722 
THK KUKA.L NEW-VOI-iKEK 
on at a later (late. So with the calf, especially of 
(lie meat or heef breeds, bone is one of the first re¬ 
quisites of early growth. The colt, if of the light 
speedy type of horse, must have small hones, but 
especially strong; while if of the draft type it must 
not only have a strong bone but must have much 
of it in order to furnish sufficient area for the at¬ 
tachment of the heavy draft muscles. 
FUNCTIONS OF PHOSPHORIC ACID.—And so 
it is that phosphoric acid, a compound which I am 
afraid, we are prone to neglect, is one which should 
lie of special consideration to us. In the plants it. 
is one of the three most essential parts of their 
food, going as it does primarily to make seeds, while 
in the animal it is not only one of the main consti¬ 
tuents of the bone, but it performs a valuable func¬ 
tion of maintaining complete and proper digestion. 
Let us then give our growing plants plenty of acid 
phosphate in our fertilizer formula, our poultry 
plenty of bone and meat scrap, and let our young 
pigs have at all times access to charcoal, bone meal 
and wood ashes. Phosphoric acid is a mineral, .vet 
it has its work to do, it is not expensive to secure 
nor is it troublesome to use. More attention to its 
use will mean better crops and bigger animals. 
H. n. LEWIS. 
“ Quality ” in Potatoes. 
A NY man would recognize the nonsense of claim¬ 
ing that all cloth should bring the same price 
because it is “cloth.” One piece might be prac¬ 
tically “all wool,” another with as much shoddy as 
could be worked into it. In buying a suit or a dress 
we should all expect to pay extra for the wool 
goods. That looks easy but when we come to milk 
it becomes harder. Milk with 4 y 2 per cent, fat is 
evidently worth more than another sample which 
just barely runs a shade over three per cent. It is 
much the same proposition as the wool and the 
shoddy, for the “solids” in the milk give it the only 
value it has as food. Many a dairyman has been 
driven out of business because he could get no more 
for his fat milk than his neighbor got for milk so 
lean that it barely reached the legal standard. Now 
in looking into the potato situation we find much 
the same trouble. There is nearly as much differ¬ 
ence between the “soggy” and the' starchy potato as 
there is in “cloth” and the milk, yet in the ordin¬ 
ary market all are sold as “potatoes” without recog¬ 
nition of the fact that one may carry 25 per cent, 
more starch than another. We hear much of the 
great use of potatoes in Germany, but many of us 
do not grasp the idea that this great use is profit¬ 
able only because the Germans produce high grade 
potatoes rich in starch. No one can get food or al¬ 
cohol or starch out of water and it would not pay 
a nation like Germany to grow great crops of 
watery or “soggy” tubers. It is not unlike the cul¬ 
ture of sugar beets. If one community were satis¬ 
fied to grow fleets averaging 10 per cent, of sugar 
while another community developed a variety con¬ 
taining 10 per cent., which one do you think would 
go into bankruptcy? We shall, sooner or later, have 
to come in this country to a clear distinction be¬ 
tween potato for human food and those for stock 
food, and those who attempt to sell the soggy va¬ 
rieties as human food will find themselves in trou¬ 
ble. This matter of “quality” in potato depends on 
variety, soil, climate and culture. Much of the poor 
soggy stuff is unripe, the vines being killed before 
the tubers matured. Spraying will help in this 
as will anything else that gives the vines a chance 
to grow on until the tubers are ripe. 
Orange Hawkweed,or Devil’s Paint Brush. 
O RANGE hawkweed owes its bad reputation 
as a weed to the habit of spreading its leaves 
out so flat and tight on the ground as not only to 
crowd out a stand of grass, but effectively to prevent 
the grass from becoming reestablished. The weed is 
capable of propagating with alarming rapidity, be¬ 
ing equipped not only with innumerable light, fluffy, 
wind-blown seeds, but also with creeping stems or 
runners that spread out just at or below the sur¬ 
face of the ground. These runners take root oc¬ 
casionally. giving rise to new plants, much after the 
fashion of strawberry runners. It is by means of 
these runners that the plants are enabled to live 
over from year to year. 
