being fed, and potatoes became the money crop. 
For years, this system paid because potatoes brought 
fair prices. Now, Mr. Lewis sees another possible 
change coming. The prices for potatoes have de¬ 
clined, and the past few seasons have been low Within 
the past few years, immense developments have been 
made in methods and machinery for growing potatoes. 
Mr. Lewis accepts the western reports of the cost of 
growing an acre of potatoes as accurate, and while 
all this may not mean permanently low prices, he 
doesn’t purpose to sit still and wait for the machine 
to roll over him. 
The “ way out ” seems to come in the very opposite 
direction of his past 20 years’ work—dairying ! It is 
just like going back 20 years, to take up an old tool 
that was then laid aside, putting a new handle into it 
and bringing it again into use. 
A creamery has been established at Cranbury, and 
most of the fertilizer farmers are sending to it the 
milk of six or more cows Let us see now just what 
this means. Mr. Lewis is milking eight cows, and, if 
the experiment prove successful, he will, probably, 
increase the herd to 15. He has fallen off only 100 
pounds per acre on fertilizer for potatoes. A part of 
the potato field is planted to fodder corn—a singular 
fact being that the Robbins potato planter was used 
to drop both corn and potatoes. The cows will eat 
the corn (fodder and stover) and a part of the clover. 
There will be even more Timothy hay to sell than 
before. A silo is being considered in which the stover 
can be kept—after the plan suggested in The Ii. 
N.-Y. last spring. The grain can be husked off and 
the stalks cut into the silo at leisure, with water 
added so as to make good ensilage. Bran and linseed 
meal are now cheap, and they will make a better 
“ balance” with the stalks than the corn would. 
The cows will, therefore, be scavengers or waste 
eaters. They will not interfere with the sales of 
potatoes, wheat, corn or Timothy hay. The disposal 
of the stalks was formerly the weak point in Chemi¬ 
cals and Clover. The cows will attend to that, and in 
case clover hay be low in price, they may be able to 
pay more for it than the hay dealer can give. The 
result of this increase of stable manure ought to be 
more corn and more grass. To what extent it will 
tend to decrease the amount of fertilizer needed on 
the potatoes, or whether it will lead to a fertilizer 
lower in nitrogen, remains to be seen. There are 
many interesting results ahead of this new departure, 
and we shall try to keep track of them. 
At present, milk sent to the creamery brings 80 
cents per 100 pounds, while the skim-milk is bought 
back at 10 cents per 100. Most of the milk seems to 
come from farmers like Mr. Lewis, who keep the 
cows as a sort of side issue—to consume a part of 
their crops that was formerly considered of little 
value. It is a good illustration of the fact that busi¬ 
ness has now reached a point where the difference 
between profit and loss often means the saving of 
what was formerly considered a waste product. Mr. 
Lewis is not yet prepared to make any definite state¬ 
ment about the success of this new plan. It is not 
past the theory stage yet, though it is very promising, 
lie will continue to use the same amount of fertilizer 
on potatoes, and all the stable manure will be put on 
sod and plowed under for corn, so that, if the new 
plan succeed, the old firm will simply take in a new 
partner, and we shall know them as 
Chemicals, Clover and Cows. 
It is singular how, after a score of years, this farm is 
going back, in part, to the old practice of dairying. 
One reason is that the home markets have changed in 
the past 20 years. Farmers have been gradually 
giving up dairying except the shipping of milk to the 
cities. Along the shore, within a few miles of this 
locality, hundreds of towns have sprung up where 
people demand vast quantities of ice cream, sweet 
cream and butter, and while the individual dairyman 
with a few cows could not eater to this trade, a co¬ 
operative creamery enables him to market his milk to 
good advantage. It is not likely that these farms 
will ever support large herds of cattle, for the num¬ 
ber of cows will, probably, be limited by the crops 
of stalks and clover hay. The whole thing shows 
how great changes are creeping all through farming 
as well as other lines of trade, and how the farmer 
must keep ahead of the times if he would be prepared 
for these changes. H. w. c. 
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piece of paper.] 
MACHINERY FOR HULLING COW PEAS. 
I want to buy a good liuller for hulling the pods from cow peas 
without splitting them. I grow the peas for seed, and have the 
ripe pods picked by hand to insure the best quality for seed. A 
hand machine to separate these pods from the peas, is what I 
want. E. o. p. 
Dover, Del. 
Something About the Machinery. 
E. G. P. will, doubtless, do well to use an ordinary 
grain thrasher, by opening it enough so that the peas 
can pass between the concave and beater spikes with¬ 
out being broken. An old set of spikes might do well, 
THE OYSTER-SHELL BARK-LOUSE. Fio. 159. 
and, perhaps, if half the spikes be removed, it will do 
all the better. There are two machines for doing the 
work ; but when this station proposed to make a trial 
of them, the people controlling one were unwilling to 
trust their machine in North Carolina. One machine 
came on trial from Georgia; it would thrash peas, but 
was rather new, and, perhaps, may before this, have 
been improved. A man with a rather slender stick 
on a raised slat floor, can discount the machine with 
three hands taking turns to run it. The one man will 
have the lightest work, too, unless the machine is im¬ 
proved. So far as we have heard or know about these 
machines, there is not one which can equal the stick, 
6 or 7 feet long and % to l\i inch in diameter. The 
thrashing floor may consist of cross slats or only 
single ones, laid about two feet above the barn floor, 
half an inch apart, and deep enough so that they will 
be firm under the weight of peas and the blows 
given by the thrashers. This is the usual way to 
thrash pods ; but it cannot be considered equal to a 
wheat thrasher opened enough so that the peas will 
not be very much broken. 
