CHAPTER VIII

THE KITCHEN GARDEN

The aim of the kitchen garden is to provide an abundance and variety of food for the family. As the object of the cultivator is to get the largest product for his labor, he ought to produce all that he can consume on the least possible area. Though one may go into mushrooms or frog raising as a money crop, the kitchen garden is the first indispensable and should first be given attention.

For a garden choose a piece of land with a southern exposure, sheltered on the north and west by woods, buildings, hedge, or any kind of a windbreak. This arrangement will give the earliest garden, for it gets all the sun there is. By running the rows north and south, the rays of the sun strike the eastern side of the row in the morning, and the western side in the afternoon.

The best time to take hold of a piece of land is in the fall, because then it can be plowed ready for the spring planting. The alternate freezing and thawing during the winter breaks up the sod and the stiff lumps thrown up by the plow, so rendering the soil pliable and easily worked. This is especially true of land that has been reclaimed from the forest, or which has not been farmed for many years.

Before the plowing is done, the land for the garden should be manured at the rate of twenty-five large wagon loads to the acre. If you can get a suitable plot that has been in red clover, alfalfa, soy beans, or cowpeas for a number of years, so much the better. These plants have on their roots nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which draw nitrogen from the air. Nitrogen is the great meat-maker and forces a prolonged and rapid growth of all vegetables.

After manuring and plowing, harrow repeatedly with a disk or cutaway harrow until the soil is as fine as dust. Then you have a seed bed which will give the fine roots a chance to grow as soon as the seeds sprout. Too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of thoroughly working the soil at this time. Every stone, weed, or clod that is left in the soil destroys to that extent the source from which the plants can get their food.

A quarter-acre garden, which is big enough to supply the whole family with a succession of vegetables for summer and fall, as well as some potatoes and turnips for winter, will take a diligent workman about four days to dig over and three days to plant. The four days' work of digging will need to be done only once. The time spent upon planting succession crops will depend upon the amount of the garden reserved for rotation. The part kept for lettuce, radishes, spinach, beets, Swiss chard, peas, string and wax beans may be digged over in a favorable season for three successive plantings, while the part devoted to early potatoes would need to be digged only twice—once when the planting is done, and again when crop is gathered and the ground be prepared for a crop of late cabbage or turnips. A planting table for vegetables, which is complete and comprehensive, is distributed free by the National Emergency Food Garden Commission at Washington, D.C.

It is far more important to plant seeds at the proper depth than that they should be planted thinly or thickly, for if they are planted too thin, it makes a sort of advantage by giving the individual plants ample room to develop to large size; and if planted too thick, the evil can easily be remedied by thinning or transplanting.

After the seeds come up, the size of almost all the vegetables can be increased by transplanting, in favorable soil, which gives each plant room for complete development.

It is too expensive to risk part of the land being unused or half used on account of seeds dying, or to put in so many seeds in order to insure growth that they will crowd one another. Where possible, therefore, seeds should be sprouted and planted, not "sown."

Lima beans planted on edge with eye down will come up much sooner than if dropped in carelessly so they have to turn themselves over. In a small garden the time saved by such planting will repay the extra trouble.

In some things like onions and radishes, however, it is better to sow them thick, and then thin them out, so as to get the effect of transplanting without so much labor. In others, like lettuce and all the salad plants, transplanting gives new life and energy and develops the individual plants in a way that will astonish those not familiar with what free development means.

It is wise to plant corn after lettuce and radishes are gathered, and more lettuce, corn, or salad, after the beans are picked. Then late crops, cabbage, cauliflower or spinach, can go where early corn grew, so that the small patch may earn your living and pay big dividends.

Do not let two vegetables of the same botanical family follow each other. For instance, lima beans should not follow green beans or peas, as all the family draw about the same elements from the soil, and are likely to have the same insects and diseases.

Do not plant cucumbers, squash, or pumpkins too near each other, as they will often inter-impregnate and produce uneatable hybrids.

Decide what you are going to do with your crop before you plant it, whether to sell it, at wholesale or at retail, to eat it, or to feed it to stock.

C. E. Hunn, in the Garden Magazine, gives the following arrangement: "For the beginner who wants to get fresh vegetables and fruits from May until midwinter, a space 100 X 200 feet is enough.

"1. Plant in rows, not beds, and avoid the backache.

"2. Plant vegetables that mature at the same time near one another.

"3. Plant vegetables of the same height near together—tall ones back.

"4. Run the rows the short way, for convenience in cultivation and because one hundred feet of anything is enough.

"5. Put the permanent vegetables (asparagus, rhubarb, sweet herbs) at one side, so that the rest will be easy to plow.

"6. Practice rotation. Do not put vines where they were last. Put corn in a different place. The other important groups for rotation are root crops (including potatoes and onions); cabbage tribe, peas and beans, tomatoes, eggplant and pepper, salad plants.

"7. Don't grow potatoes in a small garden. They aren't worth the bother.

"By training on trellis or wire, the smaller fruit plantings can be made much closer.

"If fruits are wanted in the garden, plant a row of apple trees along the northern border, plums and pears on the western sides, cherries and peaches on the eastern side. Next the apple trees run a grape trellis; and then in succession east and west, run a row of blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants. These rows, with the apple trees, form a windbreak, and besides adding to the income, protect the vegetables. Next to the bush fruits, between them and the ends of the vegetable rows, put rhubarb, asparagus, and strawberries."

Insect pests must be watched for and their destructive work checked. Ashes, slaked lime, or any kind of dust or powder destroy most insects which prey on the leaves of plants. The reason for this is that the dust closes the pores through which the insects breathe. It should therefore be applied when the leaves are dry.

Cutworms can be destroyed by winter plowing. Rotation of vegetables will reduce the damage from insects, because each family has its peculiar bugs. By constant change to new soil, the pests have no opportunity to get a foothold.

With bugs, as with boys, only those who are interested in them and therefore understand them can manage them. It is fun to study the insects—and it pays.

Here's another use of "land." Maybe a pool in your garden or a dam in a little brook in it may help out your home garden bank account. Of course a pond a few square yards in extent will give even better returns if you can sell its produce at retail near by.

W. B. Shaw, a seventy-year-old veteran who lost his right arm during the Civil War, lives in Kenilworth, D. C., and clears $1500 an acre every year out of mud puddles—if mud puddles can be measured by the acre.

Mr. Shaw is a pond lily farmer, and despite his lack of his good right arm, he poles his boat about his mud puddles and gathers in the pond lilies. His is not exactly a "dry farm" and neither wet nor cloudy weather bothers him. Furthermore, the demand for his pond lilies in Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and even New York, and Chicago, is greater than he can supply.

Mr. Shaw secured this swamp for almost nothing, as it was considered worthless. He divided it into fifteen pools with little dams between them, and rollers on the dams to enable him to drag his boat from one to the other. From May to late in September he is busy every morning gathering lilies. His average is about 500 a morning, which he ships in little galvanized iron tanks with wet moss.

Many school children know how to get results on a little land. Mr. Mahoney, Superintendent of the Fairview Garden School, Yonkers, New York, estimates that the total value of produce grown on the 250 gardens, composing the school plot, in all about one and one quarter acres of land, was $1308, or at the rate of more than a thousand dollars per acre. When it is taken into consideration that all the labor was done by boys ranging in age from eight to twelve years, this result is truly astonishing.

What may not adult skilled labor produce when applied freely to the land.

