—— [——— FARMER and PLANT BREEDER. ¥ Work of Assistant Secretary Willet M. Hays. GUY ELLIOTT MITCHELL, —— The country has realized for some time that it has in its Secretary of Agriculture a real farmer; its new Assistant Secretary is likewise a tarmer, and unless all records and ap- pearances are false, a good one, He has the valuable faculty of knowing how to do things, and at the same time to be able to tell others how. This Assistant Secretary is Willett M. Hays, Professor Hays was Secretary Wilson's choice for Assistant Secretary, after Colonel Brigham'’s death, and it ap- pears as though Professor Hays’ ap- pointment was anything but a political one. There is a fine entente cordial between these two broad-gauge men and the work of the Department has taken a distinct forward sweep since Mr. Hays’ appointment. He put his shoulder to the wheel at once and seemed able to dispense with the usual two or three months of “breaking in,” WILLET M. HAYS, ASSISTANT SECRE- TARY OF AGRICULTURE, which an Assistant Secretary for a big department usually undergoes, He fits his environment well wherever he hap- pens to be. [ustusting his classes in the field rsity of Minne sota, tween the Twin Cities, i Profe or at locate you woul 51 : sor Hays seldom visited St, Paul Minneapol on the other band, when you see him walking along the 8 in Washington you would aly expect him to be able to drop a vght furrow. But in coming city ward and wearing a crease in his M i ol gratifying results. The average wheat yield of the Northwestern States— Minnesota and the Dakotas—ranges, as [ remember, from thirteen to fifteen bushels to the acre, which {8 about the average for the entire United States. Increase this say one-fourth by simply using this new seed, as in the case of thousands of acres in the State of Min. nesota, and figure out the gain to the country. And this is only from re sults already obtained in seed improve- ment, To Double the Wheat Yield. The wheat breeding work is going on steadily, and Professor Hays says that he has probably not yet reached the half-way point in increased yield. In the work of simple wheat breeding by selection each grain is planted and cultivated separately, a thousand of them in rows, each one like a tree, and then the best ten heads are Selected from those thousand plants, and the plumpest grains again selected from those ten heads. Then you are ready for the planting of next year, And so on for ten years, In hybridization there are many more pains taken. Here the best specimens of two differ. ent varieties are crossed upon each other by hand poilination and the com- plex system of selection simultaneously carried on year by year. But the labor is more than justified by the results. Other experiments have been success. fully carried along under Professor Hays with the idea of changing the constituents of the crops—putting more protein or muscle-producing in the grain and forage crops just as the beet grower works to put sugar into his beets, Practical Farm Teaching, All this work Is technical; it might be the doings of the re The other side of Professor Hays' makeup stands forth when he gets out on a swing ‘round the circle and preaches what he knows: when he distributes ure and delivers lectures to the farmers in halls or from the rear plat forms of trains—-a practical educator. More agriculture in our national sy tem of education is his slogan, practi cal farm education that will enable a | man to farm better and make more mi at it lida He urges the conse on of the sn hools—bring ing | g four or five of the sized school teachers can hired and broader edncation afforded. teresting thiag University of Minne were there to study plants and ar mals and then go back to the farm 0 tors iterat e ey Tal | or i a8 good LO On competen a much The in about his boys at the ota was that they more i trousers he has not lost his straight They were at a college, to be sure, but SORE 8 5 = OEE oF 7) HYBRIDIZING WHEAT IN THE FIELD forward way of taking people at their! word and believing just what they say 1 asked him for a photograph to ac- company this letter, remarking that I would like t© have one of him as he looked as I last saw him “down on the] farm” (he would be arrested if he went around Washington looking as he was | then), and he gravely responded that he had no photograph such as I wanted, but that he*would send me one taken |. at a later date. - y Breeding up Plants. ™ : The work which has made Professor | Hays most famous Is his plant-breeding | BHOWING IMPROVEMENT IN TIMOTHY BY BREEDING. He Is the wizard of farm plang life as Luther Burbank is of hor tl ure, He has taken wheat and bred it up, by selection and hybridiza tien covering periods of five and ten years, so that the improved strain yields probably 26 to 30 per cent fer, He has done the same with and