156 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



March, 1919 



c 



STRAY STRAWS 



Dr. C. C. MiUer 



ur 



THAT 'S a 

 good edi- 

 torial, page 

 74, February 

 Gleanings, the 

 gist of which is 

 that a man 

 should not ad- 

 vertise beyond 

 his ability to 



perform. On the side a point is brought out 

 that is worth considering. A has advertised, 

 is flooded with orders, and turns to B, from 

 whom he buys to help out. Evidently B 

 has not advertised, and the question is 

 whether it would not have been better, at 

 least for B and the customer, if B had ad- 

 vertised and shipped directly to the cus- 

 tomer, instead of sending thru A. 



* * * 



Yes, as said in print beneath the picture, 

 on page 76, the dress of those four "ettes" 

 is "sane and safe," and, it might be added, 

 very sensible. Yet the ' ' eternal feminine ' ' 

 is still there, as you can see by the one sit- 

 ting down. Her hands are saying, plainly 

 as can be, "Is my hat on straight?" 



* * * 



Speaking of some of the California bee- 

 ranges, you say, Mr. Editor, page 75, 

 "These ranges of sage and wild buckwheat 

 will never be good for anything but bees." 

 In this day and generation, that statement 

 is just a bit reckless. It would be nothing 

 astonishing if something undreamed of 

 should turn up, making that land valuable 

 away beyond its value for bees, and who 

 knows but beekeepers may be the pioneers 

 in opening up those unexpected values? 

 ^* * * 



Speaking of overstocked territory in Cali- 

 fornia, you say, Mr. Editor, page 75, "there 

 should be a law to stop the encroachments 

 of poachers." Aren't you getting a bit 

 reckless? I knew a man who once got into 

 all sorts of trouble for advocating that a 

 beekeeper should have a legal as well as a 

 moral right to his territory. And yet, will 

 some one please arise and explain why a 

 man should have such a right in New Zea- 

 land and not in this country? Also why it 

 should not be that a man is just as secure 

 in the bee business as in the cattle business. 



* » * 



As to that account, on page 104, of a man 

 selling 22-cent honey at 6 cents for local 

 consumption, likely not many of us have 

 really learned yet that "it is more blessed 

 to give than to receive"; yet the war, with 

 its drives for Eed Cross and other things, 

 has helped quite a bit. Even the churches 

 are, as a rule, away in the background. The 

 amount raised for benevolence is only a 

 small part of that raised for local expenses, 

 when in most cases it should be on at least 

 a 50-50 basis. All that does not make sell- 

 ing 22-cent honey to neighbors at 6 cents an 

 example worthy of imitation. As a business 



1 



proposition it 's 

 rotten, and I 

 doubt the moral- 

 ity of it. When 

 Mr. Foss sold 

 honev worth $1,- 

 760 for $480, he 

 gave away $1,- 

 280. An excel- 

 lent thing, if he 

 could afford it, and the charity was judi- 

 ciously bestowed. But by what sort of 

 right did he give any of that money to those 

 of his neighbors who were better off than 

 he, "when the world is overwhelmed with 

 suffering ' ' and thousands upon thousands 

 are starving? Can he look squarely in the 

 eye at the last those starving Armenians 



and others? 



* * * 



Prohibition promises to prove such an important 

 factor in the national life of America that it ought 

 to add at the very least 10 per cent to the intrinsic 

 value of the stocks and bonds dealt in by Wall 

 Street. 



There is no individual business in which it can- 

 not be proved that great special good will result 

 from abolition of the liquor traffic. 



That 's not copied from a Prohibition pa- 

 per, but from a cold-blooded financial letter 

 in a Chicago daily that up to now has ad- 

 vocated the use of beer and wine to prevent 

 the consumption of stronger alcoholic 



drinks! 



* » * 



E. J. Ladd has sent the following quota- 

 tion from the excellent book of Dr. Henry 

 Lindlahr, 'Nature Cure and the A B C of 

 Natural Dietetics ' ' : 



Prominent chemists have discovered that foods 

 contain in various chemical forms, and in exceed- 

 ingly small proportions, certain substances which 

 they have calleid "vitamines" ♦ * * meaning 

 "living substance." It is assumed that these vita- 

 mines are molecules highly charged with vital en- 

 ergy, the essential element in nutrition. 



Thei discoverers of "vitamines" have found that 

 boiling destroys a great many of these highly or- 

 ganized substances and that temperatures higher 

 than the boiling point kill most of them. It has 

 been proved that animals will die of starvation when 

 fed exclusively on foods in which the vitamines have 

 been destroyed. 



Vitamines, the carriers of the life elements, are 

 located largely in the outermost dark coverings 

 of the rice kernel. In the various grains, also, the 

 vitamines are present in much greater proportion 

 in the outer dark layers and in the hull rather than 

 in the interior substance. These discoveries of 

 chemical and medical science seem to indicate that 

 the positive "organic mineral salts" located in the 

 outer parts and hulls of grains are the carriers of 

 "vitamines." All the dairy products, including eggs 

 »nd honey, are very rich in vitamines, or, as we 

 express it, in the vito-chemical life elements and in 

 •nimal magnetism. 



I hardly believe there is heat sufficient to 

 kill the vitamines of the honey in the drink 

 I take each morning, that being my sole 

 breakfast. 



(See the department of "Gleaned by Asking" 

 for more of Dr. Miller s contribution to this Glean- 

 ings. — Editor.] 