CHAPTER IX

TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT—SPECIALIZED CROPS

To subdue the land with an ax, a plow and a spade is possible; millions of acres have been so subdued. This method, however, is the most expensive of all, as in our times, markets won't wait, and the man who wants to get on must produce as quickly as possible. To do so, he must have the best tools. They will pay for themselves many times over in a single year. For the farm, the following list, in addition to a well-stocked tool chest (hammer, saw, plane, ax, etc.) covers the indispensible:

1 team horses (these may be hired) $200.00
1 walking plow 10.00
1 disk or cutaway harrow 25.00
1 farm wagon 50.00
1 cultivator (two horse) 25.00
1 one-horse cultivator 8.00
Shovels, pick, mattock or grubbing hoe 10.00
Work harness for two horses 25.00

TOTAL $353.00

These things you must have to get the land in proper shape for seeds or plants; but special crops require special tools. A scythe is good to keep weeds away from fences. A sickle is handy to keep down grass. To reduce living expenses, a cow for $60, and fifty hens at fifty cents each, say $25, will supply a large family with milk and eggs. Most people make the mistake of buying too many things and these poorly selected. It is better to have too few tools than too many, for tools are often dropped where last used, and so are lost. Then if money is scarce, you may not be able to make a shelter for your machines and tools, and they will rust through the winter. Many farmers, through neglect, have to replace their tool equipment every four or five years, but with attention and care, the original equipment, even to the team, ought still to be in use twenty years after their purchase. I know many instances where this is true. The above equipment is the minimum for beginning work. The character of additions to it will depend much upon the crops which you select as the money getters.

For general market gardening and the kitchen garden too, the following tool list, together with the above, will include everything absolutely necessary.

Wheel hoe $6.00
Spade and fork, each $1.00 2.00
Push hoe .65
Watering can .60
Rake and common hoe 1.00
Bulb sprayer .25
Trowel .10

TOTAL $10.60

The wheel hoe is a great saver—of backache, especially to the beginner; as Warner says, "at the best you will conclude that for gardening purposes a cast-iron back with a hinge in it is preferable to the ones now in use."

The dibble, an old tool handle, or a bit of broomstick sharpened, and garden lines to get the rows straight, labels, tomato supports, plant protectors and stakes earl all be homemade out of old material. The full outfit would include the following:

Roller $8.00
Wheel-hoe with seeder 8.50
Sprayer 3.75
Wheelbarrow 4.00
Crowbar 1.50
Weeder .35

For such crops as admit of horse cultivation a horse hoe will save a great deal of time.

The weeder is a cousin to the push hoe and has a zigzag blade for cutting off young weeds which are just starting above ground. It is pushed backward and forward and cuts both ways. It is very good for soft ground; on a harder patch use the push hoe.

A market garden is really a big kitchen garden, from which the cultivator supplies not only his own family, but his neighbors, the public. To run a successful market garden for profit, land suitably situated near transportation and markets, a large supply of stable manure, hotbeds for raising plants, crates for shipping, wagons for delivering, and a complete outfit of tools are necessary. You must raise all sorts of vegetables and salad plants in quantities sufficiently large to justify you in giving your whole time to the work. An acre devoted to general market gardening could be attended to by two men with some extra help for marketing.

To get a place fully established on new, rich land requires two or three years. On worn-out land it would take longer to build it up to the high fertility needed for maximum production. Crops like asparagus and rhubarb take two years to establish on a remunerative basis. If bush fruits are raised, three years are required to get maximum results. So in starting, land should be bought outright or leased for ten years.

In market gardening for profit, one acre might be devoted to vegetables, one acre to small fruits; strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, etc. and one acre kept for buildings, poultry, etc. An energetic man could clear one thousand dollars a year besides his living, after he got a start, and be absolutely independent; that is, unless some predatory railroad corporation could confiscate his profits before his product reached the market.

Some persons are just naturally so successful with plants that if they stuck an umbrella in the ground we should expect to see it blossom out into parasols—but they don't know why it does, and they can't teach any one else how to do it.

Any fool can sneer at "book farming" or at anything else, but you can hardly succeed without the best books by practical men. Do not let some experienced ignoramus talk you out of experimenting under their guidance. You will learn little without experience, and unless you have the grower's instinct, you will learn less without books.

Don't be hypnotized by long experience or by success. Hardly anybody knows his own business. You must have noticed that few of the people you buy of or sell to, know any more of their goods than you do.

It is just the same with trades. Hardly a barber knows that he should not shave you against the grain of the skin. Even the cat won't stand being rubbed up the wrong way; but the barber never thought of that.

We lawyers and the doctors are supposed to be thorough in our own field—I said lately to one of the ablest men at the New York Bar, "About one lawyer in a hundred knows his business." He said, "That is a gross overestimate." Shortly after I talked with three Judges, one of the City Court, one of the Supreme Court, and one of the United States Circuit, and they each agreed that my friend's remark was about true, and that in most cases litigants would do as well without lawyers as with them.

If that is true, what chance is there that an uneducated man who has "raised garden sass ever since he was a boy, and seen his father do it before him," can teach you correctly?

Men learn very slowly by experience, because no two experiences are exactly alike, unless they perceive and apply the principles under the experience.

An intelligent man accustomed to investigation can learn more about a specialty in a week's study than an untrained practitioner can believe in a year.

What the untrained teacher can tell us is of little account; what he shows us is another matter.

Therefore get help who know that they don't know anything about a garden and who consequently will do with a will exactly what you tell them to do; such labor is cheap—why should you pay extravagant prices for skill to a man who has succeeded so poorly that he can only earn day's wages? You can get much better knowledge at less cost from a book. Study and put your knowledge into practice yourself, where you see promise of a profit.

Almost every crop can be made a specialty. In proportion as special crops are profitable when conditions are right, so are they sources of loss when things go wrong. If, after your first season in the country, some special crop takes your fancy, give extra space and time to it the second year and see if you are successful in handling an eighth or a quarter acre. If so, you may extend your operations as rapidly as purse and market permit.

Before concentrating upon any crop as the chief source of income, a careful study must be made of all the conditions surrounding its production; a crop is not produced in the broad meaning of that term until it is actually in the hands of the consumer.

Potatoes, for instance, are grown by the hundred acres in sections adapted to their growth, and special machinery costing hundreds of dollars is used in planting, cultivating, and harvesting the crop. The good shipping and keeping qualities of the potato enable it to be raised far from markets and so brings into competition cheap land worked in large areas, with large capital. In spite of this, however, the small cultivator can usually make money if he can sell his potatoes directly to the consumer.

If your land is so situated that you can put your individuality into the crop and can control all the circumstances, preparation of land, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and marketing, your chances of success are immeasurably increased. As soon as any important part must be trusted to some one beyond your control, danger arises. Assiduous care in planting, cultivating, and packing will avail nothing if the product falls into the hands of transportation companies or commission merchants indifferent as to what becomes of it. It is therefore better to be quite independent, sell your own crop, and have the whole operation in your own hands from the very beginning.

Generally speaking, seed growing for the market is a highly developed special business which is usually carried on by companies operating with large capital, able to employ the best experts, and to avail themselves of all the advantages of scientific methods in culture, regardless of expense. So uncertain is the business, that even with all these facilities, they rarely guarantee seeds. It is obvious that the amateur has little chance of succeeding in such a difficult business. Nevertheless, he will be able after a few seasons of increasing experience to gather seeds from selected plants and so furnish his own supply. It must be borne in mind, however, that plants can be improved by cross breeding and that by keeping a variety too long on the same ground its quality deteriorates, and the plant tends to revert to the type natural to it before domestication.

When land is cropped every season, the nitrogen, potash, and phosphorus removed from the soil must be replaced in some form, otherwise you have diminishing returns, while the expense for labor is the same. In farming small areas for specialties you cannot easily invoke the principle of rotation by enriching the land with legumes, to be plowed under while green, the bacteria on the roots of which gather nitrogen from the air, but you must get stable manure or buy chemical fertilizers to maintain the fertility.

Special crops divide themselves naturally into two classes: those raised for immediate shipment to market, and those to be hauled to canneries. The first type are generally prepared in a more expensive way, and need more care and attention. Each class requires its own special forms of packing to conform to market peculiarities fixed by the taste of consumers.

