The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1904-07-05

| more he IS obliged to buy cows where
| ever he can get them. The COW above
| referred to is certainly grand ami
| NAL, for we saw her last winter dur
ing very pleasant visit to Mr.. Shoe
makers beautiful : home. We were
rather surprised to see in the various
| barns SO many large COWS of rather q
beefy type, the result of having to
buy in the general market.
Fertilizers
| The Tri-State Farmer quotes Prof
| Hopkins, of the Illinois College, as
saying: For general farming in Illi-
nois particularly, there is absolutely
no need for ready mixed fertilizer.
| The mixed goods cost four to eight
dollars q ton more than the raw mate
rials. No general farmer needs to
| buy more than two elements of fertili-
| ty, phosphorus and potassium. Bone
| meal will furnish the phosphorus and
| potassium chloride (muriate) the
| potassium in the cheapest form known
! to be available" But we would say
why buy bone meal? The market
| price of the bono meal is largely made
| up of the value of the nitrogen it con-
| tains, and which Prof. Hopkins says
| there is no, need for buying. and in
| this we agree with him, if the farmer
| practices a good short rotation with
| legumes. The cheapest source of po-
| taSSium is. of course, in the muriate
| of potash, and the cheapest source of
| phosphoric acid is in the dissolved
| phosphate rock commonly known as
acid phosphate. In this form the phos-
phoric acid costs less than one-third
! of the cost in bone meal, and we
| should understand that one pound of
| available phosphoric acid in the dis
solved rock is just as good as one
| pound in the bone meal. and there is
more of it Immediately available. Not
| only in Illinois, but everywhere else
| the farmers are gradually learning
that for grain farming there need
never be an ounce of nitrogen bought,
if they practice a good rotation with
legumes and use phosphorus and po-
tasSium in available forms to promote
the growth Of the legumes.
Agriculture i'm The Philippines.
The National Geographic Magazine
gives some beautiful pictures of agri-
cultural operations in the Philippines.
At the Malate Experiment Station
they have had wonderful results from
Teosinte as forage plant Seed
planted January 9th made five cut
tings by August 10th, and yielded in
that time 40 Y tons of green forage,
selling for $40 gold per ton. On well
fortified land and under proper man
agment the Bureau of Agriculture
states that during the year 1000 tons
can be produced per acre. TeOSintc
natures seed in that climate. and
three crops of seed can be had there
in year, which. at the prevailing
price for the seed, would give a re-
turn from the seed alone of LAO in
gold per acre.
Another cut in the same magazine
shows an Ingorrote village with ter
races for rice cultivation The whole
mountain side is cut into an elabOr-
ate system of terraces with retaining
banks to hold water which comes
down from the mountain above. These
people may be savages, but they are
evidently industrious SavaSes, for
every available spot on the lower slope
of the mountains il framed into
water-cCvered terrace, and the amount
of labor and ingenuity required for
this work must have been enormous.
II would seem that there is a wonder
full future for agriculture and horti-
culture in the Philippines.
The OIeo Law.
When the farm papers were fight
ing for the farmers in getting the cleo
law through Congress, we were told
that it would not be long before it
would be decided to be unconstitutiOn-
al, and that the oleo men had as good
a right to color their mixture as the
dairymen had to color real butter. But
now tho law has been before the high
| est tribunal in tho land and the SD
preme Court of the United States has
| decided that the law is constitutional,
and that it is perfectly proper to tax
! heavily the coloring of ~ mixture to
| make 1t resemble butter, which it is
| not. Dalrymen do not color their but
| ter to make it resemble anything else,
| but merely to keep up standard of
! color the year through. while the cleo
| men colored their artificial product in
| order to deceive the buyers and to
make them think that they were buy
| ing butter. The Supreme Court has
! we'll decided that a fraud IS q fraud
| and that the law can be mazda to pre-
vent fraud. The strangest thing about
/ the whole business was that one of the
| leading opponents of the anti-coloring
| law was a New York farmer. or rath-
| err, rich land owner. who was chair
man of the Committee on Agriculture
| in the House, and that the SO-called
National Live Stock Association trieG
in every way to defeat the bill, and
tried to persuade the Western stock
men that the killing off of oleo would
reduce the price of cattle, because of
the large amount of tallow used in the
| fraudulent butter, even when the Sec
rotary of Agriculture showed at one
| of their meetings that the talloW used
| in oleo would not amount to 90 cents
| per head on the cattle sold. But the
| farmers have finally triuniphed for
good, and it is now settled that men
| cannot make an imitation Of butter in
| color without paying a prohibitive
| tax, while they car make all they
| please for those who are satisfied with
pure cleo at a nominal tax, and the
poor mans butter" can be made
still if the poor man wants it, which
is doubtful for he only bought it be-
fore because he thought he was buy
ing butter The whole life Of the bust
ness depended on it's being palmed off
as butter
Lime In Pennsylvania.
We are frequently reminded by cor
respondents who ask about the use
of lime, that the Pennsylvania farm
crs use it in enormous quantities and
with great results. So far as we have
been able to Observe in those sections
of PENNSYLVANIA where we were at
college in the Cumberland Valley,
every farmer used lime freely. In that
same section, according TO the report
of the Pennsylvania State College, to-
day only % per cent. of the Cumber
land county farmers use lime. and in
The adjoining county of tranklln on