1911. 
T&& 
TROUBLE WITH MAPLE TREES. 
M. D. If., Bradford, ra. —What is tlio host 
treatment for maple trees that are dying? 
The trees are about 40 years old, and of 
good size, and hitherto of good vigor. This 
year several limbs on one side are quite 
dead. Is there any virtue in iron filings 
placed about the roots? 
Ans. —There is some local cause for 
the branches dying on one side of the 
trees. It may be that there is a gas pipe 
in the ground along the street, and it 
may be leaking. If this is so the roots 
are injured and the branches on that 
side also affected in like manner. Elec¬ 
tric wires sometimes hurt trees that are 
very close to those carrying high-power 
currents. Trees in towns and cities have 
many troubles that are not met with in 
the country. h. e. van deman. 
Leaking Cement Wall. 
.4. R., ProctorviUe, O. —I have a place 
made to hold water for spraying; it is 
walled with brick and one coat of cement. 
It is good solid wall, but it seems to leak. 
It was not troweled down enough I think. 
Some say I could take thin cement and a 
brush and go over it. What do you think? 
Ans. —When building cisterns or 
anything in that line, great care must 
be observed in the selection and tex¬ 
ture of the sand to be used for the 
final water-tight finish. The sand should 
be sieved through quite a fine sieve, not 
allowing grains larger than a No. 6 shot 
to pass through. If the cement con¬ 
tains pebbles of any size they will roll 
along under the trowel when pressed 
against the brick, making it almost im¬ 
possible to make a watertight job un¬ 
less put on quite thick, which is not 
necessary, and also more expensive. If 
you think the fault lies in the manner 
in which the cement was put on, take 
the advice given you and give it a coat 
of thin but rich cement, brushing 
thoroughly, especially where the rough 
places are. Probably you filled the 
tank before the cement was properly 
hardened, and under the pressure of the 
water a few little crevices opened, but 
I think the wash will stop it all right. 
I have a cement roof built a few years 
ago which leaked partly on account of 
the job being too porous and partly on 
account of the cement freezing before it 
got dry, causing the surface to blister. 
I got on the roof and after wetting 
thoroughly, I went over it with thin 
cement about like cream, brushing it in 
with a broom, and it has never leaked 
a drop since. w. a. bangs. 
Care of Strawberry Field. 
It*. O. B., Loganton, Pa. —In April, 1910, 
we planted to strawberries one-quarter acre, 
in row 3% feet and 14 to IS inches 
apart in the row. We cultivated three or 
four times with one-horse cultivator, and did 
some hand hoeing; until Fall the bed was 
one solid mass of plants, that if it was not 
for the rows having been hilled up with the 
cultivator you could not tell where the row 
was from the rest of the plants. We have 
so far picked over 700 quarts, and arc not 
near all done yet; we expect to get 1,000 
quarts in all. This is my first year at rais¬ 
ing strawberries. I would like to know how 
to care for the plants as soon as we are 
through picking berries, so we can raise a 
crop from this bed next year. 
Ans. —This is a good yield for the 
season. Our plan is to cut off the vines 
immediately after fruiting. Use a mow¬ 
ing machine or a sharp scythe. Cut 
off close to the crown, and with a 
sharp hoe . chop off all runners and 
lower leaves. The object of this is to 
get rid of the old foliage and start a 
new top. In our case we rake off 
the tops and use them to mulch young 
trees. After cutting the tops we use a 
fertilizer rich in potash and phosphoric 
acid, but without much nitrogen—scat¬ 
tering it along the rows. This is culti¬ 
vated in and the field is kept clean by 
use of cultivator and hoe. Chop off 
runners as they appear, leaving only 
three or four from each plant—these to 
be placed between the rows. Keep the 
others cut off so that all the strength 
of the parent plant will be thrown to 
these few strong runners. Handled 
in this way the field can be fruited 
three or four years. 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKER 
THF FACTS ABOUT FLORIDA. 
Your issue of June 10 was alone worth 
the price of a year's subscription. It was 
especially rich and refreshing to see how 
that honest Swede (I judge from his name 
that he is one of that nationality), Chris¬ 
tian Petersen, went for the “Burbank-Ocala” 
combination, and his letter is sure to do an 
immense amount of good, in protecting 
others from the experience he had. Of all 
the nauseating, sordid schemes (about as 
palatable to the honest investor as a dish 
of stewed wonderberries) a leader is this 
“latest creation” in the real estate line, in¬ 
volving the fair name of one of the best 
sections of Florida, as well as the reputa¬ 
tion of a somewhat over-exploited wizard, 
all for the sake of taking dollars from the 
pockets of homeseekers. On reading the 
flamboyant “Burbank-Ocala” advertisements 
in the papers, I wondered that any respec¬ 
table journal would lend its columns to the 
furtherance of any such scheme, which on 
the face of it carries a warning to the 
prudent investor. No worthy proposition 
needs such puffing as this has had, and it 
emphasizes the need of reform in journalism 
to the extent of barring out such literature 
from reputable newspapers. The time is 
coming when it will be as hard to get 
such advertising into the average daily as 
it would be to secure space for it in your 
own columns. Then the public will be bet¬ 
ter protected from fakery and imposition. 
The time is probably coming when Uncle 
Sam will bar from the mails all publications 
containing palpable “get-rich-quiclc” schemes 
calculated to injure the investing public, 
and that time cannot come too soon. 