For the cultivation of all specialties, many items of preparation are identical. Land must be well drained, it must contain a sufficient amount of humus, or decaying vegetable matter, to make it loose and porous; it must be free from sticks and stones or any foreign matter likely to impede cultivation or obstruct growth. The proper formation of a seed bed is a prime prerequisite to successful cropping. After the land is manured and plowed it should be gone over in all directions with a disk and smoothing harrow, until it is of a dustlike fineness.

In thorough cultivation before the crop is planted, lies the secret of many a success, and in its neglect the cause of many failures. Intelligent handling of crops is in a large measure knowledge of the influence of wind and rain, sunshine and darkness, on the particular nature of the plant Delicate plants, for example, ought to be grown where buildings or forests break the force of prevailing winds. Sheltered valleys in irrigated sections have proved the best for intensive cultivation. For thousands of years in China and Japan the conditions of successful intensive cultivation have been well understood, and to-day the most efficient gardeners are the Chinese. In some parts of Mexico, for the same reasons, intensive cultivation has reached a high development. In our own West we are catching up on vegetables and fruits.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVANTAGES FROM CAPITAL

We have seen what a worker with very little money can do and how he can succeed. A small capital, however, can be used to increase the returns to as great advantage on a small farm as large capital can be used on a large farm and with much less risk.

Stable manure is still the favorite article with the masses of gardeners. One ton of ordinary stable manure contains about 1275 pounds of organic matter, carrying eight pounds of nitrogen, ten pounds of potash, and four pounds of phosphoric acid.

When thoroughly rotted, the manure acquires a still larger percentage of plant food; it is more valuable, not only for that reason, but also on account of its immediate availability. Further, the mechanical effect of this manure in opening and loosening the soil, allowing air and warmth to enter more freely, adds greatly to its value.

It is easily gotten and often goes wholly or in part to waste. On the outskirts of some towns may be seen a collection of manure piles that have been hauled out and dumped in waste places. The plant food in each ton of this manure is worth at least two dollars—that is the least Eastern farmers pay for similar material, and they make money doing it. Yet almost every liveryman has to pay some one for hauling the manure away. This is simply because farmers living near these towns are missing a chance to secure something for nothing—because, perhaps, the profit is not directly in sight. But from most soils there is a handsome profit possible from a very small application of stable manure.

While writing this, I saw a man in New Rochelle, N. Y.; dumping a load of street sweepings into a hole in a vacant lot. It would have been less wasteful to have dumped a bushel of potatoes into the hole.

Commercial fertilizers are coming more and more in use by market gardeners, and with reason. If we examine a good fertilizer, analyzing five per cent available nitrogen, six per cent phosphoric acid, and 8 per cent potash, we shall find that one ton of it contains, besides less valuable ingredients: 100 lb. nitrogen, 120 lb. phosphoric acid, 160 lb. potash.

Such fertilizers probably retail at forty to sixty dollars per ton, and are fully worth it. All this plant food, and perhaps one half more, can be drawn in a single load, while it will take ten such loads of stable manure to supply the same amount of plant food.

There is no reason to be afraid of too much fertilizer, provided it is evenly distributed and thoroughly mixed through properly prepared soil. Stinginess in this item is poor economy.

Nitrogen is the most essential food for plant growth. It is an important element of plant food in manure. In ordinary manure most of the value is due to the nitrogen, although phosphoric acid and potash are also present. It is found in the most available form in nitrate of soda. Nitrate of soda will benefit all crops, but it does not follow that it will pay to use it on all crops. Its cost makes it unprofitable to use on cheap crops; but on those that yield a large return nitrate of soda is a very profitable investment.

"It is shown in the experiments conducted with nitrate of soda on different crops that in the case of grain and forage crops, which utilized the nitrate quite as completely as the market garden crops, the increased value of crops due to nitrate does not in any case exceed $14 per acre, or a money return at the rate of $8.50 per 100 pounds of nitrate used, while in the case of the market-garden crops the value of the increased yield reaches, in the case of one crop, the high figure of over $263 per acre, or at the rate of about $66 per 100 pounds of nitrate." (New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Stations, page 8, No. 172.)

Professor Voorhees, of the same station, experimented with tomatoes, with these results:

Manure and Fertilizer Used Cost Per Acre Value of Crop

No manure $271.88
30 tons barnyard manure $30.00 291.75
8 tons manure and 400 lb. fertilizer 15.00 317.63
160 pounds nitrate of soda alone 4.00 361.13

Such common crops as tomatoes, cabbage, turnips, beets, etc., in order to be highly profitable, must be grown and harvested early; any one can grow them in their regular season; their growth must be promoted or forced as much as possible, at the time when the natural agencies are not active in the change of soil nitrogen into available forms, and the plants must, therefore, be supplied artificially with the active forms of nitrogen, if a rapid and continuous growth is to be maintained.

It is quite possible to have a return of $50 per acre from the use of $5 worth of nitrate of soda on crops of high value, as, for example, early tomatoes, beets, cabbage, etc. This is an extraordinary return for the money and labor invested; still, if the increased value of the crop were but $10, or even $8, it would be a profitable investment, since no more land and but little additional capital was required in order to obtain the extra $5 or $8 per acre.

The results of all the experiments conducted in different parts of the country and in different seasons, show an average gain in yield of early tomatoes of about fifty per cent, with an average increased value of crop of about $100 per acre. The rest of the report shows similar results with other crops. (New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 172.)

Joseph Harris says, "Some years ego we used nitrate of soda cautiously as a top dressing on the celery plants. The effect was astonishing. The next year, having more confidence, we spread the nitrate at the time we sowed the seed, and again after the plant came up, and twice afterward during a rain.

"Instead of finding it difficult to get the plants early enough for the celery growers who set them out, they were ready three weeks before the usual time of transplanting.

"At the four applications, we probably used 1600 lb. of nitrate of soda per acre, and this would probably furnish more nitric acid to the plants than they could get from five hundred tons of manure per acre, provided it had been possible to have worked such a quantity into the soil. Never were finer plants grown. As compared with the increased value of the plants, the cost of the nitrate is not worth taking into consideration."

As a means of fertilization without the use of artificial fertilizer, soil inoculation has come. It has grown out of the discovery of the dependence of leguminous plants on bacteria which live on their roots. The discovery is one of the most important of those made in modern agriculture.

It has received its greatest impetus in America, under the experiments of Professor Moore of the United States Agricultural Department.

The Department supplied free to farmers the bacteria for inoculation. Now they supply it only for experimental purposes. A laboratory has been fitted up for the work. The method is to propagate bacteria for each of the various leguminous plants such as clover, alfalfa, soy beans, cow peas, tares, and velvet beans. All of these plants are of incalculable value in different sections of the country as forage for farm animals. In the West, alfalfa is the main reliance for stockraisers. The farmers of the East are trying to establish it, but meet with difficulty chiefly for want of the special bacteria which should be found on the roots.

The function of these bacteria is to gather the nitrogen of the air and supply it as plant food. Without the bacteria the plant can get only the nitrogen which is supplied from the soil in fertilizers. With the aid of the bacteria the growing plant can derive the greater part of its food from the air.

Here is one of the results of the use of inoculated seed as reported by the United States Agricultural Bulletin No. 214.

G. L. Thomas, experimenting with field peas on his farm near Auburn, Me., made a special test with fertilized and unfertilized strips, and stated that "inoculated seed did as much without fertilizers of any kind, as uninoculated seed supplied with fertilizer (phosphate) at the rate of 800 pounds and a ton of barnyard manure per acre."

This seems to be only in its infancy. The Department warns us that nitrogen inoculation is useless where the soil already has enough nitrogen and where other plant foods are absent.

