900 
pruning time the following Spring. Tough cloth 
should not be used at all, nor should the waxed 
cloth be wound several times around the base or 
neck of scion, so as to choke it as it grows and 
swells. H shows how the growing, healthy graft 
grips the sloping cut bn the limb as it grows and 
heals over—all one solid piece. 
WHEN TO WORK.—Best time for doing this 
work is after bark slips and before growth is so far 
advanced that the bark is so soft and loose it does 
not help in holding scion firmly in place. Where 
there is danger of fire blight the knife blade should 
be frequently disinfected with corrosive sublimate, 
1,000 to 1. We like to remove the limbs just before 
growth becomes very active, to avoid risk from fire- 
blight, also to have them ready for rapid work in 
setting the grafts, but this must not be done too 
fur ahead, as the stubs dry out. If not done early 
enough, each stub should be disinfected, if danger 
of blight. 
FRESII-CUT SCIONS.—Scions should not be cut 
a long time ahead. They seem to be better fresh, but 
if work cannot be done before they leaf out, better 
cut just as buds are swelling or opening, before lit¬ 
tle leaves come out much, and keep fresh in damp 
sawdust. Grafting can be done with fair success 
quite late, even after leaves are of considerable size, 
but there will be more loss. However, the late-set 
grafts on small limbs are likely to make but little 
growth and set fruit buds the same year. The graft¬ 
ing of trees well out on ends of limbs is practiced by 
some fruit growers, using scions from nursery trees 
they have bought, so they can tell from fruit on these 
grafts whether true to name or not years before 
they would be able to do so, from fruit from the 
young trees. This, however, does not quite equal for 
quick work the way .T. IT. Hale used to do in his 
Georgia peach orchard, for he could pick a crop of 
peaches from a tree, then dishorn it. Jnne-bud the 
new growth, and get a crop of peaches from the 
June-budded growth the next season. The long sea¬ 
son and mild Winter make possible farther South 
what would not be here in the North, and failure to 
take this fact into consideration when telling others 
“how" and “what" to do in an orchard makes trouble 
ahead. 
EXAMPLES OF GRAFTING.—Fig 247, I. shows a 
tree grafted over to Banks (Red Gravenstein), the 
disadvantage of the rank growth and the difficulty 
of forming a good new head, without further seiious 
'Cutting. Fig. 247, .T, shows a graft from a large 
grafted limb, nearly as thick as a broom handle, and 
7 or 8 ft. high, growing straight up, which is the 
tendency, even when the grafted limbs are fai tiom 
vertical. Fig 247, K, grafted pretty well out on a 
nearly horizontal limb, shows a much easier propo¬ 
sition to handle. When trees are badly “upset by 
cutting back so hard in grafting over, it takes sev¬ 
eral years for them to get back to moderate, normal 
growth, ready to form fruit buds: and the harder a 
tree is cut back the longer this is likely to take, and 
the continued cutting necessary on this rank, upright 
growth, in order to form a good head, but prolongs 
such conditions, and also increases the risk of fur¬ 
ther loss. We have lost a good many trees where 
nearly every graft lived and grew, but while the 
tree was “upset” the hard Winters finished them. 
Fig. 247. L, is another tree grafted to Banks, but 
done while smaller. This is somewhat more easily 
handled, but is still too rank. M shows tree dead 
from severe cutting. N is a tree of same vaiiety 
further up on a hill that pulled through all right. 
Bare stubs on M had growth knocked off. Nearly 
every graft was alive and growing well at first. 
i. c. R. 
Why Not Roll the Roads 
H ARD CONDITIONS.—Following the article by 
Helen S. K. Willeox on page .”,4.-). a description 
of how Winter roads are kept open in an adjoining 
State may not be ill-timed. The writer was born (in 
Northern Vermont, where the snow is usually three 
or four feet deep on the level, and in spite of this 
fact my first Winter in this section was a decided 
shock. My first disappointment came when I real¬ 
ized that I could not put my baby on a sled and run 
with her to my neighbors, and Winter is the one 
time of year when a farm woman has much freedom 
to go calling. Next I found that it was hardly safe 
to venture out in the cutter with baby, and that for 
three or four months I must expect to “bide In my 
ain house.” And as I have “bided” and watched 
horses go over the bank between us and our neigh¬ 
bors, seen our own horses come home calked, and the 
blood dripping from the milkman’s team, learned of 
delayed funerals and unattended eases of illness. I 
have done some thinking and remembering. 
