334 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November, 
slipped ditches on each side of the road-way, 
to carry off the surface-water. Such a road will 
he durable, yet will need occasional jfe^airs, 
which should not be neglected until the founda¬ 
tion is broken up. All that is needed, is an an¬ 
nual light dressing of gravel to fill up the ruts, 
and to keep the surface well rounded and smooth. 
Where gravel does not abound, resort may be 
had to shale or slate-rock from the hill side, or 
the refuse of furnaces. But whatever material 
is used, let it never be forgotten that the one in¬ 
dispensable thing is, first to make a hard, firm 
bottom, and then to keep the surface well 
rounded and smooth, so as to shed water quick¬ 
ly into the gutters at the sides. 
Roads on the hill-side are harder to manage 
than those on level ground. Here, too, the 
hard foundation is needful, and the rounded top. 
But in addition, there should be turn-outs, or 
water-breaks, every five or six rods, to turn off 
the water from the track; otherwise the road 
will soon be worn into deep gullies and spoiled. 
These, however, should hot be so large as they 
are sometimes made—a foot in hight is enough, 
and they should be laid at such an angle that 
the water will quickly run into the side gutters. 
The Great Bee-Master. 
Translated from, the German for the Amer. Agriculturist. 
Crossing the River Oder from West to East, 
near the City of Brieg in Upper-Silesia, we are 
at once in the land of the “ Wasser-Polaken,” a 
Polish tribe under the dominion of Prussia. 
We must, however, wander about ten miles over 
a sandy plain and through gloomy pine groves, 
ere we reach the Polish village Carlsmarkt 
(Karlovicze). This little village with its small 
Catholic parsonage has been for about ten years 
the attraction of travelers from. all parts of 
Europe, nay even from America, for here those 
improvements in bee-keeping began, which have 
raised this branch of agriculture to a hight, 
which it had never reached before. 
The garden of the parsonage is well-stocked 
with hundreds of bee-hives of various forms, 
many of them of original designs, and the air is 
filled with thousands of humming bees. Among 
them, in a plain dressing-gown, a little velvet cap 
on his head, walks a simple, active man, as qui¬ 
etly as if they were some of the blossoms that 
the morning breeze blows from, the trees. The 
bees sit on his neck, back, breast and hands, 
eyen in the wide sleeves of his gown, yet this 
does not disturb him in the least. Here and 
there he takes them off gently and lets them 
fly, smiling quietly when some visitor takes 
fright from the bees, or shrieks when a bee 
stings him. He, himself, is seldom stung, and 
if it ever happens, he cares as little as if it were 
the bite of a musquito. His look is steadily fixed 
op the hives and its inmates who swarm around 
him. If his visitors ask him questions, his an¬ 
swers are rather short; one must know how to 
ask him interesting questions, to induce him to 
enter into a conversation. He who wishes to 
learn something about the management of the 
bees, must learn to see and observe for himself. 
This is the habit of the Bee-Master, whose coun¬ 
tenance is so good-natured and simple, and yet 
not wanting in spirit, and who shows a certain 
reserve, or rather bashfulness, except when he 
forgets himself in his enthusiasm for his subject. 
This man is Dzierzon, the pastor of the vil¬ 
lage. He is of Polish extraction, as his name 
shows, and knows the bees as if he were one of 
them, and has learned how to educate them. 
They must do what he will; if he want honey, 
they must make honey; if he want wax, they 
must make wax; if he want more bees, they 
must breed. This power he has attained by 
thoroughly learning the nature of the bee. Ac¬ 
cording to their nature, he takes advantage of 
their instinct and faculties, avoiding everything 
which they dislike, protects them from their en¬ 
emies, nurses them in their diseases, and ren¬ 
ders, so to speak, their lives comfortable. And 
the consequence of all this is, they are able and 
willing to work for him in the way he chooses, 
to the utmost of their power, like the people of 
a kind-hearted manufacturer who cares for 
them like a father. One must have seen Dzier¬ 
zon’s continual care and watchfulness over his 
little pets to gain an idea of the “ Bee-Father 
comme ilfaut." He forgets nothing that must be 
done or changed at the hives, to protect them 
from rain or the burning sun, etc., and every bee 
which he sees exhausted, is taken up by him and 
carried to his home. On cold mornings he goes 
about with a little box, gathering the benumbed 
bees from the ground, and warms them by keep¬ 
ing the box on his body. His activity is thus 
not small, since he possesses other apiaries be¬ 
sides that at Carlsmarkt, and cares for all of 
them with equal tenderness. And he takes in 
hand also hammer and saw, auger and pincers, 
and repairs his hives as well as any artisan. 
More than any other, Dzierzon possesses two 
qualities : judgment and power of observation. 
