Farm Examiners   Again.
Miters Indiana Farmer
[ wish that whoever it is that has taken
refuge behind the title "Kosciusko County
Tiller of the Soil" had come out under his
,.wn name, so I could have had the privilege of taking a peep at him at least. It
iv nice to have a man that makes an attack on you come out in the open. I
dou't like having him make incorrect
statements about me. I am tilling the
soil, and not farming on paper, though I
confess to writing a little once in a while,
and it does me good to know that my articles are read.
As to farm examiners W advisers, let
ute give some instances of what it has ac
complished. Twenty-five years ago, Denmark was raising a very poor quality of
butter and pork and eggs. To-day Danish
butter and pork and eggs command the
highest prices in London market, and it
was accomplished by the government send-
in;.- its inspectors around to advise the
farmers how to improve their product. Not
only has the quantity put out been doubled and trebled, but the price has been
raised even  more.
Or take Minnesota. If, 15 years ago,
anyone should have said that it would be
the banner butter State, he wonld have
been laughed at, and yet iu the last ten
yean Minnesota has taken every first
prize on butter wherever a bu.tter contest
of any consequence has been held. Minnesota took first prize and championship
on butter at the Columbian World's Fair,
at the Paris Exposition, at the Buffalo
Exposition, at the St. Louis World's Fair
and at every national dairy convention
since sire began to exhibit.
This certainly speaks for the Minnesota
creamery experts, who are hired by the
State to instruct the butter makers, to
visit their factories, and the farms of
those who produce cream, to give advice
all along the line of butter making. With
the faruier instructed in producing good
cream and the butter makers in how to
make good butter. Minnesota has made a
record without a parallel in the history
ef agriculture and it would not have been
l'c ssible without the dairy nnd creamery
examiner.
Now, your correspondent is correct in
saying that "uo one is better prepared
to teach the farmer than the farmer," provided he had left oft the "himself," as
that would imply that each farmer knew
it all. This I am sure no one would seriously think for a minute. Why, he shows
that he does not know how to apply his
manure, else he would not ask why a crop
is ofttimes not as good on the manured
parts of the field as ou the part that was
not manured?
Any freshman in our Agricultural Institute, or any up-to-date agricultural school,
could tell him how to apply that manure
so as to avoid the trouble he speaks of.
The men who nre teaching in the agricultural schools and colleges are farmers who
have been so successful that they have
been called to teach others how to farm,
and many of them are going back to managing farms again. Only, the other day
one of the professors in a western agricultural college was offered $10,000 to take
charge of a large farm and estate.
At the International Fat Stock Shows
held at Chicago the agricultural colleges
have invariably carried off the championship on a steer of their own feeding. At
the last one Iowa not only had the grand
champion, but also the reserve champion.
The year before, Minnesota had the grand
ehampion, and the year before that the
Nebraska college won it.    And they were
competing against the best farm feeders
in the country. In fact men who do nothing else.
Now these professors who feed these
steers, and who are teaching the boys in
these colleges how to feed cattle, kuow
their business, and if anyone doubts it let
him try to produce a better steer than
these fellows can. They are there because
they kuow how.
Now as to the question of its being only
the farmer's loss if he loses some manure.
He is not the only loser; his children and
his children's children are the losers. If
any manure is wasted, it means that the
farmer will have less to supply his home
with. And that the children that he has
brought into the world will have to take
the farm after he has wasted its fertility.
know it all, and are glad to learn, and
we do not keep our lamp under a
bushel; so whoever comes is free to profit
by our experience and investigation. Nothing is so helpful in any line of work as
an exchange of ideas. I hope to have the
acquaintance of one who has been kind
enough to notice the scribbling of your
humble servant. W. C. Palmer.
Winona Agr. Ins., Winona Lake, Ind.
Reasons for Rotation of Crops.
Editors Indiana Farmer
An intelligent correspondent in Illinois
writes: "Let us take for illustration any
one crop we please, corn, for instance.
Why cannot we grow corn on the same
land year after year, indefinitely, without
any diminution in the yield, provided we
The land is not ours to do with as we like.
We only hold it in trust and must pass it
oi* to our children, and it is our duty to
hand it over to them as good, at least, as,
when we got it. Remember the fate of
the servants who got the talents. The
one who did not make any use of his talent had it taken away from him. The
man who wastes manure is in the same
class with the servant who had his talent
taken away. In the ordinary way of
handling manure at least one-half of it is
wasted.
As to the wheat yield of this country
and England, your correspondent seems to
think that in England the crop does not
have to contend with frost and with insects and pests, and here again he is mistaken. He is right in inferring that they
cultivate better, as they do, but that wiil
not account for it all.