E. G. P. and others may be interested to know that 
two machines have been invented to take the place of 
handpicking the pods. Handpicking is tedious and 
costs far too much of the grower’s income to remain 
long in vogue. One of these machines picks from a 
row, and works very well. It will pick many bushels 
a day. It also thrashes the well ripened pods, and 
the next step is to fan the peas out by hand. But 
the second machine picks up the pods from broadcast 
sowing and thrashes them out practically the same as 
would the prepared wheat thrasher, while the pods 
and broken vines are blown out on the land near 
where they grew. Both inventors have been advised 
to form a company and make both machines. With 
either of these the hand picking is done away with, 
though care will necessarily have to be taken to drive 
over the field when the weather is dry, and when the 
greater proportion of the crop is ripe and ready to be 
housed, else the green pods and partially dried peas 
gathered will necessitate much artificial drying of 
the crop in order to save it. The cow pea goes on 
blooming and ripening fruit for a long season, but it 
may be possible to select those which tend to ripen 
the fruit all at once, so the harvesting machine may 
be more profitably used than now seems possible to 
many who know the habit of most varieties of this 
bean. frank e. emery. 
North Carolina Experiment Station. 
How They Do It in Georgia. 
The prevailing method of thrashing (hulling) cow 
peas, is the old-fashioned hand flail, which is quite 
effective, but very slow and, therefore, unsatisfactory. 
A cheap hand-power machine for the purpose, is a 
desideratum. I have heard of machines that claimed 
to harvest and thrash cow peas at one and the same 
operation, but I have not seen one. At this station, 
we use an ordinary power grain thrasher and shaker, 
run at a low speed, and find it very effective and 
rapid, the only objection being that many of the peas 
are broken or split by the spikes. This objection will 
be likely to lie against any machine that does the 
work rapidly. After running through the thrasher 
and shaker, the peas and chaff are then put through 
an ordinary grain fan mill. Of course, it should be 
understood that the peas are in the condition of “peas 
in the hull,” separated from the vine, as they are 
almost generally gathered in the South. 
There is very little sale or use of the hulled peas in 
the South except for seed. As a rule, the farmer 
gathers enough in the pod to supply seed and some 
for his cows, to be fed in the hull. The most profit¬ 
able way to use the crop as food, is to convert the 
vines into hay or ensilage, saving only enough peas 
for seed. For these purposes, the crop should be 
mown when just a few of the pods have become grown, 
or have arrived at the stage when they are suitable 
for the farmers’ dinner table. The harvesting of the 
ripe pods, by picking with the fingers, is, like cotton 
picking, the most expensive detail of the crop, and 
should be avoided as far as possible. An expert hand 
may pick, in this way, as much as 200 to 300 pounds 
of pods, equal to two or three bushels of clean peas. 
The old rule required one hand to “ pick and thrash 
out ” one bushel of clean peas in a day. 
Georgia Ex. Station. R. .J. redding. 
The Oyster-Shell Bark-Louse. 
■/. P. It'., Bloomsburg, Pa .—I have found two apple trees in my 
orchard that are dying, and have cut from one of them a branch 
which I mail with this. I would like to know what is the matter 
with the trees, and what to do for them and any others that may 
be similarly attacked. 
ANSWERED BY M. V. SLINGERLAND. 
The apple branch was badly infested with an insect 
about which I am constantly receiving inquiries. As 
the branch showed well some important and interest¬ 
ing phases of the life-story of the insect, a part of it, 
natural size above, and enlarged below, is shown at 
Fig. 159 to illustrate these points. Ever since the 
advent in the East, of that most destructive of all our 
scale insects—the San Jose scale—fruit growers have 
seen more scale-like objects on their trees than they 
ever dreamed were there before. Scarcely a week 
passes but I receive some of these things, supposed to 
be the dreaded San Jos6 scale. There are two or three 
kinds of scales which have been common pests in the 
East for many years. 
The Oyster-shell Bark-louse (Mytilaspis pomorum), 
shown at Fig. 159, is the one most often sent in. It 
is, probably, the commonest and most widespread of 
any of the orchard scales. It is found all over the 
world, and was, probably, a European insect origi¬ 
nally, although it was recorded as very numerous >in 
Maine as early as 1794. It infests many of our 
orchard and garden fruits besides the apple, and a 
large variety of forest trees. If, during the winter, 
one of the long, narrow scales be lifted, it will be 
found packed nearly full of minute white eggs ; and 
the scales contain no other life, the shriveled body of 
the dead mother being tucked into the more pointed 
end of the scale. The entire winter is passed in the 
egg stage ; there may be from 40 to 90 eggs under one 
scale, all laid by one mother. 
Last year, we reared some of the Oyster-shell Bark- 
lice on a little tree in the insectary. The eggs began 
to hatch May 11, or the same date that J. I*. W. sent 
me the specimens illustrated. The recently hatched 
young are minute, yellow creatures that can crawl 
over the bark at quite a lively rate ; the white specks 
on the figures are these young lice. They wander 
over the bark for a few hours, usually less than a 
day, until they find a suitable spot, when they work 
their piercing, beak-like mouth-parts through the 
bark and into the soft tissue. When once thus 
established, the females never leave the spot; those 
that develop into males acquire wings and then, of 
