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 30
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
Before it had become fairly established, disease appeared first in 1664, then in 1780 and 1790 in South Germany and Hanover, and in 1830 in West Germany. In the great famine in 1770 in Bohemia where they had no potatoes, 180,000 persons starved to death, while in Schlesia where they were well cultivated they all lived. Of its introduction in its adoption to this country we would not speak.
To Grow Plants from Cuttings.
Of the refining and elevating influence of flowers as well as their healthfulness, we have already treated. Show me the family whose home is adorned with flowers " God's incarnated smiles" and I will will show you a family of refinement, intelligence and all those concomitants that make home and earthly paradise.
" To make your homes beautiful,
Bring to them flowers, Plant them around you, To bud and to bloom,
They will give life to our lonelies hours,
And brighten the pathway that leads to the tomb."
As this work is expected to go into most of the families in Mifflin connty, especially those of the leading intelligence of the county we deem this department a proper one to give a brief direction for the propogation and growth of plants, and thus not only enjoying the pleasure of their growth and progress, but also to save the cost and delay of sending for them to the professional florist. Most of our greenhouse plants are very easily grown from cuttings during the winter and spring or before the middle of April. The general principles to be observed in the modus operandi are common to all the varieties of plants or nearly so. The exceptions are in the preparation of the cuttings to be used, but the manner of using it we might say is uuformly the same. In the first place it is of paramount importance that the cutting from which the future plant is to be grown should be in the proper con- dition, namely, not too old nor hard. The rule observed by florists generally in this matter is that the young wood be so soft and succulent that it will snap readily on being bent. This rule will not apply to roses, but all the Coleus family, fuschias, geraniums, pelargoniums, helitropes, lantanas, verbenas, cuphea, begonia, alosia-citriadora, &c.
Our cutting being in the proper condition, the next thing in order, is soil in which to insert the cutting until it shall form roots, . in its new conditions. Much has been said and written on the best
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soils in which to grow cuttings. This is all superfluous. In the days of ignorance, in the primitiveness of the art, it was taught that different varieties of plants wanted differently composed soils in which to strike their roots. Some clay, some loam, some marl, and some sand ; and the distinctions were even drawn so fine as to designate the different colors of soil adapted to the different plants. Science, and experience, with a small proportion of common sense, (the latter article no man is expected to use if he has not got it) has abundantly demonstrated, that all the office performed by the soil, until the roots are formed, and then they should be potted off at once, is to act as a medinm for the retention of moisture and heat during the process of the formation of the callous, which must ever precede the formation of roots. When roots begin to strike out from the callons formation, the sooner the plants are potted off singly, the better, for the shorter the rootlets, the less the disturb- ance in transplantation. Now, having the cuttings and the soil prepared, we must, in the next place, put them in a proper condi- tion and position for healthful growth. Some have supposed that there was a magic virtue in the flower pot, for the growth of plants. They are much better off in a shallow tray, made of a soap or candle box, sawed in two, so as to form a tray about three inches deep. Our reasons for this preference, is that the box is warmer, will retain a more uniform moisture, and is more convenient. Having placed your soil in this, insert your cuttings therein, and about one and one-half or two inches deep, and at such distancesas their size may indicate, as the most appropriate, perhaps abont two inches each way. After these cuttings are inserted, give a light sprinkling of water, not too cold, to settle the earth about them, then put them in a warm position, but shaded from the sun.
Cuttings should never be allowed to wilt. This shows a cessa- tion of the circulation of its juices and bad health. The coleus will root in about a week, scarlet geraniums, in two weeks, lan- tanas, a little slower, and verbenas, in from a week to ten days. This is without the appliance of bottom heat, the use of which, will shorten the above periods, about one-third. With this prepa- ration and treatment, almost every cutting will make a new plant if it is in a good, healthful conditiou when set. With bottom heat we have grown cuttings and not lost one in a hundred.
To grow roses and hard-wooded shrubs it is more difficult, and · we would recommend layers, and a slight wound made in the part buried in the soil, from which the new roots will protrude.