On land that can be plowed, eradication of the 
Orange hawkweed is a simple matter. Plowing, fol¬ 
lowed by a short rotation of crops, including a cul¬ 
tivated one, will quickly and completely kill it out. 
In fact, its activities as a weed are confined almost 
entirely to rough pasture land that is seldom or 
never broken up for crops. 
On permanent pasture land it is often a question 
whether or not it would pay to go to the consider¬ 
able expense of eradicating the weed. Some land 
will pay for the improvement, and some will not. 
On land that will warrant the expense of improve¬ 
ment. the fanner's efforts should be devoted toward 
thickening the stand and increasing the vigor of 
the grass. This will gradually reduce the hawkweed 
on account of the crowding effect of the grass and 
the greater amount of pasturing by livestock. The 
grass may be improved by top-dressing with well- 
rotted manure or fertilizers and by reseeding. The 
seed mixture should contain, besides Kentucky Blue 
grass, some of the quicker growing plants, such as 
Red-top, Timothy, and White clover. It is usually 
desirable to go over the infested land once or twice 
with a spike-tooth harrow or other implement to 
produce a more favorable seed bed for the young 
grass and clover; or, if the infested areas are quite 
small, a hoe or mattock may be used. It is a good 
plan to run sheep on the pasture; it is also desir¬ 
able to salt livestock where the weed is the thickest. 
General applications of plant poisons, however, have 
been found to be rather expensive, and the results 
are apt to be disappointing. 
There is no question but that a great deal of the 
land most seriously overlain with hawkweed is so 
rough and poor that it will not warrant the ex¬ 
pense of improvement. It furnishes but scant pas¬ 
turage at best, and might better be left to grow up 
to trees again, putting the time and trouble that 
would be spent in its improvement into other pas¬ 
ture fields that would respond better to such treat¬ 
ment. Undoubtedly, the most economical way in the 
end would he to abandon these fields to trees, as such 
land will grow a better crop of wood than of any¬ 
thing else. 
The United States Department of Agriculture is 
anxious to hear from farmers who have handled 
Acid Phosphate as Plant Food. Fig. 262. 
hawkweed along the lines indicated above or by any 
ether method. Kindly write to the undersigned giv¬ 
ing briefly your experience. 
H. R. COX. 
U. S. Dept, of Agriculture, Washington, D. C. 
Remarkable Sports of Twenty-ounce 
Apple. 
I T is supposed that a good many orchard varieties 
have originated as sports, but a study of the his¬ 
tory of fruits does not show this to be the case. 
Thus, not more than a half dozen of the 700 apples 
described in “The Apples of New York” are reputed 
to be sports; none of the 1.500 grapes nor the 2,000 
plums described in the books on these fruits from 
the New York Agricultural Experiment Station are 
put down as sports. The notion that varieties of 
fruits commonly originate as sports could do little 
harm, were it not for the fact that some do not dis¬ 
tinguish between them and the variations brought 
about by soil, climate, nurture and stocks. There 
may lie little or no difference in the appearance of 
the two kinds of variations, but there is a wide dif¬ 
ference in them under propagation. 
The fluctuating variations found in every orchard 
due to environment and nurture, as productiveness, 
size of fruit, color, flavor and so on, are never, so 
far as we know, transmitted. They pass out with 
the individual bearing the variation. There is, for 
example, but little evidence to show that the most 
productive Baldwin trees in an apple orchard or the 
Spys bearing the largest apples, transmit produc¬ 
tiveness and large size of fruit. There are more or 
less exaggerated statements in some nursery cata¬ 
logues as to the value of propagating plants from 
trees showing desirable variations, but most such 
statements savor so much of personal gain that we 
at once throw them out of court. Several experi¬ 
menters, too, have brought forward some evidence 
in the past few years to show that varieties can 
be improved by bud selection. It is too soon to 
judge the value of this evidence. But it is certain 
that when several generations of trees propagated 
from selected buds have been grown, the check of 
May 22, 1915. 
exact records will Ire found a heavy drag on many 
of the statements now being made. 
For a number of years an effort has been made 
to bring together on the grounds of the Geneva Ex¬ 
periment Station all of the improved strains of old 
varieties of fruits, the claims for which seem the 
most reasonable. We now have a considerable col¬ 
lection of apples, pears, plums, cherries, peaches, 
grapes and small fruits sent to us as “improved.” 
