ernment stations and by private growers, it has been shown that Folgers is the best early cane. It has all the advantages of early maturation of amber, and is superior to it in every respect-in yield per acre, sugar content, and for syrup making. Mr. Denton, on being asked which is the best cane for syrup, replied, Folgers, for it is the one out of all others yielding a large amount of syrup that does not crystallize.

as a forage plant alone sorghum is more valuable as it is kept pure and each variety grown separately.

SOILS AND PLANT FOOD.

BY H. R. HILTON.

[Extracts from paper read before the annual meeting of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture.]

need food, like animals, and,

amber in ripening, yet in all tests of the two we have found one hundred days after planting it had an equal amount of su

crose.

Colman is a splendid cane. A cross between amber and orange, it is far ahead of either; it is firmly established and not only maintains the high standard reached, but improves from year to year. It is of great value for sugar, gives a large tonnage, and is a good resister of drought and frost, giving also a heavy seed crop. As a good cane for feed it is only surpassed by Collier.

The Collier is the third selected as being superior with Folgers and Colman to all others, and is recommended as the best variety for northern latitudes where sorghum is grown for sugar. Its sugar con tent is very high, and as winter feed it is simply perfection-tall, sweet and slender stalks, with an abundance of foliage which is resistant to frosts, and with the light seed heads stands up well even against our Kansas winds and calamity howls. It ripens early although a late cane and can be planted as late as June 15, and still mature. It gives a fine quality of syrup, which, however, very soon turns to sugar.

Wherever corn can be grown sorghum will flourish and will bear drought infinitely better. On the other hand we have a few acres planted on land irrigated a week before seed was put in, and this crop is still standing for the reason that the only way we could devise to harvest a forest of sorghum, was to turn in the cattle, and let them eat at leisure. No machine we have can cut it.

It looks as though the knowledge gained and money spent on perfecting this great plant was being rapidly wasted. Very few people are keeping their seed pure in this district. It is a thousand pities to have it all lost, for apart from the sugar question which is rapidly changing for the better,

ration.

like

The essential elements of this balanced ration obtained from the soil are nitrogen, potash, phosphorus, lime, magnesia, iron and sulphur. If one of these is absent from the soil, or not in available form, the plant will be defective. If either nitro

gen, potash, phosphorus or lime are absent, the plant will be short-lived. All of these elements are needed, and if one be missing, that one controls the life of the plant.

Assuming that all food elements required are present in sufficient supply, four important agents must still co-operate before the seed can germinate and the plant partake of the foods provided. These are heat, air, water and light. there is a deficiency or excess of either one of this quartette, plant life suffers; if all are present in right proportions the plant reaches its highest perfection.

If

Each plant has its own requirement of heat, air and water, but when a fine textured soil has a temperature of 75° to 90°, F. and contains 20 to 30 per cent of its bulk of water, or 16 to 20 pounds of water to each 100 pounds of soil, and the air can permeate freely, it is in the most favorable conditions for the growth of our ordinary field crops.

The mineral elements of plant food are usually abundant in our western soils. Some, like potash, are most abundant where the rainfall is least, and least abundant where the rainfall is greatest.

Nitrogen, a product of decaying animal and vegetable matter in the soil, is the most costly, the most easily wasted or lost from the soil and the most valuable to the plant itself of all the food elements obtained from the soil.

Organic matter (i. e., animal and vegetable matter) in its various processes of decomposition in the soil is called humus,

The

The products of this decomposition are ammonia, carbonic acid and water. agencies in this work are micro-organisms in the soil. The ammonia is converted by other micro-organisms into nitrous and nitric acid. The carbonic acid acts on the mineral elements of the soil and aids in rendering them more soluble and available to the plant.

The work of these lower organisms is important. German and French investigators have found from 500,000 to 900,000 germs in a gram of soil (less than half a cubic inch).

These micro-organisms can only exist where organic matter is present and will be many or few as organic matter is abundant or scarce. They are dormant when the temperature of the soil is below 39° F. or above 115° F.; dormant when the moisture content of the soil falls below 8 to 10 per cent, or about one inch in depth of water to one foot in depth of soil; dormant when the soil is fully saturated with water and dormant when air is excluded either by too much water in the soil or by soil compaction. They are most active when the soil is about half saturated, i. e., from 20 to 30 per cent of the bulk of soil, or say 16 to 20 pounds of soil, and when the temperature of the soil is 75° to 90° F. and the air has free access to supply oxygen.

Many farmers consider the destruction of weeds the important object of cultivation, but this is secondary to the maintenance of those favorable conditions in the soil that will secure the presence of air, water and heat, so related as to promote the highest development of the plant.

