574 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



of them, of beuiuiful architecture, surround- 

 ed by lawns of nice Howersand trees attract- 

 ed my attention. I walked around it and 

 through the grounds before other i)eople 

 were stirring; and soon after I learned from 

 my relatives that some good woman of wealth 

 had planned and arranged this place as a 

 school for women, liy the way, let me 

 mention that, while in Troy, N. Y., I saw a 

 similar structure built almost entirely of ex- 

 pensive granite, which I was told was built 

 by Mrs. Easscll Sage. This great school or 

 seminary was also plannetl and put up sole- 

 ly as a school or seminary for girls and wo- 

 men who have not the means to educate 

 Ihetnselves. Once more may the Lord be 

 l)raisefl for the ivomen millionaires who are 

 moved to do such a work for the benefit of 

 the le-s fortunate ones of their sex. 



Just one thing more in regard to Middle- 

 bury. When I spoke about huckleberries 

 Mrs. Bronson said, "Oh! there is any quan- 

 tity of them up on the hill Vjack of the 

 house." And then the mother and daugh- 

 ter volunteered to show me the berries. 

 There were great quantitie-s of them then go- 

 ing to waste; antl I found three distinct va- 

 rieties growing up there on that dry sandy 

 hill where the rooks were so plentiful that it 

 made me think of a story that father used 

 to tell about the "Connecticut hills." He 

 said they had to grind the sheep's noses 

 down sharp, so they could pick the grass 

 out from between the rocks and stones. 

 While you are reading about huckleberries, 

 turn over to the descri])tion and j^icture on 

 pages 215 and 228, April 1. 



l^et us now digress a little. When I first 

 got a copy of " Langstroth on the Honey- 

 bee " he had in it considerable to say about 

 his good friend W. W. Cary, of Cblerain, 

 Mass.; and while T^angstroth was inventing 

 the movable-comb hive his experiments 

 were made in a dooryard belonging to his 

 friend Cary; and, in fact, he used to ])reach 

 in a meeting-house a short distance from the 

 Cary home. The old house is there still. 

 The" name of the town, Colerain, has been 

 changed to Lyonsville, because of a trolley 

 line that runs up the valley. And, by the 

 way, these electric cars are run by the power 

 of a little stream that comes down through 

 the hills. If I were in California I would 

 call it "down through a canyon." And 

 Massachusetts reminds me quite a little of 

 California, only there are hills instead of 

 mountains, (in my way from Waterbury 

 to Lyonsville I caught a glimpse of Mt. 

 Hood and of Mt. Holyoke. I also went 

 through the Hoosac tunnel, five miles long, 

 through the Berkshire hills. A\ ell, W. W. 

 Cary has gone to his long home with father 

 Langstroth, Quinby, and many others. Jiut 

 his son, W. W., nearly my age, is still very 

 mueh alive. His hobby just now is not 

 bees. His son . and son-in-law look after 

 that department of the A. I. Root Co.'s bus- 

 iness, and raise queens, etc. W. W. Cary 

 has one of the most extensive establishments 

 for manufacturing pure cider vinegar that 

 there is, perhaps, in existence. If I have 



not made any mistake they make some- 

 thing like 15,000 barrels of vinegar a year. 

 Do you ask where he gets the apples? Now, 

 here is where )ny recent hobby comes in. I 

 never knew, until this visir, that there is a 

 locality in the world where apples grow wild 

 "out in the woods." The truth is, the beau- 

 tiful hills dotted with forest-trees in that re- 

 gion are also filled more or less with apple- 

 trees. These apple-trees come up and grow 

 spontaneously. I can understand how one 

 api^le-tree on the top of a great hill should 

 let ai)ples drop and roll all the way down in 

 the valley in different directions; but I can 

 not quite make out how any apples origi- 

 nally "rolled uphill;" nor can we very well 

 conclude that the birds carried the seeds — 

 that is, I am not quite sure they could do 

 so. Well, you suggest, if this be true, the 

 apples M'ould all be natural fruit. So they 

 would; but during the years this vinegar- 

 plant has been running, the farmers have 

 "caught on," and have not only been clear- 

 ing off the forest-trees and underloriish, but 

 they are grafting these wild apple-trees. Of 

 course, this is a natural apple region or the 

 trees would not grow. Now, this man Cary 

 is a genius. He has an acetylene-light plant, 

 all his own, that lights up his premises most 

 beautifully. Then he has a cement reser- 

 voir on top of one of his hills; and a water- 

 wheel that runs his cider-mills also pumps 

 water up to fill his reservoir. When there 

 is not water enough to run the factory a 

 gasoline- engine comes in and takes the place 

 of the turbine wheel. .lust then I found 

 friend Cary full of animation and enthusi- 

 asm in clearing the rocks from that Massa- 

 chusetts hill around the reservoir in order to 

 plant an apple-orchard. Some of the rocks 

 were so large they had to be blasted with 

 dynamite so a big team could haul away 

 the fragments on a stoneboat. While level- 

 ing up the low places they put in tiles for 

 drainage so as to make it an ideal spot for 

 growing trees. Some i)omological professor 

 said a while ago that the best location for 

 an apple-orchard is where the trees seem to 

 grow spontaneously. The process of making 

 vinegar out of api)le cider is so comi)licated 

 that I can not undertake to describe it here. 

 I will only say that the apple juice is con- 

 verted into alcohol, then into acetic acid, by 

 trickling it slowly over beech shavings; and 

 this process is going on winter and summer 

 the year round in that great vinegar-factory. 

 Let me add that great precaution is exercis- 

 ed to prevent any employee from getting 

 hold of the "hard" cider. In fact, no one 

 is kejit on the premises who would be likely 

 to be harmed by such a temptation. Fur- 

 thermore, the Agricultural Department at' 

 Washington is so much interested in ]Hire 

 vinegar that a government employee is lo- 

 cated in the factory during the busy season, 

 not only to put on the government brand, 

 but to assist in giving to the world the best 

 vinegar to be had for the consumi)tion of 

 the people. Of course this institution could 

 make vinegar from honey just as well as 

 from apples; but there is not honey enough 