By them he has penetrated into the very mys¬ 
terious life of the bee, deeper than any mortal 
before him. Nay, so minute have been his inves¬ 
tigations, that scarcely any essential character¬ 
istics have remained undetected. He astonish¬ 
ed the natural philosophers at his first appear¬ 
ance before the public with his discoveries, 
showing that the queen-bee is impregnated but 
once in her life, and that she is the only egg-lay¬ 
ing bee in the hive. The more these two dis¬ 
coveries were doubted at first, the greater was 
Dzierzon’s glory, when he proved the incontest- 
ible truth of the same, by that tribe of bees from 
Upper-Italy, which is of a yellowish color, and 
which Virgil made famous by song. Dzierzon 
introduced these bees into Germany in 1853 and 
the yellow queens from Italy produced, crossed 
with the Hack German drones, again and again 
yellow bees, while the yellow queen-bee born in 
Germany, according to the black drones with 
whom they lived, produced black or blackish bees. 
Further trials founded upon this difference of 
color, gave full proof of the truth of Dzierzon’s 
statement, so that it is no longer doubted, and 
Dzierzon stands before us as the greatest theo¬ 
retical and practical bee-cultivator in the world. 
Before Dzierzon, the whole economy of bee¬ 
keeping, a few cases excepted, consisted in de¬ 
priving the bees of as much honey as possible, 
which was naively styled “ robbing.” No one 
had formed an exact idea of their nature and dis-' 
position. Superstition thought it only necessa¬ 
ry to tell the bees, when their master was dead, 
lest they should die themselves. The little crea¬ 
tures were left in those places in which they had 
been found in their wild state, i. e. hollow trees. 
All this Dzierzon has thoroughly improved. 
He teaches the breeding and rearing of bees ac¬ 
cording to a regular Pl|n. According to his 
method, one may be independent of the whims 
of the bees, can make use of their services at the 
right time and in the right way, can breed bees 
enough in a few years to fill hundreds of hives, 
and again arbitrarily lessen their multiplying 
and gain the more wax and honey, at pleasure. 
“Mr. Smith, I wish to speak to you privately.; 
Permit me to take you apart for a few mo¬ 
ments.” Smith—(who was not in the least 
frightened)—“ certainly, my dear sir, if you’ll 
promise to put me together again all right.” 
A Farmer’s Experience in Kansas. 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist. 
I emigrated here in the Spring of 1858, and 
was just in time to put in a good crop of late 
corn. The many different instructions in re¬ 
gard to breaking up prairie, induced me to ex¬ 
periment until I found the best method. The 
first year I broke about three inches deep, and 
in the fall I perceived that it did not ‘ rot' as I 
had expected. Accordingly, the next year, ’59, 
I broke two inches deep, and my greatest ex¬ 
pectation was fully realized. I found the sod 
completely loose and very easily cross-plowed 
for fall wheat. I find that breaking the sod and 
letting it crumble is the best plan; the fall 
rains have a much better chance of washing it 
down than if it lay flat upon the ‘under sod.’ 
My experience has led me to believe that corn 
must -be planted (in this State) either very 
early or very late. I have tried it both ways, 
but have always found the late com to do the 
best. The wheat crops are different. Spring 
wheat should be sowed as early as possible, and 
fall wheat the same. Some have differed with 
me, but at last have found that early wheat al¬ 
ways does the best. 
As to potatoes, I believe that in this section of 
country at the present time, they will amount 
to nothing. The vines are very thrifty and a 
dark green, and do very well until about the 
time they begin to blossom; then a very 
small bug, resembling the “lightning bug,” 
swarms by the million, lighting ‘upon the 
vines, completely stripping them of their leaves 
and stems. If some preventive could be found 
to kill them it would make thousands of dollars 
for the man that invented it. Any thing that 
grows upon vines (potatoes excepted) will cto 
very well here. Watermelons grow to an 
enormous size. I raised one here in ’59 that 
weighed 56 lbs.; ten men eat what they wanted 
of it and there was enough left for me. I sold 
the melon for $2.50. This year, however, they 
seem to be scarce; no person here planted them. 
I am fully satisfied that this is the best stock- 
raising country in the world. Cattle will live 
the year round independent of man’s labor. 
William H. Lamb. 
Look out for Weeds! 
What, now , when the growing season is so 
nearly over? Yes, now, emphatically NOW. 
Just at this season, especially in the potato fields 
and gardens, and by the sides of fences every¬ 
where, weeds are ripening their seeds and scat¬ 
tering them far and wide over the surrounding 
land. In former days, when the potato held its 
leaves fresh and green throughout the entire 
Summer, weeds were smothered out, and the 
ground nicely cleaned for the next crop. But 
of late years, since the blight has set in, the tops 
die early, and weeds spring up and get vigor¬ 
ous possession of the land. Special care is need¬ 
ful, therefore, to subdue these interlopers: Go 
through tile fields, at once, and cut down or pull 
up the luxuriant weeds before they ripen their 
seeds and scatter them in myriads over the field. 
By all means pull up those in the garden. Pile 
them all in heaps, and as soon as partially dry, 
mix them in a brush heap and burn them, or 
better, add them to the manure heap, where 
fermentation destroys the vitality of the seeds. 
