The  RURAL  NEW-YORKER 
1443 
Matured  Cotton  Boll  from  Field  Shown  Below.  Fir/.  G33 
A  Cotton  Field  in  Cumberland  County,  N.  J.  Fig.  634 
ber  of  cars  of  New  Jersey  potatoes  sold  in  New 
York.  If  they  had  been  sold  a  month  ago  they 
would  have  netted  the  growers  over  a  dollar  a  sack 
more.  The  formula  showed  that  potatoes  were  very 
high  a  month  ago,  and  that  the  average  price  for  the 
season  was  likely  to  be  much  lower.  Yet  some  New 
Jersey  shippers  relied  on  the  short  local  crop  holding 
up  the  price.  They  took  a  big  loss.  If  they  had 
studied  the  situation  they  might  have  dug  their 
potatoes  early  and  got  out  from  under  before  the 
drop. 
A  FIELD  FOR  STUDY. — There  is  no  reason  why 
studies  of  this  kind  cannot  be  made  on  other  com¬ 
modities,  and  in  other  markets.  It  is  necessary  only 
to  get  accurate  information  on  prices  and  on  as 
many  factors  as  possible  which  might  influence  these 
prices  over  a  period  of  years.  Then,  by  taking  one 
factor  at  a  time,  and  eliminating  the  others,  we  can 
figure  how  much  influence  each  one  has  had  on 
prices.  And  we  don’t  need  to  stop  at  four  factors. 
Dr.  Holbrook  Working,  of  the  University  of  Minne¬ 
sota,  has  figured  the  x’elation  between  pig  iron  pro¬ 
duction  and  the  August  price  of  potatoes,  and, 
whether  you  believe  it  or  not,  there  is  a  relation  be¬ 
tween  them.  We  can  never  hope  to  get  all  the  fac¬ 
tors,  but  we  can  get  a  fairly  accurate  estimate  of 
the  influence  of  some  of  the  important  ones.  The 
merely  a  trace  by  weight,  but  enough  in  odor  value, 
from  a  good  specimen,  to  scent  a  large  room.  The 
apple’s  fuel  value  is  slight.  It  is  neither  what  you 
eat  nor  what  you  digest,  but  what  you  assimilate 
that  nourishes  you,  and  apples,  like  some  other 
fruits,  appear  to  do  at  least  three  things.  In  the 
first  place,  they  start  the  digestive  processes.  Just 
a  few  chews  on  a  good  one  is  enough,  but  why,  we 
do  not  know,  any  more  than  we  know  why  sucking 
a  lemon  before  his  eyes  will  cause  the  cornetist  to 
gasp  and  cease.  Next,  they  discourage  “germs,” 
using  that  word  in  a  wide  sense,  for  the  apple  acid, 
“malic”  acid*  if  it  makes  you  happier  to  say  it  in 
Latin,  seems  to  be  about  as  good  as  the  milk  acid, 
lactic  acid,  in  the  business  of  suppressing  certain 
sorts  of  putrefaction.  This  is  not  saying  that  an 
apple  cannot  rot,  they  certainly  do,  but  it  is  rare 
that  they  rot  offensively.  Lastly,  they  appear  to 
supply,  though  in  small  amount,  minerals  needed 
by  the  system  in  a  form  in  which  the  system  can 
take  them  in. 
How  far  they  carry  the  curious  and  scarcely 
known  “vitamines”  is  not  certain,  for 
we  do  not  know  what  these  really  are, 
nor  how  many  there  may  be  of  them, 
but  the  apple’s  acids  and  salts  cer¬ 
tainly  have  a  gently  stimulating  ac¬ 
tion  upon  the  intestinal  peristalsis, 
which  is  the  pulsing  motion  which 
carries  the  digested  food  along. 
Some  think  that  they  have  a  defi¬ 
nite  medicinal  effect,  and  if  a  medi¬ 
cine  is  “whht  does  you  good”  they 
surely  have,  but  there  is  almost  the 
certainty  of  an  apple  habit  being  es¬ 
tablished.  This  craving  is  only  satis¬ 
fied  by  the  use  of  several  apples  per 
day,  and  in  many  cases  their  constant 
use  has  been  followed  by  death  be¬ 
tween  the  ages  of  80  and  90  years.  Mr. 
Artemus  Ward  pointed  out  that  it 
was  no  great  virtue  in  an  apple  that 
one  a  day  would  keep  away  a  doctor, 
since  an  onion  a  day  would  keep  every¬ 
one  at  some  distance,  but  the  regular 
eating  of  one  or  more  apples  certainly 
lessens  the  need  for  “physics”  of  any 
sort.  A  fair  amount  of  the  value  of 
apples  to  the  human  system  remains 
with  the  juice  when  this  is  squeezed 
from  the  ground  fruit,  and,  although 
the  flavor  is  slightly  the  worse  for  the 
pasteurizing,  the  constituents  remain 
unchanged.  In  many  cases  the  only 
care  taken  is  to  exclude  air  from  the 
container,  while  allowing  the  carbon 
dioxide  to  escape.  This  gas  results 
from  the  oxidation  of  a  part  of  the 
sugai’,  and  so  there  is  a  loss  of  food 
value,  but,  in  spite  of  this,  the  fluid 
continues  to  be  used  as  #  beverage. 
