Chapter C: M. Gifford & Son (Short-horns), Manhattan, Kas., April 23

R. L. McDonald (Short-horns) St. Joe, Mo., April 30.

Jackson Co. Breeders (Short-horns), Kansas City, May 6, 7, and 8.

H. D. Ayres (Short-horns), Breckenridge, Mo., May 9.

Leonard Bros. (Polled cattle), Kansas City, May 13, 14, and 15.

W. P. Young (Short-horns), Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, May 27.

J. G. Gowan & Son and Col. Thad Hickman (Short-horns), St. Joe, Mo., May 28.

J. S. Latimer & Sons (Short-horns), Abingdon, Ill., May 28.

W. T. Hearne (Short-horns), Lee’s Summit, Mo., May 29.

Clinton County, Mo., Breeders (Short-horns), Plattsburgh, June 4 and 5.

Thoroughbred Live Stock Association, Higginsville, Mo., Oct. 15 and 16.

Adams Earl (Herefords), Chicago, Nov. 20.

REMEDY FOR FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.

Rev. F. H. Brett, Carsington Rectory, writes as follows to the English agricultural papers:

Some few years ago, when the foot-and-mouth disease was prevailing, I gave a farmer in this parish, who had the disease among his cattle, some sulphur_ous_ acid, and advised him to make trial of the following treatment: To put about two ounces of the acid into a quart bottle and fill up with water, and then give about a tablespoonful of this dilution three times a day to the diseased cattle. He acted upon my advice, and the result was that his cattle were quickly cured of the disease. Again, two or three weeks ago one of my parishioners came to me to inform me that one of his cows was affected with this disease, and to ask me if I could give him anything for it. I gave him some of the same acid, to be used as above stated, and advised him also to burn a little sulphur in the shed in which the diseased cow was kept, two or three times a day. He followed my advice, and three or four days after I was informed that the cow was doing nicely, and was giving her milk again. My confidence in the remedy is therefore confirmed, and I think I am in duty bound to make it as widely known as possible. In addition to giving the acid internally, I advised the moistening of the affected feet also with the same dilution with a sponge.

The sulphur_ous_ acid acts remedially, I conclude, by being destructive of the life of the microbes, or exceedingly minute animaculæ, that gives rise to the disease; and I feel persuaded that, if the owners of cattle would take the trouble to burn a little sulphur once or twice a week in their cattle sheds, they would not only protect their cattle from attacks of foot-and-mouth disease, but have them also in a more healthy and vigorous condition, especially in the season of tying-up and confinement.

I have underlined the last syllable of sulphurous to guard against mistake. Sulphur_ic_ acid would only be productive of mischief. Sulphur_ous_ acid may be obtained through any druggist in sealed stoppered bottles at a small expense.

The simplest way of burning sulphur in the cowsheds is as follows: Take a slip of cardboard, or of extra stout brown paper, about a foot long and two inches wide, and place on one extremity about as much coarsely-powdered brimstone as would lie on a penny piece, hold it by the other end, and apply the flame of a candle till the sulphur is ignited, and then wave it about in the shed, in order to disperse the vapor among the cattle; if there be straw, or anything else inflammable about, hold a tile, or something of the sort, in the other hand, under the burning sulphur, to catch any that may drop.

THE DAIRY

Dairymen, Write for Your Paper.

THE WISCONSIN DAIRYMEN.

The papers and discussions at Lake Mills comprehended quite a range of topics, and they were handled with marked ability. Three of the essays have now appeared in THE PRAIRIE FARMER in full. They were too good to slaughter by abridgment, and the same remark applies to other papers, yet our space is too limited for an unabridged report.

THE ROAD TO THE FACTORY,

by Robt. Fargo, showed the people how much they are losing by persisting in having poor roads, when by a small expense they might have good ones. The road tax is improperly applied. He thought that a good gravel road in most localities could be made for $1,000 per mile, the road-bed to be graveled one foot deep and twelve feet wide.

CANADA VS. WISCONSIN.

Mr. Harris’ paper, printed in last week’s FARMER, elicited considerable discussion. Members desired to know if, in the essayist’s opinion, Canadian dairy management was superior to that of the States, and especially of Wisconsin. The reply was in the affirmative. There seems to be more thoroughness on the part of Canadian dairymen. They have no better grass, nor water, nor cows. They discriminate more rigidly between good and bad patrons. They sometimes bring the law to bear against those who water milk or skim it. The factories there are mostly owned by stock companies. When tainted milk is discovered in the vat, it is traced back as soon as possible to its source, and the patron bringing it is excluded. The law there is similar to that in New York and was founded upon that law. Mr. Fish related an instance where a fraudulent patron in Herkimer county, N. Y., had been detected, sued, and heavily fined for his practices. Mr. Harris said as inspector of factories, he always refused to receive milk from cows allowed to feed on slough grass or drink stagnant water. Such milk would always prevent the manufacture of good cheese. He wants no milk from cows forced to feed on marshes. When a man applies to a factory to sell his milk, he looks the man over, he visits his farm, he looks at the stables and all the surroundings, and he can generally tell whether or not it is safe to receive that man’s milk.

COMPETITION.

It cropped out in this discussion that in some parts of Wisconsin and Illinois there are too many factories. Competition leads factorymen to often receive milk that should be discarded. To offend a man by enforcing strict cleanliness, non-skimming, and stripping was to drive him to a neighboring factory and his custom is lost. It is hard to make owners of cows honest when dishonest or selfish factorymen encourage them in selfish and fraudulent ways. Mr. Harris said at some of the best Canadian factories patrons were refused the privilege of taking home the whey in their milk cans. He would have no objection to their taking the whey if all would cleanse their cans properly. But this could not be depended upon.

WATER IN MILK.

He detects water in milk by means of a little German instrument called Horren’s Milk Tester, patented in Hanover. They cost fifty cents each by the 100. They are for sale by Cornish & Curtis, Ft. Atkinson, Wis., and by some others of the dairy supply concerns. This little instrument is invaluable to the factoryman.

PRIDE IN BUSINESS.

Another thing about the Canadians is they take such pride in their business that they are not given to adulterating their butter and cheese. They make a cheese that sells as the best cheddar in the English markets. The best Wisconsin cheese that Mr. Harris saw at the Milwaukee dairy fair was several points below the best Canadian article. The difference lies in the want of skill in the maker, and the greed of the patrons which often leads them to skim and to withhold the strippings.

