1906. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
455 
GEO. T. POWELL ON THE SEEDLESS APPLE. 
The claims made for Seedless apples do not seem 
well founded. The trees put forth some blossoms, and 
there are more or less apples with seeds in them. They 
have as large core carpels as other apples. AH that 
I have examined are low grade in flavor, and have 
little to recommend them, while the color is not at¬ 
tractive. But over all other points they have one 
that is a menace to those who are deluded into buying 
the trees, and that is the deep aperture or opening at 
the blossom end of the apple, extending up into the 
core from one-half to three-fourths of an inch. This 
furnishes the most perfect protection to the San Jose 
scale that could be devised. If it were the finest apple 
in every other point. I would condemn it for this one 
most dangerous defect. Trees bearing apples of such 
formation will prove to be pest breeders from the pro¬ 
tection they afford to the scale and Codling moth. It 
is not difficult to control insects that may be reached 
by spraying the outside of the apples, but when in¬ 
sects can live and breed in a narrow opening virtually 
inside of the apple their control becomes practically 
impossible. Had the seedless orange such a defect as 
this, with all of its excellent qualities, it would never 
have been disseminated. There is not an expert horti¬ 
culturist in the United States who would advise plant¬ 
ing this class of apples so far produced from any merit 
they possess. 
In regard to the salo of trees in large quantities at 
exorbitant prices, promoters see an opportunity to ex¬ 
ploit the public with a claimed novelty that is not a 
fact. Advertising agencies will be supplied with money 
to get selling schemes before the public. As a big 
speculative venture, the methods employed are ingen¬ 
ious in conception, and tempting baits will be thrown 
out to the agricultural press, the advice of 
which has been against investing in such 
schemes. That articles should now begin 
to appear in some agricultural papers in 
the interest of a syndicate, that is to put 
out several million trees of a Seedless 
apple at exorbitant prices, is a surprise 
The interests of horticulture and of a 
large consuming public, will be much bet¬ 
ter served by advocating and advertising 
apples of fine quality, of which there are 
many, the trees of which may readily be 
obtained of well-known nurserymen, at 
moderate prices, rather than advertising 
for get-rich-quick schemes with rake-offs 
from the public of 500 per cent profits. 
GEORGE T. POWELL. 
Pres. Agricultural Experts’ Association. 
" WATER GLASS EGGS” AGAIN 
My note of inquiry, page 303, has led to a 
scries of comments on this subject that have 
been interesting. But these are not con¬ 
vincing. Summed up briefly, they consist 
mainly of statements that various persons 
have preserved eggs successfully in water 
glass, and found they kept sweet and tasted 
good. So may bread with alum in it; 
nor may the user of this be able to detect injury; yet 
injury is done just the same. S. R. Devine, on page 
407, adds a new note to the register. He has pre¬ 
served eggs for three weeks in water glass and found 
no trace of albumen in the preservative. In that case 
it is entirely safe to say no water glass had penetrated 
the shell. But the statement was made in The R. 
N.-Y. that sometimes the water glass acquired a dis¬ 
agreeable odor, especially in the Summer, and the con¬ 
tents of the shell altered in appearance. If that ob¬ 
servation was correct, then albumen was present in the 
preservative; and unless there were cracked eggs in the 
lot, that albumen came out through the membrane and 
shell, in spite of its colloidal nature; and if it passed 
out. you may rest assured some of the preservative 
ingredients passed in. Now, I have never seen nor 
tasted a water-glass egg, so far as I know. I do not 
believe water glass passes into the egg; nor that the 
albumen passes out. But, if carefully handled, sound- 
shelled eggs do cause the water glass to become foul, 
then albumen does pass out: and without doubt some 
of the preservative fluid passes in. I shall be glad to 
know whether many have found the water glass grow¬ 
ing foul. 
