most cases.

For cherries but half the strength of mixture may be used without

injury to the foliage by the spray.

CROWN GALL OR ROOT GALL.

The crowns and roots of cherry trees sometimes have knots or galls upon them. The galls vary in size; sometimes they are more than an inch in diameter. Peaches suffer to a still greater extent from this crown gall. Pears and apples are likewise affected. Similar galls upon raspberry plants have been traced to eelworms. It may be that the same agency has to do with those on the cherry. The disease appears to be capable of spreading from one tree to its very near neighbor. No trees affected in this manner should be received from nurserymen and all with the root or crown gall should be burned as soon as discovered.

EXPERIENCE IN CORN GROWING.

By JOHN BEGG, Columbus Grove, O.

In presenting this subject, I do not claim any superior knowledge over that possessed by those who have been all their lives engaged in the same business, but with all my experience in corn growing, I find that I can learn something new about the business every year; and by interchange of experience upon this and kindred practical topics we can all be benefited.

I believe it has been said that "Corn is King" among agricultural products in many sections of the country, and when we consider the many advantages attending its production, I am led to believe it is entitled to all the importance attached to it, for no other crop will give as sure a yield to the farmer under all conditions as will "King Corn." Neither can any other of the staple farm products be converted into so many different merchantable products as can this. If prices are so low when the crop is harvested as to be unremunerative, the farmer can convert his corn into beef, pork, mutton or whatever other kind of live stock product may best suit his fancy or circumstances; and when this is practiced it gives him a wider market for the products of his farm, insures better prices besides enabling him to retain the greater part of the fertilizing properties of his crop upon his farm in such shape as to be returned to the soil again. With many other of our products, such as wheat, potatoes, vegetables, etc., this caunot be done, but the producer is compelled to market them within a certain time or serious loss ensues, So then, in view of these facts, anything that may be said that will tend to facilitate the cultitivation or increase the production and value of this product will be of value to the corn producers of the country.

Then let us briefly notice a few of the more important points connected with the production of this crop.

First, the soil should be as rich as can be obtained and when not so by nature should be made so by good husbandry. It should also be well underdrained, as corn will not grow or produce well upon land that is wet and sour. A rich, well underdrained clover sod is an ideal place for corn to grow and yield well. When this cannot be obtained, as has been the case with so many of us in recent years, a timothy or some other kind of sod should be used if possible. On our own farm we always plow up as much sod land for corn each year as possible. This gives a fresh loose soil easily cultivated and easily kept clean of weeds, and the decaying sod furnishes food for the growing plants that hastens growth at the right time.

The depth of plowing should be regulated according to the kind of soil. In black bottom land we plow from seven to eight inches deep, but on clay soils probably five or six inches. This plowing should be done as early in the spring as possible after the frost is out of the ground and the land becomes settled. I do not approve of late plowing where it can be avoided, as it does not allow the soil to pack as it should before planting, neither will it retain moisture in dry seasons as well as where plowed early. This was plainly seen in the summer of 1895 during the protracted drouth. After plowing, sod land should be gone over with a disc or spring tooth harrow often enough to cut it up fine so that a smoothing harrow or plank drag will make the surface perfectly smooth. Great mistakes are frequently made by farmers planting their corn before they get their soil in perfect condition, the yield being often affected by carelessness in this particular.

The time to plant is also an important consideration in producing a corn crop. Many farmers, in order to beat their neighbors, plant their corn before either the soil or atmosphere is in proper condition. Corn is a sub-tropical plant and must have a certain degree of heat and moisture to insure rapid growth, and when planted when the ground and air are cold, it germinates very slowly and sometimes not at all. But when planting is deferred until proper conditions are obtained, the seed will germinate rapidly, the corn will come up in five or six days and the growth will be much more vigorous and rapid than when planted too early in the season. On the other hand, when corn is planted very late, there is a liability of damage from early frosts in the fall, so that the farmer should endeavor to get his ground ready to plant at the proper time. This, in our latitude, is from the first to the fifteenth of May. Corn that is planted the first half of May will be much more likely to produce a good crop than when planted either earlier or later.

The selection of seed also requires a good deal of care and attention to insure success. Seed corn should always be selected either before the corn is cut, by going through and taking the best ears, or at husking time. The corn thus selected should be put in a place where it can be thoroughly dried before freezing weather comes. Corn that is thus properly dried and kept in a dry place during winter will scarcely ever fail to germinate quickly and produce a healthy plant, other conditions being favorable. Many a corn crop has been seriously damaged from no other cause than carelessness upon the part of the farmers in caring for their seed, and sometimes a difference of several bushels per acre may be seen, when corn is harvested, simply by the producers being careful in selecting a good quality of seed corn.