SKIMMING.

There were those present who claimed that more money can be realized by making both butter and cheese than from cheese alone, though its quality makes it bring a higher price. So long as this is the case such will continue to make skim cheese. They say a man must be governed by the market he is to supply. If one makes for a home market where skim cheese is liked it is all right to make butter from the same milk. It was replied that as our dairymen in general must look abroad for their market, that good, straight, full cream cheese is bound to win in the long run. When the foreign market for the Wisconsin product is destroyed it will take years of honest effort to rebuild the old reputation.

THE CHEDDAR.

The cheddar cheese of Canada is made by drawing off the whey while it is sweet, the curd being allowed to sour afterward. It takes too long to make this cheese to suit the Western cheese-maker. But you can not make the best cheese in a hurry. There is more nutriment in the cheddar than in the common cheese of the States.

BY THE ACRE.

Mr. Hiram Smith said in his paper that he computes his butter and cheese by the acre, meaning that his effort is to see how much dairy product he can get from an acre of ground. The herd of cows that can produce the most from a mow of hay or a given amount of pasturage is the best herd. That system which will take 1,000 lbs. of feed and get the most from it is the best system. He plows up about four acres of pasture every year, and proposes to reduce the acreage of his pasture thus gradually to the end. He grows feed for the cows on the acres plowed up. It is the cheapest method. He uses green feed, bran, straw, roots, etc. This gives the most milk at the least expense. He uses the submerging system of butter-making. A bushel basket full of pounded ice twice per day will keep milk cool regardless of weather. Cool the milk suddenly no matter what the system. Four pounds of butter from 100 pounds of milk is all he expects to get in summer. In fall, perhaps another pound, but it will not be of so high a grade.

THE HOLSTEINS.

Mr. Curtis, of New York, said a good word for the Holsteins as dairy stock. At the Cornell University farm they come in at two years, are milked seven or eight years, and then fattened for beef. He would not recommend this system for all breeds.

CALVES.

Mr. Northup said he can raise better calves on skimmed milk than on whole milk. Others agreed with him, and a few differed, asking what the Lord put the cream in milk for. Reply: to mix with butterine.

ITEMS.

Professor Henry mentioned some of the experiments now being carried on at the State University to show the value of different stock foods, tile, drainage, etc. He is feeding cotton seed meal, malt, sprouts, oil cake, ensilage, etc. Cotton seed meal induces a very rich flow of milk.

Mr. Smith thinks skimmed milk worth 35 cents per 100 pounds for cheese-making, for those who have a demand for that kind of cheese.

Mr. Favill, of Walworth county, set the teeth of the dairymen on edge, by asserting and proving by figures that he could make more money from same outlay in beef making in six months, than any of them could in a year from the dairy. Mr. F. will write out his experience in this line for THE PRAIRIE FARMER at an early day.

We cut short our notes of the discussions somewhat, to make room for Mr. Smith’s instructive essay on

NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES.

So long as it is true that the average yield, per cow, in milk that is taken to the factories is less rather than more than 3,000 pounds per season, and so long as it is true that there are dairymen whose cows yield from 4,000 to 5,000 pounds each per season, it will be easy to make it appear there are neglected opportunities on the part of most dairymen which, if availed of, would greatly augment the annual yield, and consequently make larger the profits.

One of the fundamental truths in stock-raising, and in profitable milk production, is, that it takes a given amount of food to support the animal’s existence in such a way that it will simply maintain its status; and that growth in flesh or yield in milk, above an evenly balanced existence, must come from the food given to cause an increase of weight in flesh, fat, or milk products. Hence, all the profit must come from that excess, and is large or small just in proportion as the animal is capacitated to utilize and digest it, within the bounds of healthy, judicious feeding. So that farmer was sound who, when he fed up to the very verge of that limit, and was told by a skeptic that he did not believe high feeding paid, replied he was only sorry that his cows could not healthfully digest more. The capital invested in the cows, in the soil, in the barns and stables, in the care and time devoted to milking and waiting on them, is very nearly the same, whether they produce 3,000 pounds each per season, or 5,000 pounds. At first it may be granted that if a farm is stocked to its capacity in feeding a herd of 3,000-pound cows, that some outside food must be imported from other soil to enable the same herd to yield 5,000 pounds each. But the enriching of the manure through high feeding, and the consequent enriching of the land, will soon obviate the necessity of the importation of outside food. If this is not true, I admit that my opinion is based on false premises; and that the opponents of high feeding have the best of the argument, as well as a majority of the disciples, and a majority of the thinly-covered bones of the so-called dairy stock of the State. In support of the idea that there is an added value to the manure through high feeding, it may be stated that there are many places in the Eastern States in which in estimating the earnings of the cow each year, that the milk, or butter and cheese, the calf and the pork are not only counted, but $10 per well-fed cow is added for the increased value she has put upon the soil, deposited it in a bank that never breaks. What is true of the old East is fast becoming true of the soil of the older settled portions of Wisconsin. To augment the productive capacity of a given number of acres, that will now support in semi-starvation a given number of cows, to a point in fertility that will add 2,000 pounds of milk per annum to each cow, milk worth, say $20, is to have the funds in hand to pay the sum of $400 as interest on the added value to an ordinary farm of eighty acres that is made to well keep twenty cows, instead of keeping them in the usual way. Four hundred dollars will pay 5 per cent interest per annum on an added value of $100 per acre to the farm. This can be done without adding a cow to the herd. All done by a simple expansion, through better use of the capital already in the hands of many who work on the semi-starvation plan.

The very first neglected opportunity of the mass of farmers is, that they do not see, and do not make much effort to see, that there is a better way than to plow, and plow, and plow, seldom seed down, keep a few head of spindling cows, mostly to give birth to spindling calves, that by a stretch of the imagination may be called cows when five or six years old; sell such cows, instead of selling butter and cheese to buy their clothes and groceries, sell hay to buy their whisky, and their farms by the bushel to pay for them if in debt, or to add some improvements in buildings if they are not. It would be useless to further describe them—they are not here, as they never go to dairy conventions, or even to county agricultural meetings or annual fairs; and so any rebuke of their methods would not reach their ears. Let them pass; the chief regret for their fate being that their name is legion, and that they seem to be beyond the reach of mercy.

