Dec. 1. 1911 



seed, and dry, it probably would be set on 

 fire by sparks from the engines, and do 

 damage. 1 have read that the roads in 

 some parts of the country welcome it, and 

 urge the sowing of seed along their lines. 



At our last convention we discussed the 

 sweet-clover question — that is, how to get 

 the farmers to use it; but some farmers are 

 too hardheaded to see the value of it. hence 

 we have concluded to do the sowing our- 

 selves. Here in my locality are hundreds 

 of acres of hillside used for nothing but pas- 

 turage. I have permission from one of my 

 neighbors to sow as much seed as I wish on 

 his 25 acres of hillside. This, we believe, is 

 the best way out of it; and consequently in 

 the near future we will put the new plan 

 into practice in Hamilton County. 



Cincinnati, Ohio. 



727 



inch of soil. It came up all right and made 

 a rank growth. The next spring, after it 

 bloomecl, I dug out the dead roots, spaded 

 it well, and planted a row of sweet peas in 

 the same spot. 



We have always had very pretty sweet 

 peas; but these were a marvel — great sturdy 

 stalk.s, large dark-green leaves, and the 

 bloom was wonderful — the finest sweet peas 

 I ever saw. I puzzled my head trying to 

 find out what I had done to those peas to 

 get such fine plants; then after a while I 

 "tumbled." It was the sweet clover of the 

 year before. 



Randolph, N. Y. 



ITALIAN SWARM FLIES 15 MILES OVER DES- 

 ERT. 



GETTING A STAND OF SWEET CLOVER. 



BY C. H. MILLER. 



Its Value for the Soil. 



BY GEO. SHIBER. 



The experience of C. R. Dewey, page 571, 

 Sept. 15, in growing sweet clover, or, rather, 

 getting the seed to germinate, is decidedly 

 different from mine. I have never tried to 

 raise a lot of it, but have always had several 

 small patches around our i^remises. It has 

 come up almost as quickly and as surely as 

 radish seed, whether I have sown it in 

 spring, summer, or fall. About Aug. 15 we 

 gathered some seed (stripped it off by hand) , 

 some being black and some green. I sowed 

 this where I had had a small patch of early 

 potatoes, first going over the ground several 

 times with a hand cultivator. In a little 

 over a week the 

 ground was all even- 

 1 y covered with 

 young plants. I 

 doubt whether they 

 will winter; but as 

 the seed was put on 

 fairly thick I think 

 there will be enough 

 that did not come up 

 to make a stand in 

 the spring. The seed 

 was u n h u 1 1 e d , of 

 course, and the white 

 variety. My experi- 

 ence, although on a 

 small scale, is that it 

 has never been prais- 

 ed too highly as a 

 fertilizer of the soil. 



About six years 

 ago one of our neigh- 

 bors gave us a small 

 handful of sweet-clo- 

 ver seed for our flow- 

 er-garden — perhaps a 

 tablespoonf ul. I 

 sowed it in a shallow 

 trench and covered it 

 with about half an 



I am sending a view of a juniper log in 

 which I am wintering a swarm of bees. I 

 have often read articles by writers who 

 claim that bees have their new home locat- 

 ed before they swarm. Now, the only Ital- 

 ians I know of are at least twenty miles 

 away; so these bees, being Italians, surely 

 must have come from there, over about fif- 

 teen miles of desert. I don't think any 

 swarm ever sent scouts that far to look for 

 a new location. 



Redmond, Oregon. 



[We believe no one has claimed that bees 

 alwaijs send out scouts before swarming; 

 that they sometimes do has been proven 

 many times. This is an interesting case as 

 it seems to be clear that this swarm actual- 

 ly traveled all this distance. — Ed.] 



An Italian swarm that Is being wintered in this juniper stump flew fif- 

 teen miles over a desert. 