The experiments are most important, and we are probably on the eve of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, but the human race has a great love for "inoculation," and indeed for all unnatural processes.

You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chandler Harris tells? No? They were constantly seeing this enormous coon, but always just as they almost got their hands on him, he disappeared. One night the boys came running in to say that the wonderful coon was up in a persimmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot; so they got the dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. It was a bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure they cut down the tree and the dogs ran in—the coon wasn't there.

"Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought you said you saw the coon there."

"So we did, Honey," said the old man, "so we did; but it's very easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it."

Another method of increasing fertility at increased expense deserves notice. The vacant public lands are for the most part desert-like, and their utilization can come about only through irrigation.

This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens and farms.

With the work being done by the United States Government, and that of the various states, we may look forward in the not distant future to this land being made habitable to man.

It is well known that with the dry, even climate and with an abundance of water applied as vegetation needs, this now arid waste is far more productive than the Eastern states, where the crops are at the mercy of the elements, sometimes having too much moisture and at other times not having enough.

"Irrigation offers control of conditions such as is found nowhere except in greenhouse culture. The farmer in the humid country cannot control the amount of starch in potatoes, sugar in beets, protein in corn, gluten in wheat, except by planting varieties which are especially adapted to the production of the desired quality. The irrigation farmer, on the other hand, can produce this or that desirable quality by the control of the moisture supply to the plant. He can hasten or retard maturity of the plant, produce early truck or late truck on the same soil, grow wheat or grow rice as he deems advisable."

"On the irrigated fields of the Vosges, Vaucluse, etc., in France, six tons of dry hay becomes the rule, even upon ungrateful soil; and this means considerably more than the annual food of one milch cow (which can be taken as a little less than five tons) grown on each acre."

"The irrigated meadows round Milan are another well known example. Nearly 22,000 acres are irrigated there with water derived from the sewers of the city, and they yield crops of from eight to ten tons of hay as a rule; occasionally some separate meadows will yield the fabulous amount—fabulous to-day but no longer fabulous to-morrow—of eighteen tons of hay per acre; that is, the food of nearly four cows to the acre, and nine times the yield of good meadows in this country." ("Fields, Factories, and Workshops," pages 116-117.)

"If irrigation pays"—and no one now questions that—"the whole Western country of rich soil, which asks but a drink now and then, will be turned into a Garden of Eden." (Maxwell's Talisman.)

Agriculture may be revolutionized with the advent of irrigation.

A new method of disposing of sewage and at the same time irrigating the soil, has come into use recently, and will be found valuable to those who are situated so that they can make use of it.

The sewage from buildings is drained into a large tank where the heavier matter can settle to the bottom. When the water rises nearly to the top of the tank it is siphoned into another tank, and from there it is piped about the field.

The piping is very simple—ordinary drain tile conveys the water. Beginning at the highest point of the field to be irrigated, a six-inch (or larger) line of tile should be laid along the highest ground with a fall of not over one inch to each ten feet. From this main trunk should be branch lines of "laterals," laid from eight to twelve feet apart, as they would be laid for draining a field. These branch lines may be laid at an angle to the main trunk as may be most convenient; all the joints must be covered so as to keep out the flirt. The whole system should be laid deep enough in the ground to be secure from frost; but to be most effective it should not be over fourteen to sixteen inches below the surface, hence sub-irrigation cannot be used very successfully in the Northern states. In a sandy loam soil with a clay subsoil it works best at sixteen to twenty-four inches.

This is substantially Colonel Waring's method of sewage disposal. To get the best use of it for plants, the water should be assembled and kept in the sun for ten to twelve days, then turned into the pipes until the ground is well soaked, and then shut off and not allowed in the pipes again for ten to fifteen days, according to the weather and condition of moisture in the soil. The crop should be cultivated between each watering.

However, as Bailey says, "Evidently in all regions in which crops will yield abundantly without irrigation, as in the East, the main reliance is to be placed on good tillage."

"Most vegetable gardeners in the East do not find it profitable to irrigate. Now and then a man who has push and the ability to handle a fine crop to advantage, finds it a very profitable undertaking." ("Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 174.) Bailey, however, was not thinking of "overhead irrigation."

The late J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wisconsin, was one of the expert market gardeners of his region. "The longer I live," wrote Mr. Smith, then in the midst of a serious drought, "the more firmly am I convinced that plenty of manure and then the most complete system of cultivation make an almost complete protection against ordinary droughts." (Same, page 330.)

If the soil is cultivated carefully and intensively, it will hold water within itself and carry a storage reservoir underneath the growing crop. Finely pulverizing and packing the seed bed, makes it retain the greatest possible percentage of the moisture that falls, just as a tumbler full of fine sponge or of birdshot will retain many times the amount of water that a tumbler full of buckshot will. The atmosphere quickly drinks up the moisture from the soil unless we Prevent it. This we do by means of a soil "blanket," called a "mulch" This finely pulverized surface largely prevents the moisture below from evaporating, and at the same time keeps the surface in such condition that it readily absorbs the dew and the showers. Water moves in the soil as it does in a lamp wick, by capillary attraction; the more deeply and densely the soil is saturated with moisture, the more easily the water moves upward, just as oil "climbs up" a wet wick faster than it does a dry one. One can illustrate the effect of this fine soil "mulch" in preventing evaporation by placing some powdered sugar on a lump of loaf sugar and putting the lump sugar in water. The powdered sugar will remain dry even when the lump has become so thoroughly saturated that it crumbles to pieces.

"We have no useless American acres," said Secretary Wilson. "We shall make them all productive. We have agricultural explorers in every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have become so acclimated to dry conditions, similar to our own West, that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-called arid lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these upon land now considered practically worthless."

In this way it has been estimated that in the neighborhood of one hundred million acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to the most intensive agriculture. (See a study of the possible additions to available land in Prof. W. S. Thompson's "Population, a Study of Malthusianism": Col. U, 1915.) Frederick V. Coville, the chief botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say that in the strictly arid regions there are many millions of acres, now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois.

Land that was thought to be absolute desert has been made to yield heavy crops of grain and forage by this method without irrigation.

Macaroni wheat will grow with ten inches of rainfall, and yield fifteen bushels to the acre. This however is less than the average wheat yield in the United States.

Much can be done by dry farming; that is, by plowing the soil very deep and cultivating six or eight times a season, thus retaining all the moisture for the crops and reducing evaporation to a minimum.

There are thousands of acres in different sections of Montana that grow good crops without irrigation. In Fergus County, for instance, the wonderful yield of 45 bushels of wheat per acre is grown without irrigation. Heavy crops of grain and vegetables are grown in the vicinity of Great Falls by the dry farming system.

The money and time spent in spraying is also well invested. The New York Agricultural Experiment Station began a ten-year experiment in potato-spraying to determine how much the yield can be increased by spraying with Pyrox or with Bordeaux mixture.

In 1904 the gain due to spraying was larger than ever before. Five sprayings with Bordeaux increased the yield 233 bushels per acre, while three sprayings increased it 191 bushels. The gain was due chiefly to the prolongation of growth through the prevention of late blight. The sprayed potatoes contained one ninth more starch and were of better quality.

The average increase of profit per acre from spraying potatoes was figured to be about $22 on each acre. The result was arrived at from experiment, two thirds of which was by independent farmers. (Particulars will be found In Bulletin No. 264, issued by the Department.)

In fourteen farmers' business experiments, including 18 acres of potatoes, the average gain due to spraying was 62-1/2 bushels per acre, the average total cost of spraying 93 cents per acre; and the average net profit, based on the market price of potatoes at digging time, $24.86 per acre.