In planting, care should be taken to plant to as nearly a uniform depth as possible. When planting is done by hand, a little care and skill on the part of the workman will enable him to do this, and when drill or check-row planter is used, the depth is easily regulated by adjusting the machine properly. Corn that is planted in this way will come so evenly as to enable the farmer to begin cultivating much sooner than where some is planted deep and some shallow. When soil is prepared properly, two or three inches is as deep as corn should be planted.

I prefer planting in hills rather than in drills. Hill corn is more easily kept clean and can be harvested with much greater ease also, and, so far as my experi ence goes, the yield is just as large and ears as large and well formed as when planted in drills. Cultivation should begin just as soon as the plants are large enough to admit of it and be kept up continuously until the wheat and hay harvest interfere, when it should stop for the season, I have long practiced cultivating our corn once per week if possible from last of May till first of July, never cultivating any after harvest is over. There may be exceptions to this practice, but they

are rare.

I prefer a cultivator with small shovels, three or four on each side. This, when rightly handled, stirs all the soil between the rows; can be run very close to the

small corn without damaging it, and leaves the surface comparatively level. It also destroys all weeds as well or better than any implement I have ever used. Cultivate deeper the first and second times while the corn is small, as the roots have not spread to any great extent and no damage will ensue. All subsequent cultivation should be more shallow as the corn will be larger and the roots spread over the spaces more. The number of cultivations must be determined by circumstances, but each cultivation should be thoroughly and carefully done. The main objects sought by cultivating are to break the crust, to prevent too much evaporation of moisture from soil and to destroy weeds.

I do not deem it necessary to "rip the ground up," as some farmers term it, as deep as it was originally plowed, when the corn is growing. I think more harm comes from such work than good to the growing crop. I also advise level cultivation rather than otherwise as it serves all the purposes that would otherwise be obtained and leaves the field in much better condition for whatever use the owner may want to make of it afterwards.

At sometime during the time of cultivation corn should be carefully thinned to a certain number of stalks to each hill. My practice has been to do this work after a rain when possible as the surplus plants can be removed at that time with less damage to the remaining ones. I thin to three stalks in a hill wherever I thin at all, but where four strong thrifty plants are growing in one hill, I let them remain as they will generally do very well in that way. This practice gives a beautiful stand, not so thick as to make the ears small and yet thick enough to give a good yield of corn. When this work is being done all weeds that have escaped the cultivator should be pulled out, as hand weeding is the safest and best way to keep corn clean after all. And when such methods as I have indicated are practiced, the farmer will generally be rewarded with a fair yield of corn; or he will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the failure, if such it is, is not due to any neglect upon his part.

As to cutting and caring for the crop in the fall, I need say but little, as very little change has taken place in the methods employed during the last twenty-five years. I prefer letting corn mature well before cutting. Many farmers err in cutting their corn too soon and the result is either shriveled, or moldy corn. I cut it up in shocks twelve hills square, containing one hundred and forty-four hills each. Especially would I advise this method where fields are to be sown to wheat after cutting, but when corn is extremely heavy, or weather unusually wet, I would put it up in smaller shocks. In ordinary seasons, however, large shocks will keep just as well and are much preferable to handle in winter when fed to cattle as is done in many corn growing sections. Leaving corn on the stalk as practiced by many farmers is a practice not to be recommended at this time. Corn fodder when properly cared for is a most excellent feed for almost all kinds of stock and is an excellent absorbent also, and when left standing on fields and simply pastured in winter it is of little value to the farmer for either. Besides, when this practice is indulged in, there is greater loss to the fields from stock tramping over them while feeding upon the stalks than all the saving of labor gained by not cutting and caring for the crop in the proper way.

As to the care of fodder I will say nothing, as it has now become a separate subject and will be considered at another time. But in concluding this paper I would advise all farmers whose circumstances will permit to raise corn along with other crops the same as when prices were higher, and feed the products of the corn fields into some kind of growing stock whenever possible.

This will give you the advantage of an enlarged market for your corn crop and at the same time enable you to keep up the fertility of your farms with ut little cost for commercial fertilizers. In fact, I believe the farmers who are still engaged in raising corn as one of their staple crops and are disposing of it in the manner

indicated above are doing much better, during these dull times, than are those who were induced to leave off their corn and live stock growing and go headlong into the production of some of the more perishable products of the farm and orchard. Especially is this true in sections where the soil and other conditions are suitable for corn and live stock and where the farmers have neither the knowledge or other requisites to enable them to compete with vegetable or fruit growers in more favored localities. So then, in this, as in all other lines of work, let us apply our-. selves with diligence and study, not only our soil and other conditions but our own adaptability for the business, and by this diligence in study and perseverance in work we will succeed in realizing a fair profit from our corn crops though prices are seemingly against us at this time.

MASTER OR SLAVE.

By E. E. ELLIOTT, Morning Sun, O.

