The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1869-08-21
Agricultural Intelligence.


Agricultural Intelligence.
WILL THE CURCULIo FLY.
A correspondent of the Country Gentle
man, writing from Wisconsin, says:
Some people seem to doubt the ability of
the insect that stings our plums, to fly. ,f
they will cut off the head OF one, his wing
caps will be so looscned that they may be
picked up with knife. Under the caps will
be found wings. IL this respect they are
furnished not unlike our Colorado potato bug.
In order to test their flying ability. brought
in six curculios and placed them on news
paper on my show case. After little travel
ling, four of the six took wing. They first
raised their wing covers a little, projected
their wings behind them, their own length,
and rose circularly into the air after the man
ner of bee about to seek his hive. Two
that were re-caught and placed upon the
paper, again took wing.
So all the remedies that are applied 10 the
body OF the tree to prevent their crawling up
are of no account. Last year l protected
portion OF my trees by dense smoking,
half dozen times, at intervals ef three days or
week. Those trees / smoked had fair
crop, Those not smoked were all destroyed
by curculio. This year am trying the jar
ring process. Two trees whose crop OF plums
were allowed, when stung by circulio, to drop
and rot upon the ground, furnish more in
sects than four trees will, oil those upou which
the crop was saved. Tbs argues that the
stung lruit should be picked and not allowed
to lie upon the ground and suffer the insect
to escape.
A USE FOUND FOR HARDHACK.
A Mr.. Calef, of Salisbury, New Hampshire,
has discovered money value in hardhack.
He finds that this plant is good substitute
for sumac in the process of tanning leather.
The Canaan Reporter says that company
has been formed in Boston, called the Calef
Tanning Association, and they have adver-
tised for one hundred tons of bareback. The
consequence is that every boy and girl in Sal
isbury is at work cutting and bringing in
bareback, and some six or eight hands are
bnsily employed in trimming and boiling
down. The price paid by the company 10
from IS to $50 per ton.
THE PUBLIC LANDS.
A correspondent of the Rnral New Yorker
has an article on the agricultural value of
our public domain, from which we clip the
following:
Without counting Alaska, the United
States has still l 500 100000 acres OF public
Ian lis. Why not count Alaska? 1t cannot
be more superlatively worthless than ninety
niue hundredths of this much heralded "bill-
ion and hall acres OF public land" 1t is high
time that our careless, creduous, spend
thrift, sovereign people, should know, not
mo nls tho extent but the quality OF their
possession.
oral this public domain, not one acre in
three hundred is worth one dime Tor farming
purposes. Excepting a Jew fertile valleys on
the Pacific slope, which gradually have to be
irlig igated in order TO produce crops, there is
no land fit to tam on west OF line drawn
through Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Min
nesota.
This line will leave at least one third OF
those States "out in the cold" OF more def
nately, out in the dry, tor drought comes in
to spoil what steriisy has spared. West OF
this line, and east OF the Continental divide,
the Rocky Mountains, most OF the surface is
covered with wild grass generally short and
thin, but which gets start the last OF May,
and Tor three or four months affords some
pasture, but early irosts render il nearly
worthless. ats value as grazing region has
been greatly ovenated. This year stock will
iail away rapidly, ii left on prairie grass alter
the middle OF September. These dry praries
will not bear close feeding. Cropped like
New York pastures, they will run out, and
there is little hope that they can be renewed
with tame grasses.
Our cheap, fertile, arabic lands are mostly
all appropriated, bought up by actual settlers
or spectators, and this fact should be speedi
ly known to all who intend to go West will
little money to purchase homes.
MAKING HAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE.
According to writer in the London Time,
machine has been invented and tested in
England which will greatly facilitate hay
making. The apparatus takes the grass a.
soOn as it is mown and places it in stron.
current of hot air set in motion by a fan, t.
be worked by horse or steam power, as pre-
ferred. The hot air is generated by fur
mace, and the revolving fan throws it upor
the grass. In this manner, it is claimed
moist grass may be converted into hay of the
best quality in ten minutes. a.a .
BLACK KNOT IN PLUM TREES.
1t is generally supposed that the black, ug
ly excrescences found on the limbs of plum
and cherry, and which are now beginning t,
appear upon some other kinds of lruit trees
are caused by an insect which perlorates tn,
bark, deposits oya, and thue produces dis
eased condition called the black knot. DIR
Michener, OF Chester, Pa, writes to the
PHILADELPHIA Medical and Surgical Report
er that this notion is not correct; that the
black knot is parasite cryptogamous plant
belonging to the class fungi, and that it is
propasated by spores in the same way that
all funsoid grow.hs are produced. We be.
lieve this statement to be true. The idea
that they are produced by insects has arisen
from the fact that flies often penetrate into
the old, decayed knots, and The larvae are
found there. Destroying the ova or flies
does not destroy the black knot; they have
nothing whatever to do in originating or
maintaining the trouble. The spores of this
peculiar fungus float in the air, lodge on the
limbs, vegetate, and in this way the annoy
ing parasite soon destroys vast numbers of
irult trees. No application of whale-oil
soap, petroleum, or any other substance, will
arrest the growth. BY cutting off the ex-
crescenceS with sharp knife, a few years of
life may be affoaded to some trees, but it
hardly repays Tor the trouble. In the war
against fungi, no matter what class or order
we combat, human skill and science are pow
erless. If it comes in the form of rust upon
our wheat, or smut upon our corn, or black
knot upon onr plum-trees, we can only look
on and see the ruin progress; we can do
nothing to avert it.-Boston Journal of
Chemistry.