F.  D.  C. 
Predicting  Potato  Prices 
Part  II 
Regarding  theory.  —  Now,  i 
have  been  around  in  the  trade 
quite  a  little,,  and  I  know  that  a  good 
many  practical  farmers  and  dealei’s 
are  going  to  consider  this  as  entirely 
theoretical,  and  of  no  real  value  except  as  an  ex- 
ei-cise  for  the  brain.  And,  assuming  further  that 
their  brains  do  not  need  the  exercise,  they  will  get 
off  right  here.  Others,  who  consider  it  seriously 
will  point  out  that  thei'e  are  hundreds  of  factoi’s 
which  we  cannot  foresee,  and  so  can’t  use.  A  rail¬ 
road  sti’ike  may  send  the  price  flying.  A  big 
local  crop  may  foi’ce  the  price  down.  And  they 
are  quite  right  —  as  far  as  they  go.  There 
certainly  are  many  factors  which  help  make  the 
price  of  potatoes  in  New  York,  or  the  price  of  to¬ 
matoes  in  Swedesboi'o,  or  the  pi*ice  of  Chile  beans 
in  St.  Louis.  Many  of  these  factors  can’t  be  meas¬ 
ured  in  a  way  which  would  permit  of  their  being 
figured  into  a  formula  of  this  kind.  Still  we  can 
use  any  available  information. 
LESSONS  OF  THE  PAST.— There  is  not  much 
use  in  post-mortems.  Yet  we  could  easily  go  over 
the  20  yeai’s  covered  in  this  study  and  find  reasons 
for  the  price  being  above  or  below  the  price  figui’ed 
by  the  formula.  If  we  had  had  the  formula  and  also 
had  known  something  about  these  other  factors  we 
could  have  changed  the  calculated  formula  price  to 
suit  our  information.  For  example,  by  using  the 
formula  to  predict  the  price  of  New  Jersey  Cobblers 
for  the  season  of  1923  we  would  arrive  at  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  there  would  be  a  drop  in  prices  during 
August.  But  if  we  followed  the  reports  at  all  care¬ 
fully  we  would  have  known  that  the  SoutlieiTi  and 
the  Jersey  ci-ops  were  both  light.  The  Eastern  Shore 
stock  was  practically  gone  when  Jei’sey  began  to 
ship — and  Jei’sey,  with  about  one-third  of  a  normal 
crop,  practically  controlled  the  market.  Now,  any 
l’easonable  man  would  make  an  allowance  for  such 
conditions  in  estimating  pi’ices.  He  would  certainly 
expect  prices  to  hold  up  two  or  three  weeks  until 
other  States  began  to  ship.  Then,  and  not  until 
then,  he  would  expect  a  di*op.  No  one  in  the  potato 
business  would  doubt  the  value  of  a  price  pi’ediction 
if  he  were  convinced  that  it  could  be  made  accu¬ 
rately.  Yet  an  error  of  9  per  cent  in  a  price  predic¬ 
tion  certainly  is  not  fatal.  On  the  contrary,  I  be¬ 
lieve  I  know  quite  a  few  men  in  the  business  whose 
guesses  are  usually  fai’ther  off  than  that.  By  allow¬ 
ing  for  factoi’s  not  considered  in  the  formula  an  ex- 
pei'ienced  man  should  be  able  to  eliminate  some  of 
this  9  per  cent.  How  accurate  must  the  prediction 
be  to  be  valuable? 
TAKING  A  LOSS. — A  few  days  ago  I  saw  a  num¬ 
Origin  of  Pebbles  &  Bowlders 
I  notice  on  my  farm  and  about  this 
country  white  stones  from  the  size  of 
pebbles  up  to  bowlders,  mostly  round  or 
neaidy  so,  bi’ought^down  from  the  north 
by  glaciers.  I  have  asked  a  good  many 
people  where  the  glaciers  picked  them 
up,  but  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  out. 
Middletown,  N.  Y.  w.  h.  g. 
I  TAKE  it  that  W.  LI.  G.  has  refer¬ 
ence  to  bowlders  lying  loose  in  the 
soil,  and  he  seems  to  have  a  sufficient 
understanding  of  glacial  action  to  as¬ 
cribe  them  to  that  factor’.  Doubtless 
he  is  right  in  this  regard,  but  it  is  ex¬ 
tremely  difficult  to  identify  the  origin  of  glacier- 
moved  bowlders.  When  the  bowlders  contain  fos¬ 
sils  then  it  becomes  more  readily  possible  because 
of  the  identity  of  these  animal  or  plant  l’emains  in 
the  bowlder  and  in  the  parent  ledge  but  with  un- 
fossiliferous  rocks,  the  problem  is  rendered  difficult 
and  remote. 