The next class, and the one for which this association has much missionary work to do, is the one that has shown some signs of progress; that is still in unbelief of the radical truth, but yet seems to be uttering the invocation of doubting Thomas, of old. The most marked neglect of opportunity by this class is in not accepting the truth alluded to previously, that it pays to transform 2,500 and 3,000-pound cows into 4,000 and 5,000-pound ones, through the process of more generous, and better paying feeding. Many of this class know that a paying flow of milk comes only from food judiciously given; but who have not yet learned the programme by which such food can be ever on hand, or do not possess the intelligent enterprise to put forth the means to obtain it. As this is, largely, the hopeful class, we may well pray for their growth in dairy grace, in the knowledge of the truth, as it is exemplified in the reliable experience of the few saints in the business, who know how to make good common cows earn $50 and $60, and more, each, per annum.

Observation and my factory books for a series of years, teach that persons of this class start out well in the spring, and have cows that maintain the flowing stream for awhile, so that the four-and-five-thousand pound yield would be obtained if they did not suffer it to come to grief, by not providing means to hedge against the immediate and consequent influences of the first serious check in the supply of palatable and easily digested food in the pastures. This is the great fatality of the whole business—a tolerated calamity as we may call it, for it endures a lapse that can not afterward be made good, the same season. It is to the paying yield of the cow what an untimely frost is to an unmatured corn crop. It is my firm belief that this is the great sin of the medium good dairyman of this and other dairy States,—the cause of the low average earnings of the cows; the reason why so many dairymen work so cheaply; the promoter of infidelity in the mind of the dairyman as to whether he has not made a mistake in entering upon the dairy business at all; in short, it is the chief “neglected opportunity” to get upon the highway to success. That opportunity, when interpreted, means that when the chief available supply of food fails, or lessens, or becomes unpalatable or undigestible, that a substitute previously provided should be immediately supplied. Let the substitute be early rye, clover, oats, millet, corn, or other fodder, grown for the purpose, according to the time in the season in which the pressing need comes; and if neither are in available time, then let the substitute take the form of ground grain in larger measures than should be given to every cow in milk, every day, even when feeding on the flushest and choicest of grasses. That is the way the 5,000-pound to the cow dairymen do; and they win in doing it. But the blighted class seem to look upon it as they would on an accidental fire, an untimely death, an early frost, an unavertable calamity; a kind of Providential dispensation, the superstitious regard it. The latter class betake themselves to prayer for rain, instead of taking the scoop-shovel to the provender, and distributing it to their famishing herds. Troops of them don’t know that they are suffering any but present loss in weight, and delude themselves into thinking a blessed rain will restore their cows to the position they fell from. They don’t seem to comprehend that they thus lose their grip on the $50 and $60 per annum prize, and their uncertainty of getting it. The result is, they have their big flow of milk at the season of the year in which dairy products are ever the cheapest; and their cows are crippled for good performance at the pail, when ever-returning good prices in the fall and early winter show them what golden opportunities they have lost.

Now I can look over my list of patrons and see in my mind’s eye the men who practice both the systems I allude to. One is the discomforted, doubting dairyman with but too little to show for his hard work; and the other has a good bank account, or a plethoric purse, and his sharpest look is given in search of more good cows, whose owners don’t know any more than to sell them. There is not a whine about them, nor do they go into a decline because another half-cent could not be squeezed out of the cheese market. Their talk is, content with “well done,” and their cure for hard times is, “more milk.”

The most manifest loss, as it appears to one taking note of merely dollars and cents, in the prosecution of any special pursuit comes to light in the dairy business, from this the chief neglected opportunity of the dairymen to gain more wealth.

There are other neglected opportunities,—minor matters in themselves—that if improved would make the goal of the enterprising dairymen easier of attainment, and are, therefore, desirable adjuncts in accomplishing his purposes, and they seem to be concomitants of measurably high success. One is in not properly testing the real profit-earning capacity of each cow, and weeding out those that are not only not profitable but are actually, year after year, eating into the profits derived from other, and it may be not so good appearing cows. Profitable performance not only at the pail, but at the churn and the cheese-vat, should alone give a cow respite from coming, in her youth, to the butcher’s block.

Another, is that there is a woeful benightedness in providing stables suitable to milk in, and easy and healthful for the cows to live in, as they should be allowed to do for more than half of the hours of the year. The advanced dairymen who have plank floors daily littered, cleaned, and cleansed, drops in the floor, and clean walks in the rear of the cows, well-ventilated, but warm, non-freezing stables, would be amazed and disgusted to enter what I greatly fear are a majority of the stables of the State, in which the cows are thrust to endure a painful and filthy existence. When purity of product has a great influence in gauging the price, and the health of consumers is at stake, this neglect in providing better and more cleanly stabling is one of the crying ills of our dairy system. I am glad to know that the supervision of the health officials of Milwaukee extends to the stables of the cows that produce the milk that is allowed to be sold in that city. It would be well if it was made the imperative duty of the health officials of every town to forcibly establish the blessings of a decent civilization in the cow stables of more than half of the farmers of Wisconsin. I am moved to thus speak because of what I have seen—and smelled. I will not quarrel with a man who claims the unalienable right to rot, as a hermit, but I deny his right to freely make and sell to others, unwholesome food, into which he has mingled filth and the germs of disease and death. It is shameful to neglect to provide good and healthful stables for food-producing dairy stock—one that calls for vengeance on a criminality.

Another neglected opportunity of the dairymen to increase the number of head their farms might subsist, and thus increase their profits, especially those who occupy our highest priced lands, is in their declining to adopt the system of soiling. I do not know of a highly successful dairyman in the State who has not adopted it, in part, at least—enough to save his cows when famine is in sight. Neither do I believe there is one who would not be more successful if he should practice it more. The arrived-at goal of the select few who keep as many cows as they have acres of land, has been reached by and through the soiling process; and approximate successes like theirs must be achieved by traveling the same route. There are those who are ensmalling their pastures, and at the same time, increasing their herds, because the lands taken from the pasture and devoted to soiling crops produce more than the old herds can consume. The wandering cow feeds herself, in fact, from what might be the choicest product of her own milk, tramps the life out of much more, and tosses her head in disdain at much that if cut and properly fed in the stall, she would eat with a relish; so that it may be safely said that two, and some practical men say three, cows might be well-fed through soiling, on the same land that one is by the system of exclusive pasturing.

