CHAPTER XXIII 



SOME PRACTICAL EXPERIMENTS 



THE Department of Agriculture at Washington, also 

 Cornell University and various other schools publish special 

 studies and monographs of different branches. For some 

 a small charge is made, but they are mostly distributed free. 

 Many of them are very valuable. The United States De- 

 partment's pamphlet on the Diseases of the Violet is a no- 

 table example. The average person does not know how these 

 can be obtained or even that they exist. 



The Department's Year Books are most interesting read- 

 ing, and both its Professors and the state colleges will answer 

 particular questions of citizens. 



These and the various United States and State Experi- 

 ment Station publications will serve instead of most books 

 (except this one), if properly filed, indexed, and cross- 

 indexed so that you can readily turn to all the information 

 on a given subject on bugs, for instance, before the insects 

 have harvested your crop. 



I am trying only to suggest things, not to advise, nor to 

 induce my readers to try to do anything that they don't 

 like or have no capacity for. It is difficult to make people 

 understand that. 



One reader of this book, a dear creature, wrote her experi- 

 ence for a Crafts magazine. She got the acres, built her 

 house, and raised one fine crop of swans ? nuts grafted 

 on wild trees ? partridge berries ? No three tons of hay ! 



224 