with timothy and with corn and other farm crops. This has en- tailed the most painstaking work, con. experiments, they were taking a sort of high school agricultural SNES, many of them for one or two years, and were not figur ing on getting a ploma and then leaving the farm and striking out for some city, as is unfortunately the his ry of so many of the graduates of the agricul tural colleges, Working through the Boys, . ‘Do your new methods stick with the boys when they get back on the old farm?” 1 asked. “How do the boys’ ’ Gi | fathers take it?” “Oh, they think at first when the boys go bome and want to make changes that we are teaching them a lot of new-fangled notions. After the first year perhaps they let the boy take atry on a small scale Then with the | good. results shown by the trial they {are more than likely to come around {by the second or third year and there is apt to be quite a shaking up of methods in the work on the old place You can’t expect to make much head way teaching the older farmers, but you can get at them through the boys.” i A WHEAT FLOWER (ENLARGED). A seventy.page bulletin which Pro fessor Hays wrote for the Department of Agriculture some four years ago on the subject df plant breeding brought his work Into great prominence. In it he outlined numerous possibilities of increased production of all crops through plant breeding. Every man knows that the American trottin tinued year after year, but always with horse has been wonderfully elements | more by breeding. And Professor Hays drew a parallel, step by step, between the improvement of the Wealthy apple, tracing its history and fmprovement from the tree developed by Peter M. Gidden of Minnesota, and Messenger, an imported English racing horse, which became the leading progenitor of the Awerican racing or trotting WHEAT ROOT SYSTEM. horse, and he thus showed that plants oy breeding as are animals, If you are interested in learning something about plant breeding you might write to your Congressman for a copy of Bulletin 29 of the Department of Agriculture, or probably Professor Hays himself has a few extra coples. AL FROM POLE TO EQUATOR, Explorer Now Penetrating the Heart of Africa. Arctic north polar country or the burning sands of tropical Africa, the Duke of Abruzzi seems equally at home, This Italian scientist, who made such a high reputation by his recent arctic explora- tions, has started for unknown regions ‘of Central Africa with a fully equipped expedition, proposing to explore the Ruwenzori Mountains and climb their highest peaks. Thuis range crosses the Equator in the vicinity the Lakes Nyvanza, whence flow the waters of the Nile. It is some eighty vast pile of blac. rock h in some ancient convulsion The English explorer, Stanley, Luwenzorl twe pointed out to him tain. As the sun ascend shi before his view tain clothed in st weeks of travel to longed to a range, mt the Ruwenzo a Mountains of the Moon, w i on old maps, are identi cording to the old geo waters of the Nile rise tains of the Moon, The Duke of Abruzzi has a diffi task before him to conquer the M ins of the Moon, even though the immits fall son it short wb, A large quant upp! we carried on the though the art most torrid of will » ind the polar climate. of mile 4 % urled up of Nat Ire ure 1 Mly year was ape n MIN foun o gral in th a ewh of backs ¢ will spi st ber : %. the pat region na tral Al A NY al elim 1 into te 1 ascend ET rat npera rst} Mid ae—————— Milk In Your Tea. “The use of plenty of milk with tea,” says The Lancet (London), “is a wis precaution and must be regarded sound physiological i ling, the proteids of milk gency i . wise | Oe the seg bir moderate As 0 IOMOE destroy nbra: ‘ ii ous mes ww Ol in femtin arated and th 30 ws with the on the nk that the been exaggerats : | £ of tea arinki ne have The real difficulty 1s Ce that a lightly drawn Iinfusior them thelr money's worth.” I rive Conv ’ ui » were capable of the same development | Whether in the frigid grip of the GROWTH OF RAILROADS, INTERSTATE COMMERCE COM- MISSION PLACES PAR VALUE AT 13 MILLIONS, More than Three Quarters of a Billion Dollars Paid Out Annually by the companies in Salaries to Over a Million Regular Employees. Commerce Commission, road statistics at the end of 1904, miles of railroad In the States, More more than 300,000 miles, The in the report was 2,104, the fact that only 1,325 miles were In the hands of receivers, use was 40,743 and of cars, exclusive of those owned by private companies, 1,708,000, Of these, 39,000 were the passenger service and engaged In hauling freight, tically all the and cars were equipped with brakes and automatic couplers, | the same was true of freight locomo- tives and a large majority of freight Cars. The number of persons on the pay rolls of rallroads In the States was 1.200.000, with wages and salaries