Another, it may well be called the lost opportunity—that grows out of the neglected ones alluded to, is that the cows are not kept in good milking condition more of the time of the year. The men who seize and utilize the few opportunities I have mentioned very soon learn that they have an almost perpetual fount of wealth; and that they can not afford to dry it up, and wait for spring. Putting in more time for the cow to produce, inevitably convinces them of the fact that the larger part of the cow’s earnings are made when dairy products are high in price; and they are dull, indeed, if they do not see in that a revelation that more winter dairying would pay. I am aware that the flippant answer made by those disinclined to adopt soiling and winter dairying, is, that they involve employment of more manual labor on a given number of acres, and that reliable farm labor is hard to get and troublesome to keep. This is the first superficial pretext of nine-tenths of those advanced enough to ever give these subjects a serious thought. Nevertheless, the practice of these innovations are essential in the higher grade of farming; and that practice, instead of being an ill, is a blessing to the farm, to the farmer, to his older children, and to the hired laborer; for it gives all of them steady and profitable employment, while the present system requires the far greater proportion of labor in the spring and summer months, and furnishes less to do in winter for the hired man and the grown-up boys and girls. They thus lounge, often, in debasing idleness, or are early weaned from the farm, and go away, never to return to partake of its real, invigorating life, its independence, and its joys. The dairy, with the accompaniment of soiling and more production of dairy products in the winter, would make the farm more like a factory, with every wheel in motion almost the entire year. The home and the family of the dairy farmer should be as large as the capacity of the man and the woman at the helm; and as steady employment as that which must be given to the store or shop would go a long way in developing and increasing the capacity of the whole force to manage more. Giving regular employment to good men on the farm makes it far easier to get and to keep them; and it retains a more brawny set of men, who are otherwise enticed to the factories and railways that give steady work, and so have the pick of the intelligent and most reliable ones. It is an accomplishment in a farmer and his wife to know how to get, and how to keep good, faithful hired men. I know of those who are slaves, because they don’t know how. Many of them ascribe it to the men, when they themselves are principally at fault. There is a mortal dread of “tramps,” especially among the more ignorant farmers. But I aver that the common system of almost exclusive grain farming that crowds most of the labor of the year into a few spring and summer months, is a direct cause of much of the tramp evil of which so many farmers complain. It manufactures the tramps who rove from necessity, and even drives out their own children to swell the ranks of those in search of a job. On the other hand, a large increase of milk-stock kept on the farm necessitates the retention of most of the manual force of the summer months. Not how to dispense with hired labor or the labor of his children, but how to profitably employ and elevate it, and make it inviting, rather than abhorrent and slavish, is the problem the progressive farmer should study to solve. The manufacturer counts upon additional gains through the addition of well-employed laborers. The farmer could do the same if he used more educated brains and a little less over-taxed muscle in his business. The bulk of every fortune steadily acquired, consists of the success of its possessor in getting, honestly or dishonestly, a profit from the labors of others. This must be so, so long as it is an axiom in political economy that labor is the basis of all wealth. The owner of the soil can succeed in winning more than a pro rata proportion, just in the ratio of his ability to make his brains help the work of his hands.

I know of whole sections, and even contiguous miles square, on which the system of farming prevails that I have condemned—the hired man is unknown, save only for short periods of the year—the children gone to the cities, to the factories, the railroads, or to the West—the land denuded of stock, almost, as well as of the rightful ones to care for it; and half-impoverished farms, half farmed by the old folks, or continuously cropped on shares by more indigent neighbors. Possessions that by nature are as fair as ever the sun shone upon, that do not, and can not now pay five per cent interest on $25 per acre; when well managed dairy farms in the same county pay more than that per cent on a basis of $100 per acre. In view of these patent facts that stare us in the face, is it any wonder that some of us feel we have a loud call to dispense the pure dairy gospel to these perishing sinners who thus neglect their grand opportunities.

In some one of the first sentences of this paper I alluded to the influence of good and profitable farming in improving the condition and standing of the farmer, as a man among men. This, after all, is the crowning objective point, or should be, of all those who make the most of the opportunities the great mass neglect. If with all his getting a man does not get some real wisdom, some development in stalwart morality, and a higher cultivation of the mind, it needs no Solomon or Bible to tell the on-lookers that he is a comparative failure; and it ought to be apparent to himself. The legitimate profits of a higher grade of farming ought to be expended to elevate the farmer, his wife, his children, and all the attendants whom he directs. Part of them should appear in the form of better and more comfortable houses and barns, finer stock, better horses, better roads and school-houses, a larger list of newspapers and periodicals, better libraries and better housekeeping, and more cheery houses in which intelligence and music are not strangers. It is as important that a man should spend his earnings aright, as that he should use his energies and talents to earn. It is not a manly element in a man whose chief forte is that he can hold all he can get. A clam can do that, and not suffer much, either, in a comparison of brains with the groveling getter of mere wealth. The high behest to earn much, by and through grand opportunities to labor and direct labor, blossoms into blessing in its best sense only when the earnings are spent to increase the intelligence, add to the comforts, and aid men to discharge their private and public duties more nobly than it is possible for a man to do with an income that simply gives him bread.

Because the earnings of the farm are not more frequently spent in thus installing a section of paradise on the farm, is the real cause of the stampede therefrom of many of the smart ones who deem the struggle for elevation there a hopeless one, and, catching an inspiration from the shriek of civilization that announces each swiftly flying train, they turn their backs on what have been to them farm dungeons, and mingle with the surging throng in quest of a better condition. That they are often mistaken and baffled in taking such a route, does not deter a new crowd from going. They fly from what they dread, as much as they are inspired by what they hope to win. These things ought not so to be; and a wise improvement of the many neglected opportunities on the farm would go far to rectify the ills they fly from, but from which yet few escape.

Say what we will about all its defects, its uninviting toil, and low wages, agriculture disenthralled of its ignorance is the basis rock of our hope; and he is a slanderer of the noblest occupation who raises the veil to expose its defects and servility for any other purpose than to help make greener its verdure, and brighten its bloom.

* * * * *

REMEMBER _that $2.00 pays for_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER _from this date to January 1, 1885; For $2.00 you get it for one year and a copy of_ THE PRAIRIE FARMER COUNTY MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, FREE! _This is the most liberal offer ever made by any first-class weekly agricultural paper in this country._

* * * * *

HORTICULTURAL

Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper.

THE FARMER’S GARDEN.

BY J. M. SMITH.

