ISfcJ 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
only common sense to keep the varieties separate. 
No rules need be laid down, but it is well always to 
remember to plant all of one variety before beginning 
the next kind, put a strong stake between varieties in 
the row, and be sure to see that all pans and baskets 
used for carrying grafts in the lot are empty before 
starting a new kind. A man with a spade and a boy 
to place them in the ground can plant 5,000 grafts per 
day. The spade should go down straight in the 
ground about six or seven inches, and the boy sticks 
the graft down alongside the back of the spade so 
that only one or two eyes of the scion are above 
ground. If you get them too deep, you will have 
trouble caring for them; if not deep enough, the scion 
may dry out and the natural root send up a sucker. 
It is necessary to pack the ground around them after 
planting. This is done by tramping the earth around 
each graft—not too hard, but just enough to make the 
dirt firm around the root. Rake some loose dirt on top 
of this for a mulch, but do not cover the grafts, just 
let them stick out of the ground about two inches. 
Keep the weeds out of them and stir the ground often 
during the growing season. Do not expect a large 
growth the first year. These delicate things must have 
time to get a start, but the second year they will show 
up much better, and most of them will be ready for 
transplanting. It used to be the custom some time ago 
to have a long list of rules for cutting and pruning 
young fruit trees, but we have come to know the 
value of nature’s methods, and the pruning knife 
should be used only sparingly in the formation of the 
fruit tree. m. k. 
In Fig. 53, reading from left to right, the pictures 
show first a whole-root graft on large branched root; 
whole-root graft on straight root; a good specimen 
of a piece-root graft; the work on next graft was done 
carelessly, and as a result, a piece of the root sticks 
out from the scion. 4 will take it some time in the 
nursery to grow over. The fifth is a piece-root graft 
showing how a very slender root may be worked into 
a tree, and the sixth the scion and root before they 
are united, showing how the scarfing is done and the 
tongue is made. 
PARCELS POST IN GERMANY 
What We Should Have Here. 
Part II. 
Next in importance is the shipment of eggs and 
dressed poultry, especially of geese, which come in 
immense numbers from Pommern in east Germany. 
The goose is the national feast fowl of Germany, just 
as the turkey is of America. Through the parcels 
post it is possible for the farmers 200 or 300 miles 
away from Berlin, Leipzig or Dresden to ship eggs 
each week to customers who live in these cities, and 
the advantage is mutual; the man in the city deals 
directly with the producer and is able to get fresh 
goods, and if they are not fresh he can make com¬ 
plaint direct to the one who is responsible instead of to 
a dealer. Cheese, honey, fruit, vegetables and flowers 
are also important products in the parcels post ship¬ 
ment from the country. Cream and milk may be sent, 
but it is not found advisable to ship them to any ex¬ 
tent by this means. The general use of the parcels 
post by farmers is shown by the statistics of the post 
offices of rural districts, which show the number of 
packages sent out by the offices much greater than 
the number received and the farmers of Germany 
seem to have used the parcels post more freely for 
selling their products than they have for buying what 
they consume. 
How general the use of the parcels post is at 
present and how its use has increased is shown by 
the following comparative statistics for 1890, 1900 
and 1908: 
Total No. of parcels No. of parcels 
handled by the per capita 
German post office. population. 
1890_ 97,470.690 2.35 
1900_182,204,787 3.8 
1908_245,859,266 4.1 
No. of letters 
j>er capita 
population. 
23.2 
35. 
43.8 
All of the important European countries have had 
a parcels post established so long that it has become 
a part of the every day life of the people, just as much 
as the delivery of mail in the large cities has with 
us in America. I do not refer to the delivery of 
rural mail, because that is recent, and while no one 
would think of giving it up, we have not yet gotten 
over wondering how and why we ever did without it. 
Here parcels post has been established so long that 
no one ever thinks of the time when they did not 
have it; it is taken as a matter of course, and when 
I say we have no parcels post in the United States 
they cannot understand how it is possible that in a 
rich country like the United States we are lacking the 
convenience of the parcels post. 