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
The temperature at which to keep cuttings should be carefully observed, and should not range to greater extremes than sixty to seventy degrees. Then grow an abundance of flowers for home ornamentation. The many are as easily grown as the few, and their abundance, as well as their beauty, is a luxury. Though frosts may not blight, nor drought burn up, the dews of heaven and the early and the later rains confer their precions blessings. Still, like Jonah's gourd, there may be a worm at the root, hence, have a large supply. It is becoming that we utilize the science of floriculture, and apply it to practical ends. While, no doubt, many things of modern discovery were familiar to the ancients, they were in the hands of a bigoted priesthood or cloistered monks. Now the common mind goes forth in the light of modern science and the general diffusion of knowledge, entranced by the beauty, elevated by the sublimity, or awe-struck by the unfathom- able mysteries of nature that surround us.
The book of nature is our class book, and in 'these we study God's sciences. The ancient Romans and Egyptians worshipped the gods and goddesses of silence. The Latins worshipped Angero- nica and Tacita as the same. Their images stood on the altar of the goddess Voluptia, with their mouths tied up and sealed, to indicate that they who endure life in silence and patience, procure for themselves thereby great pleasure.
That system of doing business may have been in consonance" with the lives, habits and surroundings of the ancient Romans, Latins and Egyptians, but it would never do in this age and country, especially in Mifflin county.
Then grow flowers for your happy homes, an attraction to the growing families to be a remembrance by them in future years, when they think of home.
Then shall it be when afar on life's billows,
Wherever our tempest-tossed barques may be flung,
We will long for the shade of the home weeping willows, And sing the sweet songs that our mothers had sung.
The Adaptation of Plants to Locality and Soils.
In treating on this subject, I shall quote from travelers in va- rions parts of the world. " Plants do not grow where they like best, but where other plants will let them," expresses a truth not yet half appreciated by botanists. It is a protest against the prevalent belief that circumstances of soil and climate are the omnipotent
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regulators of the distribution of vegetable life, and all other con- siderations are comparatively powerless. The fertilization of plants by the acts of insects, thereby producing new species, and the preser- vation of the more favored races, is a branch of this subject in which we shall find much of interest in its investigation, and we shall also find that the powers of the soil are confined to comparatively narrow limits.
Before proceeding to show what are causes that do materially limit the distribution of species, it may be well to inquire how far the soil and climate theory helps us to a practical understanding of one or two great questions that fall under our daily observation. Of these the following are most prominent: That very similar soils and climates in different geographical areas are not inhabited naturally by like species, or like genera. That very different soils or climates will produce almost equally abundant crops of the same plants, and in the same soil and climate many thousands of species from other very different soils and climates may be grown and pro- pogated far an indefinite number of successive generations. Of the first of these statements, the examples embrace some of the best known facts in geographical botany. For example, the flowers of Europe differ wholly from temperate North America, South Africa, Australia and temperate South America, and all these from one another; and that neither the soil nor the elimate is the cause of this, is illustrated by the fact that thousands of acres in each of these countries are covered yearly by crops of the same plants introduced from one to the other, and by annually increasing num- bers of shrubs, trees and plants, that have either run wild or are successfully cultivated in each and all of them.
The third proposition follows from the two first ; and of this the best example is afforded by a garden wherein on the same soil and under identical conditions, we grow, side by side, plant from various soils and climates, and ripen their seeds too, provided only that their fertilization is insured. On the grounds of the writer such extremes meet as the Hydrangea from the jungles of Egypt - out of reach of sunshine and cold, growing in mud and water, and the Mahonia Aqua-folia, from the North of Canada, bright and ever- green, with the thermometer twenty degrees below zero or 120 de- grees above, translated and thriving side by side without protection. The Pawlonia Imperialis from Japan, Eupobia Varigata from Montana Territory, are in very close proximity on a Mifflin county sand hill. The Lilium Lancifolium from the far sunrise, is
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equally healthful with the Pinus Sylvestrus and P. Austracia from the forest of Russia and Sweeden, and the Yucca Filamentosa from tropical America. Our native Cactii may be seen growing in the cottage window beside the Cape Jessamine-striking examples of the comparative indifference of many plants to good or bad climate, for neither is the temperature constitution or freshness of the air the same as the places they were brought from. Nor is any attempt made in the preceeding cases to suit the soil to the species culti- vated. The Arctic Saxifraga, the English Rose, the Tropical Palm, and the Desert Cactus have been seen by the writer growing side by side, under precisely the same circumstances as it were in defiance of their former conditions.
