1428 
yard, and all the manure was cleaned up daily and 
hauled out or piled conveniently for hauling as soon 
as possible. All the roofs around the yard drained 
from the yard so that no rain fell on it except that 
which fell directly and that I did not mind draining 
off. 
I concluded that a manure pile was a bad thing;, 
not that manure is bad, but the keeping it in a pile 
under the best conditions as that mixed with plaster 
and under a shed, was not good farm economy, and 
hence I made every effort to get the manure out on 
the land as soon as possible after it was made. Hav¬ 
ing in the mule stable and the horse stable an aver¬ 
age of .10 animals, the cow stable with 27 cows usu¬ 
ally at the pail, and feeding in Winter from 75 to 
100 beef cattle, the manure accumulation was enough 
to keep one man and team busy for at least half of 
every day hauling it out. And when that manure 
went out on a sod (and T never broke land on those 
steep hills for a hoed crop unless there was a good 
sod to help check the washing) it made fine crops of 
corn. I had 1200 acres of land, only 135 of which 
were in the level fertile bottoms along a small river. 
When I took charge I was told that I could get hay 
off the bottoms, but that the thin hills had better 
be kept in grass to keep them from running into 
gullies. 
Careful inspection showed me that while the bot¬ 
tom lands were very fertile, they were very foul 
with weeds and that if I depended on them for hay 
T would have more weeds than grass. The bottoms 
were really the bottom of a mill pond, and Gen. 
Sheridan destroyed the mill and the stream cut a 
deep channel through the accumulated silt, leaving 
a soil ten feet deep on top the original black swamp 
soil. Therefore I determined to make these rich 
bottom lands return to the hills what they had long 
been robbing from them. Having three large silos 
holding 200 tons each. T planted the bottoms in corn 
for silage, and sowed clover every Summer among 
this corn. A crop of clover hay was cut in Spring 
and the stubble at once turned for corn again, and 
T usually saved the crop before frost. 
The manure went on the hills, which were kept 
largely in grass, but the grass never allowed to run 
out as I saw many hills around me, which were 
running into gullies on the cattle tracks, but always 
broke a sod while still good and always had a sod 
on which to haul the manure. In three years I was 
cutting more clean Timothy and clover from the hills 
than had ever been made on the bottoms, and with 
the clover and corn I got a good crop of clover hay 
and made twenty tons of silage an acre. My ob¬ 
ject was not so much to make corn grain as to 
make bay, for if necessary I could buy corn cheaply 
there in the Fall, but could not buy hay, and really 
did not wish to do so as had been done before I took 
the farm. I found that with manuring and proper 
rotation any of the red hills of the Virginia Pied¬ 
mont could maintain a good Blue grass pasture, and 
manure got out as fast as possible would make in a 
little while as much corn on the hills as on the 
bottoms. Don't have a manure pile at the barn nor 
a barnyard full of manure and muck. 
w. F. MASSEY. 
Alfalfa for Opening the Soil. 
T HE "Pacific Rural Press” mentions a new use 
for Alfalfa. In California irrigation is neces¬ 
sary on most orchard soils, and strange to say, there 
are some soils which are practically air-tight and 
water-tight. In one case the orchard was planted 
on such a soil, which is described as part adobe 
and part loam and sand. When this soil was plowed 
and cultivated in the usual way, and the water was 
turned on. it would not go down below the plowed 
part. There the water would stop, and after a 
time it appeared to cement the plowed ground to¬ 
gether so as to make it waterproof. Eight feet 
down below the surface was permanent water-bear¬ 
ing gravel, but up above, the soil might have been 
concrete so far as its water-soaking capacity was 
concerned. The owner of this orchard observed the 
strong rooting power of Alfalfa and he decided to 
try an experiment of letting that crop open up his 
soil. Five acres of land were broken up and seeded 
to Alfalfa. Out in that country irrigation is ne¬ 
cessary and the water was turned on. The Alfalfa 
yields four or five crops a year, which more than 
pays for the irrigation, and it has dug into the soil 
so that the water now soaks down easily three feet 
deep and probably down to the water level. The 
trees have responded wonderfully with more growth 
and with heavier crops. They started just as soon 
as the Alfalfa began to throw its roots down into 
the ground. Thus the Alfalfa has changed the 
whole character of that soil. 
