A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 169 



beautiful strawberries on the market so early in the season ; and 

 within an hour I was having an enthusiastic talk with the very 

 man, my friend I/. B. Pierce, of Tallmadge, O. No one who 

 reads the agricultural papers of the United States needs an in- 

 troduction to friend Pierce. About a year ago (see page 534, 

 July 1, 1893) I told you about his strawberry-plantation out in 

 the sandy woods, or on ground that had been woods but a short 

 time before. New ground just reclaimed from the forest must 

 have some special fitness for strawberries. It was Saturday, 

 and friend Pierce was about as much astonished as any of us to 

 find that there were just bushels and bushels of berries ready 

 to pick He had picked the afternoon before, and decided they 

 would do nicely until Monday ; but the beautiful warm weath- 

 er, after such a protracted cold rainy spell, had done the busi- 

 ness. We sampled all the new varieties, and tasted and tested, 

 until we could not tell a good berry if we saw it. I insisted 

 that friend Pierce should hunt up his pickers, and get those 

 berries into market before night. But he got his work laid out 

 otherwise, and could not break up his plans. Perhaps he got 

 as much money for his berries the Monday following, but I felt 

 pretty sure he would not. Besides, some of them would be 

 overripe. I said so much about it, that friend Pierce would 

 have been almost excusable in saying he knew how to manage 

 his own business. He did not know, however, and neither did 

 I, that my own berry-patch at home was pretty much in the 

 same predicament. Wait a little. 



Then I visited my cousin, Wilbur Fenn. He has just got 

 a new potato planter, and I found him out in the fields, his 

 group of bright pretty children all around him as usual. We 

 had ever so much to talk about. The planter that he had just 

 purchased does not miss hills. It leaves the soil fine and mel- 

 low underneath, and all around the potato, and it was just as 

 accurate as planting by hand, or even more so. In fact, it is 

 hand-planting. We went out into the field where the potatoes 

 were coming up, and looked into the matter. A bright little 

 girl ten years old was so much interested and animated in re- 

 gard to the whole matter that I very soon discovered she did 

 some of the dropping. She sat behind her papa, on the ma- 

 chine, and placed the pieces of potato in a series of little cups 

 arranged in a circle. There were, perhaps, two dozen of them; 

 and the dropper has only to keep a piece of potato in each of 

 these two dozen cups as they revolve in a circle. It seems to 

 me that the machine is a magnificent success. But something 

 else impressed me during that visit, and it was this : There is 



