January 15, 
mother owned the farm. The agent requested the 
mother to sign the contract. 
“Why,” she queried, “is my signature necessary?” 
The agent should have replied: 
“Your son has no property, and as in business there 
arc apt to be bad debts, and he might become involved, 
we must haVe the signature of some one who would 
be financially responsible to us in such case.” 
This would put any woman on her guard. But the 
answer was: 
“Why, you see your son is not married. Unmarried 
men are more unsettled, and apt to wander. If your 
son wanted to, he could order two or three thousand 
dollars worth of fertilizer, and skip out.” 
“Oh, well, if that is all!” replied the mother, and 
put her name down at once, not realizing until after 
the departure of the agent, that if her son, inex¬ 
perienced in business, and of a trusting nature, should 
sell to irresponsible parties, she would pay the debts. 
In our locality, widows are much more common 
than widowers, and it is probably the case all over 
the country. Nothing is more necessary to the con¬ 
tinued financial welfare of a family—not even life in¬ 
surance—than the training of wife, sister, or daughters 
in all the business matters which might possibly come 
up in case they were left alone. Probably not one 
fanner in .ten, who reads this article, has the faintest 
idea of the statuesque ignorance of his wife on mat¬ 
ters which every woman should understand. Let him 
put her through her catechism and he will find in 
many cases that he is glad his attention was called 
to the matter in time to “put her wise” to a few 
things she might very much need to know in case of 
liis demise. And she will prove an apt pupil. A good 
farmer’s wife is practical and sensible, and she does 
not need much coaching to be able to protect herself. 
ELLEN E. DE GRAFT. 
COW PEAS AND CRIMSON CLOVER 
VS. ALFALFA. 
Mr. Fox of Tennessee, page 882, is worrying need¬ 
lessly aver what I have said about cow peas and Al¬ 
falfa. I am well convinced of the value of Alfalfa, 
but Alfalfa means rich soil, while all over the South 
there are millions of acres of run-down land which 
need peas and clover to bring them economically to 
making Alfalfa. Cow peas and Crimson clover are 
the best team a Southern farmer can have for pro¬ 
ducing forage and improving the soil, and on the 
average Southern farm I could grow more forage in 
one year than any man can grow in two years with 
Alfalfa. Alfalfa is not a crop for the rapid im¬ 
provement of thin land, while cow peas and Crimson 
clover are exactly fitted for doing this. Alfalfa will 
hardly ever be grown over extensive areas in the 
South as it is in the West, and here will always be a 
crop for rich lots and specially prepared land. Mr. 
Fox says that peas cost too much and cause erosion 
of the hill lands. My own experien.ee is just the 
reverse. The hill lands of the South have washed 
into gullies because of constant clean culture and 
shallow plowing, and any crop that will put vegetable 
fibre into the soil aided by deep plowing and sub- 
soiling will check washing. If a pea stubble is left 
bare all Winter on shallow plowed land one may 
expect some washing, but if the land had been deeply 
prepared, and the pea stubble sown thickly with 
Crimson clover and oats in September, there would 
be the very best means for preventing the washing, 
especially if the Winter cover is turned under in the 
Spring to make fibrous material and to form humus 
in the soil. Mr. Fox’s own statement shows that 
he has had a good deal of plowing and expense to 
get Alfalfa, and if he expects to mow that Alfalfa 
year after year three or four times without expense 
he will find his error. I am glad that he has Alfalfa, 
and hope that he can continue getting four tons of 
hay a year per acre, but there are millions of acres 
in the South that will not do that, but will give large 
crops of pea hay and leave a Winter cover on the land 
that will stop washing as well as Alfalfa, and will 
enable the farmer to increase his corn and cotton 
crops year after year. I have sown peas and clover 
on hills as steep as any ever cultivated in the South, 
But the land had been plowed and subsoiled 15 inches 
deep, and I cured old gullies and never made a new 
one, and grew grass and Red clover rankly on the 
same hills, and always had a sod to turn when the 
land went into a hoed crop. 
Tt is the shallow plowing and lack of a sod that 
has made gullies in the South. The scratched-over 
surface, with no vegetable fibre to hold it .together, 
gets into a semi-liquid state in the torrential rains 
of the South, and has to go down hill, for there is no 
other way for it to go, and nothing to hold it together. 
