joe 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
brought very high prices when exported. I have al¬ 
ways top-worked this on some other stock; when so 
handled it has proved a very early bearer, and with 
good culture will produce better annual crops than 
any other variety I am acquainted with. A profitable 
apple to grow within 25 or 50 miles of our large 
markets. I shall try it as a filler in a limited way. 
Duchess of Oldenburg.—Another apple suitable 
as a filler. An early bearer and good market apple; 
large size and sells well. T also prefer to top-work 
this variety on a better grower. 
Gravenstein.—The best Fall apple for this section 
grown. A good thrifty tree, but a little tender to 
extreme cold. I shall top-work this on a more hardy 
stock in the future. Fruit is liable to drop just be¬ 
fore maturity, especially with high culture. Does best 
on rather light land. Good fruit of this variety al¬ 
ways sells at good prices. A good export apple. This 
apple has proved a money-maker with us. 
Wealthy.—This has proved one of the best Fall 
apples to use as a filler. A heavy bearer, and no 
one should plant it as a commercial variety who will 
not thin. Its greatest value is as a filler, and to the 
orchardist who means business it will pay. 
Blenheim Orange (Lord Nelson). — This apple 
proved a heavy annual bearer with me. Lacks color 
and has not proved a profitable market apple with 
me. 
Smokehouse.—This apple has not proved equal to 
Gravenstein in any way except as a keeper. 
Worcester Co., Mass. h. o. mead. 
PREPARING SOIL FOR POTATOES. 
A reader In New Jersey Is undecided how to handle 
land intended for potatoes next year. lie Is sure the soil 
needs organic matter. Shall he sow cow pens, plow them 
under and sow a Winter crop, following next Spring with 
potatoes, or shall he plant some crops this year that will 
earn some money, if well fertilized, and follow that with 
a Wimter crop? 
The question of humus in our soils is one that 
must be taken into consideration if we aim to produce 
maximum crops. On our sandy soils in this and many 
other of our Eastern States, the humus breaks down 
and burns out very rapidly, and the soil soon be¬ 
comes unproductive, even though we supply large 
quantities of commercial fertilizers. On clay soils 
its absence tends to cause the soil to run together 
and become hard and compact, thus shutting out air, 
making it hard for the surface waters to percolate 
through, hence an undesirable condition for the 
growth of plants. I believe that we as farmers located 
as wc are on farms that have been cropped for a cen¬ 
tury or less must look after this question of humus 
just as carefully as we do actual crop feeding. The 
potato is a plant that will not do its best in a stiff! 
cold compact soil; it needs a loose, well-prepared seed 
bed, and a soil well supplied with humus. It is quite 
a common practice here among potato growers to sow 
Crimson clover among standing corn, to be plowed 
down the following Spring for potatoes. Quite fre¬ 
quently Crimson clover is sown after potatoes, to be 
followed with another potato crop; this is claimed by 
some to be successful. Had I been in the inquirer’s 
place and the field in question was not too low in 
humus, I would have sown Crimson clover the past 
August and thus saved a year’s time. However, as 
that has not been done, and the inquirer wants to pre¬ 
pare for a potato crop a year hence, I believe he can 
do no better than to sow cow peas as early as prac¬ 
tical, turning all under in early Fall, and sow to 
wheat, or better, wheat and oats. Why not rye or 
Crimson clover? First, I have found that rye draws 
moisture out of the soil much more rapidly in early 
Spring than does wheat. Oats would be all dead and 
ground covered with a mass of half rotted vegetable 
matter just ready to break down and make humus. 
