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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Aug. 1. 



the starry vault above, and cause for thanks- 

 giving and praise instead of cause for lamenta- 

 tion and complaint, and sloth and inaction. 

 Now, dear brother, you may be against me in 

 o?ie sense; butif yoil are for the truth, as you 

 say, we ai'e side by side in another sense. You 

 certainly would lend a hand and rejoice at the 

 hope of helping in a work like the one mention- 

 ed by John Williams. By the way, I forgot to 

 say that he finally died a martyr. He was 

 killed by the cannibals on one of those very 

 islands. He gave his Ufe for the ignorant 

 savages. And may God help us that we too 

 may be ready to give our lives when the good 

 of humanity — of poor forsaken humanity — 

 shall demand it. 



Notes of Travel 



NOTES OF TRAVEL ON THE WHEEL. 



It was just getting dusk when I reached 

 friend Crawford's. Somebody was swinging a 

 little girl in the front yard. It was too dark to 

 recognize anybody: but as soon as I heard 

 friend Crawford's voice I felt quite at home. 

 The reason why I did not know just where he 

 lived was because he has recently changed his 

 residence. Like myself he decided that there 

 are so many advantages to the grower of 

 strawberry-plants on sandy soil he actually 

 sold out his home, let the underdraining go, 

 and the heavy manuring, in order that he 

 might start a new place on sandy soil. Instead 

 of moving my plant-beds to a sandy region. I 

 bring in the lake-shore sand by the carload. 

 The one who grows strawberry-plants for sale 

 must be prepared lo take up plants in the 

 spring just as soon as frost is out of the ground. 

 Well, if you have tried this kind of worlv in a 

 stiff clay, such as we have here at Medina, you 

 probably know something about it. Think of 

 being stuck in the mud when it is all you can 

 do to lift your feet— said feet being incased in a 

 clod of mud about the size of an ordinary coal- 

 hod. It is not altogether the disagreeable feel- 

 ing of having so much on your feet, but it is 

 ruinous to walk through the nice rows of straw- 

 berries when the soil is in just that condition. 

 We avoid it by having our paths between the 

 plant-beds covered with cinders, and by using 

 a good deal of sand mixed with the soil of the 

 bed. Friend Crawford, perhaps, made a shorter 

 cut by starting a new home. 



Mrs. C. excused herself for not getting up to 

 welcome an old friend because she had her lap 

 full of old letter envelopes. Shall I tell you 

 what she was doing with them? Why, she 

 was cutting out the stamps from the accumula- 

 tion of letters of years past. Somebody had 

 offered something like 15 cents a thousand for 

 the canceled stamps. Just a word in regard to 

 this stamp-traffic. It may be all right. The 

 good women who collect them and use the 

 money for charitable or other purposes are 

 certainly right; but it keeps occurring to me 

 that I remember of reading in the Scientific 

 American, some years ago, that it seemed well 

 nigh impossible to stop the business of fixing 

 these stamps up to be passed off as new ones. 

 Again and again several considerable establish- 

 ments have been broken up by the police; for 

 just as soon as the government hunted up a 

 new kind of ink, these counterfeiters — if that is 

 their name— would find some chemical that 

 would perfectly obliterate the cancel, and the 

 stamps were cleaned by certain chemicals, 

 gummed over, and peddled out. Making col- 

 lections of rare, curious, or foreign stamps, is, 

 of course, a legitimate business; but what can 



honest people want of thousands and tens of 

 thousands of ordinary postage-stamps'? I hope 

 my good friend Mrs. Crawford will not think 

 that 1 mean to find any fault with her work. 

 The same kind of work is being done right here 

 in Medina, and even in my own home; and one 

 of our otfice girls, who is a member of the 

 King's Daughters, received .$7.50 for ten thou- 

 sand stamps, saved out of our own castaway 

 envelopes. 



Another little gem of a sleeping-room was 

 placed at my disposal. As I thanked God that 

 night for the mercies of the day, a feeling kept 

 coming over me that I did not deserve such 

 good friends and such dainty accommodations; 

 but it gives me a thrill of pleasure to know that 

 there are so many such pleasant homes in this 

 land of ours. 



I was up and out among the strawberry- 

 plants before anybody else. In fact. I had in- 

 spected everything in the line of strawberries 

 and gladioluses almost before friend Crawford 

 made his appearance. We discussed the mat- 

 ter of sending out plants that had been kept in 

 the cellar or somewhere else, to be ready for 

 shipment; and friend C. entirely agreed with 

 me, that no plants should be s(Mit out except 

 those in full life and vigor, tal<en right from 

 the open ground. Like the rest of us, he some- 

 times runs short of certain varieties; and to get 

 along he buys of those who have a surplus; 

 but before such plants are sent to customers he 

 heels them in in his nice rich sandy soil. A 

 little furrow is made, perhaps two or three 

 inches deep. The plants are laid in this furrow, 

 two or three inches apart, with the roots prop- 

 erly spread out. Then the soil is pulled over 

 them in such a way as to make another furrow 

 while you close up the first. Said furrows 

 ought 1:0 be five or six inches apart. The plants 

 are all heeled in in this way, watered and 

 shaded if the weather is hot, until they have 

 made new white roots. He pulled some up just 

 to show me how he wanted the roots of his 

 plants to look before he sent them out. I tell 

 you, friends, it is not luck and chance that 

 have given friend Crawford such a trade as he 

 has in new varieties of strawberries. At this 

 juncture I asked him the question why it was 

 that he advertised plants nowadays only by 

 the dozens or hundreds. 



" Why, Mr. Root, I can not afford to grow 

 plants, and put up them at the prices they are 

 advertised in the various papers. Of late there 

 seems to be a sort of agreement — at least among 

 a certain class of strawberry-plant growers— at 

 about .K.OO or $3.50 per 1000. Now, I can not 

 sell plants, put up as I think they should be, 

 for any such price as that." 



I told him I heartily agreed with him, and 

 thSit, although our prices had been for years 75 

 cents per 100 or Ki.OO per 1000, our trade was all 

 the time increasing; and during the past season 

 we have had more orders for plants by the 

 thousand than we could possibly fill. At the 

 same time, we have been so pressed with orders 

 that we have sent out a good many plants that 

 were not what they ought to have been. I go 

 over this matter rather freely here in print, 

 because a good many readers of Gleanings 

 advertise and sell strawberry-plants, and a 

 much larger number purchase plants almost 

 every spring and fall; but the demand is so 

 much larger than the supply, that the price 

 will probably be high during the coming 

 season. 



Friend Crawford has been for years an origi- 

 nator of new varieties of strawberries. If I 

 am correct, he succeeds in getting improved 

 varieties, very much as friend Livingston gets 

 his new varieties of tomatoes. He plants a 

 great lot of seeds. These seeds are, I believe. 