Mr. Devine illustrates the “a little learning” adage 
in the chemical corner of his brain. Soda we take with 
impunity, and silica we take with impunity; therefore 
sodium silicate is not a poison! By the same reason¬ 
ing, soda conTbincd with harmless nitrogen and oxygen 
should be harmless; or with harmless sulphur and 
oxygen should be harmless; and therefore sodium ni¬ 
trate and sulphate.—Chili saltpetre and Glauber’s salts 
—are safe articles of diet! And carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen and nitrogen, being harmless elements of food, 
strychnine, composed entirely of these harmless con¬ 
stituents, is a safe and wholesome article of diet! I 
hardly think the gentleman would be willing to take 
two thousand doses of water glass, however minute, in 
the course of a year. The insoluble, indigestible, slimy 
fluid might hermetically seal up enough of the diges¬ 
tive and absorptive pores to cause him considerable 
annoyance, and interfere with the natural processes, 
even if it did not act as an irritant poison. Therefore 
if it should be found that his two thousand eggs con¬ 
tain water glass, he would best let them alone, or scat¬ 
ter them through a longer period. Whenever it is 
shown that water-glass eggs really contain no sodium 
silicate, then we shall know them to be entirely safe 
to use. Tf they are found to contain this, which I 
do not believe will be the case, the question of health¬ 
fulness will be left wide open. R. o. graham. 
Illinois. 
LIME AND SULPHUR FOR HEN LICE. 
What are the probable results likely to be secured from 
spraying hen coops with lime-sulphur wash for red mites? 
If such spray would kill the insects, would the odor spoil 
the taste of the egg? a. s. j. 
Rhode Island. 
I think the lime-sulphur wash would kill both the 
mites and their eggs if they could be thoroughly hit 
with the spray. It will require very thorough work 
with a tine, forceful spray, so that the wash could be 
driven into all the cracks and crevices. The applica¬ 
tion would doubtless need to be repeated again in a 
week or 10 days to get those which are missed at the 
first application. In spraying henhouses with any ma¬ 
terial for the mites it is well thoroughly to drench the 
roosts, always removing the poles so as thoroughly to 
soak the under sides of them where many of the mites 
often congregate. I do not think the odor of the lime- 
sulphur wash would in any way affect the taste of the 
eggs of the fowls. A Cornell student has been work¬ 
ing on chicken lice and mites during the past year, 
and he finds that kerosene oil will kill the mites and 
their eggs. It can be used pure or with kerosene- 
water pump set to throw about 25 per cent of kerosene. 
One of the new miscible oils known as “Scalecide” 
was also found to kill the mites and their eggs when 
used at the rate of one gallon of oil with nine gallons 
of water. None of these sprays will affect the lice, 
which live on the hen both day and night. Experi¬ 
ments are now in progress here which indicate that we 
shall soon be able to recommend a preparation which 
will not only kill the mites and their eggs, but the 
vapors or gases of which will also kill the lice and 
cause them to drop from the bodies of the hens. 
M. V. SUNGERLAND. 
THE MOSQUITO AND AGRICULTURE . 
At first sight the relation between mosquitoes and 
agriculture seems remote, and yet. especially in New 
Jersey, it is closer than is generally realized. Where 
mosquitoes are bad, profitable dairying is difficult if 
not impossible, because only the thick-skinned poor 
cows yield at all, and they but scantily. A good cow 
cannot fight mosquitoes and give a good flow of rich 
milk at the same time. Some localities are most scan¬ 
tily settled because of the pest, and I have known 
cases where crops of berries could not be gathered, be¬ 
cause no pickers could be held; even Italians brought 
down from Philadelphia refused to remain. The 
farmer suffers as much physically and financially as 
any other body of men, and is more directly affected bv 
those species that are carriers of malarial fevers. It 
was not out of the range of the Agricultural Experi¬ 
ment Station work, therefore, to investigate the subject, 
especially as the State supplied the funds to do the 
work. The outcome of the investigation has been to 
demonstrate that it is quite practical so to reduce the 
number of the insects as to remove them from the 
category of pests. They depend absolutely upon stag¬ 
nant water for their propagation; will not thrive where 
fisli or other aquatic insects live, do not breed in dense 
swamps or in areas overgrown with cat-tail marshes, 
and most of the species except those breeding on the 
salt marshes do not fly far from their breeding places. 
