674 



leanings in Bee Culture 



cure a few White Indian Runner ducks. If you do, 

 your tables will never want for eggs and poultry, 

 and yoxir purses will always contain spending 

 money. 



Now, mind you, all of this is on the read- 

 m^r-pages of the journal. On the large page 

 opposite (the first one containing the "duck 

 story") is a full-page picture (a beautiful 

 one) of the white ducks. This last may be 

 one of the advertising pages, and paid for — 

 I do not know; but we are told also that 

 these ducks lay enormosly, "simply won- 

 derful," and keep it up winter and summer. 

 Well, the whole article is very entertaining 

 and instructive, and it may be all true — I 

 sincerely hope it is; but on one of the adver- 

 tising pages, in the front part of the book, 

 the eggs are advertised at $10.00 a dozen. 

 Let us figure a little: 400 ducks will lay 200 

 eggs a year each. But may be that estimate 

 would be a little too high for the whole flock, 

 and so we will call it 144, or just 12 dozen. 

 That would be $48,000 income if all sold at 

 the above price. The advertisement men- 

 tioned is headed "The Gold-mine of the 

 Poultry Business." Sure! there is a gold- 

 mine for somebody — that is, if plenty of 

 customers can be found at $10.00 a dozen 

 for duck eggs. 



Now, may be I am all wrong, and the 

 fashion of many of our poultry-journals may 

 be all right; but I submit the matter to our 

 readers. Is it the fair thing to have this 

 sort of advertising on our reading-pages, say 

 for the very first article on the opening page? 

 Of course I have no means of knowing 

 whether Mrs. Fishel pays for advertising 

 space on the reading-pages, or whether the 

 editor pays the lady for writing her instruc- 

 tive and entertaining article. 



A year or two ago I asked the question 

 what our poultry-journals are for. Some 

 college professor took it up in the periodical 

 called Poultry, and this professor raised 

 quite a breeze by saying that our fifty or 

 sixty poultry-journals were published main- 

 ly to enable advertisers to gather in the 

 "shekels" from the unsuspecting. I hope 

 it is not true. I am sure it is not true; but 

 I do feel that our journals on bees, poultry, 

 and every thing else, should be published 

 mainly to give the people at large honest 

 information in regard to our separate indus- 

 tries. The reading-pages, at least, should 

 be devoted to this one thing and nothing 

 else. 



INDIAN RUNNER DUCKS — DO THEY EVER 

 SIT? 



The following, clipped from the Farm 

 Journal, must be pretty conclusive evidence: 



I have raised Indian Runner ducks for more than 

 three years, from thirty to 100 all the time, and have 

 never known of a single instance of one attempt- 

 ing to sit or even make a nest. 



Rahway, N. .1. Robt. N. Riddle. 



Notwithstanding the above, however, one 

 of our two ducks which we kept last winter 

 in Florida did try to sit on a nestful of eggs, 

 and she fought like a tiger when I tried to 

 take her off and get her eggs. 



THE WRIGHT BROTHERS UP TO DATE, AND 

 SOMETHING ABOUT FLYING-MACHINES. 



Over fifty years ago I "forecasted" that 

 electricity would soon take the place of 

 steam in transportation. In fact, I went 

 around to schoolhouses, when I was only 17 

 years old, to proclaim in my "lectures" (?) 

 what was coming to pass. Like the Weather 

 Bureau, however, things did not always 

 come quite as soon as I predicted. It was 

 forty years instead offotir or five, and steam 

 has not quite been done away with yet. 

 Later on I " forecasted " that automobiles 

 would some time take the place of horses. 

 That has not yet come to pass, but is com- 

 ing; and finally Gleanings was the first 

 periodical in the whole wide world to an- 

 nounce the Wright brothers had made a 

 flight of something like a mile, and whirled 

 round and come back to the place of start- 

 ing. Well, we have wireless telegraphy, 

 fireless cookers, fireless brooders for chickens; 

 and a fireless incubator is not exactly in 

 sight, but it is under way. And now it is 

 my privilege to announce — that is, to the 

 best of my belief — that flying-machines 

 will in time be as plentiful as automobiles. 

 Perhaps I shall be dead and gone, however, 

 before that happens. But there is still one 

 thing more coming. With the fireless cook- 

 ers and wireless telegraphy we are going to 

 have powerless flying-machines. Orville 

 Wright has already left the ground on a 

 glider, without any power whatever, and 

 has gone up in the air and remained sta- 

 tionary for almost ten minutes. Perhaps 

 he is away up in the clouds by this time if 

 a merciful Providence has spared his life* to 

 go through with these daring experiments. 



Most of you have seen great birds away 

 up in the sky, sailing hither and yon with- 

 out a movement of the outspread wings. 

 Mankind has speculated for years past as to 

 how this is done. Well, if I am right, these 

 birds have simply learned the trick of hunt- 

 ing up a current of ascending air. The air 

 is constantly in motion, as you may know; 

 and whenever a body of air sinks downward, 

 somewhere else a body of air will go upward, 

 and vice versa. The sun, in its daily course, 

 keeps up these moving currents. Well, the 

 Wright brothers have only to acquire suffi- 

 cient skill to find these ascending currents 

 of air; and after taking advantage of these 

 they can get to a sufficient height, and from 

 this point they can glide down hill or go 

 anywhere they wish to; for aviators frequent- 

 ly shut off the engine when up at a great 

 height, and go many miles without making 

 any use of their power whatever. A glider 

 without any engine or propellers will be very 

 much lighter. 



Now, look out, friends, and see if my pre- 

 dictions do not come true. I am not a 

 prophet. I am simply a forecaster, just as 

 our good friend Leonard forecasts (or tries 

 to) the laying hen. " Coming events (usu- 

 ally) cast their shadows before, " as you may 

 recall. 



* Please notice the frequent losses of life among 

 aviators are all or nearly all wnth other machines 

 than those made by the Wrights. 