Commonsense and industry are necessary in the farmer, but that alone will not
give his live stock and plants plenty of
food. To do this he must know about
soils, about manures, about plant food
and how a plant uses it; and how the animal uses the food after the plant has made
it. Then he must know the kinds of
food that are suited to the different animals, and the purposes for which they are
fed; and a whole host of things. As
this correspondent lives in Kosciujsko
county, I would suggest that he attend one
of the classes of agriculture that are held
daily at the Winona Agricultural Institute, and I fteel sure that he will regret
that he has not had the opportunity of
taking a course such as these boys are
getting here.
By way of parting, I extend an invitation to the Kosciusko county brother to
v.'sit ns and give us the benefit of his
years of experience.     We don't pretend to
restore to the soil annually all the elements of plant food taken from it the
previous year by the crop, and by leaching? Oh, >by adding more than was lost,
why may we not even increase the crop
annually? Keeping the soil, of course,
sufficiently suplied all the time with umus.
This is not a question of economy, but of
possibility. Are we compelled to rotate
our crops in order to maintain fertility?"
There is no doubt that with a. gross-
feeding crop like corn, we can, by manuring the land annually with heavy applications of humus making manure, like
stable mannre, keep up and maintain its
productiveness for a long time, since the
leading demand of the corn crop is for nitrogen. Btj_ even in this case, unless the
land is unusually well supplied with phosphoric acid and potash, there will finally
be a diminution of the grain yield, since
the stable mannre does not supply these
in proportion to the nitrogen and humus-
making material. But one of the chief
reasons for rotation, aside from its final
bad effects on the land by reason of any
crop finally disliking to feed on its own
decay, is the effect on the crop itself
through the increase of the fungus diseases that effect it. Smut and other diseases will increase as the land becomes
infected with the spores. Then, with a
hoed crop like corn, it will be almost impossible to keep up the humus content in
the soil, except by the liberal use of stable
manure, and this is a barrier that cannot generally be overcome, because of the
hick of a sufficient supply. Wheat too
might be sowu year after year, if followed
in a suitable climate by cow-peas and
supplied with a sufficient amount of phosphoric acid and potash, but it would be
found in a few years that there would be
an excess of the nitrogen, and the straw
would become weak, and the crop inclined
to lodge. Rotation is, then, a matter of
farm economy. One crop makes a demand for plant food in different proportions to another, and we take advantage
of this fact in the arrangement of the rotation and the application of the fertilizers. Without a rotation we would have
to fertilize all the land every year, while
with a rotation we can use on the legume
crop a liberal amount of phosphoric acid
and potash, and depend on it to make the
hoed crop that may follow, since th*
more liberally wc supply these forms of
plant food to the legume crop, whethe;
peas or clover, the more uitrogeu they wilt
get for us, and the more humus-making
material they will put in the soil far more
cheaply than we could get it there by hauling stable manure, even if we could always have an abundance of this.
Farming is not a matter of possibilities,
of a theory, but an art practiced for the
purpose of making a profit, and the experience of ages has shown that a rotation of
crops devised for the purpose of increasing
the production of the staple sale crop, ami
the maintenance of animals  for the  production of manure, is the most profitalM**
method of farming.    We  rotate in orc/fj
to ha*-e not only grain crops to sell,  £"
crops to feed, for the growing of fota_-i
and  the  feeding of live  stock  lie  at S"
foundation  of profit  in  the  cultivation
ihe land, and we bring in the legume
cause if we feed them liberally with/      ->
pnorous and potash, they will give •      ne
nitrogen that costs so much if wc J>*»    it.
We  might in some  cases  be  able   to  buy
the stable manure, but even then it would
be more expensive humus making than by
growing the organic matter already spread
in the peas grown by the help of phosphoric acid and potash only.    In short, it is a
matter of business profit, and not of possibilities. W.   F.   Massey.
Wolves in Brown   County.
Wolves in Indiana are somewhat of a
novelty. During the recent siege of
told weather and deep snow it is repotted
that a pack of wolves, driven by hunger,
left their haunts in the wild forests of
Brown county and raided a flock of sheep,
belonging to .Tames Helms, a farmer living near Nashville. Several of the shee|i
were said to have been killed by the ravenous creatures.
The conning tower is the brain of a war
vessel. In its stands the commanding officer during an engagement. He is in-
\isible to the men and gives his commands by means of bell signals and speaking tubes which communicate with c\ cry
part of the vessel. Here are located the*
wheel and the nautical instruments. The
conning tower is situated over the forward turret. It is usually not more than
six feet across aud is protected by 12-lncb
plates. It not ouly is in touch with e. cry
part of the ship, but commands a perfect
view of the battle.
The other evening at Yankeetown.    as
two young men were driving along i tin-
try road, their horse frightened and ran
away. The accident was caused by a
thief who was carrying two 50-pound pigs
in a cracker box. The robber dropped
the box, nnd the pigs escaped and ran to
their home nearby. The owner of the
porkers lent the horseless young men another rig to get horae, because, as lie
said, it was their horse which detected the
robber and  Raved his pigs.