418 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1 



to 



furnishes aiiotker important contribution 

 the scientific part of incubation. 



POULTRY SECRETS; HOW GLEANINGS ENABLED A WO- 

 MAN TO SAVE HER MONEY. 



I want to tell you how much I enjoy your writings, 

 and how much good they have done me. I feel as 

 though I were listening to one who had my individual 

 welfare at heart, and read between the lines. I want 

 to thank jmu personally for every one of them, past 

 and futur^ Your poultry talks have been a great help 

 to me also. At one time I was just going to send off 

 for a "secret " which you disclosed just in time— in 

 fact, I had the letter ready to send, when I received 

 Gleanings; and, as usual, I glanced over your writings 

 and happened to see your disclosure of the secret. 



Ranch Vigo, Tex., May 2. MADELINE E. Pruitt. 



There is one point in th« above letter that 

 strikes home to me. This ^ood woman says 

 she feels, in reading my talk, as though she 

 were "listening to one who had my individ- 

 ual welfare at neart." Now, if our various 

 poultry journals would only feel the same 

 way toward those who subscribe for them, 

 how much better it would be all around! 

 Just think of not only permitting but abet- 

 ting this foolish business of asking a dollar 

 of each of a hundred people for a secret when 

 that same secret could be printed for the 

 benefit of all the subscribers, in a space not 

 much greater than the advertisement of it 

 occupied! How is it— are poultry journals 

 printed in order to help along swindles? or 

 are they printed for the benefit of those who 

 subscribe and pay their money? 



YELLOW SWEET CLOVER BLOOMING THE FIRST 

 YEAR. 



In our issue for June 1, page 26, I men- 

 tioned the fact that we had purchased a ton 

 of yellow-sweet-clover seed, and on page 21 

 of the June 15th issue the question- was asked 

 about sowing sweet clover among corn at the 

 last cultivation. Well, to-day, June 14, one 

 of our employees, Mr. Philip Boley (the 

 "duck man" I have mentioned before), 

 brought me a stalk of yellow sweet clover 

 five feet tall, covered with bloom. He said 

 this came from seed that he sprinkled along 

 the roadside last November. He can not tell 

 whether the seed came up last fall, and 

 made root enough to winter over, or not. 

 He only knows that, when he saw it this 

 spring, it was making a tremendous growth; 

 and now it is not only up to a man's chin, 

 but is full of bloom and covered with bees. 

 I was aware that yellow sweet clover blos- 

 soms much earlier than the white; but I did 

 not suppose it was possible to get such a 

 growth and yield of honey in so short a time. 

 He says that horses that go "past there eat it 

 readily. Please remember this seed was not 

 sown on cultivated soil, and there has been 

 no effort made to cover the seed in anyway. 

 It was just scattered along the roadside, 

 along his own premi-^s, of course. Can oth- 

 ers tell us more about sowing it late in the 

 fall, and its early blossoming? 



By the way, friends, where can you find a 

 forage crop that will be five feet high in the 

 middle of June when the seed was thrown 

 only on the top of the ground in November? 

 For feed I can not believe there is any thing 



more valuable; and from what experiments 

 that have been made in using this plant to 

 plow under for green manuring, I do not 

 know of any other that has its equal, the 

 question is, "Can this result be duplicated?" 



RATS AND MICE, AND WHAT IT COSTS TO 

 BOARD AND LODGE THEM. 



Perhaps you have noticed statements in 

 the papers, especially of late, about the dam- 

 age that results from rats and mice. When 

 I was first told that it was more than a mil- 

 lion of dollars I thought it incredible. A lit- 

 tle later a statement appeared to the effect 

 that it was several million; and now we have 

 a government bulletin, just issued, that de- 

 clares that recent careful statistics make it 

 quite probable that our rats and mice cost us 

 almost if not quite a HUNDRED ^^LLIONS of 

 DOLLARS annually. This bulletin contains 54 

 pages, and it ought to be read and studied 

 by every man, woman, and child, not only 

 in our own country, but throughout the 

 whole world. The matter just now is attract- 

 ing more attention, and assuming more im- 

 portance, because, aside from the hundred 

 million dollars that it costs us in money, rats 

 are found to be a most prolific source of 

 propagating contagious diseases. It is a dis- 

 grace to any home or to any neighborhood 

 to have rats and mice breeding and peopling 

 the world. Mrs. Root was congratulating us 

 two or three days ago that she had not seen 

 a rat or mouse on the premises since we got 

 back from Florida. Last night, however, I 

 found rats had got into our apple-cellar and 

 "chawed up " the few remnants of a peck of 

 apples. We considered this cellar as rat- 

 proof; but careful investigation showed that 

 the rat had worked a hole through from an 

 underdrain close up to the wall. I mixed up 

 some cement in a hurry, and made a good 

 job of stopping up the opening. Now, this 

 bulletin states that the great highway of rats 

 is sink and drain tiles, and directs that all the 

 openings or outlets from tiles and sewers be 

 covered by good strong galvanized wire cloth, 

 close enougli so that no rat or mouse can get 

 through. Another important matter is that 

 nothing should be left lying around loose 

 that rats and mice can subsist on. Here is a 

 paragraph that hits our establishment most 

 emphatically. Let me quote: 



Another important source of rat food is the remnants 

 of lunches left by employees in factories, stores, and 

 public buildings. This food, which alone is sufficient 

 to attract and sustain a small army of rats, is common- 

 ly left in waste or other open receptacles. Strictly en- 

 forced rules requiring all remnants of food to be de- 

 posited in covered vessels would make trapping far 

 more effective. 



We have between 200 and 300 employees 

 just now, and most of them bring their din- 

 ner. I have repeatedly exhorted our work- 

 men to be careful about baiting rats and mice 

 by throwing remnants of their food around 

 at the noon hour. Let me repeat what I have 

 said before: Do not bring your dinner in a 

 basket. Have some sort of dinner-pail with 

 a tight-fitting cover. Spread out a newspa- 

 per where you eat your dinner, and brush 

 Continued on pane 17. AJvertisinu. 