"One class of gardeners," Burnet Landreth explains, "may be termed experimental farmers, men tired of the humdrum rotation of farm processes and small profits, men looking for a paying diversification of their agricultural interests. Their expenses for appliances are not great, as they have already on hand the usual stock of farm tools, requiring only one or two seed drills, a small addition to their cultivating implements, and a few tons of fertilizers. Their laborers and teams are always on hand for the working of moderate areas. In addition to the usual expense of the farm, they would not need to have a cash capital of beyond 20 to 25 dollars per acre for the area in truck."

"Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market gardening, taking only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances, and labor, would require a capital of $80 to $100 per acre. For example, a beginner in market gardening in South Jersey, on a five-acre patch, would need $500 to set up the business, and run it until his shipments began to return him money. With the purpose of securing information on this interesting point, the writer asked for estimates from market gardeners in different localities, and the result has been that from Florida the reports of the necessary capital per acre, in land or its rental (not of labor), fertilizers, tools, implements, seed and all the appliances, average $95, from Texas $45, from Illinois $70, from the Norfolk district of Virginia the reports vary from $75 to $125, according to location, and from Long Island, New York, the average of estimates at the east end is $75, and at the west end $150."

I have before me now one of the roseate advertisements, which we so often see in the newspapers, telling how fortunes can be made by investing a few dollars in a tropical plantation in Mexico.

It gives what are supposed to be startling yields per acre, and yet the returns, which must necessarily be taken with considerable allowance, are only from $580 to $1087 per acre on various plantations.

There are market gardeners and nurserymen near New York City who are making their acres produce better returns than this. It is not necessary to go off into the tropical wilderness seeking a fortune which is usually a gold brick that some fellow is trying to sell you, when as good results can be secured right at home.

Market gardeners in and near Philadelphia pay $25 to $50 an acre and upwards rent for land, and work from five to forty acres. This is as much as similar land in many parts of the country could be bought for. But it is not a high rent when they are right at the market—one man makes the round trip in two and one half hours—manure costs them nothing—for years they have been using the excavations from the old style privy wells, which has been hauled to their farm and deposited where they wished it, free. They have modern facilities, such as trolley and telephone, and are as much city men as any clerk in an office. They clear far higher profits from an acre than the average farmer, raising never less than two, and often three crops in a season. They employ several men to the acre, and at certain times many more, working the men in gangs. Only the difficulty of getting good help at their prices prevents them from using twice the number.

However, the possibilities of putting capital into land at a profit are still infinite.

What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil—one ninth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose—but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce, not only the air, but the soil as well, must be warmed; that is done by putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil; its fermentation heats it. But with the present development of industrial skill, heating the soil could be done more economically and more easily by hot-water pipes. Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use of portable pipes, or thermosiphons, provisionally established in the cool frames.

Competition that stands in with the railroads can be met only by being near the market or having water transportation. Indeed, the erect of water transportation in getting manure, and in delivering the produce from the railroads, appears in the early history of trucking. The railroads often crush out boat competition by absorbing docks and standing in with the commission men. This could be met by such cooperative selling agencies as the flower growers already have.

"One of the earliest centers for the development of truck farming in its present sense was along the shores of Chesapeake Bay, where fast sailing oyster boats were employed for sending the produce to the neighboring markets of Baltimore and Philadelphia. In a similar way the gardeners about New York early began pushing out along Long Island, using the waters of the Sound for transporting their produce. The trucking region on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan is another sample of the effect of convenient water transportation in causing an early development of this industry. The building of the Illinois Central railroad opened up a region in southern Illinois that was supposed to be particularly adapted to fruit growing." ("Development of the Trucking Interests," by F. S. Earle, page 439.)

If one goes into the trucking business on so large a scale as to be able to make deals with the railroads, such as The Standard Oil Company has made, of course additional prices could be gotten, owing to the possibility of putting competitors at a disadvantage. That business is a large one.

In doing business on this scale, much will depend on your ability as a merchant.

"It is useless to grow good crops unless they can be sold at a profit; yet it is safe to say that ten men grow good truck crops for one who markets them to the best advantage."

Three Acres and Liberty: Ch. XI-XV

CHAPTER XI

HOTBEDS AND GREENHOUSES

Whether to get an early start on the garden or for raising plants for field crops, a hotbed is all but indispensable. In making a hotbed what we seek to do is to imitate Nature at her best, so get the best soil and the sunniest spot you can find.

In all hotbeds the underlying principle is the same: They are right-angled boxes covered with glass panes set in movable frames and placed over heated excavations. The bed may be of any size or shape, but the standard one is six feet wide, since the stock glass frames are usually six feet long by three feet wide. You can have any length needed to supply your requirements. "Tomato Culture," by A. J. Root, tells us that the cheapest plan is to get some old planks, broken brickbats or stone, and piece together a box-like affair in proper shape: to provide drainage, the front should be at least ten inches above the ground and the rear fourteen inches. A hotbed knocked together in this way is all right to start with, if you cannot do any better, but will last only two or three seasons. For a permanent bed, probably the best way is to make cement walls extending to the bottom of the manure. The bed ought to face south or southeast and be well protected on the north. It should be banked all around with earth or straw to keep out the cold, and mats or shutters should be provided for extra cold weather. The best material for heating the bed and the most easily obtained, is fresh horse manure in which there is a quantity of straw or litter. This will give out a slow, moist heat and will not burn out before the crops or the plants mature. Get all the manure you need at one time. Pile it in a dry place and let it ferment; every few days work the pile over thoroughly with a dung fork; sometimes two turnings of the manure are enough, but it is better to let it stand and heat three or four times.

"You can make a hotbed also on top of the ground without any excavation. Spread a layer of manure evenly one foot in depth and large enough to extend around the frame three feet each way. Pack this down well, especially around the edge, put on a second and third layer until you have a well-trodden and compact bed of manure at least two and one half feet in depth. Place the frame in the center of this bed and press it down well." A two-inch layer of decayed leaves, cut straw, or corn fodder, spread over the manure in the frame and well packed down, will help to retain the heat. Ventilate the bed every day to allow steam and ammonia fumes to pass off.

"The soil inside should be equal parts of garden loam and well-rotted barnyard manure. Tramp well the first layer of three inches. To make it entirely safe for the plant seeds in the hotbed, add another layer of the same depth. Use no water with garden loam and manure if you can possibly help it."

"Before sowing any seeds put a thermometer in the bed three inches deep in the soil. If it runs over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, do not sow. If below 55 degrees it is too cold; you will have to fork it over and add more manure. If the bed gets too hot, you can ventilate it with a sharp stick by thrusting it down into the soil."

Another way that the old gardeners have to make a hot bed is with fire. On a large scale this is cheaper, though more complicated than the fermentation of manure. In making this kind choose your location and build the frames as before. "Cut a trench with a slight taper from the east end of the plot to the end of the hotbed, and on under the ground to about four feet beyond the end of the bed. This taper to the outlet will create a draught and so keep a better fire. Arch this over with vitrified tile. The furnace end where the fire is should be about six feet away from the bed. When the trenches are completed, cover over with the dirt that was taken out of them. Two such trenches under the frames will make a good hotbed. Anyone can do this sort of work."

A hotbed can also be heated by running steam pipes through the ground, but unless you happen to be where exhaust steam could be used, this method is not economical except for big houses. The care and expense of a separate steam plant would be too great to pay, unless for growing winter vegetables for market or flower culture. If you go into that on a scale large enough to pay, new problems at once demand solution.

Vegetables under glass have kept pace with other crops. Within fifteen miles of Boston are millions of square feet of glass devoted to vegetables, chiefly lettuce. There are more than five million feet in the United States used for other crops. Ordinarily, under favorable conditions, glass devoted to this work will yield an average of fifty cents per year per square foot.

About the lowest estimate of cost per sash is five dollars; this amount includes the cost of one fourth of the frame and covers. There are usually four sashes to one frame. A well-made mortised plank frame costs four to six dollars. A sash, unglazed, costs from one to two dollars. Glazing costs seventy-five cents. Mats and shutters cost from fifty cents to two dollars per sash, depending upon the material used. Double thick glass pays better in the end as being less liable to breakage. These prices vary greatly, however.