But with a deeply loosened bed of soil and a sod to 
hold the soil together there will be no washing. Then 
when that hoed crop has peas among it. and is fol¬ 
lowed by Crimson clover in the Fall, the soil is con- 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
sfantly gaining in humus and less and less inclined to 
wash. After years of such treatment the land may 
grow Alfalfa. But, as I have said. Alfalfa is not a 
crop for a short rotation to build up worn land. It 
is an extremely valuable crop when we have the land 
in the fertile state it demands, and can be kept for 
years if annually fertilized. But if any man imagines 
that he can mow Alfalfa three or four times a year 
and take the crop off the land and return nothing, 
end that the land will improve, he will soon find that 
he is mistaken. There is no crop on earth that will 
do this. If you have a good stand of Alfalfa you are 
fortunate, but remember that it must be kept good by 
annual fertilization, while you grow your corn and 
cotton and other crops with the aid of cow peas and 
Crimson clover. Mr. Fox objects to the work needed 
for the improvement of the land through annual for¬ 
age crops. I .have never seen any great development 
in agriculture without hard work, no matter what 
one’s crops are. w. F. massev. 
HOW LONG CAN ALFALFA STAND? 
I wish that Mr. Wing and other experts would give their 
opinion as to how long ground can remain in Alfalfa with¬ 
out deterioration of the sail, a point I do not remember 
having been touched on. If fertilization is necessary, what 
is preferable, barnyard manure or chemical fertilizers? 
Indiana. J. H. H. 
The writer confesses to being a plain farmer, not 
a chemist or college professor, and he cannot handle 
this question as technically ag either a chemist or 
professor would. The only thing that he really knows 
on this subject is what he has gathered from observa¬ 
tion, and a little plain theory which he has arrived at 
through observation and reading. 
Woodland Farm is largely composed of naturally 
fertile soil, some of which many years ago was badly 
abused, but all of it has been heavily manured time 
and time again, so that for the past 10 years it has 
been in a good state of fertility. Naturally, we expect 
these fertile fields to produce well, but if the Alfalfa 
was injurious or hard on the soil in any way, we 
would expect our meadows to yield less with each 
succeeding year that they were left sown to Alfalfa; 
exactly the reverse of this is true up until the time 
that the stand becomes thin. One small field was left 
sown to Alfalfa without being plowed up, manured 
or fertilized in any way for seven consecutive years. 
We finally ruined it by severe pasturing, but for at 
least six years the plants yielded heavily year after 
year, certainly without any decrease as far as indi¬ 
vidual plants were concerned, although each year the 
stand was becoming a little thinner. This field was 
then given a light coating of manure, plowed up and 
put into corn, produced a splendid crop, and since 
then for several consecutive years, it has been sown 
to Soy beans, corn, and a number of experimental 
crops which we have grown, practically receiving no 
manure or fertilizer in this time, and has yielded 
splendid crops every year. Another instance was that 
of a meadow which had been sown to Alfalfa for 
several years, but which was plowed up and planted 
to corn in 1908. Forty-five acres of this field produced 
an average of 100,1 bushels per acre weighed-up corn, 
and this without one load of manure or commercial 
fertilizer. This was the largest yield of corn on so 
large an acreage that we had ever produced. 
It has been our practice for several years to use a 
six-year rotation, Alfalfa four years, corn two years; 
the second time the field was planted to corn, giving 
it a good coat of barnyard manure. This rotation has 
certainly increased the productiveness of our fields 
year after year. For a number of years we have 
been applying acid phosphate at the time of seeding 
to Alfalfa, and we find this pays us very well also. 
For the past year or so we have been going a step 
further yet in applying acid phosphate to our old 
meadows, and we find that this still further increases 
the yield of Alfalfa. Theoretically, Alfalfa adds con¬ 
siderable nitrogen to the soil, and in practice this 
.seems to be clearly proven; consequently, on fields 
that are not already much impoverished, application 
of nitrogen should not be very necessary. However, 
the plants consume phosphorus quite freely, and the 
college professors tell us that with our system of 
applying barnyard manure once every six years or 
even oftener, we do not add as much phosphorus as 
could be used to advantage; and the results that we 
are getting through applications of the acid phos¬ 
phate seem to clearly prove that this theory is correct. 
Applications of potash on our own soils have proven 
to be useless, excepting on rather mucky ground. 
We find that we can grow Alfalfa on almost pure 
muck, by using heavy and repeated applications of 
potash, but on any other soil its use seems to be of no 
value. 
