348 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



pulls the plow, thinf];s have changed consid- 

 erably. The editor of the Praeiwal Farmer 

 says in his summary: "Wherever you find 

 automobiles you find an advocate for better 

 roads — one who will talk and argue and fight 

 for them." He says, "Farmers all over 

 the country are now of one opinion — that 

 the automobile has exerted the greatest in- 

 fluence for good roads." And even our care- 

 ful and staid neighbor, T. B. Terry, sug- 

 gests that even he may run an automobile 

 when they succeed in getting a good road 

 clear up to his farm. I wish every one of 

 our readers would send for the copy of the 

 Practicxd Farmer on good roads, even if 

 they do not subscribe for it for a whole year. 



PARCHED CORN AS A BREAKFAST FOOD. 



I want to say that, from personal experience, 

 parched sweet corn, ground fine, \vith plenty of 



the " top of the milk " mixed in, and sweetened with 



white-clover honey, makes a dish good enough for 



even a farmer bee-keeper, saying nothing of a king. 



Riceville, la. A. F. Foote. 



Thanks, friend F. We have not only 

 talked parched corn several times in past is- 

 sues, but I think many of us have greatly 

 enjoyed it. Dried sweet corn, parched and 

 ground as you suggest, will, no doubt, be an 

 improvement; but I think I should find it 

 ' ' sweet ' ' enough without the honey. I have 

 often thought that not enough was made of 

 the sweet corn and canned green corn which 

 are already on the market. But a breakfast 

 food made of parched sweet corn I think 

 might be a good rival to any of the great 

 and successful breakfast foods; and there is 

 plenty of time to plant a good plot of sweet 

 corn when this meets your eye, in order that 

 you may have enough mattired sweet corn 

 to test Bro. Foote's suggestion. 



By A. I. Root 



"POULTRY secrets;" HOW TO TELL THE 

 SEX OF BABY CHICKS. 



I am inclined to think the "secret" busi- 

 ness is rather on the wane; at least I have 

 not seen many secrets offered for sale of late. 

 By the way, several poultry-journals have 

 been carrying an advertisement of a '25-egg 

 incubator; and in this incubator advertise- 

 ment mention is made of some big discov- 

 ery in regard to hatching (iuck eggs. I 

 wrote for their catalog, and mentioned that 

 I wanted to get hold of all the late discov- 

 eries in the line of growing ducks. Now, 

 what do you suppose this distinguished pro- 

 fessor wanted for his secret? Only the tri- 

 fling sum of one thousetnel dollars.' He ex- 

 plained that his business was teaching his 

 secrets to some of the great duck-growing 

 establishments. He said if I were growing 

 ducks on only a small scale he would make 

 a price that would he reasonable; but I was 

 so scared that I did not, ])ush the matter 

 any further. Why should I? During the 

 last winter every egg that I set, or almost 

 every one, produced a duck, and every duck 

 grew and prospered except the two that the 

 alligator caught, and some other trifling ac- 

 cidents. May be it is a gootl thing to have 

 somebody come out with a $1000 secret; and 

 it just now occurs to me he would be just 

 the fellow to go in partnership with Keller- 

 strass. What a thriving business the two 

 together might build up! 



Oh, yes! I promised to tell something 

 about determining the sex of day-old chicks. 

 Here is the advertisement that was sent me. 



TO TELI. THE SEX OF BABY CHICKS. 



At last we have the poultryman's greatest need- 

 to tell the sex of baby chicks. You can tell in 3 

 minutes' time from the time tlie chick is a day old. 

 Guaranteed. Inclose |1 with addressed envelope to 

 The Kinsey Co., Milton, Ind. 



I can not tell you where the clipping came 

 from; but I sent my dollar, and (here is the 

 secret for all of you. You just pick up the 

 chick in your hand. Put your thumb around 



its neck and give it a gentle squeeze. If it 

 is a rooster he will kick and keep on kick- 

 ing; but a pullet will kick only a few times 

 and then be quiet. Now, there is, no doubt, 

 some truth in this. We all know that the 

 male chick is, as a rule, a little larger and 

 stronger than his sister; but how about the 

 chicks that are just half way, that keep on 

 kicking a little longer than the ones you de- 

 cide to be female? His dollar secret may help 

 us to tell something about it; but I very much 

 doubt whether it will enable anybody to 

 sort out with any certainty a cockerel from 

 a pullet when only one day old. When the 

 chicks are two or three weeks old I can very 

 often decide, almost to a certainty, by the 

 growth of the comb. The cockerels will 

 very soon show much greater development 

 of the comb than the pullets. But this is 

 by no means certain. When F^rnest was 

 visiting me in Florida we picked out some 

 cockerels to send to market. He called my 

 attention to the fact that he thought one of 

 them was a pullet after all, and she was al- 

 most a full-grown hen, so I put her among 

 the pullets. But two weeks later she was 

 having a square fight with one of my big 

 Buttercup roosters, and she turned out to be 

 (or he turned out to be) a male after all. 

 And I have found it to be true, that, although 

 we can tell generally when the chicks are a 

 month or six weeks old, there are certain 

 cases where it puzzles almost any one to 

 decide \N\\Qi\\ex a, full-groum cMcA;en is pul- 

 let or rooster. 



Please notice, in regard to the wonderful 

 secrets, you not only have to send a dollar 

 for aboiit a dozen lines of instruction, but 

 you must also inclose an addressed envelope. 



A PULLET LAYS AT FOUR MONTHS OF AGE, 

 EVEN DOWN IN FLORIDA, ETC. 



There seems to have been an impression, 

 and I confess that I shared it more or less, 

 that [pullets do not commence laying as 



