700 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



liol, and slopped the use of toliacco shortly after 

 coining to this country. 



One of his standing rules was, weather permittina:, 

 to take a long walk daily. His declining years were 

 made happier by the fact that hundreds of Cleveland 

 and Ohio friends annually tendered him a birthday 

 party. 



WORKS DAILY IX HIS GAKDKN CLEAR UP TO HI.S 

 100th BIRTHDAY'. 



Columbus, Ind., July 1. — Despite an all-day rain, 

 more than 1000 persons were present to-day at a 

 celebration held at Hartsville in honor of the 100th 

 anniversary of the birth of Wesley Potorf¥, retired 

 farmer of the town. Tlie aged man shook hands with 

 every one present and stood the strain of the day 

 well, although he had mowed all of the weeds about 

 his home on the day previous with an old-fashioned 

 scythe. 



He is the father of six children, and has nineteen 

 grandchildi-en, thirty great-grandchildren, and thir- 

 teen great-great-grandchildren. 



.VKVHR U.SED TOBACf'O. 



He never used tobacco in any form, and never 

 swore an oath. In his early manhood he became a 

 member of the Christian Church, and for forty years 

 has been a deacon of the Hartsville Christian Church. 



Mr. Potorff is well preserved physically for one of 

 his age, and even yet performs much manual labor. 

 Within the last week he has whitewashed the fence 

 around his home and built and hung a gate. He 

 works almost daily in his garden. 



By the vvay, the older I grow the more T 

 feel the importance of teaching children as 

 well as old people the importance of " eat- 

 ing to live instead of living to eat ;" also the 

 importance of a reasonable amount of out- 

 door exercise every day, no matter how old 

 we arc, and where can we find a better place 

 for such exercise than in the garden ? 



HIGH = PEE; 



SWEET CLOVER ALONG THE ROADSIDE, ETC. 



We clip the following from the Universily 

 Farm Press News, published at llse riiivei- 

 sity Farm, St. Paul, Minn. : 



The appearance of white sweet clover along road- 

 sides throughout Minnesota is a very encouraging 

 feature. It is the forerunner of alfalfa, and should 

 not be unwelcome in its own right, since it is prac- 

 tically as valuable a soil-improver as common red 

 clover or alfalfa. 



Inoculating the soil for white sweet clover is just 

 as necessary to success as it is for alfalfa ; but where 

 seed can be gathered along the roadside at no ex- 

 pense except tlie labor it will pay in many instances 

 to sow three or four pounds of the unhulled seed per 

 acre with the grain, other clover, and timothy seed. 

 Some of the sweet-clover plants will be inoculated 

 the first year, and more the second year. Alfalfa 

 following will get the benefit of this increase in num- 

 bers of the right kind of bacteria. 



The thing to do as the sweet clover along the road- 

 sides ripens its seed is to gather it for use on farms, 

 or for sale if more is gathered than is wanted. — A. 

 C. Arny, Assistant Agriculturist, University Farm, 

 St. Paul. 



Although the above does not say so, yet 

 we take it that sweet clover has got in along 

 the roadside because they used broken lime- 

 stone in making the road. We find it grow- 

 ing with wonderful luxuriance all through 

 Ohio wherever crushed limestone has been 

 used for road-making. During a dusty time, 

 when tills crushed limestone i.s carried by 

 the wind over to the adjoining fields the 

 eli'ect is plaiidy noticeable on all kinds of 

 clover, and sweet clover particularly. The 

 bacteria mentioned can also be obtained by 

 scraping up the soil where the sweet clovev 

 grows along the roadside, and siDrinkling it 

 over the fields. 



DYNAMITE FOR TREE-PLANTING, SUBSOILING; 

 ETC. 



Our friends may have noticed (especially 

 our farming frends) ihat many of our 

 agi-icultural periodicals are giving illustrat- 



E GARDENING 



ed articles on the beneficial results brought 

 about by the use of dynamite. Now, I am 

 i'lad to see tliis, and I am glad to welcome 

 dynamite; but still I have had a feeling all 

 along that tliere is a good deal of exaggera- 

 tion, especially in selecting the most valu- 

 able results. I felt pretty sure, too, many 

 times, tliat the articles were furnished by 

 the people who have dynamite to sell. Now, 

 this matter is all right if not carried too far. 

 What we want is practical experience from 

 the farmers themselves, and we want the 

 unfavorable reports as well as the favor- 

 able. Finally, our experiment stations are 

 the ones to test dynamite and every thing 

 else, for that matter, that is being recom- 

 mended to the farmers. With this in mind 

 ! (luestioned our Ohio Experiment Station, 

 and here is the reply from my good friend 

 Prof. C. E. Thorne, who has been for many 

 years a careful and conservative observer: 



Mr. A. I. Root: — I have yours of the 27th, and 

 replying would say that we have used dynamite in a 

 small way for subsoiling on this farm; and wliile the 

 first season seemed to show beneficial results, this 

 difference disappeared by the second season, and we 

 are not able now to see that the dynamiting has bC' n 

 of any advantage. We have similar reports from 

 other directions, and therefore are not at all pre- 

 pared to recommend dynamiting as a substitute for 

 tile drainage. 



I have set out trees with it, and have been pleased 

 with the ease with which the holes were made; but I ■ 

 do not see that the trees planted in that way liave 

 done any better ; in fact, not so well as where the 

 land was plowed before planting. When it is not 

 practicable to do this, I think the dynamite a good 

 thing for tree-planting. 



One of our drainage difficulties on this soil is that 

 the fine silt soon fills up the drainage crevices, and 

 even tiles will be filled with it very quickly if the 

 outlet becomes in any way obstructed, and we think 

 the crevices made by dynamite would soon be tilled 

 with this silt. On the somewhat coarser-grained 

 soil that you have, this objection might not hold. 

 Chas. E. Thorne, Director. 



Wooster, Ohio, June 29. 