The  region  over  which  the  Labradorian  lobe  of 
the  Wisconsin  ice  sheet  moved  is  very  great  and 
brought  in  rock  material  from  all  over  Eastern 
Canada  and  the  Adii’ondack  Mountains  and  it  is 
from  so  extensive  an  area  as  this  that  these  bowl¬ 
ders  were  picked  up  and  dropped  at  Middletown. 
We  have  a  fairly  good  number  of  recorded  in¬ 
stances  where  a  very  peculiar  and  unusual  rock 
found  in  the  glacial  debris  agrees  throughout  with 
certain  l-ock  exposures  in  the  Adirondacks  or  Can¬ 
ada,  and  we  are  now  carrying  on  field  investiga¬ 
tions  to  ascertain  if  further  identifications  of  this 
sort  cannot  be  made,  for  they  have  an  intimate  bear¬ 
ing  upon  the  actual  direction  of  the  ice  flow.  But 
there  are  so  many  beds  of  white  quartzite  in  these 
northern  areas  of  crystalline  rocks  that  I  should  not 
venture  even  to  guess  as  to  which  of  them  this  ma¬ 
terial  in  question  may  have  come  from. 
john  m.  clark,  New  Yoi’k  State  Geologist. 
astronomer  can  predict  the  coming  of  an  eclipse. 
The  weather  pi-ophet  sometimes  can  tell  whether  or 
not  it  will  rain  tomorrow.  An  expert  predicted  the 
Japanese  earthquake  six  months  before  it  happened. 
We  all  of  us  have  learned  to  rely  rnoi’e  or  less  on 
these  predictions.  Here  is  a  field  for  serious  study 
— the  pi’ediction  of  agricultural  prices.  Are  there 
not  possibilities  in  it?  Frederick  v.  waugii. 
New  Jersey. 
Cotton  Growing  at  the  North 
“King’s  Early  Improved  Cotton — 'Matures  90  days. 
Gets  ahead  of  weevil.  Special  prices  on  this  fine  seed 
for  next  30  days.  Write  today  for  facts.” 
Seeing  an  advertisement  similar  to  the  above  in  a 
Southern  agricultural  paper  last  Spring  of  this  variety 
of  cotton,  I  thought  it  would  be  just  the  thing  for  this 
section,  and  sent  for  seed  which  was  planted  about 
May  10.  I  opened  up  a  furrow  with  a  one-horse  turn¬ 
ing  plow,  scattered  a  bit  of  fertilizer  and  stable  com¬ 
post  in  the  row,  mixed  with  the  earth,  dropped  the 
seed  and  covered  with  the  same  plow.  I  find  more 
pains  must  be  taken  in  the  planting,  as  but  few  plants 
came  up,  due  I  suppose  to  a  too  heavy  covei’ing.  These 
plants  are  today  full  of  pods,  bloom  and  bud.  I  am 
sending  sample  in  separate  package.  Not 
a  ripe  boll  can  be  found  after  160  days. 
Now  either  these  Southerners  have  power¬ 
ful  fertilizers,  or  the  blistering  heat 
nishes  it  on  to  maturity,  or  they  ai’e 
natural  born  talkers.  Just  which  I  am 
unable  to  determine.  It  looks  as  if  an¬ 
other  three  months  would  be  needed  hei’e. 
Plants  slightly  nipped  by  frosts  of  Oct. 
7,  S  and  9.  Add  this  to  your  cotton  facts 
for  Northern  edge  growers.  w.  E.  b. 
Sandy  Hill,  Md. 
IT  is  gi*eat  nonsense  to  talk  about  ma¬ 
turing  cotton  in  90  days.  At  Hope 
Farm  the  cotton  patch  was  alive  on 
Oct.  26  but  none  of  the  bolls  had  fully 
opened.  Sevei’al  of  them  showed  the 
white  cotton  as  the  boll  had  started 
to  ci’aclc.  The  picture  at  Fig.  633 
shows  a  boll  well  matured,  gi-own  by 
Mrs.  S.  L.  Lupton  at  Bi-idgeton,  N.  J. 
A  few  bolls  opened  in  this  way,  but 
most  of  the  larger  ones  did  not  show 
the  lint.  The  other  picture  shows  the 
row  or  “patch”  from  which  this  boll 
was  taken.  Most  of  us  who  tried  cot¬ 
ton  at  the  North  have  evidently  fed 
too  much  nitx-ogen,  and  this  seemed  to 
prolong  the  growth.  It  seems  clear 
that  our  cool  nights  in  late  Summer 
and  early  Fall  hold  back  the  cotton 
plants.  We  still  believe  that  in  time 
we  shall  learn  how  to  handle  improved 
varieties,  so  that  the  crop  can  be 
grown  as  far  north  as  Philadelphia! 
Whether  it  can  be  grown  at  a  profit  is 
another  question. 