The following sample estimate by a gardener is for a market garden of one acre, in which it is desired to grow a general line of vegetables. It supposes that half of the acre is to be set with plants from hotbeds.

One eighth acre to early cauliflower and cabbage, about 2000 plants, if transplanted, would require two 6 X 12 frames, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty plants being grown under each sash.

These frames may be used again for tomato plants for the same area, using about 450 plants. This will allow a sash for every 55 plants.

One frame should be in use at the same time for eggplants and peppers, two sashes of each, growing fifty transplanted plants under each sash.

Two frames will be required for cucumbers, melons, and early squashes; for extra early lettuce, an estimate of sixty to seventy heads should be made to a sash. It is assumed that celery and late cabbages are to be started in seed beds in the open.

In the fashionable suburbs of Boston "one hotbed 3 X 6 feet was used in which to start the seeds of early vegetables. Plantings were made in the open ground as soon as the weather permitted, and were continued at intervals throughout the season whenever there was a vacant spot in the garden. The following varieties of vegetables, mostly five-and ten-cent packets, were planted: Pole and wax beans, beets, kale, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, corn, cucumbers, corn salad, endive, eggplant, kohlrabi, lettuce, muskmelon, onions, peppers, peas, salsify, radish, spinach, squash, tomatoes, turnips, rutabagas, escarole, chives, shallot, parsley, sweet and Irish potatoes, and nearly a dozen different kinds of sweet herbs."

"In the larger garden, tomatoes followed peas, turnips the wax beans, early lettuce for fall use took the place of Refugee beans. Corn salad succeeded lettuce."

"The spinach was followed by cabbage, while turnips, beets, carrots, celery, and spinach gave a second crop in the plot occupied by Gardus peas and Emperor William beans."

"Winter radishes came after telephone peas, Paris Golden celery was planted in between the hills of Stowell's blanching. The plot of early corn was sown to turnips. The hotbed was used during the late fall and winter to store some of the hardy vegetables, and the latter part of October there was placed in it some endive, escarole, celeriac, and the remaining space was filled up by transplanting leeks, chives, and parsley." (Bailey, "Principles of Vegetable Gardening," page 38.)

"If spinach is grown in frames, the sash used for one of the late crops above may be used through the following winter.

"This, like the last case, makes a total of five frames, the cost, depending on make and material, from one to five dollars; twenty sash and covers, at, say, $2.75, $55; manure at market price, calculating at least three or four loads per frame. This is a liberal estimate of space, and should allow for all ordinary loss of plants, and for discarding the weak and inferior ones. It supposes that most or all of the plants are to be transplanted once or more in the frames. Many gardeners have less equipment of glass." (Same, pages 49-50 )

Growing vegetables under glass gives smaller returns than flowers; as, for instance, a head of lettuce brings much less than a plant of carnations, and suffers more from the competition of southern crops. Nevertheless, the greenhouse-grown vegetables have come into prominence lately because they can be raised in houses that are not good enough for flowers. Lettuce and tomatoes are the principal crops; some growers raise thousands of dollars' worth each year. The greenhouse is also used for forcing plants which are afterwards transplanted to the open air. This develops them at a time when they could not grow outdoors and gives them such a start that they are very early on the market, thereby realizing the highest prices.

"Nearness to market is the most important feature in a greenhouse. In large cities, manure, which is the chief fertilizer, can be had in most cases for the hauling. The short haul is an important item, and, most important of all, the gardener who is near the market can take advantage of high prices, if the grower is near enough to the city to make two or three trips; in such a fluctuating market as New York, it is to his advantage."

Some kind of a greenhouse is necessary, but one large enough to produce a living would cost a very large sum. Vegetable raising under glass has been made profitable in special localities where nearly the whole community gives its time to building up the industry, but complete success can be attained only by having absolute control of all the conditions entering into production, and giving assiduous and undivided attention to detail.

Leonard Barron, in the Garden Magazine, says: "The best type of greenhouse for all-round purposes is unquestionably what is known as the even span—that is, a house in which the roof is in the form of an inverted V, so as to be exposed as much as possible to sunlight, and having the ridge-pole in the center. All other types of houses are modifications from the simplest form, and are designed in some way or other to fit some special requirements. These requirements may be: the cultural necessities for some particular crop; a desire to have the atmospheric conditions inside more or less abnormal at given seasons (as in a forcing house); or an adaptation to some peculiarity of the situation, as when a greenhouse is built as an adjunct to other buildings."

"It is plain common sense that the ideal greenhouse is one in which the light is most nearly that which exists outside, and in which the heat is as evenly distributed. It is practical experience that a structure with as few angles and turns m it as possible and with a minimum of woodwork in its superstructure, best answers these conditions.... Greenhouse building has developed into a special industry, and the modern American greenhouse is the highest type of construction. It is built with as careful calculation to its situation and its requirements as is the country dwellinghouse. Such a thing naturally is not cheap."

"The low-priced 'cheap greenhouse' is a makeshift of some sort. Perhaps its roof is constructed of hotbed sash, a perfectly feasible method of construction, which for ordinary, commonplace gardening will answer admirably. Or, its foundation is merely the plain earth. Such a building does admirably in the summer time, and even in the late spring and early autumn; but woe betide the enthusiastic amateur in winter, who, being possessed of one of these light greenhouse structures, has indulged in a few costly, exotic plants. They will be frozen, to a certainty! It is economy to pay a fair price in the beginning to secure a properly built greenhouse that will withstand the trials of winter."

"If iron frame is used instead of wood there is greater durability, and the structure being more slender, will admit more light, but the cost will be increased."

"It makes very little difference in cost what shape of house is to be erected. The cost per lineal foot for an even span is practically the same as for a lean-to of the same length and width. In the lean-to, in order to get the sufficient bench and walk space inside, it is necessary to carry the roof to a point much higher than in the even span. The extra framework and material for the roof cost a good deal, yet add practically nothing to the efficiency of the house."

"Heating of greenhouses is best done by hot water, and in a small house the pipes may well be connected with the heating system used for the dwelling, if the greenhouse and the home are within any sort of reasonable distance from each other. For large houses, or ranges of several houses together, the independent heating plant is necessary. Steam is used for heating by commercial florists, but it is economical only on a large scale."

"As a uniform temperature must be maintained in the house, the fires, where steam is used, need watching continuously during cold weather, for the moment the water ceases to boil, the pipes cool off and a considerable time is consumed in starting the heat running again. With hot water there is much more latitude in attention, for though the fires dwindle' the water which fills the pipes will carry heat for a long time, and it will circulate until the last degree is radiated. But a hot-water system costs in the installation about one fourth more than steam. Very small houses may be successfully heated by kerosene stoves, which may be placed inside the house. A much better way would be to use oil heaters for an inside water circulation, carrying off all products of combustion by means of a flue. Coal stoves should never be installed inside the house. It has been done successfully by some amateurs, but the danger of coal gas being driven back into the house by a down draft in the chimney is too great a risk. Coal gas and illuminating gas are two virulent poisons to plants."

It is obvious that the amateur must proceed with great caution in undertaking intensive cultivation under glass. Build at first the simplest and least expensive kind of hotbeds or greenhouses. It takes three to five seasons to train even an experienced farmer along these special lines. Separate crops require special treatment. Do not experiment, but follow well-tried procedure. It is comparatively easy to farm an acre under glass, but it should be worked up to, each step being taken only after a solid foundation is ready to build on. Learn by your mistakes. Don't get discouraged by failure. By not making the same mistake twice, you will soon learn by experience just what is essential to production. The more you learn about the way nature does things, the more likely you will be to succeed when you seek to imitate her.

