and infectious diseases of domestic animals, is characterized by the
appearance of vesicles or small bladders on the mucous surfaces and those
parts of the skin uncovered by hair, such as in the mouth, on the gums and
palate, on the tongue, and the internal surface of the lips and cheeks; on
the surface of the udder and teats, and between the claws. The disease
passes through four different stages or periods; but for present purposes
it will be sufficient to merely mention the most prominent of the
successive changes and appearances, as they occur to the ordinary
observer. The incubatory stage, or the time between contamination and the
development of the disease, is very short (from twenty-four hours to one
or two weeks), and the disease is ushered in by the general symptoms of
fever, such as shivering, increased temperature, staring coat, dry muzzle,
dullness and loss of appetite. The animals seek seclusion, preferably in
sheltered places, where they assume a crouched position, or lie down, and
there is more or less stiffness and unwillingness to move. The mouth
becomes hot and inflamed looking, and covered with slime, the breath
fetid; the animal grinds the teeth, smacks with mouth, and has difficulty
in swallowing. There is more or less tenderness of feet and lameness, and
in cows the udder becomes red and tender, the teats swollen, and they
refuse to be milked. Depending upon the intensity of the fever and the
extent to which the udder is affected, the milk secretion will be more or
less diminished, or entirely suspended; but throughout the disease the
quality or constituents of the milk become materially altered; its color
changes to a yellow; it has a tendency to rapid decomposition, and
possesses virulent properties. Soon yellowish-white blisters, of various
sizes, from that of a small pea to a small hickory nut, appear on the
mucous surface within the mouth, and which blisters often in the course of
development become confluent or coalesce. They generally break within two
to three days, and leave bright red, uneven, and ragged sores or ulcers,
to the edges of which adheres shreds of detached epithelial tissue. The
animal now constantly moves the tongue and smacks the mouth, while more or
less copious and viscid saliva continually dribbles from the mouth. The
lameness increases in proportion as the feet are affected, and if the fore
feet are most affected, the animal walks much like a floundered horse,
with the hinder limbs advanced far under the body, and with arched back.
The coronet of the claws, especially toward the heels, becomes swollen,
hot, and tender, causing the animal to lie down most of the time. The
blisters, which appear at the interdigital space of the claws, and
especially at the heels, break in the course of a day and discharge a
thick, straw-colored fluid; the ulcers, which are of intensely red or
scarlet color, soon become covered with exudating lymph, which dries and
forms scabs. On the udder, the blisters appear more or less scattered and
variable, and they are most numerous at the base and on the teats.
Ordinarily, the disease terminates in two or three weeks, while the
animal, which during its progress refuses to partake of any other than
sloppy food, gradually regains strength and flesh, and the udder resumes
its normal functions. The mortality at times has proved very great in this
disease when it has appeared with unusual virulency.
Shyness and Timidity.
In common "horse language," these propensities are confounded one with the
other or else no proper and right distinction is made between them. A
horse may be timid without being shy, though he can hardly be said to be
shy without being timid. Young horses in their breaking are timid,
frightened at every fresh or strange object they see. They stand gazing
and staring at objects they have not seen before, fearful to approach
them; but they do not run away from, or shy at them; on the contrary, the
moment they are convinced there is nothing hurtful in them, they refuse
not to approach or even trample upon them. This the shy horse will not do.
He can not be persuaded to turn toward or even to look at the object he
shies at; much less to approach it.
Timid horses, through usage and experience, get the better of their
timidity, and in time become very opposite to fearful; but shy horses,
unless worked down to fatigue and broken-spiritedness, rarely forget their
old sins. The best way to treat them is to work them, day by day,
moderately for hours together, taking no notice whatever of their shying
tricks, neither caressing nor chastising them, and on no account whatever
endeavoring to turn their heads either towards or away from the objects
shied at.
Glanders.
With a view of shedding light on the important question of the
contagiousness of glanders, we will mention the following deductions from
facts brought forth by our own experience.
1. That farcy and glanders, which constitute the same disease, are
propagable through the medium of stabling, and this we believe to be the
more usual way in which the disease is communicated from horse to horse.
2. That infected stabling may harbor and retain the infection for months,
or even years; and though, by thoroughly cleansing and making use of
certain disinfecting means, the contagion may probably be destroyed, it
would not perhaps be wise to occupy such stables _immediately_ after such
supposed or alleged disinfection.
