GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



392 



firsts, $1.00 a peek; sef-ond?!, half price; sold 

 in neAv half-peek baskets. 



DASHEENS AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE POTATO. 



We clip the following from the Toledo 

 Blade : 



DASHEENS, EIVALS OF SPUD, TO BE SOLD HERE; 



GOVERNMENT EXPERT HERE TO LECTURE ON 



PLANT. 



Arrangements to place dasheens on the Toledo 

 market are in progress. 



Robert A. Young, of the government Bureau of 

 Plant Industry, will lecture Thursday night in the 

 council chamber on the dasheen. The lecture will 

 he under the auspices of the Housewives' League. 

 The league urges substitution of the dasheen for 

 high-priced potatoes. The dasheen cannot be grown 

 further north than South Carolina. The present 

 market price is 10 to 15 cents a pound. It is 

 asserted the food value is 50 per cent greater than 

 that of the potato, and that its uses are much more 

 diversified. 



Here in Florida they retail at 5 cts. per 

 lb., and by the bushel at aboitt 3 ets. Per- 

 haps they do not as a rule reach full matu- 

 rity further north than South Carolina; but 

 1 liave now grown them for three summers 

 in Ohio, with no trouble at all. 



DASHEEN STAND THE WINTER IN OPEN GROUND IN 

 VIRGINIA. 



Mr. Boot: — I write to inform you that my 

 dasheens, left in the ground, survived the severe ex- 

 posure of this severest winter of many years. We 

 are located in central Virginia, and the knowledge 

 of this hardihood of the dasheen may prove an in- 

 centive to extend the cultivation of this valuable 

 vegetable in more northern latitudes than now 

 usually grown. . 



Bees have wintered well, and are in good condition 

 . — are strong with ample stores. 



Prospects for a good season were never better at 

 this date in March. B. F. Averill. 



Howardsville, Va., March 14. 



The above is a valuable report. We have 

 always dug them in Ohio when frost killed 

 the tops. " They might winter there with 

 straw mulch as protection. Here in Flori- 

 da, when killed down by the recent freeze 

 they were up again with great gTeen leaves 

 before almost anything else. As there are 

 many incjuiries coming, T take the liberty 

 of copying the following advertisement from 

 the Florida Grower for Marcli 10. 



LOOK! LISTEJSr! — Why pay such high prices for 

 white potatoes? Order your supply of dasheens 

 now. Ask those who have tried them if they are 

 not good at $2 bushel. The R. W. Harper Co., 

 The Dasheen Men, Montverde, Fla. 



May, 1917 



FAKE STORIES IN REGARD TO AGRICULTURE; 

 POULTRY BUSINESS, AND BEEKEEPING. 



The older readers of Gleanings will 

 remember how hard it once was to con- 

 vince people that comb honey was not 

 made in a factory out of paraffine and 

 glucose. About the same time a yarn was 

 started about artificial hens' eggs, and a 



good many believed it was possible. Since 

 then other fakes have come up. Just a few 

 days ago there was a statement in the Sci- 

 entific American to the effect that sweeten- 

 ed water could be fed to a pu::i^.kii.-\ine 

 so as to gTow enormous pumpkins ; and two 

 photographs were given to show how it was 

 done. The pumpkin-vine was split, and a 

 lampwick pulled thru it. Then the ends 

 of the lampwick rested in dishes of sweeten- 

 ed water; and the statement was made in 

 good faith that the vine w^ould suck up 

 the sweetened water and form pumpkins of 

 enormous size. The incident recalled some- 

 thing I read years ago in some agn:'ieultural 

 paper that pumpkins and squashes would 

 take up milk in a similar way; and as my 

 good friend Collinwood, of the Rural New- 

 Yorker, is pretty well posted in all these 

 things I submitted the page containing the 

 account of it from the Scientific American. 

 Below is his reply. It is rather long, I 

 know, and evidently was not intended for 

 publication ; but the story gives such a vivid 

 glimpse of our good friend Collinwood, and 

 besides contains some wholesome morals, 

 that I give the letter entire: 



Dear Mr. Root: — I am very much pleased to 

 hear from you again, and very glad to answer your 

 question as best I can about this so-called scientif- 

 ic stuff. I believe the whole thing is a humbug, and 

 I don't believe there is anything to it whatever. 

 I am afraid that I am in a way responsible for 

 this, and I will explain why I think so. 



Some years ago, when I was younger than I am 

 now, I used to try to write poetry now and then. 

 It was wrong, I know, and I should have known 

 better, but I am afraid I got started in writihg 

 stanzas to a certain young woman who was a very 

 practical character, and quite unmoved, ar^parently, 

 by my poetry. At any rate, the Muse took me by the 

 ear and walked me off in a corner and started me at 

 writing verses. Having fallen into the habit of 

 it I kept it up, and, running a little short of facts 

 now and then, I drew from the bank of imagination. 

 I remember two poems, so called, which I wrote 

 while I was working on a farm paper in the 

 South, trying to boom the dairy business. One was 

 about a frog that fell into a chairn. There was 

 cream in the churn, but the farmer's daughter, 

 who was supposed to churn the butter, had prob- 

 ably gone off skylarking somewhere and left the 

 job for mother. This frog found himself swimming 

 in the cream. Many a man would have given up, 

 opened his mouth, swallowed the cream until he 

 was so heavy he could not float, and then gone 

 down for the last time. This frog probably had 

 ancestors who came from Cape Cod, and he was 

 naturally a kicker, so he made up his mind that 

 he would try a few kicks anyway before he went 

 down. He kept on swimming and kicking until he 

 churned the cream into a lump; and when the lazy 

 dairy-maid came back there was a great lump of 

 golden butter in the churn, with the frog sitting 

 on top picking his teeth with his hind foot. The 

 moral of this was, " keep kicking." 



The other poenn was written about a lazy man 

 who did not like to churn, so he just set his milk 

 in the pans, put them out under the tree, and wont 

 to sleep. There was a pumpkin-vine arrowing 

 around the house, and, attracted by the milk, it 