CHAPTER XII

OTHER USES OF LAND

We had intended to write an interesting chapter on the use of a few acres of land for poultry, and another on raising a vast drove of rabbits, both from practical men, but a good average man, just such as this book is written for, sent the following:

"I am very sorry that I cannot comply with your request to write a chapter on poultry for your new book. It is true that I am physically and mentally capable of performing that feat, and it would be possible for me to prepare an essay that might entertain the reader, and even make him believe that there is money in commercial poultry. I prefer, however, to leave that sort of romancing to the poultry journals who, by much practice, are adepts in the art. The fact is, I did not make poultry raising pay, and had I remained on my chicken ranch, I would have gone broke. I do not mean to say, however, that there is no money in poultry, but merely that I could not get it out. Perhaps others who are better equipped for the work can make a success of such an undertaking, but I could not. The numerous poultry journals are filled with instructions how to do it and with letters from people who assert that they have done well with poultry; but, really, during the four years that I was in the business I cannot recall a single case of success, and, on the other hand, I learned of failures without end. I had the reputation of having the best planned and most completely equipped in this part of Washington, and perhaps in the entire state. My stock was thoroughbred and healthy, and they seemed to attend to business strictly. I devoted about all my waking hours to them, did everything that seemed necessary that was suggested by my own success, and yet I could not make it go, am glad I am clear of it, and have no desire to try it again. I am perfectly willing to admit my possible unfitness for the business, but I am also compelled to admit that I could not succeed and that no advice of mine could help others."

Although many, either under exceptional circumstances or because of exceptional ability, have made a success of wholesale poultry raising, it seems on reflection that Mr. Wolf's ideas are in the main correct.

The price of chickens is fixed, like all other prices, by supply and demand, and toward the supply every farmer contributes his chickens and their eggs which cost him practically nothing; at least he counts that they cost him nothing.

Now it is clear that if you considerably increase the supply at any place, the price will fall, and the farmer, whose chickens and eggs cost him almost nothing in money, will sell them low enough to command a market and will continue to raise them, however little he gets for them.

So you are against inexhaustible competitors who can neither be driven out nor combined with. It is worse than competing with bankrupt dealers. To make much money you must have at least some monopoly, and even a little bit of the earth that is well suited to your purpose where there is no unreasonable and unreasoning competition, will give you a chance.

But while it is true that the farmer's subsidized hens have a very disastrous effect at times upon the market, the fact is that, notwithstanding the tariff, we import millions of dozens of eggs laid each year by the pauper hens of Canada and often of Denmark.

Another fact to be considered is, that it is when eggs are most plentiful that the farmers depress the market. With their ways of handling their poultry, their hens lay only when conditions are most favorable, and in the winter when eggs are as high as fifty cents a dozen in cities, they have no eggs to market. Like the market gardener, to be timely in market is to succeed. A week may mean an annihilation of profits.

It is a different proposition to raise a few chickens as a side line as the farmers do.

A workman at the Connecticut place of one of the experts who has revised this book had a bit of land not more than 100 X 200 feet, and for several years cleared $100 a year by raising eggs and broilers, doing the work together with that of a little garden of small fruits before and after working hours The chickens fed largely on green food in summer.

In selling your surplus at a profit, the same principles apply as in raising a surplus to sell at a profit.

While poultry and egg raising does not require that you must be first, it does require that you market your produce at a time when the prices are highest.

You must hatch at a time which will allow the young hens to begin laying as winter approaches; the food must keep up animal heat and the house must be warm enough to make the hens comfortable, and the conditions must be such as to keep them laying.

As an experiment, we once raised six pullets. They were hatched in May, and in December they began laying. All during the winter they laid never less than four and some times six eggs a day, and kept this up until spring.

They were fed on wheat and corn and plenty of meat scraps and green food. They were kept in what was practically a glass house, receiving the benefit of the sun during the day, and were protected from the winds. The effect was to bring as near as possible the condition of the warm months; these paid very well.

Ducks are less frequently raised than chickens and often realize good returns.

The popular fallacy that ducks require a stream or pond is gradually passing away. There was a time when nearly all ducks were raised in this way, feeding on fish as the principal diet, but experience has proved that ducks raised without a stream or pond tend to put on flesh instead of feathers, and they have not the oily, fishy flavor of those raised on the water. Nearly all of the successful duck raisers now use this method.

This is bringing the duck more into prominence as an article of food; as James Rankin says in "Duck Culture," "People do not care to eat fish and flesh combined. They would rather eat them separate."

The white pekins are the popular birds, because they are larger, have white meat, and are splendid layers. They lay from 100 to 165 eggs in a season and are the easiest to raise. They can do entirely without water; and Rankin tells of selling a flock to a wealthy man, who afterwards wrote asking him to take them back, because he had bought them for an artificial lake in front of his house, so that his wife and children could watch them disporting in the water. He complained that they would not go into the water unless he drove them in and would remain only so long as he stood over them.

Ducks are easier to raise than any other fowl and are freer from disease. They are ready for market when eight weeks old.

The industry is assuming large proportions, and ranches are now raising ducks by the tens of thousands and are finding better markets each year.

In starting any poultry business, it is better to begin with twenty-five fowls and master details with those, then double the number as fast as they have been made to return profits.

The Atlantic Squab Company, of Hammonton, N. J., says "it is a simple matter for the beginner to figure out on paper net profits of four or five dollars per year from each pair of breeders, but we doubt if it can be made. It is, however, 'pigeon nature' to lay ten or eleven times a year, but hardly natural to presume that each and every egg will ultimately mean a Jumbo squab in the commission man's hands.

"A loft [that is, a pair] of high-class Homers, properly mated, should average six pair of squabs per year. For one year our squabs averaged us a fraction over 60 cent per pair; say $3.60 has been the returns from each pair of breeders. It has cost us 90 cent per pair to feed for twelve months; remember, we buy in large quantities; it would cost the small breeder $1 a year per pair to feed. It would be well to allow 60 cent a pair for labor and supplies, such as grit, charcoal, tobacco stems, etc., although the bird manure, which we find ready sale for at 55 cent. per bushel, has covered these incidental expenses for us. The inexperienced beginner, with good management and close attention to details, should clear $2 a year from each pair of birds, provided he starts with well-mated pure Homer stock." Pigeons are particular about their mates, and will rather go single than take a disagreeable partner.

Raising Belgian hares at one time promised to be a most profitable industry. The Belgian hare is a distant relation of the ordinary rabbit. Its flesh is white, close-grained, and tender, resembling the legs of the frog, and has a very savory flavor. It is considered by many superior to poultry, and the rapidity with which they breed gave promise of fortunes. The doe brings forth a litter of about eleven every sixty days, and with prices ranging from $1.50 to $2.50, as they were about the year 1900, with the cost of raising from thirty to forty cents, the reason for this promise is evident. In Southern California thousands turned their attention to it, and some firms entered the business with equipment to the value of fifty thousand dollars.

Besides the ordinary market prices realized for the hares, some went extensively into breeding fancy stock, and realized from $50 to $250 apiece for them.

This industry had indications of becoming extensive and enduring, but by 1900 so many went into the business that the markets became glutted and prices fell with disastrous effect.

Whether it will pay you depends largely on the attitude of your customers toward the hare as a food product.

Bee-keeping offers an interesting and remunerative field of employment. More than the average living awaits those only who will make a careful and intelligent study of bees and their habits and will give them the proper care and attention.

One need not be a practical bee-keeper to enter this field. He can purchase even one hive and, while increasing from this, he can gain an experience that he could get in no other way.

How shall one start bee-keeping?

Get one hive or a few hives. If you have no room in the yard, put them upon the roof. One man in Cincinnati, Ohio, makes his living from bees kept on the roof of his house.