This crop worked down into that hard land and 
opened up passages through which the water soaked 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
as the roots died, and new ones were formed. Or¬ 
ganic matter was put down into the soil, where :t 
held moisture and slowly changed the character of 
the ground. We have known farmers in the East 
to argue that one chief reason for sowing clover 
with the Timothy was the fact that the clover roots 
work down into the ground and in this way open 
passages for water and thus change the character 
of the soil. This is not a new use for Alfalfa, but 
ir simply demonstrates the value of using these tap- 
rooted crops. They only hunt and obtain plant food 
down below the upper soil, but to some extent they 
break up the subsoil and let water and lime solu¬ 
tions down below the surface. We think the new 
varieties of Alfalfa with their tap and branching 
roots will he better for this purpose even than the 
old-fashioned varieties which throw a single tap¬ 
root. Tn California and the West the use of Alfalfa 
in the orchard seems to be gaining, but we must 
remember that such orchards are irrigated, so that 
both the weeds and the Alfalfa have abundance of 
moisture. On many of our drier Eastern soils Al¬ 
falfa in the orchard has not proved successful, as 
no irrigating i,s done, and the Alfalfa took too 
much moisture from the soil, so the trees suffered. 
On some naturally moist land one or two crops of 
the Alfalfa are cut and piled around the trees. 
This helps, and overcomes the objection which 
might otherwise be urged against such use of 
Alfalfa. 
Drought and Business Depression. 
Part III. 
STATE COMPARISONS.—Since in a good many 
instances a severe drought occurs in one State while 
other States have sufficient rainfall, a similar exam¬ 
ination of records was made for seven other States 
representing a very large part of the country, par¬ 
ticularly the sections in which drought is most 
significant. States were selected for which it was 
possible to compute means for the same 25-year 
period as was used in the case of New York. The 
number of places in the other States at which rain¬ 
fall records were made has not always been as 
great in proportion to area as in New York, having 
been as low as 45 in South Dakota; yet the number 
has been large enough to give valuable results. 
For the 1393-99 period the number of dry seasons 
(rainfall below the 25-year mean) was as follows: 
Pennsylvania and Missouri, 3: North Carolina and 
Kentucky, 4; Ohio, 5; Iowa and South Dakota, 0. 
Adding to these the three dry seasons of this period 
for New York, we have a total of 34 dry seasons in 
the eight States, against 22 wet seasons. The pre¬ 
ponderance of dry seasons confirms Mr. Boynton’s 
supposition. The 1900-06 period shows 20 dry sea¬ 
sons against 36 wet seasons. In New York and 
Pennsylvania 1900 was the only dry season of this 
period. Here again we have substantial agreement 
with the supposition. During the third of the seven- 
year periods, New York had seven dry seasons, cor¬ 
responding exactly to the statement of Mr. Boynton. 
Taking the eight States together there appeared a 
total of 30 dry and 26 wet seasons. We may note 
in passing that the season of 1914 was dry, contrary 
to the recollection of our correspondent, not only in 
New York, but also in each of the other eight States 
excepting Iowa and South Dakota. 
Holding to the same division of the past 21 years 
that Mr. Boynton makes, we find the rainfall records 
of the eight States to show a total of 100 agree¬ 
ments with his theory and 68 disagreements. The¬ 
oretically, therefore, the connection between drought 
and business depression may be said to hold good 
about 100 times out of 168, or nearly 60 times out 
of 100, without making any allowance for the lag 
in the trend of general prices following fluctuations. 
SERIOUS DROUGHTS.—Examining the records 
of the eight States for instances of serious drought, 
we find 29 such instances in the first period, 12 in 
the second, and 23 in the third. That is to say, in 
the years of adversity serious drought is about twice 
as prevalent as in the years of prosperity. The 
method of counting the instances of serious drought 
requires description to give assurance of its validity. 
First, all instances of an average seasonal deficiency 
for a State of two inches or more in rainfall were 
tabulated. Next, it was found on examination of 
the climatological summaries published by the 
Weather Bureau for the various States, that this 
did not show all instances of serious drought and it 
.appeared necessary to include also those cases in 
which a deficiency of two inches or more appeared 
for a period of two months or less within the grow¬ 
ing season, even though the total for the five months 
were above the 25-year mean. Finally, to dispose 
of the remaining doubtful cases, reference was again 
made to the published summaries of the effects of 
the weather, and those instances were added in 
December 4. 1915. 
which evidence was found of a serious falling off 
in the yield of crops in not less than a third of the 
State with such reduction of water supply as to 
affect the condition of live stock or the development 
of water power. 
