USA > Pennsylvania > Mifflin County > History of Mifflin County : its physical peculiarities, soil, climate, &c. ; including an early sketch of the state of Pennsylvania Volume I > Part 29
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The grape will prosper in a great variety of soil and climate provided only the soil be dry. Varities best to be planted in Mifflin county are the improved native sorts among which are the Concord, Hartford Prolific, Ives Seedling, and a few others, Dela- ware and Diana, &c., sufficiently hardy that they need not be taken to bed with you in cold winter nights, but will endure our climate and make good returns for the labor spent upon them. The Hartford Prolific is desirable for its good quality and early ripening ; Concord for productiveness and good health ; Clinton and Diana for their keeping qualities; the Ives Seedling for marketing and wine; the Delaware and Creveling for table use. These va- rieties will all endure the winters in Mifflin county. Mauures I would give grapes nonc at all. Fuller recommends stable manure. I would do so too, were I writing on the barren poor sands of New Jersey as he did, but in Mifflin county there is no land too poor to grow the best grapes in our latitude, and is peculiarly fitted for their growth. Pruning has been a perplexing question to the amateur grape grower. I would advise you to read Hussman, Fuller, Meehen, and every other author you can lay hands on. After having done this, throw them all aside and take your shears and about four ounces of common sense, study the habits of the vine, and the manner of producing its fruit, and then build a little more trellis and let pruning alone, or do but little of it. Did vines grow to order, or each one like every other vine then rules might be useful, but as it is, they confuse and mislead. I observed in the vineyards of northern Ohio last fall, that in all vineyards where severe pruning was practiced, they lost their crops with the mildew and rot, but on neglected, unpruned vines there was none of these in a single instance. The reason was obvious. The severely pruned forced a large amount of the cir- culating sap into the fruit and trimmed stumps on which the fruit hung, causing a rot and mildew from its over-abundance, but the vine that was allowed to grow as nature designated, and the laws
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of nature make no mistakes, went on and performed its proper functions, and its end performed its mission fulfilled according to law. The propagation of the vine is a simple process. Cut the enttings from which yon intend to propagate to three buds. Do this after the maturity of the bnds in the fall and bury them in the earth, or in the cellar, for even temperature and moisture till late spring, then plant in a rich, mellow bed sloping them so that the lower bud is five inches deep, and the middle bud one or two inches deep, and let these take root, and the upper bud put out the leaves and young vine. The middle bud two inches below the surface will also do this at times. Transplant at one on two years old.
For the preservation of fruit, gather when fully ripe, pack in boxes of a bushel or less, with layers of cotton among them, put away in a dry, cool cellar, and the work is done. Clintons and Dianas will keep till April or May. Concord do not keep well. It is important, in planting grapes, that proper distances be observed, that they may have the room to imitate the old hen who was set on a hundred eggs, viz: to spread themselves. It is enstomary in Europe to plant six by six feet. That will do for their weak, slen- der growers, but our strong-growing American sorts, want ten by twelve or twelve by twelve feet, which isas near as the Concord, Clinton or Ives Seedling should be planted. Delaware, will grow much closer, six by eight is sufficient. A stronger growth of wood is made on a rich soil. A healthier vine and a richer fruit on a silicious soil, but thorough drainage in all cases. Mineral manures may be applied to advantage on soils lacking the elements which they supply.
The Horse.
The breeding and raising of animal stock of various kinds, as the horse, the ox, the sheep, the hog and others, in some countries, can be pursued with profit. But in Mifflin county, the value of lands and farm products, the labors and and the fertilizers necessary for the proper culture and nutriment of soils, the length of our winters, and the feeding term of all domestic animals, the cheap- n'ess of transportation to and from those localities that have more advantageous facilities for stock growing than we; all these render it unprofitable to grow these here, as they are grown there, with a few exceptions, viz : The horse and the sheep, and such others only as are needed for domestic use.
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The horse and sheep may be grown here with profit, and the finer breeds and specimens are sought for for shipment to other parts.