3. That virus (or poison of glanders) may lie for months in a state of
incubation in the horse's constitution, before the disease breaks out. We
have had the most indubitable evidence of its lurking in one horse's
system for the space of fifteen weeks.
4. That when a stud or stable of horses becomes contaminated, the disease
often makes fearful ravages among them before it quits them; and it is
only after a period of several months' exemption from all disease of the
kind that a clean bill of health can be safely rendered.
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[Illustration: HORTICULTURAL]
Horticulturists, Write for Your Paper.
Sand Mulching of Orchard Trees.
In THE PRAIRIE FARMER I notice the interesting note of "O." of Sheboygan
Falls, Wis., on the apparent benefit resulting from sand and manure
mulching of pear trees.
In the very near future I expect to see much of this kind of work done by
commercial orchardists. Already we have many trees in Iowa mulched with
sand.
I wish now to draw attention to the fact that on the rich black prairie
soils west of Saratov--about five hundred miles southeast of Moscow--every
tree in the profitable commercial orchards is mulched with pure river
sand. The crown of the tree when planted is placed about six inches lower
than usual with us in a sort of basin, about sixteen feet across. This
basin is then filled in with sand so that in the center, where the tree
stands, it is three or four inches higher than the general level of the
soil. The spaces between these slight depressions filled with sand are
seeded down to grass, which is not cut, but at time of fruit gathering is
flattened by brushing to make a soft bed for the dropping fruit and for a
winter mulch.
The close observer will not fail to notice good reasons for this
treatment. (1.) The sand mulch maintains an even temperature and moisture
of the surface roots and soil and prevents a rapid evaporation of the
moisture coming up by capillary attraction from the sub soil.
(2.) The soil under the sand will not freeze as deeply as on exposed
surfaces, and we were told that it would not freeze as deeply by two feet
or more as under the tramped grass in the interspaces.
(3.) With the light colored sand about the trees, and grass between, the
lower beds of air among the trees would not be as hot by several degrees
as the exposed surface, even when the soil was light colored clay.
(4.) A bed of sand around the trunks of the trees will close in with the
movement of the top by the summer and autumn winds, thus avoiding the
serious damage often resulting from the swaying of the trunk making an
opening in the soil for water to settle and freeze.
Still another use is made of this sand in very dry seasons, which as with
us would often fail to carry the fruit to perfection. On the upper side of
large commercial orchards, large cisterns are constructed which are filled
by a small steam pump. When it is decided that watering is needed the sand
is drawn out, making a sort of circus ring around the trees which is run
full of water by putting on an extra length of V spouting for each tree.
When one row is finished the conductors are passed over to next row as
needed. To water an orchard of 1,200 trees--after the handy fixtures are
once provided--seems but a small task. After the water settles away, the
sand is returned to its place.
In the Province of Saratov we saw orchards with and without the sand, and
with and without the watering. We did not need to ask if the systematic
management paid. The great crops of smooth apples and pears, and the long
lived and perfect trees on the mulched and watered orchards told the whole
story of the needs of trees planted on black soil on an open plain subject
to extreme variations as to moisture and temperature of air and soil.
J. L. BUDD., IOWA AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE.
Pear Blight.--No. 2.
The mere "experience" of an individual, whether as a doctor of medicine,
horticulture, or agriculture--however extensive, is comparatively
worthless. Indeed the million "demonstrate it to be mischievous, judging
from the success of quacks and empyrics as to money. An unlimited number
of facts and certificates prove nothing, either as to cause or remedy."
Sir Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory "explained all the phenomena of
light, except one," and he actually assumed, for it "fits." Nevertheless
it will ever remain the most thinkable mode of teaching the laws of light,
and it is not probable that any more than this will ever be accomplished
as to any natural science--if that can be called science about which we
must admit that "it is not so; but it is as if it were so."
Of more than 300 "Osband Summer" which I grafted on the Anger quince
successfully, one remains, and this one was transplanted after they had
fruited in a clay soil, to the same sort of soil between "the old
standard" and a stable, both of which have occupied the same locality and
within twenty yards, during much more than fifty years of my own
observation--this "Osband Summer" flourishes. It has borne fruit in its
present site, but grew so rapidly last year that the blossoms aborted thus
illustrating the large proportion of vital force necessary to the
production of fruit, as the site has a perennial supply of manure from the
old stable. A number of standard trees, of the same variety, developed
beautifully until they attained twenty or thirty feet, but then succumbed
to the blight, after the first effort at fruiting. So also the Beurre
Clairgean etc., etc. Their exposure to the same influences, and their
growth during several years did not occasion the blight, but the debility
which must inevitably attend fruiting seems the most prolific cause.