RECURRING DROUGHT.—When completed the 
table of serious droughts for the eight States ex¬ 
hibited the following interesting facts. During the 
prosperous period, 1900-06, the most unfavorable sea¬ 
sons were 1900 and 1903. there being serious drought 
in three of the States in each of these years. In 
1904, in which season there was drought of national 
importance, the States affected were chiefly in the 
cotton belt, a very unusual occurrence, but included 
Ohio and Kentucky. There was serious drought 
iu seven of the States in 1893; in six States in 
1394. 1895, 1897. and 1914; in five States in 1913; 
and in four States in 1908, 1910, and 1911. Con¬ 
sidering the fact that the records examined repre¬ 
sent roughly the rainfall conditions over an area 
extending from North Carolina to South Dakota, 
the writer was somewhat surprised to find that 
serious drought has occurred as extensively as the 
records indicate in so many years, and that it ex¬ 
hibited so much of a tendency to recur in such 
seven-year periods as suggested by Mr. Boynton. 
Records were not examined in detail for years 
prior to 1890, but 1890, 1891, and 1892 Avere more 
free from serious droughts than any other three- 
year period excepting 1905-07. It. is true that there 
Avas very Avidespread drought in 1887, but there is 
good reason to believe that 1888 and 1889 were gen¬ 
erally favorable seasons. Hence Ave may assume 
that there Avas a five-year period preceding 1893 
during Avliich the rainfall in this country was gen¬ 
erally sufficient. 
In conclusion, Ave have evidence of a succession of 
four alternating periods of favorable and unfavor¬ 
able seasons in this country since 1887, the first 
being a period of five years, the third, including the 
generally favorable season of 1907, being an eight- 
year period, the second and fourth each seven-year 
periods. It Avill be observed that this leaves the 
business depression of 1907 unaccounted for, though 
it may be partially explained by the backward 
Spring of that year and the drought of the Summer 
in a feAv Eastern States. In the light of all the facts 
examined, a succession of alternating AA r et and dry 
seasons in periods of just seven years must be re¬ 
garded as rather exceptional, and, therefore, one 
may not Avith any degree of confidence expect seven 
Avet seasons to folloAv the series of dry seasons end¬ 
ing with 1914. GEORGE AV. MINDLIXG. 
A Fraud in Apples. 
T HE following extract is from a letter recently 
received from a correspondent in Wisconsin: 
I mail you under separate cover six Tolman Sweet 
apples selected from a barrel of New York stock shipped 
to my grocer from a wholesale fruit house 50 miles 
from here. The apples were billed as "Fancy” and 
cost Dir. Ilomstad $4.75 per barrel, 50 cents of the cost 
being freight. Please note that the apples range from 
1)4 inches in diameter up to 1% inches. Their com¬ 
bined weight on my postal scales is 10 ounces. Their 
quality, or rather lack of quality, is self-evident. 
Three of these apples were photographed—exact 
size—just as they came, and they are shOAvn at 
Fig. 541. We tried to get the name of the’packer 
Avho sent this fruit out, but the package had been 
destroyed. In several former cases of this sort Ave 
have traced down to find that the fruit Avas sent 
out by a buyer who bought the fruit on the trees, 
packed them himself, sold and then got out of the 
State. We think that a good share of such dis¬ 
reputable fruit is put on the market in that way. 
No matter who puts it out, it is a fraud which is 
doing great injury to the trade in NeAv York apples. 
There can be no question about it. There are many 
places in the Middle West where NeAV York apples 
Avould be welcomed, and where a permanent market 
could be obtained if the packing were Avell done. 
Such stuff as is pictured here will ruin this trade, 
not only for the present, but what is far more ser¬ 
ious, for the future, when this outlet for our fruit 
will be badly needed. It is trade suicide to pack 
such stuff. 
Imports of Potash. 
The government reports show the following figures 
of potash imported during the first eight months of this 
year, as compared Avith one year ago. As Ave see, there 
is a steady falling off. During August alone only 605 
tons of muriate and sulphate were imported against 
11,530 tons in August, 1914: 
Eight months ending August— 
1914. 1915. 
Fertilizer salts; 
Tons. 
Value. 
Tons. 
Value. 
Kainit . 
317,205 
$1,484,140 
6,040 
$94,818 
Manure salts . 
150,973 
1,028,107 
13,047 
201.802 
003,860 
Sulphate of potash 
30,090 
1,310,818 
10,027 
Muriate of potash. 
151,395 
5,109,404 
50,800 
2,134,712 
Other potash salts: 
Carbonate of potash 
Pounds. 
13.035,005 
Pounds. 
377,890 8,940,008 
209,601 
Hydrate of potash 
5,081.483 
192,996 2,028,142 
99,103 
Nitrate of potash. 
2,229.856 
74,743 
14,855 
1.477 
CyanicTe of potash. 
318,087 
44,020 
802,127 
132,409 
Other potash salts. 
4,007,704 
309,063 2,075,741 
205,751 