But let us not ignore entirely the influence of soil and climate, but consider the very extraordinary
Adaptations of Vegetable Life.
In regard to temperature there are limits of Heat, Cold, and Humidity that species will not overstep and live; but these ex- tremes are very great. ' The present spring the Scilla Siberica and Early Crocus put forth their delicate flowers while their roots were encased in the frozen earth-" the standard bearers in the van- guard of spring."
A friend informed me that he has picked the flowers of the trail- ing Arbutus of New England from the edge of a snow-bank.
In the moist soils of the Torrid Zone, stimulated by heat, plants grow with tropical luxuriance, and in simpler forms among the snow and ice of the polar regions. They grow and flourish in hot and sulphur springs and upon the naked rock nourished only by the rains, in the desert's sand, and in the ocean's depths. Many species of mosses choose the naked rock for their home. The Spanish Moss and Mistletoe of our own country, are independent . of soil or root, as generally developed, being barely attached to walls, rocks or other plants, while the whole Epiphital family are adapted to the unusual circumstances of being nourished and supported by the absorbent powers of their leave instead of their roots. Great multitudes of sea plants have no fixed habitation, but float freely on the ocean, driven by winds. They have no need of roots to supply them with nourishment which they meet every- where in their course, or to absorb it from the soil which they have not, therefore they have no useless roots, as the fish of under- ground streams are without eyes. The deep sea plummet brings
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up old Ocean's shining tresses of emerald green from a hundred fathoms, and mushrooms grow in the eternal night of the darkest caverns.
A species of Chara has been found growing and fruiting in one of the Geysers of Iceland-hot enough to boil an egg in four minutes. An American traveler found plants growing in a high state of perfection and flowering around the borders of a volcano in the island of Pana, where the thermometer stood two hundred and ten degrees, and plants have frequently been found in the hot springs of Italy, whose waters raise the mercury to the boiling point. An English traveler records a case of a plant growing in the mud hotter than boiling water in the island of Amsterdam.
On the other hand, the mosses on which the Reindeer of Lap- land subsists, grow amid perpetual snows and wherever man has been able to penetrate and exist himself, he has found plants of exquisite beauty and perfection, in many cases filling the air, cold and silent thought it be in these frozen and dreary regions, with delicious perfume and adorning the dreary landscape with the beauty of their flowers, and as far as human eye has been able to penetrate the arctic regions, where human foot has never trod, the single cells of the Algea tribe, the most simple form of vegetable life, redden the eternal snows. Hence we may safely conclude that vegetable life is co-extensive with the surface of the earth.
Let us consider some of the very beautiful arrangements of Nature, for the
Subsistence of Plant Life.
In regard to the elements, we must consider their harmonious agreement in reference to vegetation. The air, though of great density, sustains the most delicate organisms. The change of but a single quality, as to rarification or density, would destroy every living creature. It is the air that causes smoke to rise, that retains liquids in vessels, canses the circulation of saps in trees, and wafts to the continents the clouds of the ocean. We might also demon- strate the necessity of water. Who can behold without astonish- ment the wonderful quality of this element, by which it ascends contrary to all the laws of gravitation in a medium lighter than it- self, in order to supply us with dew and rain ; the arrangements of mountains to give circulation to rivers-all these furnish innnmer- able advantages each in its proper office and locaiity. Did space
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permit, we might speak of the earth as an element, and its very ad- mirable laws as a planet. Truly, " great and manifold are Thy works." One more thought presses our attention, the ineompre- hensible mystery of the
GROWTH, BLOOMING AND FERTILIZATION
of plants, the formation of seed, the thousand-fold mixture of flow- ers-clustered in groups or scattered in endless eonfusion, sup- plied by botanists with so many barbarian names that the ear is wearied, while the eye is surfeited by the endless suecession of beauty and variety-beanty's principal charm. Mark the plant from its earliest stages of progress, holding itself subject to nature's mysterious laws, as it moves on to maturity, having within itself, as it were, the power of a ceaseless self-creation- From the seed the plant is unfolded as soon as the nourishing earth loosens it, and bedecks herself by giving it birth, and the light with its sacred charms receives and nourishes the new-born flowret, and paints its frame in freshly budding leaves.