Second, I am afraid Crimson clover sown after cow 
peas would furnish too much organic nitrogen late in 
the growing season, causing an excessive vine growth 
at the expense of tubers. This, however, should be 
better understood by the inquirer, and he be gov¬ 
erned accordingly. Where there is no danger of too 
much nitrogen becoming available, I would say by all 
means sow Crimson clover. Here I am quite satis¬ 
fied it would furnish too much nitrogen, hence would 
prefer oats and wheat sown together. The oats will 
grow very rapidly during early Fall, and live till near 
January 1. Wheat will start more slowly in Spring, 
and altogether be more desirable. As to making this 
method profitable through one potato crop, the extra 
yield of potatoes would not in all probability pay for 
the loss of a moneyed crop the previous season, but on 
soils insufficiently supplied with humus such treatment 
as outlined here should in my judgment be of such 
lasting benefit as to pay well for time and money ex¬ 
pended. When we realize what humus is to the 
proper handling of our soils, and the aid in hold¬ 
ing moisture, the mechanical condition it helps us 
to secure and maintain, the beneficial bacteria, and 
many other things, it is not a question of how much 
one potato crop will yield by this treatment, but to 
get our soil in proper condition for many succeeding 
crops. For this very reason, I, on my sandy soil, 
cover my fields as fast as a crop is harvested, and in 
addition to that use stable manure. All this as I said 
before is to keep up the content of humus in my 
soil, knowing full well that if I let it run too low 
unfavorable results will follow, no matter how liber¬ 
ally I fertilize or how well I cultivate. 
_ C. C. HULSART. 
THE CURSE OF PHEASANTS. 
Only just a few years ago a small number of 
pheasants were turned loose in Ontario County. To¬ 
day their number is legion. After they began to mul¬ 
tiply so that occasionally one was seen here and there 
they were much admired as a beautiful bird. Soon 
their numbers and their appetites increased, so that 
their natural wild food was not sufficient for their 
wants. Here and there they began to dig up a few 
hills of corn, which at first seemed to be about all 
the damage that they did. But where they dug up a 
few hills of corn one year, if allowed naturally to in¬ 
crease, they would very seriously damage a field of 
corn the next year. Their natural increase is from 
15 to 30 for each pair in a single season, and some¬ 
times more. Their numbers have been so increased 
that it is not uncommon here in Ontario County to 
see flocks- of 20 to 50 seeking what they may devour. 
They begin to damage the farmer just as soon as he 
puts grain of any kind into the ground in the Spring. 
YOUNG RUTTER PEAR TREE. Fig. 71. 
They will dig up a large amount of oats or barley 
and will continue digging them until the grain is six 
or eight inches high. They arc especially fond of 
peas, and will follow a drill mark and not miss a 
single pea for several rods. When you plant your 
garden seeds there is scarcely anything in the garden 
that they will not dig up. The past season they have 
dug out hundreds of spears of corn a foot high, and 
there are a number of fields in my neighborhood 
where there was not a single spear left for three or 
four rods. There were several fields of corn in my 
neighborhood the past season which were dug out so 
badly as to necessitate the refitting and replanting, 
and after the second planting were dug out so badly 
that some of them were plowed up, while others were 
refitted a second time and planted to beans. The sea¬ 
son was then so far advanced that the farmer got 
scarcely anything for his labor. The corn that did 
manage to get the start of the pheasants and make a 
crop is their easy prey as soon as in the roasting ear 
stage of maturity. They will alight on the ears; strip 
down the husks and help themselves in a manner 
most tantalizing to the farmer, and they are right on 
the, job as long as there is an ear left in the field/. 
If the corn is shocked it is their easy prey, and a flock 
of from 20 to 40 pheasants will easily destroy a bushel 
of cars a day. 
Two* years ago there was a large field of corn in 
my neighborhood which, on account of not being well 
matured, was drawn as fast as fed out during the 
Winter. The last few acres of that corn were more 
than half destroyed by pheasants while in the shock. 
There is a saying that you have to eat seven olives in 
order to learn to like them, and something must have 
compelled the pheasants to cat seven beans, for they 
February 2!), 
will now dig them out with alacrity and gobble them 
up with a relish. They are quite fond of digging up 
hills of melons, cucumbers and squashes, and when 
melons are half grown they will frequently dig holes 
in them and spoil them. Last Fall many fields of 
wheat were considerably injured by pheasants digging 
out the seed and in fact there is no grain grown on 
the farm and no seeds planted but what the pheasant 
will dig out what he wants if he can get them and no 
grain but what he will damage more or less as soon 
as it approaches maturity. There are neighborhoods 
in Ontario County in which the damage done by 
pheasants the past season is more than twice the 
amount of all the taxes for the year. Some of the 
Granges of this county have taken the matter up and 
are sending resolutions to the State Grange to be sent 
to the Legislature by the State Grange demanding 
that every farmer have the right to kill the pheasant 
in any way upon his own farm. 