Marion County, Florida, which was select¬ 
ed by these bold boosters as the site for 
exploiting the spineless cactus as a profit¬ 
less investment, is really a fine section in 
the main. I have often been through the 
county, and can bear witness to the value 
of many of its tracts of land. It is the 
banner melon-growing section of the State, 
the Candler melons having made a name 
for themselves years ago. Before the great 
freezes of recent years, the Harris Grove, 
at Citra, was the lax-gest plantation of 
oranges in Florida, and it was reported that 
one crop sold for .$S0,000, in the eighties. 
But there, as everywhere, you can find many 
spots of practically worthless land, or soil 
so sterile that it would cost more to make 
it productive than it is worth. Such tracts 
are turned to profit by the typical land 
faker, whose siren song siugs louder as the 
land is poorei', and the less it costs him 
the more he can afford to spend in big ad¬ 
vertisements in the dailies of uncertain con¬ 
science and the “Sunday magazines” where¬ 
in so many fairy tales are told of the enoi’- 
mous profits in the culture of ginseng, 
mushrooms, squabs and frogs. That jour¬ 
nalist whom you quote as having said that 
“those land fakers had injured Florida more 
than the fi’eeze” knew what he was talking 
about, and it is to be hoped that that State 
will pass and enforce laws making it hard 
for such imposition to be continued. 
Last Winter the Board of Trade of Or¬ 
lando passed resolutions indorsing a propo¬ 
sition which is now under consideration by 
the Washington, D. C., Chamber of Com¬ 
merce, looking to the establishment in that 
city of a series of State buildings on a gov¬ 
ernment reservation, wherein the visitor, in¬ 
vestor* or px-ospective home-builder may 
find accurate and reliable information about 
any section of the State, its lands, products, 
industries, etc. Maps of sections with lands 
for sale, quality and price guaranteed 
through the State authorities; samples of 
products of forest, field, mine and water; 
photographs of farming and other scenes, 
and thoroughly i-eliable printed matter, all 
for the purpose of exploiting the interest 
of the State permanently at the national 
capital. Fresh fruits and other produce 
would be sent constantly to the State build¬ 
ing, and orders taken by sample for larger 
shipments to foreign and domestic points. 
Such representation and pi’otection from 
fraudulent exploitation would be of great 
benefit to Florida as well as other States, 
and it is to be hoped that such an arrange¬ 
ment can be made at Washington, which 
city would in that event become more truly 
national in character, and make itself the 
greatest show place in America. The Cham¬ 
ber of Commerce has also addressed a cir¬ 
cular to the Spanish-speaking nations to the 
south, suggesting their co-operation in the 
establishment of trade buildings and a per¬ 
manent exposition at Washington. Inter- 
state and international trade can thus be 
developed, and the public at large supplied 
with first-hand and reliable business in¬ 
formation which it has long needed. 
I also noticed in your issue of June 10 
an inquiry as to the success of camphor 
culture in Florida. On my visit to Orange 
county last January, I was surprised at 
the fine growth made by camphor trees I 
had known there years before. On the farm 
of my father at Winter Garden was a tree 
which he had planted as a small sprout 
obtained from the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture at Washington in 1881. Its diameter 
at the ground is now four feet, the trunk 
branching in forks of two feet each, near 
the ground. It was completely covered with 
countless seeds or berries, looking much like 
small black cherries, and the ground under¬ 
neath was a mass of young camphor seed¬ 
lings. I learned that persons had success¬ 
fully planted the seed like oats, harvested 
the young plants with a reaper of special 
design, and distilled fine camphor from the 
resulting “hay” of young seedlings. The 
tree is perfectly hardy in Orange county, 
and appears to have no insect enemies or 
diseases. It is believed that the wood is 
valuable for making clothes chests, etc., the 
natural gum retaining its odor for a long 
while and effectually banishing moths and 
other insects. Reliable information as to 
the present and probably future of camphor 
culture in Orange county could be obtained 
from the secretary of the Orlando Board 
of Trade. 
Another possible source of profit to Flor¬ 
ida is the culture of bamboo for the making 
of aeroplanes. Nothing is so strong in pro¬ 
portion to its weight as the dried bamboo 
poles, which are often found 50 feet in 
height, weighing only a few pounds, and 
capable of sustaining hundreds of pounds in 
weight. Mit Henry Nehrling, the famous 
botanist and ornithologist of Gotha, Fla., 
has many varieties growing on his place, 
which have never been injured by the frost. 
Among the many good things in your issue 
of June 10 was a warning about going too 
heavily into Eucalyptus culture. In the 
eighties the Eucalptus craze struck Flor¬ 
ida, and many trees were planted. Some 
of them grew 10 feet a year. The freeze 
sealed their doom and they faded as they 
had grown, like Jonah’s gourd. If the pub¬ 
lic will take pains to investigate before in¬ 
vesting, it can get reliable information as 
to what, where and when to buy and plant. 
One thing is sure: Money planted in the 
pockets of the average Florida investment 
schemers will never sprout, much less bear 
fruit, for the planter. After a residence of 
10 years in Florida I would impress upon 
yoxxr readers the necessity of visiting all 
land before buying it, and even then hire 
an honest guide to take them to the actual 
piece of land, and not depend on the maps 
or plats shown. Florida is bristling with 
fine opportunities for the intelligent and 
industrious home-seeker and farmer, but 
none should buy befoi'e inspection. 
Maryland. lindsay s. perkins. 
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The Schreiber Mfg. Co., Dept. 24, Hammond, Ind. 
Potato Digging Time Coming 
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The Dowden Potato Digger Is a machine you can 
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Largeat Manufacturers of Stool 
Roofing Material In tho World (50) 
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