It is our purpose to treat in this section especially of that most noble animal, the horse, as no other of all the domestic tribes have held the position he has in all human history, in all civiliza- tion.
The equine race furnish the only animal alike useful in the arts of peace and war, and the horse is rendered an effective coadjutor in an infinite variety of human pursuits. In peace, he aids in the labors of agriculture and commerce, ministers to our social attach- ments and pleasures, while in war he is absolutely indispensable. None of the triumphs of modern engineering can supersede, offset or neutralize the advantages one army would have over another dis- possessed of this valuable auxiliary.
Conflicts, on which the fate of nations depended, have been won or lost by this efficient instrumentality. To this the conquest of Mexico was due. " Sheridan's ride " is immortalized ; Grierson in Mississippi, Stuart on the Potomac, Morgan in Ohio, are among more recent instances. Waterloo was lost by Napoleon mainly by the failure of his cavalry. Frederick the Great, of Prussia, owed his success, in a great measure, to his cavalry, as also did Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, Oliver Cromwell, Hannibal, Alexander and other warriors of antiquity. When asked for the origin of his noble steed, Abdul-Kadir, the Arab chief, replied : "When God wished to create the horse, He said to the south wind, ' I wish to form a creature out of thee; be thou condensed.' Afterwards came the angel Gabriel, and took a handful of that matter, and presented it to God, who formed it into a light brown or sorrel horse, saying : ' I have created thee; I have called thee horse; I have bonnd for- tune upon thy mane, that hangs over thine eyes ; thou shalt be the lord of all other beasts; men shall follow thee wheresoever thou goest ; thou shalt be as good for pursuit as for flight ; thou shalt fly without wings; riches shall repose in thy loins, wealth shall be made by thy intercession.' "
Less fanciful are the deductions from history and seience as to liis origin. Fossil remains demonstrate that he was an inhabitant of the new world anterior to the flood, and cotem- porary with the mastodon ; but this race here had become extinct, and he was unrepresented here at the time of the discovery of this continent. In the old world he was fortunately preserved. As he
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was designedly a creature for the use of man, he thrives best under his care.
Barbarous tribes recognized his ntility, as well as the civilized nations. The Indian, while he repulses our advances to give him christianity and civilization, has learned to subdne and utilize the descendants of the stock taken to Mexico by the Spaniards ; hence, with civilized and savage, this noble animal has become his com- panion in every part of the world that is habitable by man. He is found in a wild state in the unpeopled wastes of Central Asia ; but naturalists are not agreed on the question as, whether there found, he is the type of a race originally found wild, or descended from the tame stock of some ancient people. Certain it is, he was the companion of man from the remotest antiquity.
There is evidence that they have been bred on the Assyrian plains for more than a thousand years. Late researches among the ruins of oriental cities of Nineveh and Babylon have brought to light sculp- tured images of the horse, which might be a fac simile of the Arabian horse of to-day, although these sculptures may have in these figures represented the family steeds of Sennacherib or Nebuchednezzar.
Descriptions given by the sacred writers still further trace the affinity of the ancient type with the modern Arab steed. Job's sublime description of the war-horse would not apply to an animal less noble than the Arab of the desert.
The prophet Habbakuk, in warning the Jews of the dangers from the powerful forces with which the Chaldees were about to assail them, says : " Their horses are swifter than the leopards, and more fierce than the wolves ; their horsemen shall fly as the eagle hasteneth to eat."
In point of usefulness, the horse can claim superiority over every other domestic animal. He has been prized for various properties,. the beauty and gracefulness of his form. The nobleness of his de- meanor, his strength and his swiftness, have furnished a theme for the historian and poet, since the days of Job. The varieties of the horse present striking external differences, but all are included in one zoological classification, their diversity of forms and sizes, being at- tributed to uses, climate and breeding. The English and Flemish draft horses, differ often in weight, while the Shetland pony of two. hundred pounds, excites our astonishment, that all are identical in origin. The horse in our modern civilization, more so in towns. than in country, has became the victim of numerous diseases. One object is to investigate and make known these causes, preventives.
