AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



519 



A Bee-House is just patented by 

 W. G. Rutherford. His description and 

 claim is thus given in his patent : 



The bee-house shown and described, 

 having a door and provided with a cen- 

 tral passage-way. The vertical cross- 

 partitions secured to the inner faces of 

 the side walls, and dividing the same 

 into sections accessible to the passage- 

 way ; the longitudinal horizontal divis- 

 ion-boards secured to the vertical parti- 

 tions, and dividing the spaces between 

 them into hive compartments; the side 

 walls opposite each compartment having 

 a bee-opening and an alighting-board, 

 the horizontal strips 11, secured to the 

 vertical partitions in each compartment, 

 the brood-frames suspended from the 



experimenting until his crop exceeded 

 3,000 tons per annum. During this 

 time, Mr. Walker practically superin- 

 tended his extensive farm, including the 

 construction of ditches and practical 

 irrigation, and harvesting of the plant. 

 He believes that " over at least one-third 

 of the territory of the United States, 

 alfalfa may be grown to so great an 

 advantage that it is doubtful whether 

 any other crop can equal it in productive- 

 ness." He describes the process of sow- 

 ing, irrigating, and curing alfalfa. Of 

 the pleasures of farm life, he writes : 



You who are in the cities, shut up in 



W. G. RUTHERFORD'S BEE-HOUSE. 



strips, and the honey-sections arranged 

 above the brood-frames, and being sup- 

 ported by the same in each compart- 

 ment, substantially as described. 



Alfalfa is a plant which promises to 

 be one of the great sources of wealth in 

 this country. It is cultivated exten- 

 sively in California, Utah and Colorado. 

 It produces three crops a year, and an 

 extraordinary tonnage per acre. The 

 November Cosmopolitan contains an 

 article by John Brisben Walker, who 

 was for ten years an alfalfa farmer in 

 Colorado, and prominently connected 

 with the introduction of alfalfa into that 

 State, beginning with a few acres and 



dingy offices, racking your brains on 

 Wall street, or compelled to walk 

 through streets walled in by dingy 

 houses — you do not envy, perhaps, the 

 very different work which these men 

 have just begun — these men holding 

 forks and pitching heavy loads of new- 

 mown hay into the air and onto wagons, 

 or from wagons onto stacks. If you do 

 not, it is because you do not know ; it is 

 because Providence has never permitted 

 you to stand in a field with more than a 

 hundred miles of snow-capped hills 

 stretched out before you, and wafting 

 down upon you breezes, the like of 

 which blow nowhere else ; where the 

 sunstroke is unknown, and where every 

 breath is life. Around, the green plains 

 and fertile valleys ; above, an ever 

 changing panorama, never the same for 

 two hours at a time. 