Notwithstanding the many advantages that America 
has over the European countries, one cannot help 
seeing some of the advantages of having the public 
utilities, such as the railroads, the telegraph, the tele¬ 
phone and the street railways operated by the gov¬ 
ernment, as they generally are in Germany, rather 
than by private interests. The private interest oper¬ 
ates a utility as illustrated in our express companies, 
so as to give the largest return possible on the capital 
invested. The government operates a utility for the 
sole purpose of giving the best and cheapest service 
possible, as illustrated in the parcels post here. Any 
profits from the business, which, if owned by private 
interests, would be declared as dividends and drawn 
out, are, if operated by the government, put back into 
the service for its improvement, or the rates charged 
the private individual are reduced till they barely 
cover the cost of operation and maintenance. Our 
express rates would have been very different if the 
express companies had been operated on this basis 
for the last generation. 
The advantages of the parcels post as it is found 
here may be summed up as follows: 
1. It gives a cheap and convenient method of send¬ 
ing small packages any distance. 
2. It affords a method for farmers marketing but¬ 
ter, eggs, poultry, fruits, vegetables and flowers direct 
to consumers. 
3. It affords the city man an opportunity of get¬ 
ting fresh produce direct from the producer without 
the intervention of the middleman. 
4. It affords the merchant a method of selling and 
delivering goods direct to the farmer. 
5. It tends to establish uniform prices for produce, 
since the cost of sending produce in packages of 11 
pounds or less is uniform when the distance is over 
10 miles. 
6. It affords a means of transportation that is 
mutually beneficial to producer and consumer. 
Halle a Saale, Germany. h. c. price. 
TO FIND THE HORSE POWER OF AN 
ENGINE. 
Very often a farmer desires to know how many 
horse power he can actually get out of his engine 
in order that he may work it near to the limit. A 
simple and easily constructed device for measuring 
the power is known as a pony brake. It consists of 
beam A, which is cut out to fit over the belt pulLy 
of an engine. A strong wide band of heavy canvas 
or leather is attached to the beam on one side by 
means of a pair of good springs. The other end of 
the band is fastened to the head of a bolt which 
extends through the beam. Threaded on the top 
of the bolt is a nut C. At the end of the beam A 
and just three feet from the vertical line passing 
through the center of the engine shaft is a spring 
balance reading up to 25 pounds (for engines of less 
than 4 H. P.). This balance is supported by any 
convenient form of framework or any convenient 
hook. If a spring balance is not convenient a pail 
may be suspended as in Fig. 2 and filled with sand 
or stones and afterwards the pail and its contents 
weighed. 
With C adjusted so that the band is loose, the 
engine is started, being very careful to have the 
band on so that the engine turns towards the spring 
balance as shown by the arrow in Fig. 1. The nut 
C is carefully tightened until the engine begins to 
slow down. At this point the reading of the spring 
balance is taken and the speed of the engine counted. 
If the speed is too great to count by tying a short 
piece of rope or cloth to the fly wheel and holding 
the finger against the rim, counting each time the 
cloth goes by, it may be obtained by counting one 
of the slower shafts used for opening the valves or 
for operating the sparking mechanism. Then, when 
you stop the engine, turn the fly wheel through one 
revolution and get the number of revolutions that 
other shaft makes. Then, knowing the number of 
revolutions of the shaft, you can multiply and get 
the number of revolutions per minute of the belt 
pulley. 
The rating of all engines is according to their 
February 17, 
“horse-power,” a measurement employed by James 
Watt as early as 1775. An engine of one horse¬ 
power will move a weight of 33,000 pounds one foot 
in one minute against the force of gravity, or it 
will move one pound 33,000 feet in one minute. 
