68 
after allowing for friction and other losses, 10 lamps 
per horse power is a safer estimate. 
Both the dynamo and the governor are run by 
quarter-turn belts directly from th.e upright turbine 
shaft, an arrangement that reduces gearing and fric¬ 
tion to the minimum, although it is particularly hard 
on the belts, which should be of leather, endless and 
of the best quality. In this case the turbine runs 
about 500 revolutions, with a 17-inch pulley belted to 
the six-inch dynamo pulley, giving that about 1,400 
revolutions. 
As it is more than half a mile from the house to 
the wheel, it is entirely out of the question to go there 
morning and night to start and stop it. I have heard 
of letting such a rig run 24 hours a day by the month 
without attention, and while I can see no fundamental 
difficulty in so doing, yet I have hesitated to adopt 
the plan, owing to distrust of lubricating devices and 
belt leather under such continuous service. We have 
a good neighbor who lives about 700 feet from the 
mill, and we light his house and barn in considera¬ 
tion of his attending to the matter of starting and 
stopping the machine. This question of gate control 
gave me more trouble than anything else, and was 
finally settled by shutting off the water from the 
wheel by the use of a simple flap valve, 12x14 inches 
square controlled by a wire and counterweight. The 
wire runs to our neighbor’s bedrooom window. At 
five A. M. (dairymen’s rising hour) he pulls the wire 
and the light comes on. Simply releasing the wire 
allows the gate to flap shut. This operation is re¬ 
peated as evening draws near, and both of us being 
dairymen, we agree fairly well on a rather early bed¬ 
time. His last duty as he jumps into bed is to shut 
down for the night. What is needed is a governor 
with human intelligence to shut down when anything 
goes wrong, instead of opening up the gate to full 
capacity. Once a bucket chain stopped for some rea¬ 
son. and we quickly ground out a phosphor-bronze 
bearing, and again a part of a bran sack got in iilie 
wheel and nearly put us out of business. Yet, with 
the care and attention needed, the man who has once 
flooded his house and stable with incandescent light 
will be exceedingly loath to go back to lamps and 
lantern, once quite satisfactory, but now so dim and 
smoky. 
Most farmers will very properly ask for some sort 
of an estimate of a plant of this character. It must 
of course vary widely with different conditions. In 
our case, everything was favorable, except the long 
distance from the power made a heavy expense for 
line wire. In our case the plant is entirely new ex¬ 
cept the generator, which is second-hand. The cost 
will run something like this: One 50-light dynamo, 
say $150; one small turbine, varying from $60 to $200, 
the first figure being for the naked upright wheel and 
the latter for a horizontal wheel in an iron case; one 
water-wheel governor, $75, plus installation; line 
wire, varying from a very few dollars if near to some 
hundred if a half-mile or more away. We hung up 
about 900 pounds of copper, using No. 4 and 5 B. & S. 
Now is an especially favorable time to purchase this, 
as the cost will not exceed one-half what it did one 
year ago. This then for a very rough estimate. If 
only a short distance from the power, with a dam al¬ 
ready constructed, and a man who can do most things 
himself, and buying only such things as are required, 
a sum as small as $350 will perhaps do as a starter. 
On the other hand, if everything must be of the best, 
with a nice job of wiring the house, together with a 
switch-board and measuring instruments, it would be 
very easy to put in three times this sum, and if a 
turbulent stream must be dammed, I can easily see 
how it might absorb the price of the farm. I might 
add one thing, that if a man will take up a scheme of 
this kind and carry it on to completion, solving the 
various problems as they arise, and reading all he can 
get hold of on electricity meanwhile, he will be able 
to make a fair fist at being an electrical engineer by 
the time he gets through. jared van wagenen, jr. 
A BAG OF FERTILIZER. 
How To Pick It Apart. 
Part I. 
1 have been using a fertiliser with the following 
analysis: Nitrogen 3.3, phosphoric acid 7, potash 10. 
Jt costs a little less than $40 a ton. I ant told that I 
might buy the chemicals and mix them at home. 
Should I do sof I use about three tons a year. 
This gives us a chance to go through the fertilizer 
question before the time comes for buying. Let us 
see if we can find what there is in this bag of fertilizer, 
and then see if we can buy the plant food any cheaper 
in the form of chemicals. 