All the phenomena of pear blight can be accounted for, and we are greatly
encouraged in protecting the trees therefrom if, we assume, it is only the
result of weakness and deficient vitality; if so, as in epidemics, all the
pear trees may be poisoned or ergotized, but only the weakest succumb; and
perhaps this debility may be confined to one limb. The practical value of
this view is manifest, as it is impracticable to avoid using the same
knife, and remove every blighted leaf from the orchard. Moreover, if the
limb is a large one, its prompt removal shocks the vitality of the whole
tree[1] and thus renders other parts more vulnerable. On the contrary
view, the limb may be allowed to drop by natural process, precisely as all
trees in a forest shed their lower limbs, leaving hardly a cicatrice or
scar, and this may be insured at any season by a cord of hemp twine,
firmly bound around the limb. The inevitable strangulation, and the
healing of the stump (without the mycelium of fungi which the knife or saw
inevitably propagates by exposing a denuded surface, if not more directly)
proceed more rapidly than the natural slough of limbs by starvation.
Moreover the fruit may mature on such limbs during their strangulation, as
this may not be perfected before the subsequent winter.
The next practical result of my view is the fundamental importance of all
those means which are calculated to husband the vital force of the tree
during its first effort to fruit; one of these is the use of a soil that
will not produce more than twenty bushels of corn without manure, thus a
large proportion of the setts will be aborted, but one half of what
remains should be removed, and subsequently the area beneath the limbs
should have a wheelbarrow of good compost. D. S.
Footnote 1: NOTE.--The shock as to vital force is
demonstrated by the fact that when young trees are not
trimmed at all their girth increases more rapidly, and they
bear fruit sooner. Moreover, when old trees are severely
pruned (though not half the proportion of wood is removed)
they fail to bear during the next year. I find that a hemp
cord about the size of the stem of a tobacco pipe
(one-fourth inch diameter) will soon become imbedded in the
bark if firmly tied around a limb, and perhaps this size is
more efficient than a thicker cord.
The Black Walnut.
The black walnut is without doubt the most valuable tree we have for the
rich lands of the "corn belt," West, and one which is very easily grown
everywhere if the farmer will only learn how to get it started. How few we
see growing on our prairies. Why? Simply because to have it we must grow
it from the nuts. It is nearly impossible to transplant black walnut trees
of any size and have them live; although it is a fact that whenever a
non-professional attempts to grow them from the nuts he is almost sure to
fail, it is also a fact that there is no tree that is more easily grown
from the seed than this, if we only know how to do it.
It is my purpose in this note to tell how to do it, and also how not to do
it.
In the first instance we will suppose a man lives where he can gather the
nuts in the woods. When the nuts begin to fall let him plow deeply the
plot of ground he wishes to plant and furrow it off three or four inches
deep, the distance apart he wishes his rows to be. He will then go to the
woods and gather what nuts he wishes to plant, and plant them at once,
just as they come from the tree, covering them just out of sight in the
furrows. This is all there is of it; simple, is it not? But it will not do
to gather a great wagon box full, and let them stand in it until they
heat, or to throw them in a great heap on the ground and let them lay
there until they heat. It will not do, either, to hull them and let them
lay in the sun a week or two, or hull them, dry them and keep them until
spring, and then plant; none of these plans will do if you want trees. Of
course if the nuts are hulled and planted at once they will grow; but this
hulling is entirely unnecessary. Besides, the hulls seem to act as a
special manure for the young seedlings, causing them to grow more
vigorously.
Next, we will suppose one wishes to plant walnuts where they can not be
had from the woods, but must be shipped in. There seems to be only one
plan by which this can be done safely every time, which is as follows:
Gather the nuts as they fall from the trees--of course when they begin to
fall naturally all may be shaken down at once--and spread them not over a
foot deep, on the bare ground under the shade of trees. Cover out of sight
with straw or leaves, with some sticks to hold in place called a "rot
heap;" then after they are frozen and will stay so, they may be shipped in
bags, boxes, barrels, or in bulk by the car-load, and then, again, placed
in "rot heaps," as above, until so early in the spring as the soil is in
workable condition. Then plant as directed in the fall, except the soil
should be firmly packed around the nuts. Keep free from weeds by good
cultivation, and in due time you will have a splendid grove.
