1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



583 



my old friends. If I am correct, his best early 

 berry is the Excelsior ; and we found a few 

 nice berries still while I was there. The Ex- 

 celsior is two or three days earlier than any 

 thing else. For an all-purpose berry he would 

 place the Marshall almost if not quite at the 

 head, and I believe I agree with him. He has 

 found the Clyde also to be one of the best. 

 He has no rust on his grounds. I think I nev- 

 er before saw a patch of strawberries where 

 you could find scarcely a rusty leaf on any va- 

 riety toward the close of the season. 



Now, he has been doing with raspberries al- 

 most as wonderful things as with slrawberries. 

 The Eureka is one of his best black caps. 

 They are cultivated and thinned like the 

 strawberries, and then mulched with manure. 

 He has lately been trying a mulch of some 

 sort of swamp grass that contains no seeds. I 

 think I never saw so many raspberries on the 

 same area of ground — no, not even at our ex- 

 periment stations. If I am correct, he gets 

 rid of many of the weed seeds in the stable 

 manure by composting it. It is piled on a 

 piece of vacant ground, three or four feet deep, 

 the top of the heap being nearly flat and level. 

 Then at different times the pile is cut down 

 and forked over so as to get it uniform. Sun 

 and rain do the rest of it. There may be some 

 waste by this process — doubtless there is ; but 

 well-rotted manure will take right hold at 

 once and make the plants boom. It was 

 worth to me going many hundred miles just 

 to get a glimpse of what is really possible in 

 berry culture by following up these two things: 

 Spacing the plants properly, and piling on the 

 manure in season and out of season. 



The doctor and I are both dyspeptics — that 

 is, we have suffered from bad digestion. We 

 both abstained from berries the evening of my 

 arrival ; but in the morning, finding myself 

 apparently " O. K." I ate berries before break- 

 fast, then I ate a lot at breakfast (great lus- 

 cious whoppers), then I sampled them after 

 breakfast again ; and after Mr. Stull, the pro- 

 prietor, had arrived, discovering that I had 

 made a mistake in naming some of them, he 

 and I went over the patches together, and I 

 sampled them still again. Then at dinner I 

 had another great big dishful ; but when the 

 doctor's wife brought out some beautiful rasp- 

 berry pie I thought it was time to draw the 

 line, and asked to be excused from taking any 

 pie ; but ever so many times since then, when 

 I think how delicious that raspberry pie look- 

 ed I have almost felt sorry that I did not have 

 a piece and take the chances. By the way, 

 doctor, don't you think you could manage to 

 send me a piece of raspberry pie by express — 

 that is, if raspberries still hold out ? I seldom 

 eat pie here at home ; but if it was like what 

 I saw that day in Marengo, I think it would 

 not hurt me. 



Well, then, there is another thing that is 

 nice at Br. Miller's. While in Chicago, find- 

 ing it difficult to get hot water between meals 

 I drank tea and sometimes coffee ; but while 

 we were waiting for the train at West Chicago 

 the engineer of the waterworks forgot himself 

 and let the water run over the tall waterworks 

 reservoir ; thereupon the station agent opened 



the valve at the drinking-fountain to take ad- 

 vantage of the situation to rinse the pipes 

 thoroughly. The sight of the beautiful gush- 

 ing water made me more thirsty. I told the 

 clerk of the eating-room that I would willing- 

 ly give him the price of a cup < f coffee for 

 some of that water made hot. He soon 

 brought it ; and, oh it was so much nicer than 

 any tea or coffee I ever tasted in my life ! It 

 was hard water, but the minerals seemed to 

 me to "hit the spot " and fill a "long-felt 

 want." When I got to Dr. Miller's I was de- 

 lighted to find the water from his well seemed 

 to be just like it, so I generously treated the 

 crowd (the whole lot) to all the pure clean 

 hot water they all wanted to drink ; and may 

 be that is why so many berries did not hurt 

 me a particle. Since returning home I have 

 been longing for more of the water that comes 

 from Dr. Miller's well. 



Perhaps I should explain that the hot water 

 I drink is heated to only 110 or 120 — never 

 hotter than the latter, and sometimes it is less 

 than 110. Several times, when I could not 

 get artificial heat, I have used water that stood 

 in the sun until it was as hot as the sun would 

 make it. If you find disagreeable symptons 

 follow from drinking all the cold water you 

 want on a hot day, just try water warmed to 

 the above temperatures. Do not by any 

 means think of drinking water so hot that it 

 throws you into a perspiration. This would 

 be very apt to make you take cold, even dur- 

 ing a very warm day. 



SWEET CLOVER FOR HORSES. 



Dr. Miller had just cut two tons of sweet- 

 clover hay. I should say by the looks of it it 

 was allowed to get rather too rank and tall to 

 make the best hay ; but as an object-lesson he 

 opened the stable-door and whistled for his 

 three horses. They evidently supposed it was 

 feeding time, or for some special reason they 

 were to be fed. All three marched into the 

 barn, and turned their heads toward the man- 

 gers ; but as nobody seemed to hinder them 

 they marched over to the hay-mow and pitch- 

 ed into the sweet-clover hay. They first pick 

 off the leaves and small twigs ; but after they 

 have trimmed off the stalks and can't get any 

 more they eat up this dry brush, as it were. 

 The doctor suggested something I never heard 

 before — that, although the horses would eat 

 the green growing clover with avidity, they 

 pre/erred the. cured hay; so he led one of them 

 out in the yard and gave him a taste of some 

 rank but tender shoots. Of course, he grab- 

 bed for this, but soon showed his preference 

 for the cured hay in the barn. 



Just now it occurs to me that M. M. Bald- 

 ridge said sheep were exceedingly fond of 

 sweet clover ; and, by the way, we are just 

 making a test of using sheep according to Ver- 

 non Burt's plan, to keep the apiary slicked up 

 from grass and weeds, making sheep take the 

 place of a lawn-mower. We have fenced off a 

 part of our apiary with wire netting, and a 

 ewe and her lamb occupy the inclosure. About 

 the first thing the lamb did was to pick out all 

 the sweet clover in the inclosure. Then it 

 reached over the low fence for all that could 

 be secured outside ; and when the leaves and 