Some came with the statement that the improved 
strain bore larger fruits or better colored fruits; 
others were more productive or less subject to dis¬ 
ease than the parent; others were earlier or later 
than the normal variety. In the very great ma¬ 
jority of cases these strains brought into being by 
bud-selection are identical with the original varieties 
from which they came. A few have turned out to 
be sports, and it is some of these that I want, 
to put on record. 
Several varieties of apples, as Gravenstein. Seek- 
No-Further and Twenty Ounce, seem to furnish 
sports of this fruit. Those of the Twenty Ounce 
are most remarkable. The Collamer Twenty Ounce 
and Ilitchings Twenty Ounce are widely distributed 
and are well known, in New York at least, as bright 
red variations of the parent variety. The two strains 
seem to be similar, but are sufficiently different to 
be distinct. The Collamer originated as a sporting 
branch; the Ilitchings. as a sporting tree. 
This past Fall a third one of these red strains of 
Twenty Ounce was sent to the station with the 
statement that it came from a branch of a Twenty 
Ounce tree growing in the orchard of E. II. Ander¬ 
son. Hilton. N. Y. Young trees from buds taken 
from the branch reproduced the sport. It is similar 
and yet distinct from either the Collamer or Ilitch¬ 
ings Twenty Ounce. This Anderson Twenty Ounce 
is almost a counterpart of Opalescent, a new and 
valuable variety. This similarity led to a study of 
the tree and fruit characters of Opalescent and we 
were forced to the conclusion that it. too. is a red 
strain of Twenty Ounce either from seed or bud. 
Here, then, are four strains of Twenty Ounce, 
all valuable because better colored than the parent. 
Twenty Ounce in the Western New York apple belt 
is one of the half dozen leading apples. If is wide¬ 
ly grown in several other regions as well. The sev¬ 
eral red strains of it here mentioned are quite equal 
to the parent variety in all characters and surpass 
it in color. It is yet too soon to say which of these 
four strains is best. They are so nearly alike that 
it may save confusion if all are grown under the 
name “Red Twenty Ounce,” but, at any rate, the 
parent variety should now be superseded by its red 
strains. As soon as growers can obtain any one of 
the four sports they ought to cease planting the 
poorly colored parent. 
It does not follow that every variation in Twenty 
Ounce will be transmitted as is color in these four 
sports. There is nothing to lead one to suspect that 
the red color induced in this variety by climate or 
soil will be transmitted. What causes a plant to 
sport no one knows. There is some evidence to 
lead one to suspect that hybridity is a cause if not 
the cause. The fact that there are but few varie¬ 
ties of apples which seem to throw these sports is 
borne out in other species of plants. 
Variations are always interesting, and if they 
prove to be transmissible may be valuable. Every 
grower of fruit should be on the lookout for them. 
Their value can be told only by propagating from 
the sporting branch or plant. If the variation con¬ 
tinues to come true it is a sport. If the offspring 
reverts to the normal type the variation is but a 
deviation brought about by climate, soil or nurture. 
The vast majority of the differences found in every 
variety are of the latter class and. so far as we now 
know, selection cannot make new or improved fruits 
out of them. Persons with exuberant imaginations, 
who see heritable characters in all of the multitudin¬ 
ous variations in an orchard, should hold their en¬ 
thusiasm in hand until through propagation the de¬ 
viation proves to “come true.” u. p. hedbick. 
Geneva Experiment Station. 
E XPERIMENTS are reported from Kansas in 
clipping “lodged” wheat. This means wheat 
which has fallen down or been broken by wind 
or rain. It usually occurs on rich land where the 
plants make a quick, soft growth. It will often 
happen in a wet Spring where manure or nitrate of 
soda are used to stimulate growth. Some farmers 
think that if the young wheat is clipped shortly after 
it falls down it will make a new upright growth 
and give a good yield. The facts seem to be that 
in wet seasons clipping does not check the growth 
enough, while in dry seasons the clipping delays 
maturity and shortens the yield. The best advice 
seems to be to let field alone and not use too much 
nitrogen. 