THE MODERN PLAN.—I had heard the old- 
timers in my home town talk of the “early days when 
‘Ihe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
they plowed out the roads.” but I had had no idea 
this was still practiced in any locality where there 
is heavy snow. In Vermont, and I believe also in 
Northern New York and New Hampshire, road-roll¬ 
ing has been used successfully for over HO years, 
and has long since passed the experimental stage. 
The roller in common use is made of two drums 5 ft. 
long and 5 ft. in diameter, set 1 ft. apart, so it 
makes an 11-ft track. After every snowfall of 4 in. 
or even less, if there has been much drifting, the 
roller starts out and packs the snow into a hard, firm 
bed, the sides being solid enough to permit passing, 
or to serve as a good sidewalk. In the Spring the 
road machine is mounted on runners and the drifts 
and bad sliding places are scraped down, which does 
away with many of the discomforts of the break-up. 
ECONOMY OF LABOR.—From the viewpoint of 
labor involved, these roads are a real economy. Two 
men and two teams with a roller can pack 10 or 12 
miles of drifts into a good road in a day. Except 
where digging is necessary, the men have only to 
sit on top and drive, tucked up cosily in their fur 
coats and robes, which is somewhat easier than fol¬ 
lowing a plow. Time saved from “watchful waiting” 
at good turning-out places, is another item of 
economy. 
GOOD SUMMER ROADS.—Our Summer roads 
are undoubtedly the finest in the United States, and 
we are all justly proud of them. They have added 
greatly to the value of our farms and farm products. 
But the farmer needs good Winter roads fully as 
much. He frequently finds his best market for cab¬ 
bage and potatoes during those months when the 
macadam road is buried deep with snow, and when 
small loads and poor roads make the hauling pretty 
expensive. With rolled roads the farmer could 
safely store his potatoes until the time they would 
bring him the most handsome profit. The daily 
necessity of sending the milk is a big argument for 
road rolling. A day’s milk on our route would more 
than pay the initial expense of a roller, and there is 
A Box of Black Beautu Eggplants. Fig. 2.J8 
(See page 906) 
hardly a Winter that at. least one day’s milk is not 
lost through the impassability of the roads. 
THE OPEN ROAD.—The advantage of having an 
open road is felt keenly when there is illness in the 
family. Any extra taxes would be well spent as in¬ 
surance that your physician could reach you at any¬ 
time. Even in spite of the terrible Winter roads, 
our doctors do nobly in reaching their patients. But 
the number of country doctors is steadily diminish¬ 
ing, and words of dissatisfaction with the Winter 
roads point to one cause for this decrease. 
MATTERS OF EXPERIENCE—As proof that 
road rolling works, may I give a few examples from 
my own experience? For four years my companion 
and I drove to high school, a distance of three miles, 
and never lost a day on account of the roads. We 
went through drifts, of course, but always under¬ 
neath the last storm there was a wide, hard roadbed. 
Later, when teaching in the same academy, although 
two-thirds of our pupils drove in from the country 
every day, we very rarely had an absence caused by 
the condition of the roads. In all the five years of 
my teaching there the night mail never failed us, 
although it had to come by stage a distance of 12 
miles. 
IN NEW HAMPSHIRE.—Now for contrast with 
Mrs. Willcox’s article. In my home section autos 
have never been used on the rolled roads. Obviously 
they are too narrow. But in New Hampshire they 
use a roller the same in construction with drums 6 ft. 
4 in. wide. I quote from an article by Chas. A. 
French, city engineer of Laconia, N. II., in the 
Ijiterarg Digest of November 10, 101S: "In cold 
weather we are able to use four-ton motor trucks on 
these rolled snow roads, but not when the snow is 
deep duiiing a thaw.” The experiment of testing 
them out for autos here would be far less expensive 
May S, logo 
and have a vastly greater chance to succeed, to my 
mind, than the plow and tractor method described 
by Mrs. Willeox, and would have the overwhelming 
advantage of making a good road for the farmer, in¬ 
stead of destroying the passable one he already has. 
CONSTRUCTION OF ROLLER.—These rollers 
would have to be made locally by carpenters or me¬ 
chanics. The frame is made of any good hard¬ 
wood. 3x6 in. The pole goes through between the 
rollers and bolts on to the frame in front and back. 