How can we tell what this fertilizer contains? 
If we wanted to buy a Guernsey cow we would have 
several things to go by—pedigree, color map or pho- 
THE BUEAL NEW-YORKER 
tograph. and reputation of the breeder. We would be 
told of certain white spots on the cow, a certain size 
and shape of udder or head or horns, and a certain 
ability to give milk. We should have to take much 
that was said about the breeder’s character on faith, 
but the Guernsey Cattle Club could be relied upon to 
A DUTCH BELTED COW AND CALF. Fig. 27. 
look him over and tell us frankly if lie was straight. 
This would be the most important thing about buying 
a cow. 
Now in these respects buying a fertilizer is not un¬ 
like buying the purebred cow. The agent or the manu¬ 
facturer tells us that they will guarantee so many 
pounds of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash in one 
ton. That is what we buy the fertilizer for, because 
if we want extra growth on our plants we must have 
nitrogen, while if we want solid and plump fruit or 
grain we must have plenty of potash. With our sea¬ 
son ahead of us and a living depending upon the 
crops we have got to know ahead that we are using all 
the elements of plant food in fair proportions. It is 
just like a man buying a good bull to head his dairy 
herd. He has got to be sure before he starts that the 
bull is descended through a long line of cattle noted 
for milk or butter production. Otherwise he might 
find some years later that the heifers he depended on 
for his future herd were mongrels or beef cattle. 
H has got to htww what he is using, the same as a 
farmer who buys fertilizer. 
What the cattle club ought to be to such a dairy¬ 
man the experiment station is to the fertilizer farmer. 
Every year samples of the different brands of fertilizer 
offered for sale in your State are examined and an¬ 
alyzed at the station. The results of these analyses 
are printed in a bulletin where all may read them. 
To be sure, if we are buying this year we must be 
guided by the figures for last year’s samples, but that 
is usually enough for our purpose, since we can get 
the average for a number of years if we like. Of 
FLORIDA SPONGE DIVERS. Fig. 28. 
course if a man is buying 10 tons or more it will pay 
him to take out samples and have them analyzed sep¬ 
arately, but most of us will have to be satisfied with 
the Station figures. 
You will see that on the face of it this fertilizer 
calls for 60 pounds of nitrogen, 140 pounds of phos¬ 
phoric acid and 200 pounds of potash in one ton. But 
this is only one side of it. Hunting up a station 
January 25, 
bulletin we- find that the full analysis of this fertilizer 
shows the following: 
Per cent. Total. 
Nitrogen from nitrates. 1.54 .... 
Nitrogen from organic matter. 2.04 3.58 
Soluble phosphoric acid. 4.14 .... 
Reverted phosphoric acid. 2.52 .... 
Total available . 6.66 
Insoluble phosphoric acid. 2.76 .... 
Potash . 11-24 
Now this will be clear enough to those who under¬ 
stand these figures. It is about like saying to an ex¬ 
pert dairyman that a certain cow made 350 pounds of 
butter last year, weighs 800 pounds and was sired by 
Gold Drop. To those who do not understand, our 
object is to make the facts as clear as we can, even 
at the risk of taking too much space. 
You will see first that this fertilizer is better than 
the guarantee. The manufacturer promises 66 pounds 
of nitrogen—he gives 70. He says there are 140 
pounds of phosphoric acid in a ton, with 120 pounds 
available. The station finds a total of 188 pounds, 
with 132 available. While 200 pounds of potash are 
guaranteed, 225 are found. As a further test, we look 
back over the station’s figures for the past five years, 
and find that this fertilizer averaged 71 pounds of 
nitrogen, 135 of available phosphoric acid, and 214 
pounds of potash. Here we may be sure that the 
papers really fit the fertilizer. 
So far so good, but what good are these figures 
to us? 
Pretty much the whole story when we understand 
them. You see, there are 71 pounds of nitrogen in 
that ton. Now the first thing to study over is that one 
pound of nitrogen may be worth more than another, 
just as one cow may have a superior value. You 
notice this bulletin tells us that about 30 pounds of this 
are “nitrates,” while the remaining 40 are “organic 
matter. h. w. c. 