And now just a word to the farmer who possibly 
may not as yet have seen the pheasant, or perhaps 
may have seen occasionally one. They are coming 
by the hundreds in spite of you, and the quicker you 
lick a postage stamp for your Assemblyman and your 
State Senator demanding the abatement of this nuis¬ 
ance the better it will be for you. The actual tiller 
of the soil who earns his daily bread by the sweat of 
his brow cannot afford to be imposed upon in this 
way by city sportsmen. Were wc to attempt to raise 
a drove of hogs on the lawns of these same city 
sportsmen and get a law passed to protect those hogs 
so they would not molest them in any way, what a 
howl there would be, and yet that would only destroy 
the ornamental, while the pheasant takes the bread 
and butter from the farmer and his family. A man 
just from Oregon tells us that the pheasant was in¬ 
troduced and protected by law in Oregon for the 
sportsmen’s sake, and in a short time he became such 
an unmitigated nuisance that he is now hunted and 
killed in any way to get rid of him, and a bounty is 
paid for destroying him. Now, if we do not want a 
repetition of what Oregon already has, we must be 
up and doing. At one time the aristocracy (sports¬ 
men) of France then in power made it a capital 
offence for a peasant to kill a pheasant, while for an 
aristocrat to kill a peasant was no crime at all. Now 
while we probably never will attain any such condi¬ 
tion of things in this country, I cannot help but think 
of the above facts, as a farmer’s boy living only a 
few miles away was sent to jail last week for 25 days 
for the killing of a pheasant. Haven’t we been im¬ 
posed on about enough? Isn’t it about time to call a 
halt? Think it over, brother farmer, and act accord¬ 
ingly- ___________ J- Q- wells. 
THE RUTTER PEAR. 
One of the most promising pears that I have ever 
grown is the Rutter. It is an old but still a rare 
variety, being listed by but very few nurseries, but 
yet it has proved distinctly more promising than most 
of the better known varieties with the exception of the 
Kieffer and the Garber. When I set out my first pear 
orchard, the blight withheld its hand until the trees 
began to bear. Then the Bartlett went first, a victim 
without a symptom of possible redemption. Next 
went Clapp’s Favorite, after setting a few big beau¬ 
tiful pears to make its departure more regretted. The 
Lawrence, Howell and others suffered to some ex¬ 
tent, but were not wholly wiped out. The Rutters 
and Kieffers, however, stood untouched until last 
year, when the cold late Spring, or rather the total 
omission of Spring altogether, was accompanied by 
the worst attack of blight all over this country that 
I have ever seen. It fell on young and old alike; 
old Kieffers reaching their tenth crop unscathed, as 
well as thrifty two-year-olds, that up to that age had 
always been exempt, went down in common ruin. 
When we finished pruning, the ground was covered 
with brush, from small limbs to whole trees. The 
Rutters succumbed then, along with the others, but 
not until they had shown extraordinary promise. To 
enumerate very briefly their good qualities, they bear 
very young, at two and three years, and they bear 
more abundantly than any other variety except the 
Kieffer, and they are not even second to that. Fig. 71 
shows a four-year-old Rutter, top-budded on a Kief¬ 
fer stock, loaded with fine pears. There were about 
150 of them. The limb to the left is bent to the 
ground with their weight, and in addition, I had 
early thinned off quite a number. This tree was a 
fraction over three inches in diameter. In color the 
pears are a deep green until ripe, when they turn to 
a tempting russet yellow. Some of them are blotched 
with dots that add to their beauty. In quality they 
are very good ; distinctly a good quality fruit. They 
are of good size, some specimens weighing over half 
a pound, depending on the thinning. They are also 
resistant to high winds that play such havoc with 
some varieties. Again I must give it the palm as 
the most regular and persistent bearer, not even 
excepting Kieffer. All in all, I cannot understand 
why this pear is not more widely known and planted. 
The conditions here were very unfavorable, the trees 
being highly fertilized by adjacent strawberry 
ground. _ l. r. joiinson. 
Missouri. 