A few years ago it was necessary for me to call upon a gentleman upon some business. After my business was completed and I was about to leave, I started toward the garden. He called to me saying, “Do not go there—you can not get through the garden.” I arrived at the border and stopped. He had evidently complied with one of the necessities of a good garden, viz., plenty of manure, for it is simply impossible for weeds to grow at the rate, or attain the size they had there, except upon very rich land.

Rabbits would have been perfectly secure from foxes, and foxes from dogs, in that immense and tangled growth of weeds.

The owner of that garden was one the best and most enterprising farmers in the State. He had at one time been president of his State agricultural society.

Many years ago I visited a friend living upon a 160 acre farm. It was one of the most beautiful section farms that I have ever seen either in this or any other State. While there I was speaking of a splendid crop of melons that were then just ripening. He said, in rather a fretful manner, “I do not see why my melons do not grow. I know the land is rich, and there are no weeds in the hills. I hoed them all up only a few days ago.” I walked out to his garden with him, and there were his poor, puny vines struggling for life. As he said, there were no weeds in the hills, a little circle of perhaps two or three feet in diameter had been hoed out, and the balance of the land was covered with a dense growth of weeds from two to six feet in height.

He had a most industrious and refined lady for a wife, and young children growing up around him, and, as before stated, a most excellent as well as valuable farm. Yet not one early pea or one ear of sweet corn; not even early potatoes or a tomato, or, in fact, anything that by any stretch of the imagination could be called a garden bed—yet the man has been to college.

Another gentleman said in my presence, “In the spring, at the proper time, I purchase cabbage seed and sow them; when it is time to set them out I buy the plants and plant them; when it is time for cabbages they are _there_, and so I always have cabbages.”

He is among the very best farmers in the State. He teaches others how to farm, and does it well. The man who attacks him in a convention needs a strong cause and a ready tongue, or he will be apt to consider his own cause a very poor one before he gets through with it. This man has been president of a State dairymen’s association.

One case more: Another gentleman, who is far above the average farmer, and who has also been president of a State dairymen’s association, as well as a public teacher, as he was going out to attend a farmers’ meeting or convention, where he was expected to be a teacher, happened to look out over the place where his garden should have been, and saw an immense growth of weeds going to seed. He said to his sons and hired men, “Boys, bring out a team and hitch to the mower, and mow off the garden; I can not conscientiously go and teach others how to farm with that crop of weeds going to seed in my own garden.” The work was done. “There,” said he, “I can now go and teach without a troubled conscience. There are no weeds going to seed in my garden.”

I have strong hopes of this gentleman. He has a conscience. He attends church; and although I consider him intellectually as far superior to most of the preachers of the day, yet if the right man should become his pastor, I fully believe that there is salvation for him even in this life.

As to the other three the case seems at least to be a very doubtful one. One can not but be reminded of the anecdote of the three little boys who had commenced studying the catechism. Some one asked them if they had learned any of it? “Oh, yes,” says one of them, “I am past justification.” A second one says, “I am past sanctification.” The third jumps up and says, “I have beat them all; I am clear past redemption.” It is much to be feared that the three first described gentlemen are all of them clear past redemption.

Let us turn for a moment to a farmer’s garden of another order. He has a beautiful as well as an excellent farm. Around his house are quite a number of handsome trees that stood there when the Indians were the proprietors of the soil. The present owner has added such other trees as he thought would add both to its beauty and comfort. The house is a number of rods from the highway, and in the summer is one of the most beautiful rural homes that I ever saw. Back of, and near by, the house is his garden. It is so arranged that most of its crops can be cultivated with a horse and cultivator. A nice asparagus bed furnishes not only himself and family an abundant supply of this the first as well as one of the best of the products of the outdoor garden, but also a quantity to sell. His strawberry beds, containing only a few of the standard varieties and a very few plants of some of the most promising of the new ones, were models of both beauty and economy in their arrangement for cultivating both well and cheaply. The same was true of his peas, beans, sweet corn, cabbages, potatoes, etc. His raspberries, both red and black-caps, furnished an abundant supply for the family during their season. The same is true of his blackberries and grapes.

A short distance from these well cared-for necessaries and luxuries of his farm is a moderate-sized and well cared-for orchard. I have no doubt he can, if he wishes, have some of the products of his orchard or garden, or both, upon his table every day of the year.

The gentleman who owns and controls this farm has never been president of any State dairymen’s association, nor has he ever been sent to Congress. But, gentlemen, he is one of the most thoroughly wide awake and enterprising, as well as one of the very best farmers that Wisconsin can boast of; and we have some good ones.

The question very naturally arises, Why is it that so many, not only of our common, but of our very best farmers, fail to have anything that can be called even a poor garden? It is not because they do not like its products.

Time and again have men who were good farmers, when looking over my grounds, said: “Well, it is too bad that I have not had a decent garden; but I am determined to have one after this, and will neglect it no longer.” I have no recollection of any farmer’s family among my acquaintances who would not enjoy its products. Perhaps the best reason, and often the only one, that can be given for so many almost entire failures in this respect is the want of time. It is a well-known fact that almost all of our farmers are short of the help they really need to keep their farms in good condition. Something is sure to be neglected, and, in three cases out of four, if not in nine out of ten, the poor garden is the first thing that is left to care for itself, which it generally does by growing a tremendous crop of weeds.

It is perfectly useless to attempt to have a respectable garden, unless arrangements are made in the spring for its planting and cultivation with the same care that arrangements are made for the care of the wheat, oats, corn, or potato crop, or the care of the dairy.

When these arrangements are made and faithfully carried into execution during the season, then shall we see good gardens upon our farms; and not only that, but, as a rule, they will be the best paying pieces of land upon the farm, not only in the comfort they give to the family, but in the profit as well.

I do not propose at this time to give you a treatise upon gardening. A few hints that may be of value to those who wish to make some improvement, is all that will be attempted.

In the first place, select, if you can have a choice, a piece of light, loamy soil, with a little sand, if you can get it. A heavy clay soil will raise as large a crop as the one above mentioned, but it is not as early, and is much more expensive and different to work. In laying out a garden on a farm take plenty of room, and arrange the goods in such a manner that the greatest possible amount of work can be performed with the horse.

The selection of seeds is to me the most annoying and perplexing job of the season. The circulars come pouring in, and are filled with the names of new varieties of this and that and the other, each better than any other of its kind, and so very desirable that you are apt to think that you must have a few of the seeds just to try them.