APPLE CULTURE IN WESTERN NEW YORK. 
Young Trees Under Thorough Culture. 
My young apple orchard, set in 1898, has attracted 
much attention, and a brief description of it, includ¬ 
ing the results to date, may be of interest and possible 
value in the discussion of the sod vs. tillage question, 
which is attracting so much attention in The R. N.-Y. 
at the present time. This orchard contains nine acres, 
and 825 trees. The soil is a low ridge of clay loam, 
very full of small stones; some small portions are 
gravelly and others are a rather stiff red clay. These 
latter often suffer from drought. Many bowlders 
were originally scattered over the surface, but these 
have mostly been removed or buried. Medium two- 
year-old trees were used, and set in the ordinary man¬ 
ner, the tops were formed in the nursery at about 
three feet in height. Three to five of these main 
branches were shortened to eight to 10 inches, and 
all others were cut away. Since that time the only 
pruning has been to cut out cross branches and to 
thin out the centers very lightly. Some of the lower 
branches that rested on or very near the ground have 
been removed. The idea has been to produce a broad 
low head and to avoid pruning so much as to induce 
wood growth. The permanent trees were set 40 by 44 
feet apart, and fillers were set between, so that as 
the orchard now stands the trees are 20 by 22 feet 
apart. It has always been tilled. The first three or 
four years corn was planted and the trees were hoed 
with the crop. Since then the soil has been tilled 
without cropping, the Cutaway disk and the spring- 
tooth harrows being the tools mostly used, except the 
hoe, which is used to remove grass and weeds from 
near the trees. No chemical fertilizers have been 
used, and barn manures only twice on portions of the 
orchard at the rate of about a load to 25 or 30 trees. 
The varieties in the orchard are as follows: 450 
Ben Davis, 100 R. I. Greening, 100 Ribstnn Pippin, 75 
Hubbardston, 72 Twenty Ounce, 10 Grimes Golden, 
10 York Imperial, 5 Wealthy and 3 Wagener. The 
Ribston was a case of false label. Wealthy and Wag¬ 
ener were set in 1900, and Twenty Ounce was grafted 
on Ben Davis in 1900. The first crop was produced 
in 1903 and the record in bushels is as follows: 1903, 
250 bushels; 1904, 100 bushels; 1905, 600 bushels; 1906, 
850 bushels: 1907, 2,121 bushels. The following table 
shows the amount of barreled fruit for the years 1905 
and 1907. In 1906 the record for the different varieties 
was not kept: 
Ben Davis . . .. 
R. I. Greening. 
Ribston Pippin 
Hubbardston . .. 
Twenty Ounce 
Grimes’ Golden 
York Imperial 
Wealthy . 
Wagener i. 
Total 
1005 
1907 
Trees. 
Rbls. 
Rbls. 
. 450 
01 
379 
. 100 
20 
94 
. 100 
12 
25 
. 75 
18 
57 
. 72 
1 
3 
. 10 
2 
7 
. 10 
3.5 
5 
5 
1.5 
5 
3 
3 
. 825 
149 
578 
The sales approximate as follows: 1903, $133; 1904, 
$25; 1905, $525; 1906, $375 ; and 1907. $2,135, making 
a total of $3,195, which amounts to $355 per acre. I 
am not able to give a statement of co.-t to date, as 
our records are incomplete, but for 1906 we have the 
following, which is substantially correct as to time, 
though the rate per day is an estimate: Pruning, 
7.08 days at $1.75, $13.65, or $1.52 per acre; spraying, 
1.07 days at $10, $17; spraying materials, $11.85, mak¬ 
ing cost $28.85, or $3.21 per acre; tilling, 11 days at 
$3.25, $35.75: hand work, .25 day at $1.75, 44 cents, 
$36.19, or $4.02 per acre; total, $78.69. or $8.75 per 
acre. This includes all the regular orchard work ex¬ 
cept the fruit harvest. The cost of pruning and 
spraying will increase with the increase in size of trees, 
but the cost of tillage will not increase. These trees 
have not only been highly productive, but they have 
also made a fine growth, many of them having a 
spread of 20 feet or more. willis t. mann. 
Niagara Co., N. Y. 
