74-2 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Nov. 15 



about your tnlhusiasui over Florida. The fact is, a 

 man with a good healthy conscience and enough to 

 eat can see and enjoy the beauty of nature any- 

 where. He acknowledges that they have 98 per 

 cent climate. Well, that is certainly not bad. 

 Anybody ought to live on that; but here we have 

 150 per cent, and we can nearly live on it too - no 

 mosquitoes nor redbvigs; no blizzards nor cyclones, 

 and we can sing the old song: 



Have you heard of the sundown sea, love. 



With its blue and golden sky. 

 Where the ripples play the livelong day. 



Where the summers never die? 

 Here is health and wealth for you, love; 



Here is health and wealth for me; 

 Here is all that is best in the golden West, 



In the land of the sundown sea. 



Aguanga, Cal., Oct. 11. Paul Thomsen. 



My good friend, I fear you are a little 

 rough on our preachers. Are you going to 

 meeting every Sunday so that you know 

 just what kind of preachers we do have? 

 And let me suggest, too, that ministers 

 should be a little careful about "speaking 

 out," as you term it. Do you remember 

 what the Savior said about disturbing and 

 endangering the wheat by pulling out the 

 tares? I am glad you like your California 

 climate. But you do have blizzards once 

 in a while, even in California — at least you 

 did when I was there. And you do have it 

 terribly dry and dusty in the summer time, 

 which is not the case down in "sunny Flor- 

 ida." 



A LARGE CITY OF OHIO THAT NOT ONLY 

 VOTED DRY BUT KEEPS DRY. 



On page 508, May 15, 1904, and page 558, 

 June 1, 1904, I described a visit at the home 

 of the great flower establishment of Good & 

 Reese, of Springfield, O. At that time their 

 plant covered something like five acres, but 

 I do not know what it covers now. I do 

 know that this firm is quoted by Dun and 

 Bradstreet away up in the thousands. 



Well, in a recent letter from one of the 

 proprietors, at the close of it I had one of 

 my happy surprises by finding the follow- 

 ing as a sort of postscript: 



It may be of interest to you (this being the largest 

 dry city In the State) to know how the Rose law 

 operates with us. When we first voted dry, about 

 half of the saloons gave up entirely; the other half 

 have claimed to sell soft drinks; but at the present 

 time, when they are caught they are known as hard- 

 drink propositions. On the prominent squares of 

 the city, where there were some 40 odd saloons, 

 there are now six that are not used for other busi- 

 ness purpose.s, and these six, at this writing, are 

 closed up tight. 



The law has been a great benefit to poor people 

 who spent their money for drink in the saloons, the 

 family now reaping the benefit in better food and 

 better clothing. On the whole, we are pleased to 

 say the law has worked wonders in Clarke County. 



Springfield, Ohio, Sept. 27. .1. M. Good. 



I was particularly pleased to know that 

 one of the greatest establishments of this 

 kind in the State, and perhaps one of the 

 greatest in the United States, was on the 

 dry side; and I felt pleased, too, to know that 

 the writer recognized that I was as much 

 interested in righteousness and temperance 

 as in greenhouses and beautiful flowers. 

 Surely our nation is "marching on." 



THE INSECT PESTS OF FLORIDA AND OTHER 



SOUTHERN CLIMES; ALSO SOMETHING 



ABOUT THE "EMERGENCY FOOD." 



In my hand is a book entitled "The Book 

 of Camping and Woodcraft." One of our 

 good friends who reads Gleanings calls at- 

 tention to the fact that the above-mention- 

 ed book would give me "the truth" about 

 "redbugs," jiggers, etc., not only from prac- 

 tical experience in the woods, but from a 

 scientific point of view. On the outside 

 wrapper of the book is a sort of introductory 

 as follows: 



Sound " horse-sense " about the ways of the woods, 

 written by a man of long experience, by a man who 

 loves the wild, by a man who gives scholarly atten- 

 tion to the smallest details, and, best of all, by a 

 man who can write. In its way, a masterpiece. A 

 book every outdoor man or woman must have, and 

 a book every indoor man or woman should read. 



Well, after looking the book over quite a 

 little I heartily second the above. Although 

 I am not much of a hunter, and I am not. in 

 favor of taking animal life unless it is real- 

 ly necessary, I have read the book with the 

 keenest interest. Even if you have no fancy 

 for the "wild wood " you will greatly enjoy 

 it, no matter what page your eye strikes; 

 and after you once begin reading it you will 

 certainly read it all through. I feel greatly 

 tempted to make longer quotations, but our 

 space is more than filled already. 



jiggers, REDBUGS, ETC. 



T\\e moquim . . . a microscopic scarlet ocw /•)(.?, 

 resembling a minute crab under the glass. It 

 swarms on weeds and bushes, and on the skin causes 

 an intolerable itching. An hour's walk through 

 the grassy streets of TefT^ was sulHcient to cover my 

 entire body with myriads of moairims, which it took 

 a week, and repeated bathing with rum, to extermi- 

 nate. 



C'urapiitos. or ticks tei-odes). which mount to the 

 tips of blades of grass, attach themselves to the 

 clothes of passersby, and bury their jaws and heads 

 so deeply in the flesh that it is difficult to remove* 

 them without leaving the proboscis behind to fret 

 and fester. In sucking one's blood they cause no 

 pain; but serious sores, even ulcers, often result.— 

 Orton, The Andes and the Amazons, pp. 484—487. 



The author of the book comments on the 

 above as follows: 



The moQuim mentioned above answers the descrip- 

 tion of our own chigger, jigger, red-bug, as she is 

 variously called, which is an entirely different beast 

 from the real chigger or chigoe of the tropics. 1 do 

 not know what may be the northern limit of .hese 

 most unladylike creatures, but have made their ac- 

 quaintance on Svvatara Creek in Pennsylvania 

 They are quite at home on the prairies of southern 

 Illinois,exlst in myriads on the Ozarks.and through- 

 out the lowlands of the South, and are perhaps 

 worst of all in some parts of Texas. The chigger, as 

 I shall call her, is invisible on one's skin, unless you 

 know just what to look for. (iet her on a piece of 

 black cloth, and you can distinguish what looks 

 like a fine grain of red pepper. Put her under a mi- 

 croscope, and she resembles, as Orton says, a mi- 

 nute crab. She lives in the grass, and on the vmder 

 side of leaves, dropjnng off on the first man or beast 

 that comes her way. Then she prospects for a good 

 place, where the skin is thin and tender, and 

 straightway proceeds to burrow, not contenting 

 herself, like a tick, with merely thrusting her head 

 in and getting a good grip, but going in body and 

 soul, to return no more. The victim is not aware 

 of what is in store for him until he goes to bed that 

 night. Then begins a violent itching, which con- 

 tinues for a week or two. 1 have had two hundred 

 of these tormenting things in my skin at one time. 



If one takes a bath in salt w.ater every night be- 

 fore retiring, he can keep fairly rid of these unwel- 

 come guests: but once they have burrowed under- 

 neath the skin, neither salt nor oil nor turpentine 