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and cnres, for the benefit of our eqnine friend and his owners, and work and study for the amelioration of the condition of the noble animal.
As with the human animal, so with the equine, his food, his drink and his manner of living, and labors, make up his general health, other things being equal. Diseases among horses, in new conntries, have never been so numerous nor so virulent as in older localities. So with the hardy pioneer, of whom we have so largely spoken in preceding pages ; his robust health, as well as his horse, can be at- tributed to his coarse food, free exercise in the open air, and well- ventilated apartments. The Indian and Mexican ponies are never siek, and feed exclusively on wild grasses, green or dried, on their native plains or prairies. Let us look a moment, at the hay crop of the United States, the variety of grasses grown in the different States, and the condition of horses in regard to health.
The fat-producing elements that have enlarged the carcass of the Conestoga horse, has not tended to robust health or longevity. The California equine that makes his hundred and twenty-five miles a day, excels the famed Arabian brother, in speed and endurance, on a regime of wild hay, produeing good wind, great enduranee, but less of the carbonaceous deposit than is on his Conestoga cotem- porary. There are about three thousand varieties of grasses now known, and new ones are continually discovered in the unexplored regions of the West. Only abont thirty of these have been brought under cultivation, selected for their large yield and for their nutri- tive or fat producing qualities. The annual hay crop in the United States, is about twenty-five million tons, worth two hundred and fifty million dollars. Clover is the greatest meat producing food, it only requiring twelve pounds of hay to make one pound of flesh, henee the flesh on the clover fed horse of Pennsylvania, in contrast with the lean, bony races that feed on the wild prairie grasses of the West. Six pounds of barley, seven of oats, eight of beans or peas, and one hundred and fifty of turnips or earrots, are each esti- mated to produce one pound of flesh. A chemical analysis of the the grape, as well as experiments in feeding them to animals, proves them to contain less of the meat-produeing elements, and more of the bone and tendon, or in other words, less of the carbonaceons elements, and more of the vigor, framework and endurance of the animal.
Our readers, many of them will, with the writer, remember the ante-railroad period of this country when the turnpikes were
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traversed by stages and " big wagons," when hundreds of wagons and thousands of horses done the work that required the greatest physical endurance. The feed adjudged the best, was coarse straw cut up and a small amount of ground small grain added thereto. The latter experiences of the old Ohio stage company in northern Ohio in the same age was to feed coarse straw and a small amount of oats or corn. The most experienced and practically best informed of western livery men have for years and are to-day feeding wild native hay from the prairie with the best results, while close unventilated stables, pampered feeding and bad air of eastern livery stables have induced epidemics. The comparatively open shed, the coarse regime of the inhabitant of the west have proved a preventive and immunity from disease. Preventives are better than cures, and the sooner men interested in this valuable animal, (and who is not), adopt a system of regime more in consonance with the natural and physical requirements of the horse, his health will be secured, his usefulness enhanced, his value increased, and the physical condition ameliorated of this man's best friend and helper, of all the domestic animals.
The Peach.
The peach is a native of Persia, and its name refers to its origin in that country. It is known to have flourished in both China and Persia at a very early date, and was highly appreciated in both countries. It has often been found growing spontaneously in Asiatic Turkey. The peach is mentioned by Pliney, and several others of the classical writers, and many anecdotes are related of the veneration and even superstition with which it was regarded by the Asiatics. There is reason to presume that it was one of the "trees of the garden" which God planted in Eden, and which were to flourish, nourish and cheer our first parents in their pristine purity and happiness.
