6S8 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 



By the way, round about the town of Wells- 

 ville, Allegany Co., N. Y., there are a great 

 many hillsides, and some of them are pretty 

 long liillsides, as well as pretty steep. Pa- 

 ther Cole's garden is, some of it, located on 

 ground so steep that it would be difficult for 

 a horse to work it ; accordingly it is most- 

 ly worked by hand. One of the first things 

 I noticed were springs at the base of the hill 

 — not natural springs, but ((r^(/id«? springs. 

 Water was running from four of them at the 

 time of my visit, and the four together made 

 quite a little rill that passes along by the 

 roadside. He informed me that, during the 

 most severe droughts of the present season, 

 some water was all the time coming from 

 these artificial springs. He has just been 

 making a larger reservoir at the upper edge 

 of his five acres, and pretty well near the 

 summit of the hill. This reservoir is to 

 catch enough rain water so as to alTord a 

 constant supply to the covered trenches be- 

 low it from one rainfall to another— or, at 

 least, that is the theory ; and I found water 

 standing in the trench while I was there. 

 Now, it occurred to me that this water, in- 

 stead of passing along near the surface, 

 would sink down into the gravelly soil and 

 go straight into the hill, witliout watering 

 the plants at all. Father Cole says, how- 

 ever, that this is a mistake. There is very 

 seldom a hillside found so porous that the 

 water runs straight down into the earth, in- 

 stead of passing slowly near the surface, to 

 the bottom of the slope. Although there 

 had been quite a hard rain only a few days 

 previous to my visit, no gullies and no ave- 

 nues where the water had ever run over the 

 surface of the earth were visible anywhere 

 over his covered reservoirs. 



It would be impossible to mention the long 

 pleasant chats we had during the 24 hours I 

 remained. Father Cole has been studying 

 on this subject more or less since the time 

 he was ten years old. Ilis mind was first 

 drawn to it by a paragraph in Morse's Phys- 

 ical Geography, under the head of " China." 

 The statement is to the effect that the Chi- 

 nese have for ages excelled in agriculture. 

 They build large reservoirs on the summits 

 of the hills, to catch rain water, and this 

 rain water is allowed to pass slowly down- 

 ward over successive terraces, so as to irri- 

 gate the vegetation from the summit of the 

 hill to the valley below. Well, during these 

 years that have passed, friend Cole has been 

 a deep and diligent student of nature. Hero 

 is one of his theories : Wlien the country 

 was new, and our hills and moinitains 



were covered with forests, the surface of 

 the ground was protected by a carpet of 

 leaves. When the rain falls on these 

 leaves it is arrested until it can sink slowly 

 into the earth, watering the roots of the 

 trees, because these leaves hold pretty much 

 if not quite all the water that falls on level 

 plats on the summits of our hills, or even on 

 high ground. The water from these rain- 

 falls accumulates in the shape of bogs, mo- 

 rasses, or wet, swampy pieces of ground. 

 From these wet elevated places, the water 

 slowly descends until it strikes an impervious 

 subsoil of clay, or, as is often the case, a 

 rocky formation over which it flows, drop- 

 ping over one shelf after another until it 

 comes out of the hill in the form of springs. 

 Man now steps in and clears off the forest. 

 In many places in York State the hills were 

 denuded, simply to sell the timber for fire- 

 wood to the railroad companies during the 

 time they ran their locomotives by wood in- 

 stead of coal. After the forests w^ere gone, the 

 leaf-supply was stopped ; and in a few years 

 the ground became bare, so that it was cut 

 up and gullied by each heavy rain. The 

 rainfall in this case, instead of going into 

 the ground, washes away the vegetable mold 

 and vegetable soil, and carries it into the 

 creeks. A clover sod might do something 

 toward preventing this great damage and 

 loss to the farmer ; but clover sods are the 

 exception, not the rule. The recent rage for 

 tile drainage now comes in (draining off 

 these wet spots), striking another blow at 

 our hillside springs, besides going still fur- 

 ther and damaging our wells. This reminds 

 me that Prof. Cook remarked, recently, that 

 he was (if raid of the results of tile drainage. 

 In his own neighborhood they had been con- 

 gratulating themselves on draining off a 

 wet piece of marsh that stood on elevated 

 ground. But about as soon as they had the 

 work nicely accomplished, the wells, one aft- 

 er another, in that vicinity, began to dry up 

 and fail. It seemed to me at the time it 

 could not be possible that our wells should 

 be dependent on such marshy places and 

 stagnant pools; but Prof. Cook gave it as 

 his belief that they were. Father Cole, to 

 convince me by an object-lesson, asked me 

 if I could stand a tramp of a mile or two 

 over the hills. Of course, I could. You, 

 my friends, will know that, even if father 

 Cole didn't. First we visited a beautiful 

 soft-water spring, where water enough was 

 miming out of the end of the wooden trougli, 

 I should think, to fill a two-inch auger-hole. 

 "Now, my friend," said my teacher, " I 