The drums are made of any good soft .wood 4 in. 
wide. The ends of the drums are double and are 
fitted with iron hoops. The seat is on a frame that 
is fastened to the roller frame. The axle is one long 
piece or two short pieces of 2-in. iron shafting, and 
the axle itself turns. The cost of such a roller used 
to be about $35, but now it would probably be nearly 
three times that amount. If any community is in¬ 
terested enough to make the experiment, the car¬ 
penter who has made all the rollers in my home 
town has generously offered to make a mechanical 
drawing of the roller, showing every detail of con¬ 
struction. ELMA T. M’FEETERS. 
Tompkins Co., N. Y. 
A Test of Silage Corn 
O N page 505 there is a letter from M. S. P„ 
Sullivan County, N. Y., as to the kind of corn 
to grow for silage. As he is located in a locality 
that has a similar climate to ours, perhaps he will 
be interested in some tests we made last Summer 
of 15 kinds of corn said to be suitable for silage. 
They were planted May 15, on well-manured ground, 
in small plots of two rows 40 feet long of each kind 
of corn. The corn was cut and weighed on Septem¬ 
ber 7. The results follow: 
GREEN WEIGHT I*ER ACRE IN TOUNDS 
Total 
Ears 
Name of Corn 
Wt. 
()nlv 
Williams . 
31044 
10164 
Dented 
Mass. A. (’. White... 
25515 
8748 
Dented 
Mt. Hope Dent. 
24057 
10167 
Dented to ripe 
Longfellow Flint. 
26073 
11664 
Glazed to ripe 
Rowe No. 7. 
33534 
14580 
Dented 
Cornell No. 11. 
24286 
8748 
Dented to ripe 
Cornell No. 12. 
34263 
11664 
Milk 
S purr's llybred. 
27702 
8748 
Dough 
Wilbraham White. . . . 
18954 
2016 
Dented 
Mammoth Yel’w Flint 
40724 
11664 
Dough 
Hall’s Golden Nugget. 
32054 
10206 
Dough to glaze 
Dibble’s Big Red Dent 
33534 
10206 
Dented 
Golden Beauty. 
40724 
8748 
Milk 
Luce’s Favorite. 
40724 
13122 
Dented 
Sanford White Flint. 
23328 
10206 
Ripe 
As we had no platform scale we could not weigh 
the whole of each plot, so we weighed 10 feet of 
each kind to the nearest pound and multiplied to 
make an acre. 
In order to find out more we grew two acres each 
of Mammoth Yellow Flint, Hall’s Golden Nugget. 
Dibble’s Big Red Dent, Golden Beauty, Luce’s Fav¬ 
orite and Sanford White Flint. All were planted 
with Medium Early Green Soy beans (one quart of 
Soy beans to three of corn). All gave about the 
same results, except that the Sanford was too ripe 
to put in the silo, and Ihe Luce’s Favorite did not 
show up at all well. It had few ears and a light 
yield of fodder. From the 10 acres we put into the 
silo we got 04 tons of settled silage, so if the yield 
of the test plots is divided by two it will probably 
give the amount of silage from each kind of corn. 
This is the third year that we have been trying 
out silage corn and Soy beans. For us the Medium 
Green seems to be the best, as they form pods and 
seed, and do not fall into the row to interfere with 
cultivating, and they have not caused trouble in 
harvesting by machine, although it leaves about one- 
third of the beans in the field. What is left makes 
good green manure, and 1 am certain the beans help 
the corn when planted together. We have never 
been able to see any difference in milk yield between 
corn with ears in milk and corn with ears glazed, 
and we certainly have to feed as much grain in 
either case. I am convinced that the proper corn 
to grow is the largest kind that will have ears in 
the dough or milk stage at harvest time. Corn that 
has no ears seems to have too much water in it to 
make the best silage. I (liink it would be foolish 
to grow Sanford Flint when Mammoth Yellow Hint 
will yield nearly twice as much to the acre. A 
farmer would do better to grow the larger corn and 
devote the extra time and acres to a cash crop and 
buy his grain (which lie will have to do, anywaj L 
I believe that of the various kinds we have tried 
we do best with Mammoth Yellow Flint, Golden 
Nugget, Big Red Dent or Golden Beauty. Anyway, 
we are going to give these another lield trial this 
coming year. In this section we can only be sure 
of three months without frost, and often not as 
long. My farm is at an elevation of 1,000 feet, so 
you can see that corn is quite a problem here. 
Berkshire Co., Mass. joung. ELLis. 
