1886 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



■SiY.) 



keepers and poultry-journals would ridicule 

 such a slipshod way of raising pDultry ; and 

 they may urge the danger of their being de- 

 voured at night so far away from house or 

 home. Well, mine were never harmed, al- 

 though tliey were near the creek, where ene- 

 mies might be supposed to lurk. But should 

 there be danger of such nocturnal prowlers, 

 our ten-cent i)oultry-book gives directions for 

 a cheap and pretty little poultry-house for just 

 such flocks of chickens. If you are going to 

 keep chickens in this way, of course you can 

 keep only about so many on a certain area. I 

 got a dollar apiece for my roosters, and they 



cost almost nothing. The reason is, as I 

 told you, I started, in the hrst place, with 

 some tine stock that was universally want- 

 ed. Besides the birds sold, agood many eggs 

 were disposed of also, at 50 cts. a dozen ; but 

 I suppose everybody would liave been satis- 

 fied at a dollar a dozen. After investing sev- 

 eral dollars in one of the best male birds 

 this spring, I am now going to charge a dol- 

 lar a dozen for the eggs. Now, there is 

 something else I wanted to say in regard to 

 poultry; but as it starts from a different 

 standpoint, we will take it up in another 

 chapter. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



That which tlie palinorwoi-m hath Iclt lialh the 

 hath the cankcrworm eaten; and that which tlic 

 —Joel 1:4. 



My friends, if you desire success in raising [ 

 plants or in raising poultry, or in any kind 

 of business, you have got to fight against 

 difficulties and discouragements. Sometimes 

 it would seem as if the odds against you are 

 terrible odds. If j^ou do not work carefully 

 and wisely, you will see the work, not only 

 of hours, but of days, swept away so quickly 

 that it willtake you by surprise and astonish- 

 ment. You may have made ample provision 

 against the effects of frost by means of glass 

 sash and steam or hot-water pipes ; but just 

 as soon as you get a temperature just right 

 to make the plants boom, you will discover 

 that you have hit it exactly in making in- 

 sect-life "boom." Perhaps tin first enemy 

 you meet will be green flies on your lettuce 

 and other plants ; and beware how you 

 think they do not amount to much, and can 

 not do much harm. So wonderfully rapid 

 are their powers of reproduction, that, be- 

 fore you know it, they will fill your green- 

 house. If you go to the books they will tell 

 you that a thorough fumigating with tobac- 

 co-stems will kill the flies. Tobacco costs 

 money, and fumigating takes time ; and by 

 and by you begin to fear it is more bother to 

 fight the green flies than all your stuff is 

 worth. If the little pests would only be so 

 accommodating as to die submissively after 

 you have smoked them enough, as it would 

 seem, to satisfy any reasonable bugs, you 

 could get along very well ; but they will get 

 sick from the tobacco, and fall down on 

 their backs, and after a while get up again 

 and increase faster than ever. We became 



locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left 

 cankcrworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. 



almost discouraged this last winter, throngh 

 this same pest ; and I verily believe that the 

 bugs would have come out ahead had we 

 followed the directions given in the books. 

 In despair. I wrote to our frieiul Peter Hen- 

 derson, lie told me that it is quite a hard 

 matter to kill the flies on the leaves of let- 

 tuce when it got to making heads, for they 

 would get down uiuler the leaves, where the 

 tobacco smoke could not reach them ; and 

 he said the only plan was to cover the 

 ground witli tobacco dust and then drench 

 the plants with a tea made of tobacco-leaves. 

 This conquered them — at least for the time ; 

 but to go over all the greenhouse in that 

 way takes more time and tobacco than the 

 lettuce would likely be worth. 



About the first of January, for an experi- 

 ment, I set one of my Light J5rahmas under 

 one of the benches in the greenhouse. Only 

 one chick hatched out, through some care- 

 lessness on my part; but that one chick 

 came pretty near managing the green flies, 

 alone and imaided. When, a little later, 

 half a dozen more spry little J3rahmas came 

 on the stage, they went over the whole of the 

 beds, and througli all the boxes of plants, 

 and so effectually picked out the green flies 

 in about three or four days' time that the 

 victory was complete. Friend Terry says, 

 in his potato-book, that the best and cheap- 

 est way to master potato-beetles is to take 

 them off and kill them by hand. And I be- 

 lieve a good many others find it so. Now, 

 after you have seen a chicken go through a 

 grepnhouge bed and snap up the insects one 