These latent powers slept in the seed, locked in its cell-germ of rootlet and leaf, minutely perfeet in shape, its slumbering life thus. guarded, awaiting its eseape as soon as the moisture unlocks the cell. It then springs to the surface, forcing its way upward with a newly found vigor, flings away the night that eneompassed it. Yet. how simple its form. A new impulse is now given it as joint upon joint it moves upward, receiving its original, meeting the morning sun with gladness. It grows apace, is more expanded, the softly falling due and rain cuts it into points and divisions, painting each in delieate tints.
All these forms and shapes were snugly concealed, uneonseiously sleeping in the germ or seed, like the "passions in the heart of in- faney," till moved into life by the law of its growth, at last it ar -- rives at perfect stature, looks forth on the sky a model of beauty. Now nature, with a more prudent hand, withholds the sap and nar -- rows the cells, still eares for the future and seems to consider that. when tender and leafless the stalk promised the flower whose won- derful form is next seen, put forth in graceful profusion, as "finis. coronat opus."
Manures.
Mifflin county, being an agricultural region, and one of the best. cultivated in the State, though not the largest in extent of terri-
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tory, we deem it proper to devote a liberal share of the present work, to its agricultural and horticultural interests. To do this, we will write what we know, on such subjects as will be of interest to those honorable callings, though we are not enrolled among those who wield " the scythe, the sicle and the flail," but would be more appropriately enrolled among those who have wielded the spade. the hoe and the pruning shears, and to this, we might add, the pen.
As enriching the soil, is the ground-work to all successful agri- cultural and horticultural success, a few practical thoughts on the above subject will be most appropriate, and will now engage our notice. The soils of various kinds that compose the tillable lands of Miffiin county, are more or less deficient in lime, and as that is an important element in almost every combination of animal and vegetable life, it follows, that to supply it liberally to our soils. will not only enhance their value, but increase their productive- ness and enable the growing crops to appropriate other elements. (ammonia, for instance) that are now lost wholly, or in part, by fermentation and evaporation. "Names do not make things," and if we ask the farmer, the plasterer or manufacturer, the name of a certain article, he will call it "Plaster of Paris." The mineralist will give you the name of the same thing, " gypsum," and the chemist will call it "sulphate of lime," but the substance is the same, We will illustrate its use.
Sulphuric acid has an affinity for ammonia, forming sulphate of ammonia, by breaking up its connection with the lime and uniting with ammonia. The lime finds a companion, when deserted by the sulphuric acid, in carbonic acid, forming carbonate of lime. Now. we see, that when we have put ammonia in the soil, in the form of manure, it is liable to waste, but that plaster or lime, will hold it till needed for new combinations, and can always be applied to the soil, with profit.
The fermentation, which is always taking place in manure heaps, throwing off large quantities of ammonia, in the atmosphere, can be stopped, and the ammonia saved, to be applied to the soil, bv the application of plaster of lime. Adaptation of mannres to the kind of crops to be grown, is one that receives too little attention, and is often the cause of failures, by the growing crop not being able to appropriate the elements in the soil. The botanical organiza- tion of the wheat plant, for instance, is extremely delicate and is consequently a delicate feeder. Ground that has been but recently largely fed by mannre from the stable, though right for
·
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eorn, which is a gross feeder, is poorly fitted for wheat, but clover or corn, may be grown to use these crude elements, to be followed by wheat. A crop of clover may be grown, the ammonia of the manure being held in the soil, by the plaster, then the great quantity of decomposing vegetable or organic matter left in the soil, by the elover, is in a sufficiently refined state, to be made nse of by the finer organization of the wheat.