1 he salt marsh species are migrants, fly many miles 
from home and are responsible for fully 90 per cent 
of the mosquito pest in New Jersey. Fortunately the 
breeding places arc not co-extensive with the salt 
marshes, and the problem of improving the bad sec¬ 
tions is a very simple one. At its last session the Leg¬ 
islature of New Jersey appropriated $350,000 for the 
purpose of dealing with the problem, not more than 
$70,000 to be expended in any one year; as a matter of 
fact only $ 10,000 was provided for the year beginning 
November 1 , 1900, so the work must start in a very 
conservative manner. 
How is this money to be expended? First in edu¬ 
cational work; teaching each community that is in¬ 
terested where its problem lies and what it can do to 
dispose of its local troubles. Second, to drain by nar¬ 
row, deep ditches or to fill when necessary all those 
salt marsh areas along the coast on which the migratory 
mosquitoes breed. Careful estimates have been made, 
and the sum appropriated will be sufficient. There will 
be no spreading of oil, no application of chemicals, no 
exploitation of theories. It is a simple problem of sani¬ 
tation handled from a business standpoint in a manner 
which experience has shown to be effective. There will 
be no reclamation for agricultural purposes; though 
the incidental effect will be to increase and improve the 
quality of the salt hay crop; there will be 
only the removal of surface pools and pro¬ 
vision for carrying off surface water rap¬ 
idly and completely. The ditches will be 
deep and narrow, to prevent their be¬ 
coming choked by plant growth and 
to provide for the circulation of the 
little killie-fish that feed ravenously upon 
mosquito wrigglers wherever they find 
them. Large ponds will be simply con¬ 
nected with tide water to admit marine life, 
and in the whole work natural conditions 
will be so adjusted as to make it impossible 
for the mosquito larvte to develop. 
In all this there is no element of the 
sensational; only the application of a sci¬ 
entific method to obtain a definite result. 
We expect success, of course; but the re¬ 
sults for a year or two will not be startling, 
first, because no start can be made until 
November, 1906; second, because the 
amount now provided is not sufficient to 
clean up any large area; and third, because 
the work done one Summer does not show 
results until the season following. We have 
suffered the pest and its annoyance from 
the beginning of our time; the method of 
relief is not by miracle, but by hard work; 
give it time to approve itself. JOHN B. smith. 
New Brunswick, N. J. 
“A FROST PROOF STORAGE HOUSE” 
On page 255, in “A Frost-Proof Storage House,” IT. E. 
Cook speaks of a double wall of cement with air space eight 
inches across (above ground) with walls tied together with 
wire. etc. I wish to put up a storage house to hold about 
5,000 bushels of apples one story under ground (dug out of 
hillside), with one story frost proof above cellar, and one-half 
story attic, for empty barrels, crates, etc. As I understand 
it, both walls would have to be put up together. What kind 
of “form” would I have to use between walls? Would it be 
best to imbed ends of joists and sleepers in the inner wall? 
Indiana. r. i„ b. 
There are different ways of putting up forms, but it. would 
seem to me in this case that the advantageous method would 
be to put up studs for a support to the inside wall, bracing 
them firmly, and then putting the boards on fast as you 
filled in with concrete. If you built the whole form at 
once it would be difficult to work over it. The concrete 
should be thoroughly tamped to make it solid and free the 
mass from air. A very good way to make the surface show 
smooth and free from stone or gravel is to run a spade be¬ 
tween concrete and form after tamping: this will push away 
the stone. When you get up to the top of the ground or 
nearly so. and wish to begin the hollow wall, build core 
boxes a trifle larger at the top. so they can be taken out 
after the concrete sets, leaving a space of four inches each 
side and four inches between the “cores” : the outside form 
can he secured through these spaces between the “cores" 
with wire, and the wire cut after the concrete is in, leaving 
them in the wall for re-enforcement. Then put on another 
above and so on. This system saves building a stiff supported 
form for both sides. Some care must be taken of course to 
keep this movable form plumb. Rolts can be used and kept 
above the concrete, raising the form altogether, but I doubt 
in this case whether it would be as satisfactory as the meth¬ 
od just described. Yes, the cross joists could lie bedded 
in the inner wall. It would probably be a good invest¬ 
ment to secure the assistance of a mason having some ex¬ 
perience in this kind of work. p, 5 , 
A HOME MARKET FOR MARYLAND WATERMELONS. Fig. 185. 