In applying stable manure to the soil organic matter is being supplied for the bacteria to work upon, and to get the most value out of the manure, soil conditions favorable to the nitrifying processes must be maintained or much of this valuable promoter of fertility will be wasted.

We have little control over the temperature of the soil, except as it is warmed in the early spring by cultivation, or lowered at mid-summer by shading the ground with green foliage. Our soil temperatures are not excessive even in mid-summer if a corresponding proportion of water is maintained, but a deficiency in the water supply makes a lowering of the soil temperature desirable while the deficiency exists.

The air is always within reach and available when the soil is in permeable condition.

Time to Irrigate.-When to irrigate is a serious problem with many, especially so with new settlers. To lay down an inflexible rule for irrigation would be absurd. One answer is, to watch the appearance of the crop and give water as the condition demands it. Root crops will thrive best if irrigated frequently. Corn when small should have but little water, quite frequently none until it is several inches high, but when it is earing out it will require a great deal of water. This is true of all

crops when the grains are filling out and the most rapid growth is being made. The water should be shut off when the grain is hardening.

To allow water to stand about the plants with a hot sun shining on them is often fatal. Cabbage and even alfalfa in some soils can be killed in this way. The application of water to growing crops is a matter that requires a great deal of investigation. There are so many conditions to be considered and different objects to be accomplished that comparatively little is known as yet of this science. Both qual

ity and quantity are regulated by the use of water; then what is best in some soils is not good in others, so that the old timer even finds new difficulties to contend with when he changes his location, even though but a few miles away.

Winter Water Reservoirs.-The winter rains and snows are a constant source of waste of water that might be held in natural basins or easily constructed reservoirs for use in irrigating during the coming season. There is no better time than the present for irrigators to investigate the subject of securing an independent source of water supply. Land without water is almost worthless in many sections of the West, yet with a sufficient supply to meet all the demands for irrigation the land becomes valuable in proportion to its location and fertility.

If the soil is of a character to admit of constructing catchment reservoirs every available location should be used. In the foothills of most mountain valleys are basements covering from one to fifty acres where, with a little work, a large body of

winter water can be stored. Small channels, made with an ordinary plow, will be sufficient to lead the water from a large area to the reservoirs. In this manner the rains, that otherwise would only swell the mountain streams and run away causing frequent floods and destruction of property, can be utilized and made to furnish moisture for the next season. The snow is a prolific source of supply for these reservoirs, and many small streams of winter and early spring can be trained into the channels leading to the reservoirs.

The Woolly Aphis.-Cyrus Marshall, of San Marcos, California, gives this remedy for the apple tree pest as follows:

"Some six years ago I found fifteen or more apple trees infested with woolly aphis. The trunks were more or less covered with them and they had distributed themselves on the higher branches on most of the trees. I had a mixture, kerosene, of course, being the principal ingredient, and applied with a very small brush to the parts affected. As fast as I killed them they came up to the roots and appeared again upon the

trees.

I consulted all the men I saw who were learned upon the subject of tree pests, and received from each a remedy, none of which was a success. The second year, after vainly working, I dug deep around each tree and found masses of diseased roots

attached to the main roots, woven together in labyrinth, and from three to four inches in diameter. In the interstices were thousands in different stages of development. I cut these diseased masses of roots clean from the trees, and put around each tree two or three gallons of hard-wood ashes, and then filled up with the earth. It was not necessary to repeat the experiment, except with five or six trees, and did not lose one, and have since had no woolly aphis."

Care of Fruit Trees in Winter.When trees stand too thickly in grown orchards, excluding air and sunshine, all inferior trees should be dug out. Each tree to bear well should be exposed to the light on all sides. Many a cord of wood might be taken from most orchards and yet plenty of trees remain to serve their purpose better. Remove all rough dead bark from the trees with a scraper, and

The increase in the number of fowls was 153 per cent between 1880 and 1890, and of eggs 79 per cent. Estimating the value of eggs at 12 cents a dozen on the farm the year through, we would have the egg supply of the United States worth $55,000,000 in 1879, and $98,000,000 in 1889. Taking the farm value of a fowl at 25 cents, we should have $64,618,039 as hens. Adding this to the $98,000,000 for the representative value of all American eggs, we get $162,618,539 as the value of the fowl crop of the United States. is 150 per cent greater than the value of all American sheep in 1895, and $62,000,000 greater than their value in 1890.