It is not mentioned in the Bible, but Congener, the Almond, is mentioned several times as early as the days of Jacob, and we find when he was preparing his present for the Governor of Egypt, he commanded his sons to take "myrrh, nuts and almonds" as a gift, showing the esteem in which they were then held ; and again, in the direction for making the golden candlestick among its orna- ments, the myrtle and almond are mentioned as the principle ones. The peach, like civilization and the human race, traveled from the Orient westward into Europe, and we find it mentioned by Roman
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history in the reign of Emperor Claudius. It was highly valued by the patricians of Rome, and was cultivated by them as one of their choicest luxuries. It is still a standard tree in Italy. It was intro- duced into England from Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century, and has been cultivated there as an exotic ever since. Her cool, moist climate, however, prevents its general cultivation, and it is only grown by walls or under glass, and the fruit is sel- dom seen there except on the tables of the aristocracy. Even in France, where the climate is much milder, it is not always reared without protection, and the fruit has not gone into general use, but is a delicacy confined to the wealthy alone, and its cultivation con- fined principally to gardens. In China it is extensively cultivated in the gardens of the rich, and has attained an extraordinary size, but of their manner of propagation and culture but little is yet known, owing to the exclusive policy heretofore pursued by that. ancient empire. Now, since its long fast-barred doors have been opened, among other benefits hoped for is a more accurate knowl- edge of the culture and habits of the peach. The Chinese are great gardeners, and much that affects the curious in horticulture, as in other arts, we have much to learn of them that is both interesting and useful. We know already that they produce peaches of a very large size, and two at least of rare shape, viz : the Chinese flat and the crooked peach. With this beginning we will not be surprised at yet more curious developments. The curiosity, ingenuity and enterprise of our countrymen will soon discover whatever we may know. It is to our credit that the United States is the only country in the world, in either ancient or modern times, that has produced peaches in sufficient quantities to allow them to be a common marketable commodity, alike a luxury to the rich and the poor, and with us so thoroughly acclimated that every man may rest "under his own vine and" peach tree, and all may regale themselves and their families on this most wholesome and delicious fruit to their heart's content. The peach comes to finer perfection on the east- ern side than on the western side of this continent. So also on the castern world. The trees, vines and shrubs of western Europe prosper best on the western coast of North America, while our im- portations from China and Japan do well with us. This is illus- trated in a remarkable degree in the shrubbery that has been brought to this country from the Orient that is doing so remarkably in Mif- flin county, and the peach is far inferior even in Illinois and Iowa
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to what it is here and farther east. So with many other importa- tions.
One of those inexplicable occurrences in fruit raising, says the Boston Journal of Chemistry, is prominently brought to notice this season. For a period of seven years the peach tree has remained barren of fruit in New England and the Northern States, and for this no satisfactory reason has been assigned. The present season every tree is crowded with fruit, and for this result we have no ex- planation to offer worthy of trust. It matters not, so far as our observation extends, where the trees are located, whether on the top of a hill or on the northern or southern declivity, or whether in low lands or in dry or wet soils; all present the same pleasing as- pect ; the branches are all borne down with healthy fruit. The theories so readily formed and widely disseminated regarding this caprice of the peach tree are in fault ; not one of them is worth considering. We had cold weather 'and wet weather and deep snows for a period, and no snow for a longer period during the winter ; in short no meteoric condition can be reasonably assigned for the prolific condition of the peach trees. It is a freak of nature, or perhaps better, it results from a law of nature not well understood. Our peach crop this year promises to reach at least five hundred bushels, and the trees are perfectly healthy and the fruit in excellent condition.
The Potato. ITS HISTORY AND CULTIVATION.
When the Spaniards conquered Peru, in the sixteenth century, they found some potatoes there, and carried some to Europe, giving some to the Pope of Rome. The plant was cultivated a little in Spain, Italy and Burgundy, and very little in the Netherlands, and from a certain resemblance to the truffle, an esculent fungus growing in the earth in that country, the Italians then gave them the name of Tartufi or Taratufoli, from which the Germans derived their name of Kartoffel. The French called them the " Apples of the Earth,". or, in their language, Pammes de Terre, while in Austria and por- tions of Germany the equivalent cognomen, Erd-Apfel, was used. John Hawkins first introduced them into England, in 1565, Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and Admiral Drake in 1586.
