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306 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
This plant is a most prolific source cf honey, and when 
introduced, as it will be, for other agricultural uses, it will 
supply to the bee-keeper, in every season, an inexhaustable 
source of bee-forage. At present, it is true, the white clover 
is the most abundant source of the bee-keeper’s profits, unless 
we may except the basswood, so scattered through our 
forests. The white clover grows in every part of the state 
with great luxuriance. Early in June its bloom usually 
appears and continues until frost appears, about the first of 
October. Nearly every acre of pasture land, every road side, 
every meadow, and head land, abounds in white clover. If 
the estimates of honey deposits on a given area, made- by 
Langstrotb, Quimby and other bee masters, are at all correct 
and reliable, the supplies of honey, from this plant alone, are 
practically inexhaustable. The deposits of honey, says Mr. 
Kidder, on an acre of white clover, are 830 pounds per an¬ 
num, and of course on a single quarter section, 132,800 pounds, 
and on every square mile, 531,200 pounds. But Alsike, 
instead of being less, is really more productive of honey than 
the white clover. If the above estimate is at all correct, 
millions' of pounds or even tons of honey, remain in the 
capsules of our flowers ungathered, because the natural 
harvester is not introduced into the harvest field. This field 
invites its myriad harvesters. 
If all who attempted to keep bees would master the science of 
bee-keeping, as a few only have, the results would be immense. 
The statisticians claim that if the pursuits of industry were fol¬ 
lowed fully up to the standard of the best authorities now 
known, the single state of Indiana could support a population 
of 90,000,000. Now, on the other hand, it barely supports 
1,500,000. The failure to do more, results largely from igno¬ 
rance. 
So in bee-keeping, the failure to achieve a greater result than 
what we now witness comes from a want of practical knowl¬ 
edge of the whole subject. Countless tons of honey now 
waste in our forests and fields because we do not learn how r to 