Of course, there is occasionally some improvement made in vegetables and plants but it is safe to say that in nineteen cases out of twenty the farmer or the amateur who invests in some new varieties of seeds or plants upon the recommendation of his circular, loses both money and time by the operation. If I should record my own experience in this line during the past twenty-five years, the result would show that I have drawn an occasional prize and a marvelous number of blanks, and some of them very annoying, as well as expensive ones.

I will give you a list of such seeds as have proven themselves to be about the best that I can find, after years of experience:

Asparagus—Conover’s Colossal.

Beets—Early Egyptian for first early; Early Blood Turnip for
fall and winter.

Carrots—Early Scarlet-Horn.

Parsnips—Common Dutch Hollow-crown.

Ruta Bagas—American purple top, imp.

Turnips—Flat Dutch.

Bush Beans—German Dwarf Black Wax.

Pole do.—Lima.

Cucumbers—White Spine.

Cabbage—First Early Jersey Wakefield; Fall and Winter, Prem.
Flat Dutch.

Celery—Golden Dwarf.

Muskmelons—Early White, Japan, and Hackensack.

Watermelons—Mountain Sweet.

Cauliflower—Early Dwarf, Eurfart.

Peas—Extra early Dan O’Rourke, American Wonder, Champion of
England.

Summer Squash—Round Scallop, American Turban, Hubbard.

Lettuce—Curled Simpson and Boston Market.

Pepper—Large Bell and Butternosed.

Tomato—Trophy and Acme.

Sweet Corn—Early Minn., Crosby’s Early, Stowell’s Evergreen.
These if planted at same time will give proper succession.

Radishes—French Breakfast, and Covent Garden.

When we come to the small fruits I will recommend as follows: Strawberries—Wilson’s Albany seedling for main crop. If a few very large ones are wanted try the No. 30, and the Sharpless. With me they are both worthless except for the purpose of producing a few very large berries. To lengthen out the season the Kentucky is the best of any that I know of. Downer’s Prolific is also a fair bearer, of excellent quality. I am constantly trying those of the new varieties that seem to me most likely to do well, but almost invariably lose both time and money. I have some twelve or fifteen varieties of these now on trial, but presume the result with nearly or quite all, will be the same as with hundreds of others I have had during the last twenty-five years, viz., after two or three years of trouble and expense plow them under for manure.

For raspberries, the Doolittle and the Mammoth Cluster have done nicely among the black-caps. The Gregg is also highly recommended by those who have tried it. I have not tried it a sufficient time to tell what it will do with me. The Philadelphia is a standard among the reds, and justly so. After two or three years’ trial I think very highly of the Cuthbert, although with me it is not as hardy as the Philadelphia. In fact, they all do better for being covered in winter.

Blackberries. For this portion of the State I know of nothing that I believe would give better satisfaction than Stone’s Hardy.

Among currants, the Red and White Dutch are still the standards.

The Concord grape is yet among grapes about what the Wilson is among strawberries—the standard for the million. The Worden, a seedling of the Concord, is very promising, and may yet prove to be a strong competitor in the race. The Delaware does splendidly in the Fox River Valley, but is not as reliable in all parts of the State as the above-named varieties.

I have tried to recommend nothing but what will do well with good fair cultivation upon any good soil. Yet you will often be annoyed in selecting seed, from the fact that the same seed is sent out by different seedsmen under different names. For instance, I have had early peas sent to me under different names and by different seedsmen and all planted on the same day, side by side, all cared for precisely alike, and all alike claiming to be remarkably early and prolific as well as excellent in quality, and yet every one of them precisely like the old extra early Dan O’Rourke that I used to grow, I do not know how many years ago.

The American Wonder is the only one of the new varieties that I have tried in many years that really seems to be an acquisition to our list. It is a dwarf about second early, and with me a good bearer, and of excellent quality. I mention this to show the farmer that as a rule it is better for him to rely upon the old standard list, until some grower with whom he is acquainted has fairly tested the new variety, and ascertained whether or not they are worthy of cultivation, and some good common sense are all that is needed to insure a good farmers garden. In twenty-five years I have failed but once to harvest at least a paying crop of strawberries, and most of the time they have been both large and profitable. During that time I have failed once to have a corn crop, and have a number of times failed to have a paying crop of potatoes; in fact, I have failed oftener with my potatoes than with any other of the long list of crops that I attempt to grow. Yet if I should say to the farmers of this audience that they did not know how to grow a crop of potatoes, they would consider themselves insulted, though I presume that not one of them has had complete success with them for any long series of years.

Peas and onions should be put in as early as the land is in good condition to work in the spring. If the ground freezes hard soon after they are sprouted it will not injure them. Parsnips, beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, and salsify will all bear a little frost after they come up, but not much.

Corn, beans, peppers, tomatoes, vines of all kinds, require a warm soil and will do their best in no other.

A place for the wife and children’s flowers should not be forgotten or neglected. Give them a place, furnish help to prepare and care for it, and do not complain about the little time and expense it takes, either. Probably you will neither eat nor sell the flowers, but they will pay you better than a few extra bushels of wheat would. We are apt to hear complaints at our conventions that the young men will persist in leaving their farm home and seeking a new one in some of the towns or cities. Well, when I am traveling in our own and in other States and see so many desolate, dreary places that are called farmhouses—no trees, no shrubbery, no fruit, no flowers, no garden, in fact, nothing but a shell of a house, and some land, and it is fair to suppose that it is about as cheerless inside the house as it is dreary outside of it, I often wonder how, or why, any bright, active, wide-awake young man can stay there one day after he is at liberty to leave.

Gentlemen, I know that there are many beautiful exceptions to the above described homes, and that they are yearly becoming more numerous. If the exceptions could become the universal rule, what a glorious Northwest we should have! Presidents of State agricultural societies would not have to warn their friends against attempting to get through the tangled mass of weeds called the garden. The man who has been to college would no longer fret because his vines could not grow. The President of the State Dairymen’s Association would no longer buy cabbage plants or cabbage. Neither would he be compelled to order out his team and mow his garden before his conscience would allow him to teach others how to farm.

Instead of these, should be homes beautiful, homes bright, homes happy—so happy that the young would be loath to leave and glad to return. As our Northwest is the grandest portion of our republic, so should our homes be the most beautiful, and the inmates thereof the most intelligent as well as the happiest and most contented citizens of our wide domain.

OUR FUTURE ORCHARDS.