There was an immense crop of walnuts in this district last fall, and
thousands of bushels were put up carefully, in this way, all ready for
shipment before the weather became warm; many more thousands were planted
to grow seedlings from, for, notwithstanding the walnut transplants poorly
when of considerable size, the one year seedlings transplant with as
little loss as the average trees.
There is no tree better adapted for planting to secure timber claims with
than the black walnut, and none more valuable when the timber is grown.
For this purpose the land should be plowed deeply, then harrowed to
fineness and firmness, and furrowed out in rows four, six, eight, or ten
feet apart. The nuts may then be planted as directed. It is best to plant
thickly in the rows, then if too thick they can be thinned out,
transplanting the thinnings, or selling them to the neighbors. They should
be thoroughly cultivated, until large enough to shade the ground, and
thinned out as necessary as they grow larger. A walnut grove thoroughly
cultivated the first ten years will grow at least twenty feet high, while
one not cultivated at all would only grow two to three feet in that time.
D. B. WIER., LACON, ILL.
Notes on Current Topics.
ARBOR DAY.
Why can not Illinois have an Arbor Day as well as Nebraska, or any other
State. There ought to be ten millions of trees planted the coming spring
within its borders--saying nothing of orchard trees--by the roadside, on
lawns, for shade, for wind breaks, for shelter, for mechanical purposes,
and for climatic amelioration. Nearly all our towns and villages need more
trees along the streets or in parks; thousands of our farms are suffering
for them; hundreds of cemeteries would be beautified by them, and
numberless homes would be rendered more pleasant and homelike by an
addition of one, two, or a dozen, to their bleak places. Can not THE
PRAIRIE FARMER start a boom that will lead to the establishment of an
Arbor Day all over the State? Why not? There is yet time.
HOT-BEDS.
For the benefit of those who can not command the usual appliances for
hot-beds, I will say that they can be made so as to answer a good purpose
very cheaply. Take a nice sunny spot that is covered with a sod, if to be
had. Dig off the sod in squares and pile them carefully on the north side
and the ends of the pit, to form the sides of the bed, with a proper
slope. The soil thrown out from the bottom may be banked up against the
sods as a protection. After the bed is finished, the whole may be covered
with boards, to turn the water off. These answer in the place of glass
frames. As the main use for a hot-bed is to secure bottom heat, very good
results can be obtained in these cheaply constructed affairs. After the
seeds are up, and when the weather will permit, the boards must be removed
to give light and air--but replaced at night and before a rain. Of course,
where large quantities of plants are to be grown, of tender as well as
hardy sorts, it would be better and safer to go to the expense of board
frames and glass for covering.
DON'T DO IT.
Of course, all the peach trees, and many of the other stone fruits, and
most of the blackberry and raspberry plants, will show discoloration of
wood when the spring opens--so much so that many will pronounce them
destroyed, and will proceed to cut them away. Don't do it. Peaches have
often been thus injured, and by judicious handling saved to bear crops for
years afterward. But they will need to be thoroughly cut back. Trees of
six or seven years old I have cut down so as to divest them of nearly all
their heads, when those heads seemed badly killed, and had them throw out
new heads, that made large growth and bore good crops the following
season. Cut them back judiciously, and feed them well, but don't destroy
them. And so with the berry plants. Wait and see, before you destroy.
PEARS FROM RUSSIA.
No one who reads Prof. Budd's articles on Russian Pears, can fail to be
interested and struck with the prospect of future successful pear culture
in the United States. It is highly probable that Russia is yet to give us
a class of that fruit that will withstand the rigors of our climate. But
how is this to be accomplished? Individual enterprise can, and doubtless
will, accomplish much in that direction; but the object seems to me to be
of sufficient importance to justify State or National action. The great
State of Illinois might possibly add millions to her resources by giving
material aid in the furtherance of this purpose--and a liberal expenditure
by the General Government, through the Department of Agriculture, or the
American Pomological Society, would be more usefully applied than many
other large sums annually voted. At all events, another season of fruitage
ought not to be allowed to pass without some concerted action for the
purpose of testing the question.
Some of our strongest nurserymen will likely be moving in the work, but
that will not be enough. The propagator of that fruit, however, who will
succeed in procuring from the European regions a variety of pears that
will fill the bill required by the necessities of our soil and climate,
has a fortune at his command.
OLD WINTER