The latter sent some to a friend to plant, with the remark that the fruit was excellent and nutritious, so that it would be very useful in Europe. His friend planted the tubers, and they grew
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nicely, and when the seed balls were ripe, he took those instead of the tubers (roots), and fried them in butter, and seasoned then with sugar and cinnamon, and placed them before some company as a great rarity.
Of course, these balls tasted disgustingly, and the company con- cluded the fruit was not adapted to European cultivation. The gardener pulled up the plants and burned them.
The gentleman, who chanced to be present, stepped on one of the baked potatoes as it lay in the ashes, when it broke open, when he noticed that it was as white as snow and mealy, and had such an agreeable smell that he tasted it, and found it very palatable.
The new vegetable was thus rescued, but for a century after it was only cultivated in his garden. In 1600, the Queen of England made the remark in her household book, that a pound of potatoes cost about two shillings.
From England the plant was gradually introduced into Holland and France, but it first appeared only as an expensive rarity on the tables of the rich, and on the royal tables, and as a decoration in princely rooms. Louis XIV was accustomed to wear a potato blossom in his button hole, and his queen wore a wreath of them as a head ornament at court balls.
As in many other circumstances, scarcity and hunger accom- plished a general distribution. The grain failed for several years, and in 1771 a nourishing plant was sought to relieve this need. In 1773 an apothecary named Parmentier wrote an essay to which was awarded a prize by the Academy of Natural Science, and in this he directed the attention of political economits to the potato. He also cultivated several acres of them himself. The king was so-de- lighted with the excellent yield that he exclaimed : "We have found bread for the poor." But the poor, and especially the peas- ants, would not try them, but despised and scorned the strange bulb. Parmentier adopted a stratagem. He made a public an- nouncement that his potatoes were now ripe, but that they were so valuable that he had obtained from the king a special protection, and every one who stole a potato would receive a double penalty. This worked to perfection. The peasants came at night and stole the potatoes, carried them home, and on trial found them so good that in a short time every corner of the field was dug over and cleaned out, and the next spring hundreds of peasants planted stoleu potatos. The potato was introduced into Germany still later, although planted in the Botanical Gardens as carly as 1588.
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In many parts they were introduced in the years of famine in the Thirty Years War, and then in the beginning of the eighteenth century they were cultivated and prepared in different ways as food for feeding animals and for starch.
Every time a grain harvest failed the potato made rapid advances into favor. The manner in which the Prussian government aided its introduction is well told by a celebrated author : " I was about six or seven years old, and just putting on trousers-say about 1743 or 1744-when there was a dreadful scarcity, so that many persons died from hunger. In the next following year the city of Colburgh received a present from Frederick the Great-a thing utterly un- known at that time. A large freight wagon full of potatoes came to the market place, and on the announcement made throughout the city and its suburbs that every owner of a garden should be at the city hall at a certain hour, and by grace of the king a benefit was to be conferred upon them. People began to conjecture what that had to do with the gift, and the less they knew the more they wondered. The city fathers now exhibited the fruit to the assem- bled multitude, and a long lecture was delivered on the planting and cultivation and cooking them. The good people took the highly praised tubers with wonder; they smelled and tasted them, and shook their heads. Some were thrown to the dogs, who snuffed about them, and of course rejected them with disdain. Judgment was pronounced against them. 'See,' said they, ' they have no smell nor taste, and even the dogs won't eat them. What help will they be to us?' 'The belief was general that they grew on trees. Very few were planted as they should have been, some sticking singles ones in the ground here and there, paying no further atten- tion to them. Others piled them in heaps and threw a little dirt over them. The next year another load of potatoes was sent, but experience had taught them something, and a person was sent along that understood the cultivation, and who aided in the planting and took care that they were attended to In many places the govern- ment was obliged to use compulsory measures, and dragoons watched the peasants to see that they planted potatoes. In other places the priests and clergy endeavored to enlighten the people, and stimulate them, but everywhere the progress was slow. In Switzerland they were cultivated as early as 1730, and in the famine of 1771 they saved thousands of lives ; but they did not come into general use until the beginning of this century, and principally since 1817.
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