Granting our Apple Orchards on High lands, Ridges, and Slopes are Suffering, or Starving from Insufficient Moisture, What will be our best course with them?

_Number Four._

In the first place, it may be well to enlarge a little on the subject of deficient moisture the average orchard is liable to on prairie and all other Western soils of a drift origin, where the strata lie nearly parallel to the plane of the earth’s surface. Here there are, therefore, few, if any, of those springs or fountains of water which often supply abundant moisture to land of considerable slope and elevation. If this difference in geological conditions is taken into account, it will explain why, in many sections, orchards often do quite remarkably well on hillsides and mountain slopes.

There is little or no resemblance between the apple tree and the orange tree, when both are botanically considered; but considered from the point of view as a source of fruit, the one is the best product of warm climates, and the other of cold ones; both being esteemed nearly universally. The orange being a very juicy, and at the same time, a fruit in which sweet and sour are equally blended, requires a moist soil and a large supply of water, in addition to a relatively high temperature. Accordingly, when grown in warm but dry climates, as in Spain and along the north shore of the Mediterranean, the ground bearing orange trees is uniformly copiously irrigated two or three times a month, during the warm season, and every two months in the winter. The orange-producing portion of Louisiana is mostly confined to the sixty or seventy square miles of cultivatable land along the Mississippi river banks, south of New Orleans. Here the soil is alluvial and sandy, the rainfall sixty or seventy inches per annum, and the state of the atmosphere so continuously humid, as to drape all arboreal vegetation with moss. Florida has the same rainfall, the same humid atmosphere, the same moss, with the advantage of a soil quite as sandy, in which, as constitutes elements, phosphoric acid and potash abound in far greater proportions than in the alluvial of the Mississippi. And it is probably due to this happy association of heat, humidity, a sandy soil, rich in the phosphates of lime and salts of potash, that Florida oranges really are, and are regarded the best in the world. But in spite of these advantages, and another, no less important—that by capillary attraction, through the sand—the orange roots have direct and easy access to water beneath; it is found that the trees do better if mulched to prevent evaporation during the cool months—they being the dry season, while the summer months are the wet. The Louisiana orange-growers go farther; they not only mulch liberally with rice straw every year, but in addition, every third or fourth year, from eight inches to a foot of the earth under the trees is removed and new earth put in its place.

From these statements we get some idea of the amount of water the orange tree demands in the soil, and the measure of moisture in the atmosphere, to supply evaporation from its large evergreen leaf surface and fill its fruit with juice. An apple tree is not an orange tree, to be sure, but when in leaf, and bearing a heavy crop of fruit, the farmer must necessarily make large drafts on the soil to meet the surface evaporation and supply the required juice to its fruit. Every tree in leaf is a pump, constantly drawing on the soil and drying it, and in all reasonable probability the drafts are in proportion to fruit and foliage. Has any body calculated the daily demand for moisture a twenty-five-year old Northern Spy, or Baldwin, carrying twenty or thirty bushels of apples makes on the soil beneath and around it during the hot and dry months of August and September? The quantity probably is largely in excess of the common estimate, and perhaps not half required by the orange—but it is so much it affords a sufficient reason why such trees grow faster, are healthier, and bear more and better fruit, on lands that are moist, than on lands that are dry.

But orchards on high lands, or on slopes, or on slopes and ridges, suffering for moisture, can not be removed to low lands, nor can they be irrigated, except at an enormous expense. What then can be done? In the first place, the annual rainfall can be held to the space it falls upon, under the tree, by the throwing up a furrow or ridge around it, as far out as the limbs extend, where the ground is level, and by a dam on the lower side, when the ground slopes. The latter could also be made to stay a portion of the rain falling on the higher ground above. Further: a general system of mulching ought to be adopted; not for the purpose alone of keeping the surface moist, but also for supplying food to the roots as the mulch decays. If the orchard is in grass, clover, or weeds, they should be mowed at least twice a year, the burden suffered to lie on the ground and rot, or be thrown under the trees. After pruning, the wood removed should either be left where it falls, or piled in heaps about the orchard and suffered to rot as in the “hammock” land orange groves of Florida, where the under brush and extra timber is rarely burned, but piled in heaps to rot away.

If it is desirable to bring barren trees into bearing, or to rescue them from decay and death those in an unhealthy state, measures of a more radical and expensive character must be taken, measures similar to those which have been practiced for centuries with the grape vine, with complete success. These measures consist either in removing the earth under the trees and putting new and fresh earth in its place, as practiced with orange trees in Louisiana, and on the coffee plantations in the tropics, or in digging a deep and wide ditch around the tree, inside the outer diameter of the branches, and refilling it with near half the earth removed and half such mineral fertilizers and amendments as tree leaves and refuse decaying vegetable matter of any sort for the other half.

But nothing more than a general outline of the course to be pursued can be indicated here; and nothing more is necessary for the intelligent amateur, fruit-grower, or orchardist, who feels the strength of the proof, and accepts the situation.

In these latter days most of the diseases which afflict humanity are believed to be attributable to improper nutrition and faulty hygiene, and are relieved or cured by a more or less radical change in food and habitat.

In the animal world, the truth appears in a still stronger light; while in the vegetable kingdom, nutrition counts for almost everything. Still, in the case of the peach yellows and pear blight, both appear, on first sight, to be distinct diseases, neither yielding to any remedy yet applied to them, and both being attended with the present fashionable bacteria, which are made responsible for many diseases and all epidemics. But has anybody yet made the experiment whether water supplied copiously to the spare and thin roots of the pear will or will not prevent the blight, or tried the same thing with the peach? We all know the gigantic and venerable pear trees of the Wabash and Kaskaskia country were planted on the sandy second bottoms of the rivers named, where in their early youth, if not in their mature age, water was always within easy reach of their roots; and we have seen the item in the agricultural papers telling how one experimenter at least, has saved his pear trees from blight by copious watering. The prairie and timber country both are drying out and losing soil moisture very much faster than we have any conception of. Situations where moisture in the soil was abundant enough for all crop purposes twenty-five years ago, suffered quickly after a brief drought now, and would be benefited by irrigation where it would have been injurious fifty years before. Beside, we have borrowed many of our ideas from the fruit-growing experiences of the East, and they from the cooler and moister countries of Europe. And in that way the amount of right teaching has been too attenuated, until it is in many respects practically worthless.

B. F. J.

THE MODEL ILLINOIS NURSERY.