A strange thing in its power and workings is influence. We find it, moving in its mysterious way its wonders to perform, throughout all the realm of creation.

We find unlike, inanimate objects knit together by some cohesive force. It is a form of influence which scientists tell us is called attraction. We confine two gases in the same space-the one absorbs the other and completely changes its nature. We mix two or three ingredients together and bring them in contact with another; the result is a disastrous explosion.

Learned men may call these diverse phenomena by different names, but us they may serve as illustrations of the workings and power of influence. We pass into the domain of animate creation and the same results are to be seen. Even man, gifted with reason and will, is attracted, controlled, repelled, and exerts like influence upon all with which he comes in contact.

It is not, however, to the general principle, but to one simple illustration of the power and action of influence that your attention is asked to-day. An illustration, too, that may well teach us how all things are bound together by the golden chains of mutual dependence.

On the one hand we have the farmer, on the other the soil. The Farmer and the Soil; their mutual power, their mutual relation. Which is, or should be, master, which the slave?

Of all the pursuits of the world's workers the calling of the agriculturist lies closest to mother earth. In their buying and selling, their strife and endeavors, others may forget their kinship with the soil; the farmer can never forget it. He is bound to it by ties which can never be severed. There is between them a covenant. He is in league with the very stones of his field. Not a day of his life passes but he is reminded that with the soil is bound up for him failure or success, sorrow or happiness.

To the born agriculturist there is a certain fascination linked with the soil. I believe in truth, it is inherent in the whole human family. As a friend once put it, "Nine-tenths of the people hope some day to own a farm to which they may retire to end their days," The universal desire of the American citizen is to possess a home. This desire is founded not so much in the bare walls and roof which compose the abode, as in the fact that with it go some square rods or acres of God's own earth which he may own, every foot of it, clear down to the center of the globe. This inborn love for the soil and everything connected with it is intensified

in the farmer. It satisfies every sense of his being. What to him are the perfumes of Cathay when o'er him steals the odors of the fresh plowed field or the aroma of the new mown hay?

"You ask him for the sweetest sound

His ears have ever heard;

A sweeter than the ripple's plash
Or trilling of a bird;

Than tapping of the rain drops
Upon the roof at night;

Than the singing of the pine trees
On yonder mountain height;
He will tell you these are tender,
Yet never quite so sweet

As the murmur and the cadence
Of the wind across the wheat."

To such a one the love of the land appeals like an overmastering passion. For it the pioneers pushed into the wilderness with memory ever looking backward and hope ever leading on. For it the homesteader joined in the mad rush into the unknown land of Oklahoma. For it men have sailed the seas over and scaled the mountains and swam the rivers. It has ever been so since the days of Abraham and Lot and the children of Israel and the promised land, and so it will ever be so long as it shall be said, "There remaineth yet much land to be possessed.”

Whence arises this peculiar attraction to the soil? It is not easy to explain. The simplest reason that can be given is the fact that men recognize in it material possibilities.

The soil is the source of all wealth, and no passion is so strong as that of greed for gain. Aside from this, and it may be but mere fancy, it seems to me that the ties which bind us to the soil are those of kinship. The farmer, more than all, recognizes the brotherhood of the soil, a communism of origin and purpose. The interchange of influence between the two is not, however, equally exerted. On the contrary, it seems that one must, for the good of both, in time become master of the other. If the farmer does not keep the soil where it properly belongs, under his feet, he will find he loses something of that divine spirit which is within him. The soil is ever of the earth, earthy--its tendency is downward. There is a popular idea that contact with the soil is to a degree degrading. It is assumed that the man who delves with pick or shovel, who handles the hoe or guides the plow is, because of his associations, a step below his fellow men. He may be respected for his integrity and worth, but the fact that he is a farmer or gardener or laboier is never forgotten. His calling is referred to in an apologetic way, and he is continually made to dwell in the vale of humility. We cannot claim that this is wholly unjust. The fariner as a class is not the most refined and cultivated of men. His manners are often ungraceful, his language uncouth, his bearing boorish. Worst of all, he usually doesn't care to have it otherwise. He would rather be a king among his hogs, although himself should class as a hog among kings. He is content to let his mind, his ambitions, his will remain chained to the low level of the soil. "The grossuess of its nature has had weight to drag him down.” Instead of mastering he is becoming enslaved. The influences which ought to minister to his higher development are working out his degradation. Think of the many men, and women, too, among your own acquaintance who have lived so slavishly close to the soil that "their very souls seem covered with muck." Toilers who tumble from their unrestful beds in feverish haste to take up the burdens of another day, who glance at the beauty of the rising sun, "rejoicing like a strong man to run a race," or at its glory as it drops behind the western slope, only to see if it presages fair weather or foul; restless spirits who find no pleasure in walk