will be a demand for them which must be supplied. Could these animals be killed in their native place, and be shipped then to our great centers, the difficulty would likewise be met. Whatever measures we adopt, it is evident that complete isolation must be secured. The transportation of Texans, on foot, should be limited to the winter months, when the home stock is confined to small areas, and is not in danger of coming in contact with the droves. During the spring, summer, and fall months all gulfcoast cattle should be transported by steamboat or rail; that whenever or wherever landed there should be large yards, fenced in, where these cattle can be kept exclusively; that all cars or boats used for such transportation should be thoroughly cleansed and disinfected, the neglect of which should be an offense punishable with a heavy fine and imprisonment. When we have to deal with a contagious disease like this, which is not transmissible if only a fence separate the cattle, the preventive means seem simple and easy to adopt-i. e., let no cattle commingle, either in pastures, roadways, or unclean trucks, with southern stock.

Through the medium of transportation, we of the eastern States are af flicted with splenic fever, to prevent which it is only necessary to allow no gulf coast cattle to mingle with others at the different stock-yards, and to thoroughly disinfect the boats, cars, and trucks on which they are shipped. To prevent Texas fever, then, it is only necessary to avoid immediate contact with gulf coast cattle or their excreta.

The following essays were then read, and the practical discussion which followed each one showed clearly not only the interest which was taken by the audience, but also the wisdom of the Board in inaugurating the plan of holding its meetings at different points accessible to the farmer of the State. At every session of the Board the audience was larger than had been expected, and its practical nature was shown by the discussions of the questions brought out by the essayists.

TEXTILE FIBER PLANTS-THEIR ADAPTION TO PENNSYLVANIA SOIL AND CLIMATE.

By Dr. J. P. EDGE, of Chester County.

In the discharge of the duty assigned me, I will endeavor to be brief and practical so far as the speculative nature of the question will permit. The subject, however, is a large one, and to be fairly presented should have reference to the question of imports and consumption by our State and nation.

Its supposed design is to have a practical bearing on our State industries, and the profitable employment of our labor and capital. We import so largely of textiles, either raw or manufactured, that the question is forced on us, 66 Can we produce them at home, or substitute others profitably?" It is puerile and degrading to our national standing that, while we have millions of men, women, and children in enforced idleness, and boundless acres of the richest of soil not productive, we shall import from foreign lands the results of their skilled labor, and leave our own in ignorance, and the consequent tendency to pauperism and general "poverty."

It is false economy and improvidence to pay to foreign nations millions of dollars annually as a tribute to their industry and thrift, when we can and should produce and manufacture at a lower cost than they, were our people educated and skilled.

In the matter of textiles, as instanced in jute, we pay in importing the cost of production in India, of shipment to Scotland, expense of manufacture, of transit to this country, tariffs, insurance, commissions, &c., &c.; and, furthermore, lose the benefits of the great and diversified employment to grow out of the industries collateral to this large increase in our production.

We have imported, in the last fifteen years, an annual average of $5,000,000 worth of unmanufactured jute, the present import being largely in excess of the average. In five years, one hundred and seventy million pounds were made into paper alone, mostly for buff envelope stock, and the asserted total of consumption in the last three years is three hundred million pounds.

A single town in Scotland has one hundred mills running, and employs twenty thousand hands in the making of jute fabrics, consuming, in 1872, one hundred and sixty million pounds of raw staple, and exporting fifty million gunny bags, a large per cent. of them to distant California for wheat sacks (at a cost to her farmers of $2,450,000, equal to one eleventh of her wheat crop, or two million seven hundred and twenty-two thousand two hundred and twenty two bushels) in which to send her cereals to India and the East. Thus, from the growing plant, the jute of India is made to circle the globe before its use is fulfilled.

According to southern testimony, the growing of jute in our gulf States has proven four times as productive as cotton or flax, and only takes one tenth the labor to raise it. Its success, as a southern product, is, therefore, assured. But can we grow jute in Pennsylvania? On a small scale, it has been matured from imported seed, and has produced a fiber of fair quality. Our summers are shown to be long enough to perfect the fiber, but not the seed; but it has been proven, that as we advance .northward from the Carolinas, the fiber gradually diminished in quality and strength. It is a question to be solved only by experiment, if the northern product can be grown to compete with that of lands more favorable to it. The conditions required for its perfections are "a hot, damp climate, and a moist, sandy, or alluvial mold. Its proper latitude corresponds with that of the sugar cane, rice, cotton, &c."