We have visited in our time very many nurseries both East and West. We have seen those East where the elaboration of landscape gardening was made to add effect to and set off the nursery stock grown. We have seen West hundreds of acres covered with stock in a single nursery. Yet we have never seen the perfection of details coupled with strict accuracy as to name in the varieties of stock grown, united to evenness and vigor in growth, nor a stricter method displayed in adaptation of varieties suited to the climate of the West, added to the most perfect cultivation and handling of stock, than at the premium nurseries of Spaulding & Co., near Springfield, Ill.

These nurseries, covering 375 acres originally, of first-class land, were thoroughly tile-drained, at heavy expense before anything was planted thereon, the land having been first cleaned and stumped of its timber. Thus, the groundwork having been laid for a great and model nursery, under the management of Mr. J. B. Spaulding, a well-known nurseryman of many years’ standing in Illinois, and whose practical experience from a critical standpoint is perhaps broader than that of any man in the West, it is not strange that whenever entered for premium before the State Board of Agriculture, such should have been unanimously awarded by the committee of examination. This, however, the records of the board will show.

In speaking of the artistic adornment of some old and extensive nurseries East, we find this difference: In the nurseries of Mr. J. B. Spaulding the useful is never lost sight of. Mere ornament is not what strikes the visitor, and yet the nursery is one beautiful picture in its varied and blending colors of fruit, flowers, and foliage; for the orchard and garden are by no means neglected—the visitor can find the fruits themselves, the crucial test. It is worth the journey to see.

The immense stock, the ample building, the splendid drives, the office connected with the Western Union Telegraph lines by telephone, and everything pertaining to the great nursery, is kept in the most perfect condition. Blight and borers are strangers to their 10,000 orchard trees of pear, peach, chestnut, and apples, all of varieties unexcelled, and adapted to the soil and climate of the West. The real gist of the whole, however, lies in the record of sales of this nursery for the fall delivery just closed, which amounts to nearly $120,000.

The most gratifying success has attended the efforts of this firm in growing stock. Of 150,000 buds set the past season, comprising cherries, pears, plums, and peaches, almost no rebudding has been required, and their stand is unexampled. It is not strange that the firm have the approval of the State Board of Agriculture and nurserymen of experience East and West, especially from the large nurseries proprietors of Western New York. All unite in saying Spaulding & Co.’s grounds, comprising upward of 375 acres, thoroughly tile-drained, for the growing of nursery stock, are unsurpassed. The 1,500,000 one, two, and three-year old apple trees, and 175,000 one, two, and three-year old cherry trees—the latter budded on Mahaleb roots, imported from France—together with their enormous stock of evergreens, pears, roses, shrubs, etc., are matchless in their perfection of growth, whether it be from an Eastern or Western standpoint.

In driving through the nursery we were shown a large block of American chestnuts, from five to eight feet high, and thence were driven to the chestnut orchard nearly all in bearing. The chestnut here seems fully as much at home as any other plant cultivated.

For the protection of their patrons against outside imposition, each of their nearly one hundred selected salesmen are accredited with a certificate of agency.

The long experience of this firm, being nearly thirty years in the business at Springfield, Ill.; the reputation they enjoy; the approval and indorsement they receive from the State—all commend this nursery to the favorable attention of those who have ground upon which to plant shrubbery or trees.

THE BASKET WILLOW.

A correspondent wishes some information about the basket willow. In Onondaga county, Central New York, this willow is cultivated and manufactured on a large scale and is, in fact, a leading industry. The cultivation is increasing very rapidly and is a great benefit to this and neighboring counties. The baskets made from this willow are better and cheaper than the splint basket, and raising the stock is found to pay much better than other farm crops, while the manufacture gives employment to hundreds of men, women, and children, who would otherwise have nothing to do during the winter.

These willows are grown on high land and on low land, on wet and dry land, and on very cheap land, and on land that is worth one thousand dollars per acre. The crop needs to be planted but once, and an average yearly crop can not be worth less than one hundred dollars per acre. As the timber suitable for baskets is getting scarce and dear, it is plain that the demand for willow will increase every year. In most parts of the country are Germans who understand working the willow, and it is a great benefit to them and to their neighbors to have this industry introduced. Not one farmer in a dozen has on his place as many baskets as he needs, for the reason that they are scarce and dear. This willow is the easiest thing in the world to raise, and yet we import from Europe $5,000,000 worth a year.

About two hundred tons of willow are manufactured every year in one little village in this State. One man in Syracuse told me he should send to New York this winter one hundred and forty tons of peeled willow, mostly of his own growing. In all the large cities more or less willow is manufactured every year, and the amount thus worked in the city of Milwaukee is very large. This industry is a benefit to the whole community and deserves to be encouraged, and the West especially should take a deep interest in extending it. The fact that it gives employment to poor during the winter, thus making comfort take the place of want, should exert a great influence in its favor. Here then is a means by which the farmer can put money in his pocket and help his poor neighbor at the same time. I have no interest in this matter as I do not raise, buy, or sell, but I do know it has been a great blessing to our State. There is one variety grown here that is much preferred to any other, but I can not find out the true name for it. Even the man that brought it here does not know its name.

In a future number I will give directions for planting, etc.

A. M. WILLIAMS
LONG ISLAND, N. Y.

* * * * *

SEEDS, Etc.

VICK’S FLORAL GUIDE

For 1884 is an Elegant Book of 150 Pages, 3 Colored Plates of FLOWERS and VEGETABLES, and more than 1000 Illustrations of the choicest Flowers, Plants and VEGETABLES, and Directions for Growing. It is handsome enough for the Center Table or a HOLIDAY PRESENT. Send on your name and Postoffice address, with 10 cents, and we will send you a copy, post-paid. This is not a quarter of its cost. It is printed in both English and German. If you afterwards order seeds deduct the 10 cents. VICK’S SEEDS ARE THE BEST IN THE WORLD. The FLORAL GUIDE will tell how to get and grow them.

VICK’S ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY MAGAZINE, 32 Pages, a Colored Plate in every number and many fine Engravings. Price $1.25 a year; Five Copies for $5. Specimen numbers sent for 10 cents; 3 trial copies 25 cts.

Address.

JAMES VICK,
Rochester, N. Y.

* * * * *

Will be mailed FREE TO ALL applicants and to customers of last year without ordering it. It contains illustrations, prices, descriptions and directions for planting all Vegetable and Flower Seeds, Plants, etc. INVALUABLE TO ALL.