To sum the question up, we know that on moder¬ 
ately fertile ground Alfalfa will thrive for at least 
seven years without the application of either com¬ 
mercial fertilizer or barnyard manure, and that Alfalfa 
sod may be plowed up after seven-year intervals, and 
a splendid crop of corn grown without applying 
either manure or fertilizer. We find, however, that 
the plants will make good use of at least one good, 
heavy application of manure once in six years, and 
that acid phosphate or bone meal will much more than 
pay for themselves, either when applied to a young 
meadow at seeding time or when applied to old 
meadows. The acid phosphate is, of course, cheaper, 
the only danger being of getting the soil acid from 
its continued use. chas. b. wing. 
Ohio. " 
MORE ABOUT TREE SUBSTITUTION. 
With apples it is more damaging to the owner of 
the orchard than with peaches and plums, as they do 
not come into bearing as soon, nor do the trees live 
as long as do the apples. Most nurserymen make a 
few mistakes, and there are a few rogues in the 
business also, but planters should not buy trees from 
unreliable firms or their agents, or unknown salesmen. 
The best one can do there is apt to be a mistake once 
in a great while, and the nurseryman may not be to 
blame either. One firm buys trees of others, and 
they are supposed to be true to name and may be as 
far as they know, and in propagating them they may 
have bought the buds or scions from some fruit 
grower who was a little careless or not trustworthy 
and he may have furnished scions or buds which were 
untrue to name. If such were the case the firm 
selling the trees to the planter gets all the blame, and 
the planter may sell scions from the young trees 
before they commence to bear, thinking all is well. 
The orchardists must bear their own mistakes, and 
to avoid them they should not propagate from trees 
unless they know they are true to name, old enough 
to bear fruit, so they can tell. And they should not 
trust to hired men to go out and cut the scions, for 
they may get into the wrong tree, as they usually do 
not know the varieties as the owner should. The 
nurseryman may be and usually is about as honest 
&s the planter, and in fact I believe they take more 
pains to avoid mistakes in handling the scions, buds 
and trees than do the orchardists who sell the wood 
to propagate from. The man who sells scions not true 
to name would be likely to raise the biggest howl 
when he finds out he has trees planted which have 
proved untrue. 
One orchardist is said to have replied to a nursery¬ 
man in a meeting that he should go to the orchards and 
cut his own scions. The orchardist himself is the 
only one to see to that, and the nurseryman would 
not know many of the varieties if he should go to 
get them. In cutting scions one may easily get into 
a tree of another kind if he is not careful, and es¬ 
pecially if he h»3 hired help to cut them, unless he 
has an orchard of only one kind; there are not many 
of that sort, and probably should not be many 
such on account of cross-pollination. Now let us 
all be charitable toward an honest tree grower, and 
search our own self to see if we have done as best 
we could to keep things straight, but at the same time 
keep a ‘sharp eye on the ones who are careless or 
crooked. In cutting large orders of scions I have 
had but one tree of a kind untrue to name, as best I 
know, to get in and it was a small one of an excellent 
variety which was cut when I was unavoidably away, 
and did not find it out till after they had been shipped, 
but I at once wrote the firm about it telling them 
where and how to find them. The color of the wood 
and the spots on the bark and also the buds would 
give a careful tree man a clue to the wrong ones. 
Ohio. u. x. cox. 
R. N.-Y.—That is sensible. The wonder to us has 
always been that nurserymen can fill orders with so 
few mistakes. If only a small proportion of a fair¬ 
sized order were mixed wc should not make serious 
complaint, for wd know the danger of a mix-up in 
budding, grafting or sorting. On the other hand, in 
cases where a large proportion of the trees are 
wrong we should regard it as close to criminal care¬ 
lessness, and the nurseryman ought to stand his share 
of the loss. _ 
An English gardener, while attending to his em¬ 
ployer’s poultry, was severely pecked in the arm by a 
cockerel. Blood poisoning followed, and during a fit 
of temporary insanity resulting from this illness, the 
gardener committed suicide by drowning. The gar¬ 
dener’s widow brought suit against his employer for 
compensation, and the jury awarded her £156 (about 
$750). A far-reaching employers’ liability law in 
Great Britain covers cases of this kind to an extra¬ 
ordinary degree. __ 
The Supreme Court of Maine considered the case 
of a contract to pay a commission for the sale of farm 
property. The farm owner signed an agreement to 
pay a certain commission for the sale of his farm if 
he withdrew it from the hands of the agent. This 
agent agreed to “list” the property for sale. The 
owner sold the property himself and the agent claimed 
the usual commission, though he never advertised it 
for sale. The court held that unless the property 
was thus advertised, and unless some real effort to 
sell was made, the agent did not properly “list” it. 