amounting SR817.5308.000), The par value of rallway capital was $13,213,124 000, or a capitalization of $64,200 per mile, Prac. alr Six Per Cent, Dividends. Of the total stock out standing, 42 per cent. pald no dividends. The amount of dividends declared during the year was $221,041,000, a little over cent, on dal vidend-paying stock. number ried by the TI5.415.000, capital or G The of railways in the year was| The number of ton of freight carried was 1,300.800,000, an increase over the previous year of over five and one-half million tons, IH — ‘ NEXPLODED PROJECTILES. Danger Lurks Therein-Chinese Inquisitiveness Proves Fatal, The disg from the East of the ling of pearly a dozen th " of a mine near ts found | mteh coming kil ie exp josl to lig thee wrt Arthur 4)" ( in show | o vicinity I fie la of un Che of ex welling falled to explod ' tiles have ‘ : r nd a in dering and On » ag to the WRInDg “Luialive of on a dispute J danger ! i Oa ® vi dan (es oO ati ve, to prove his The annual report of the Interstate | giving rail. | | shows the enormous total of 207,073 | United | recent railroad construe- | tion has brought this figure up to] num- | ber of railrond corporations included | That the! railroads are prosperous is shown by! of road | United | annual | to! per passengers reported as car | Far i ! wie ithe of soil or rock. » hit it on the nose, der spot of proje wtiles. It with a terrible the ten exploded interested shee Another Ch hich had fresh tators. nese discovered a shell found a resting in water lake just behind kyard of Port WAS place © one the oh the | noise, killing ten of oo chanic can operate thei Ari 1 : shell | ras at. crew ati the top and went out on the y got It off. Good metal was having In the land of the Oriental, {and this is what attracted him. He { used an old nail to remove the tempt- ing oblect, His Inquisitiven dear lesson for his the pleces were never » 10 try worth { « fan iam 4 ’ und, ! SCHOOL GA The Department of Agriculture is Just issuing an attractive illustrated bulletin on school gardens. In his In. troductory, Dr. Galloway, Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, says, that as agriculture in its broadest sense is the primary basis of wealth In the United States, it seems essential that efforts should be made In our general educational system to bring early to the mind of the child facts which will he of value as emphasizing the Importance and necessity of agricultural work There 18 no better way to do this, he gays, than through a well-managed and well conducted system of school garden training which early awakens interest in an Industry which means much to the future prosperily of the country, When the work of handling Congres gional free seed distribution was turned over to the Bureau of Plant Industry several years ago efforts were made to arouse Interest on the part of members of Congress with large city constituon. cles, who might be able to encourage the school garden movement through the distribution of specially red | 10 sood packages. Bince then mililons of packages of seeds have been distributed RDEN WORK. in this way in the cities, and the result has been that much school garden work has been organized and thousands of pupils have learned something of grow. ing plants, A small tract of land back of the De partment of Agriculture Building has beet set aside for model school garden WOrK. The bulletin in question has fllustra. tions of a number of successful school gardens in various cities, and has plans outlined for carrying on such work The following interesting paragraph Is quoted from the bulletin on the work at Hampton Institute, Virginia; “When it was announced two years ago to the children of the Whittier school that they were to be taught gar. dening on a twoacre tract the news was received with mixed feelings. While the little ones were pleased, the older girls thought It a disgrace to work In the flelds. After two yoars there are no pupils in the school who de not look forward with eagerness to this work, If IL is necessary to be ab sent from school, they think It must | 8 was ly, although | [BOOKS 2O0KS NM MM NN EE MOE OOOO OOOO NO OTHER WAGONS APPROACH L, Perfect Adaptability Under all Conditions to The Strong Old Hickory ROSCOE | The total number of locomotives In| in| 1,002,000 | passenger locomotives | and | MANUFACTURED BY 8 Kentucky Wagon Manufacturing Co. LOUISVILLE, KY. "LARGEST PRODUCERS OF FARM WAGONS IN THE WORLD Kirk’s AMERICAN CROWN the amount of | A Quarter of a Century of unfailing service SOAP i clesnser 8 & green soap, « ff, stency of paste, a perfect ery and alt xi b r autor machin vehicles; will face. Made from ire i] the ghly | wt ed If y Crown Soap in address and we w supplied. 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Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers