180 A-KTNUAL REPORT. 



profitable near barns and on farms, where there is always more or 

 less grain wasted in feeding stock and in threshing. A large 

 grassy run furnishes the cheapest and healthiest food, lasts a 

 whole season through, and requires no daily preparation. One 

 woman, who is a poultry-fancier, advertises in that pro- 

 minent agricultural paper, the Western Rural. Bees are 

 not liable to be taken up for trespass. The apiarist need 

 not own land, but must have her location reasonably near 

 meadow and woodland sweets. A few years since, one of the best 

 and largest apiaries in the country was owned and managed by an 

 Iowa woman. There are many live journals devoted to bees and 

 poultry. Whoever is inexperienced, ought to take and read one of 

 them. Intelligence and skill command as high a premium out- 

 doors as indoors. Silk culture is now attracting much attention 

 among Southern women. This is mainly conducted within the 

 house, but, if the person engaged in it, plants and cultivates her 

 own mulberry trees, and gathers the leaves herself, a pleasant 

 combination of indoor and open-air work can be made. Italian 

 women do so. A friend in California has gathered grapes and suc- 

 cessfully cured them as raisins. More than one orange plantation 

 of Florida owes its thriftiness to woman's care. The cultivation 

 of orange trees, about which plows are little used, and hoes, rakes 

 and brushes are chief implements, is just the work for her patience. 

 A few years ago one woman in that state was employed by north- 

 ern parties to superintend five different groves. The United States 

 is the greatest strawberry-eating nation of the world. Who ever 

 heard of strawberries being unsalable or thrown away ? A small 

 plot, well tended, yields large returns; so their production is prac- 

 ticable in villages and towns. Women and girls already do the 

 picking. Is the planting and weeding any harder? With an oc- 

 casional lift from masculine arms, and some weeding by little 

 hands, vegetables can be grown. Mrs. Hoyt once said she had 

 known a quarter of an acre, after the women of the household 

 had taken it in hand, to yield vegetables enough for a large family 

 in no small variety either, besides a fair amount of small fruits. 

 If it had before been customary to purchase these supplies, think of 

 the saving. If, however, the fare had included no such dishes, the 

 crisp lettuce, juicy radishes, delicate asparagus, and tart berries of 

 that new administration must have lessened meat and flour bills. 

 People do somehow satisfy hunger, if not with vegetables, then prob- 

 ably with pastry. In large cities there is some market for fresh flow- 

 ers and tasty bouquets, other than greenhouse products. At Christ- 