In Northern India and Bengal the yield is two thousand to three thou sand pounds per acre. We pay five to eight cents per pound. At the medium product, twenty-five hundred pounds at five cents, we show a yield of $125 per acre, which may be put down as remunerative.

An estimate made by S. C. Brown, of Trenton, based on the assumption that the plant can be grown in New Jersey, gives this showing: The corn crop of the State being nine million four hundred thousand bushels, at fiftysix cents, gives $5,264,000. The same acreage in jute, yielding fifteen hundred pounds per acre, would give $17,749,995, or an increase of nearly one hundred and twenty-five per cent.-$6,485,995. The foreign fiber is grown on primitive methods, and exclusively by hand labor. With our improved machinery, and our artificial manures, and the recent inventions for separating the fiber from the wood by steam, without having to resort to the wet rotting, which not only weakens it but changes its color, it is fair to assume that we can grow jute cheaper and better than to export it. Let us try! But who and how?

Much attention has been directed of late to our indigenous textiles, and

some confusion has been created by the assertion that an "American jute" is found growing wild in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The plant alluded to is a member of an entirely different family-the malvatia-and is the abutilon avice un æ, or Indian hemp or velvet leaf. It is thus described by botanists:

Leaves obicular-cordate, acuminate, velvety, four to eight inches long, nearly circular, with closed sinus and slender point; pedeucles axillary, shorter than petioles. Annual; stems two to five feet high; branching petioles three to five inches long; stipules subulate, caducous; flowers, yellow; carpels, about fifteen in a campanulate, truncated head, with oblique, radiating beaks at summit. Habitat, cultivated grounds; exotic; flowers in July and August.

Doctor Ezra Michener, in his "Manual of Weeds," makes these remarks: "This large, troublesome weed, being an annual, can be kept in subjection readily. But the attempt often fails from the neglect of the very small plants, which in this species frequently produce seed when only a few inches high. When permitted to mature, the plant is very prolific. It is a reproach to any farmer where it is found."

Every farmer who knows it is aware of the great strength in the bark of this weed, as in its green state he has doubtless used it for thong-straps, ox-whip lashes, halter straps, trace ropes, and a variety of other impromptu It is a vigorous grower, hardy, prolific in seed, and has the merit of returning to the soil a very large leaf surface, through which it has supplied the materials of growth, absorbed by their rough velvety surface.

uses.

No extended attempt has been made to produce it in quantities sufficient for manufacturing. Mr. LeFranc, however, is now offering to those who will engage in its growth a price per ton for the green plant, which should insure the effort, and we shall not have long to wait for the test, it is to be hoped.

Specimens of the prepared fiber have been shown me, which are equal, if not superior, to the best imported jute, with the advantage of being of a better and brighter color, containing less tannic acid, and, therefore, better fitted to receive the coloring matter of dyes. It is naturally white, and when shown alongside of the imported fiber does not require a practiced eye to show their relative value, both in color and strength. Its rank and rapid growth will ensure a large yield under cultivation, and which, I suppose, would be in excess of the average of jute-twenty-five hundred pounds per acre-as the branches possess the same strength of fiber as the stalk. Twenty-five hundred pounds, at five cents per pound, gives a yield of $125. It is to be desired that experiments will be made this year in Pennsylvania, which will determine its claims for profitable raising.

The usefulness of the Indian nettle was, a half century ago, probably as little appreciated as is the Abutilon now, and it is not among improbable events that we may yet send to Europe a textile that shall compete with those of her own colonies, as we now do in the staple cotton.

Earnest attention is also directed of late to the ramie, or China grass; the vegetable silk fiber plant. The question of its successful growth in Pennsylvania, is now under discussion and trial. Persons who have planted the imported seed and the roots obtained from the South, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, have now in posession the matured and prepared fiber from such planting, which in quality is all that we can desire. The period of growth was about ninty days, and if it can be shown that the plant will mature its fibers inside of one hundred days in our climate, the success of its culture is assured. Grown as an annual, from imported seed, it may become a competitor with the product of the perennial plant of more south