JANUARY 1, 1913 



35 



learn over again if he would get the best results in 

 the quickest time. Then he needs to bring either 

 enough money or enough time and ability to work 

 BO as to carry him through several failures. As a 

 rule the road to success begins on the failure rout«, 

 and in many cases it is a long way to the proper 

 turn. 



As many are thinking of Florida I may do them 

 a service by telling two stories — one of them of the 

 friends whose method with poultry has just been 

 set forth, the other of their neighbor and uncle, Mr. 

 Chas. Blood. It cost Mr. H. about twelve years of 

 his early manhood to get a start here. He worked and 

 struggled hard, but made little progress apparently. 

 He was finding himself, and learning the growing of 

 groves. Offered a job of caring for a grove, he went 

 to Terra Ceia, a fertile island just north of the 

 mouth of the Manatee in Tampa Bay. Having en- 

 dured hardness, he was ready for his opportunity, 

 and grasped it when it came. He found a good 

 woman, one of the salt of the earth, and married. 

 Then he made the first payment on ten acres. They 

 built a shanty, and began the struggle for a home. 

 He grubbed palmettos and stumps, grew truck, and 

 cared for the grove of the non-resident. She raised 

 chickens with his help ; but all the time they were 

 working for a grove as the goal of their ambition. 

 They planted the seeds, grew young trees and budded 

 them, and after a while they began to yield. Then 

 they got on to Easy Street, and are now enjoying 

 the fruit of their struggle. They bought the ten 

 acres in 1899, 13 years ago. For about half of that 

 time they have been getting a revenue from their 

 grove, and for about five of them the revenue has 

 been large enough to mean comfort. A quarter of a 

 century, divided into twenty years of hardship and 

 five of prosperity, is not bad, is it ? 



The most remarkable grove that I have seen in 

 my rather extended travels over central Florida and 

 the west side of south Florida belongs to the Mr. 

 Blood mentioned above. There are thirteen or four- 

 teen acres in his tract, with about 2000 grapefruit- 

 trees on ten of them. House, barn, lawn, packing- 

 house, and a pond occupy about four acres. 



Mr. Blood is the apostle of intensive grapefruit 

 culture. His trees are set 14% feet apart, 200 to 

 the acre. The old-time grove-grower sets them thirty 

 feet apart, less than fifty to the acre, and for many 

 years cultivates land that his trees do not fill, wait- 

 ing for the time when, tall and stately, they will 

 take all the space. 



Mr. Blood believes in the present rather than the 

 future, and wants the largest returns this year 

 rather than a decade hence. As many trees to the 

 acre as will take up the entire space in a few years, 

 then all the water and fertilizer those trees will 

 stand is his practice. The results are good. He 

 began on Terra Ceia about seventeen years ago with 

 nothing. His revenue by the time he had been there 

 ten years was at least fifteen thousand dollars per 

 annum. Since then his yearly average, clear of all 

 expenses, has been fully that amount. Who can tell 

 the value of an acre of ground that nets $1500 an- 

 nually ? 



He and his wife spent the summer visiting north- 

 ern friends and relatives. For several weeks they 

 were with a brother-in-law who owns a big wheat- 

 ranch (two whole sections) in the valley of the Red 

 River of the North. A large force of hands, with 

 traction engines, gang-plows, and other up-to-date 

 machinery make this 1300-acre farm very profitable. 

 It is the ideal of modern farming ; but our Florida 

 friends prefer their thirteen-acre grove. They live 

 easy, in the best climate in the United States, with 

 no rush, and get more comfort and as much money 

 as the big farmer. One acre of their farm is worth 

 a hundred of the bigger one. Comment is unneces- 

 sary. The story speaks for itself. If one wants to 

 know Florida'? possibilities, there they are. 



Please notice that these successful people learned 

 the business through struggle and failure, and that 

 their success came after years of waiting. Gold 

 grows on trees here, but dne must first learn how to 

 grow the tree. Time, patience, hard work, grit, and 

 many a disappointment are elements of life here as 

 elsewhere ; but the opportunity is great, and condi- 

 tions favorable. Come and see for yourself. 



Parish, Fla., Nov. 21. F. M. Baldwin. 



SITTING HENS VS. INCUBATORS. 



Our readers will remember that I have 

 several times brought this matter up. Let 

 me go over it briefly. Last winter I filled 

 our incubator with eggs by standing them 

 on the small end, and thus got in quite 

 a few more than the incubator was made 

 for, proposing to take out the unfertile 

 eggs after three days. But that night I 

 found a sitting hen, so I took fifteen eggs 

 out of the crowded incubator and gave them 

 to the hen. She managed in some way to 

 have almost every egg fertile; but the in- 

 cubator made only about two-thirds fertile. 

 The experiment was repeated with like re- 

 sults. Finalty our good friend Keyser, well 

 known in poultry circles, announced that 

 he took some eggs from the incubator at 

 testing time, which showed no sign of fer- 

 tility. He gave these to a sitting hen to 

 ''keep her going," but forgot about it, and 

 in three weeks' time she hatched quite a 

 few chicks. In other words, the eggs that 

 would not show any sign of fertility in one 

 of the best up-to-date incubators were, the 

 greater part of them, afterward made fer- 

 tile by the sitting hen. I found the same 

 true with duck eggs. Sitting hens produce 

 ducks from almost every egg, the incubator 

 does it with only a little more than half 

 as many. I submitted this question to in- 

 cubator men and others; and I think tlie 

 general verdict, although sometimes reluc- 

 tantly given, was that a sitting hen is pos- 

 sessed of some "trick of the trade," or what- 

 ever you may call it, that beats, if not all 

 incubators, the greater part of them, in 

 getting the germs in the egg to start. In 

 my investigations I notice that the eggs 

 under a sitting hen have a greasy or oily 

 appearance not found on eggs in the in 

 cubator; and a writer in the Ame7ican 

 Poultry Advocate for June, last year, has 

 quite an article on the matter, from which 

 I clip the two following extracts: 



He believes that the oil on the eggs which are 

 set under hens plays an important part, and goes 

 on to say that some experiments have been con- 

 ducted with a combination of the use of moisture, 

 hen oil, and carbonic-acid gas ; and that the dif- 

 ficulty was the absolute control of the factors. The 

 few hatches have given great hopes of being able 

 to accomplish something worth while when the con- 

 trol of these factors was learned. 



The presence of more oil on eggs under hens 

 than in incubators was brought out at the Oregon 

 station. The amount of oil was also found to be 