That is, an engine of one horse-power will do 33,000 
foot-pounds of work in one minute. If we should 
allow the arm with a weight at the end to fly 
around with the fly wheel, in one revolution the 
weight would be moved through a distance corres¬ 
ponding to the circumference of a circle whose radius 
is the distance from the center of the wheel to the 
weight, or what is the same thing, to the point where 
the spring balance is fastened. Suppose, then, the 
arm A to be two feet long from the center of the 
wheel to the point where the spring balance is at¬ 
tached, the weight would move, if not fastened, 
through a circumference equal to the circumference 
of a four-foot circle, or 12.57 feet, for each revolu¬ 
tion. Now, if there are 600 revolutions per minute, 
the weight would move 600x12.57=7542 feet per* 
minute. If the balance read 24 pounds, the number 
of foot pounds exerted by the engine would be 
24x7542=181,008. Now, if there are 33,000 foot¬ 
pounds in one horse-power, your engine would be 
giving 181088-=“33000, which equals 5.48 H. P. The 
formula, then, for determining the horse-power of 
an engine is 
Length of arm \ X2X 22/7 X R. P. M, X Reading 
of balance-i-33,000 
which equals 
2 X Length of arm X speed X 
balance-j-10500 
= Horse' Power. 
For engines of four horse-power or less, an arm 
of two feet and a spring balance reading to 25 
pounds is large enough. For an engine twice as 
large, either the length of the arm should be twice 
as great or the spring balance twice as large, and 
so on. If you have a certain size balance, say 60 
pounds and an engine of about 12 horse-power, run¬ 
ning at, say, 800 R. P. M., from the above formula 
you will get the length of arm to use: 
2 X Length of arm X 800 x 60_ 
10500 ~ U 
, , _ 12 X 10500 _ , , , 
Then length ot arm ' 2 x 800 X 60 “ 1,3 feet 
and allowing something extra for safety, our two- 
foot arm would be satisfactory, although a little 
longer arm would be better. 
By tightening up the band varying amounts, the 
engine will run at various speeds and the balance 
will read differently for each speed. It would be 
well to figure the horse-power for a number of dif¬ 
ferent speeds in this way. Then, when doing any 
job with the engine, you can tell what horse-power 
the job is taking by simply counting the speed and 
turning to your calculation and seeing what horse¬ 
power the engine gave at that speed. A table having 
speed of engine in one column and horse-power of 
engine in a second column, would be very convenient. 
RALPH P. CLARKSON. 
MADE “ TIRED” BY DEER. 
I am very sure that if “Farmer,” Connecticut, page 
9^, has become tired by reading disparaging remarks 
about deer in your paper, he would have needed the 
services of a physician had it been his strawberry 
bed that a herd of deer were pasturing last evening. 
For several years deer have poked the mulch from 
large hill system strawberry plants, and gnawed them 
close to the ground, ruining them.Their noses and 
teeth are what they “brush” our apple trees with; and 
perhaps the gentleman from Connecticut would con¬ 
sider it no damage when compared with his humanely 
esthetic sense of these beautiful, noble 
creatures, if they should return his appreciation 
by clipping every growing shoot from his newly set 
orchard from Spring to Fall, till now it is an orchard 
of worthless sticks. When we see seven deer calmly 
munching the shoots from our two-year-old orchard 
that managed to survive their ravages last year, though 
seriously damaged, and find our big strawberry plants 
ruined, we are apt to lose our sentiment among the 
primitive instincts for self-preservation, and call for 
a gun. We are sorry the gentleman is tired. 
Massachusetts. H - I - E - 
We see that the scientists are working hard at some 
plan for “aging beer.” Why not suggest our unpatented 
plan of letting beer grow white haired by never drinking 
It? 
The Geological Survey measured the waters of the upper 
Connecticut River. In April, 1909, the river flowed 49,700 
cubic feet per second. In September, 1908, however, the 
flow was but 288 feet per second. I'f some one had tried 
to sell power on the basis of the April snowing it would 
have been about like the land boomers selling Florida 
and Texas land on the basis of what some man grew by 
accident in a back yard in a favorable season. 