This

One Acre, with Irrigation.-The following is a closely estimated average of crops raised on one acre in Otero county, Colorado, last year: Wheat twenty-six bushels, oats thirty-seven bushels, rye thirty bushels, barley forty bushels, corn forty-one bushels, beans twenty-two bushels, potatoes 160 bushels, sweet potatoes 110 bushels, peanuts 150 bushels, tomatoes 325 bushels, sugar beets twenty-two tons, alfalfa five tons; cabbage, sold at two cents a pound, eight tons, cantaloupes, sales for an acre, $248.30, net $203.20; watermelons, sales for an acre, $134.40, net $96.40.

THE National Grange, various State Granges-among them the strong Illinois body-and the Illinois Farmers' Institute, all recently in session, demand from Congress and the Illinois and Indiana State Legislatures pure food laws-laws which shall suppress the manufacture and sale of bogus butter, bogus cheese and bogus lard. And the National Dairy Union, which has just closed its session in Chicago, voices the same just demand. Committees were chosen by the Union to wait on Congress and the Illinois and Indiana Legislatures. Other Western and Central States, except Illinois and Indiana, already have State laws to protect honest products.

THE attention of Congress and the Illinois Legislature is also called to the fact that a great and extensive business is done in Chicago in horse meat-sold as beef. The stuff could be seized in hundreds of meat markets at any hour any day. Horses are not only slaughtered here but supplies of corned horse are received from western points in barrels and

cans.

ANOTHER meeting, with more credentialed delegates than there are to a national political convention, has also just been held in Chicago. This was the first annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. About 15,000 people were in attendance, representing manufacturers of the country worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A national organization of the manufacturers was cemented, and that great organization proposes to have a voice in regard to future legislation concerning the manufactures, trade and commerce (domestic and foreign) of the United States. Its very reasonable demands for the present will doubtless be granted by this or the succeeding Congress.

THE far Western States are waiting on Congress for an act giving them the arid land grants outright, and the Territories

The

DELEGATES to the first annual meeting of the National Association of General Manufacturers, just held in Chicago, represented an invested capital of $2,000,000,000; while the delegates to the meeting of the Textile Manufacturers' Association of the West and South represented an invested capital of $40,000,000. latter includes both woolen and cotton interests. These two great associations held separate meetings, with one joint session. The common aim of both is protection to home industry and extension of American trade to foreign nations, and the Textile Association adopted ringing resolutions for Congress on that subject.

The

The general manufacturers' meeting called the attention of Congress to the fact that Japanese goods are flooding the American market, and called for a halt. report of the committee on resolutions, which was adopted, asked for a uniform classification of freight from the Interstate Commerce Commission. It also advocated the establishment of an industrial exposition in the City of Mexico; that a Department of Manufactures be established under a secretary of equal rank with the Secretary of Agriculture; that the inequality of traffic conditions in various States be investigated and righted if possible, and that the Senate of the United States is earnestly requested to pass promptly and send to the President the revenue bill lately adopted by the House of Representatives. The meeting was unanimous for the completion of the Nicaragua canal. Trade agencies in South America were determined upon.

The speech of Hon. Wharton Barker, of Philadelphia, before the Textile manufacturers, was a great feature, and was closely followed. He urged that protection and bi-metallism must accompany one another.

A DECISION of various points in the Interstate Commerce Act has just been made by the United States District Court in Chicago in ruling on the Santa Fé and Nelson Morris indictments. The big packer was freed from his troubles, the indictments relating to him being quashed.

John A. Henley, traffic manager of the Santa Fé, and ex-President Rinehart of the same road were adjudged to have been properly indicted. The indictments against Isaac Thompson, a Kansas City shipper, and Manager Jenkins of the Hammond Packing Company were quashed. The court holds that a shipper cannot be punished for accepting a rebate, but that it is right and proper that carriers be held for discriminating against the public. The railroads of the country will take the general issue of the law to the United States Supreme Court.

VENEZUELA has just taken her first step in commercial warfare against England. George Turnbull, of Boston, who claims part ownership in the great iron mines in the Imataca mountains, not far from the mouth of the Orinoco, and within the territory contested by England, started from Great Britain with a ship load of mining machines and material which were consigned to a firm in Ciudad, Bolivar. At that place, when he offered to pay the duty on the machines, he was told that he had violated the law in not going to the point originally appearing in the manifest. He was further informed that his act was regarded as an invasion of Venezuelan territory and that it was probable that his machinery would be confiscated.

THE Concensus of opinion among wellposted men is that prices of cattle and hogs will show quite a gratifying advance during the next sixty days.

AN International American bank was one of the recommendations of the PanAmerican Congress and was suggested by the late James G. Blaine. A bill for such an institution is now being considered in Congress.

WHILE general trade has not shown a widespread tendency to revive from the holiday depression, there are favorable features in a revival in iron and steel prices, and continued heavy cereal exports.