Thus, the simplest rudiments of chemistry, will teach us im- portant faets, having a "dollar's and cent's " bearing on the com- monest avoeations of every day's experience. It is well to inves- tigate and know the reasons why we have raised a good crop, as to investigate the reasons of a failure. Providenee has placed all these elements and combinations, in our hands, to use them, and has given us minds and means of investigation, to direct their ap- propriate application ; and now, if we, by ignorance or indolence, negleet them, please let us not blame Providence, with the failures, of which we are the legitimate and direct canse.
For centuries, the light that science now throws on the tillage of the soil, was burried in more than midnight darkness, and the high position of modern chemistry, is unveiling the secrets in the great laboratory of nature-a laboratory, not bounded by walls of brick or stone, but reaching from the Zenith to the Nadir-from the rising to the setting sun.
Under the rotunda of this vast dome, we are placed by the great chemist, to labor and to investigate, and realize that, " great and marvelous, are his works," yet we can behold his wonders in the growth of a blade of grass, the development of a flower, as in the in the majesty of the forest oak.
The Leaf -- Its Structure aud Functions.
The principles governing the application of manures given in the preceding section, is equally applicable to trees as to general crops. We now present the LEAF-its structures and functions.
"Gay bodies we know have gone down to decay, With the winter's first breath they have withered away; But a change will come o'er them, and dream-like and fair, The features that marked them they'll once again wear, The same wondrous tissue, the outline and grace, On each tiny leaflet and blossom we trace-
True type of ourselves, whose poor bodies shall rise From the grave of corruption, the heirs of the skies."
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
The sun, retiring to the southern hemisphere, permits the chilly winds of autumn to remind us that winter is approaching. The leaves assume the tinted hues of autumn from maturity and age, if not from frost. The silver maple, the ivy, the Virginia creeper, and the begonia, the sumach, and the pear are first ripe, and leave the spray on which they grew. The oak, the elm and the chestnut, on account of the large amount of tannin contained in them, will, for a while longer, adhere to the parent stem. A brief summary of some of the offices and functions of the leaf will, for a while, en- gage our attention.
All plants, in a general sense, receive their food from their roots. The tree receives its supply of minerals also, such as silex, lime, potash, magnesia, &c., in solution. The sap, thus charged with nourishment, ascends the trunk, traverses the branches, and passes. into the leaf. The superfluous moisture which held this nourish- ment in solution passes off by the process of respiration from the leaf, but it parts with none of the nourishment contained in the liquid circulation. This is distributed throughout the plant, a por- tion being deposited in the cells of the leaf.
The wonderful system of minute vessels, which traverse the whole cellular system, becomes clogged as the season advances; its circulating functions become clogged, and gradually cease to,ope- rate, and before winter they are wholly suspended, and the leaf loses its hold and falls to the ground. One of the most remarkable pro- perties of leaves is their power of decomposing carbonic acid gas, thus enabling them to contribute, in common with the roots, to the growth of plants. The largest part of all plants consists of carbon and the elements of water. The woody fibre is formed of carbon, hence the growth of all trees and plants are dependent on their power for taking up and digesting this substance.
But they neither find it nor take it up in a free and simple state, but in the form of carbon combined with oxygen. Carbonic acid gas pervades the atmosphere, from which the leaves are constantly separating it from the oxygen, and appropriating the carbon as a continuous contribution to the growth of the plant. As carbon, and not carbonic acid, is the food of plants, the power of decom- posing the latter to leave them in possession of the former, and of expelling the superfluous oxygen, is, therefore, indispensible to its growth. In reality, the leaves are its lungs, and their functions are strikingly analagous to those pe. ormed by the lungs of men and animals.
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