Wm. A. Selzer, a large dealer in bee-keepers' supplies, in Philadelphia, established many colonies on the roof of his place right in the heart of the business district, where it would seem impossible for bees to find a living.

Very little space is required for bee-keeping; hives can be set two feet apart in rows, and the rows six to ten feet apart. No pasture need be provided for them. There are always fields of flowers to supply the nectar.

White clover produces a large yield of nectar of very fine flavor. The basswood or linden tree blossom produces a fine nectar which some consider better than white clover. Buckwheat also gives a good yield of nectar, but it is dark in color and brings a lower price for that reason. There are other plants which yield large quantities of nectar, and it would be necessary to know the locality to say what would be the best plants; but as white clover is found almost everywhere in the northern states, it is safe to say this will be the best producer in the spring, and goldenrod, where found, the best for the fall supply.

Frank Benton, in United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 59, says: "It may be safely said that any place where farming, gardening, or fruit raising can be successfully followed is adapted to the profitable keeping of bees."

There is always a farmer here and there who keeps a few hives of bees. These often can be purchased at a very reasonable price, but unless they are Italian bees and are in improved hives, it would be better to purchase from some dealer. He may sell you a very weak colony, but after the first year these ought to be as strong as any. Start in the spring; when you have your bees, read good literature on the subject. A. I. Root's "A B C of Bee Culture" is good for beginners; subscribe for the American Bee Journal, of Chicago, or Gleanings in Bee Culture, Medina, Ohio. They are full of the latest ideas on the subject.

A yield of fifty pounds of honey in a season can be obtained from one hive of bees in almost any locality. In fact, this is often done where bees are kept in built up cities. One hundred pounds would be considered a very small yield by many apiarists, and twice this amount is often gathered in favored localities where up-to-date methods are followed.

One man can take care of two hundred hives or colonies, as they are termed, if he is working for comb honey, and perhaps twice that number if for extracted honey.

Comb honey is stored usually in one-pound boxes set in a super or small box over the main hive body, which is itself a box about seventeen inches long, eleven inches wide, and ten inches deep into which frames of comb are slid side by side. These combs are accessible and can be lifted out, exposing to view the inner workings of the hive. It is in these combs that the queen lays as many as three thousand eggs some days, and in which the young bees are hatched. They are also used for storing honey for winter use.

The extractor has been invented to remove this honey without damaging the comb. The economy of this can readily be seen, as ten pounds of honey can be stored while one pound of comb is being built.

This leaves the bees free to gather honey instead of using a portion of their force to build comb, as is necessary when comb honey is desired.

The extractor is a round tin can on a central pivot with a revolving mechanism. Into this the full combs of honey are placed and are whirled around, throwing the honey out into the can by centrifugal force. It is then run out at the bottom into bottles or barrels, and the empty combs are replaced in the hive for the bees to fill again.

Twice as many pounds of honey can be produced by this method; but the price of extracted honey is much less than that of comb honey. Adulteration of extracted honey with glucose is becoming so prevalent that it threatens to ruin this branch of the industry. But there will always be a good market for honey sold direct by the producer to residents, or even through storekeepers, in medium size towns, where customers can be sure that the honey is pure.

The average wholesale prices of honey are about fifteen cents a pound for extracted and twenty cents for fancy comb, so if the apiarist with two hundred hives produces the small average of fifty pounds of comb honey and sells it at fifteen cents a pound, he will receive $1500 for his season's work. If he goes in for extracted honey and produces one hundred pounds per hive, he will receive even more. Of course, expenses will have to come out of this.

That this has been done over and over again is proved by men who started in with only a few hives and have accumulated considerable property from the business.

But no one need expect to do this unless he is willing to give the bees the attention which they will require. To neglect them once means often a total loss. Most of the work will have to be done during the swarming season in May, June, and July. There has been so much written on the subject and so many inventions and improvements made in the hives that bee-keeping more than any other branch of similar employment has been reduced to a science, and any one can thoroughly master it in two or three years. It is because its possibilities are not generally recognized that so few are now engaged in it.

The fear of stings will always deter many from entering this business and so check competition from forcing prices down.

The price of honey makes it a luxury, and there will be an unlimited opportunity in the crop as long as the price does not get near the cost of producing, which is far below the present prices.

To use land directly is to open almost infinite opportunities. Department of Agriculture, Farmers' Bulletin 204, says: "In the United States the term 'mushroom' refers commercially to but a single species (Agaricus Campestris) of the fleshly fungi, a plant common throughout most of the temperate regions of the world, and one everywhere recognized as edible."

It is unfortunate that the commercial use of the term "mushroom" restricts it to a single species. There are about twenty-five common varieties of edible fungi in the Northern states.

The successful cultivation of mushrooms in America has not been so general as in most European countries. It is in France and in England that the mushroom industry has been best developed. France is the home of the industry. Unusual interest has been shown in the United States in the growth of mushrooms within the past few years, and it is to be hoped and expected that within the next ten years the industry will develop to the fullest limit of the market demands. The demand will, of course, be stimulated by the increasing popular appreciation of this product. In some cities and towns there is already a good market for mushrooms, while in others they may be sold directly to special customers. This should be borne in mind by prospective growers.

While many American growers have been successful, a much larger number have failed. In most cases their failures have been due to one or more of the following causes:

(1) Poor spawn, or spawn which has been killed by improper storage.

(2) Spawning at a temperature injuriously high.

(3) Too much water either at the time of spawning or later.

(4) Unfavorable temperature during the growing period. It is therefore important to the prospective grower that careful attention be given to the general discussion of conditions which follow.

Mushrooms may be grown in any place where the conditions of temperature and moisture are favorable. A shed, cellar, cave, or vacant space in a greenhouse may be utilized to advantage for this purpose. The most essential factor, perhaps, is that of temperature. The proper temperature ranges from 53 degree to 60 degree F., with the best from 55 degree to 58 degree F. It is unsafe to attempt to grow mushrooms on a commercial basis, according to our present knowledge of the subject, in a temperature much less than 50 degree or greater than 63 degree F.

Any severe changes of temperature would entirely destroy the profits of the mushroom crop. From this it is evident that in many places mushrooms may not be grown as a summer crop. With artificial heat they may be grown almost anywhere throughout the winter. Moreover, it is very probable that in this country open-air culture must be limited to a few sections.

A second important factor is moisture. The place should not be very damp, or constantly dripping with water. Under such conditions successful commercial work is not possible. A place where it is possible to maintain a fairly moist condition of the atmosphere, and having such capability for ventilation as will cause at least a gradual evaporation, is necessary. With too rapid ventilation and the consequent necessity of repeated applications of water to the mushroom bed, no mushroom crop will attain the highest perfection.

Even a little iron rust in the soil is reported as fatal to the Campestris, the only fungus so far successfully propagated.

If other fungi than the Campestris come up wild, don't throw them away as worthless. Many are better eating than the one you seek, and you can avoid the risk of poisonous ones by learning to recognize the dangerous family—send for the Agricultural Department's Bulletin No. 204. Meanwhile, (1) all mushrooms with pink gills, (2) all coral-like fungi, (3) all that grow on wood, and (4) all puffballs, are good to eat if they are young and tender—only don't mistake an unspread Aminita for a puffball.

An ingenious person may find other sources of income in the country. A young hotel porter in Ulster County, New York, bought seventy acres of mountain woodland four miles from the railroad for two hundred and fifty dollars, and puts in his winters cutting barrel hoops, at which he makes two dollars a day. Meanwhile the land is maturing timber. That is hard work, but to gather wild mushrooms or to cut willows, or sweet pine needles to make cushions, or to catch young squirrels for sale, is lighter, if less steady employment.

And with all our uses of land, we must not forget a little corner for the hammock and the croquet hoops for the wife and the children. In the Province of Quebec, where the land is held in great tracts under the Seigniors, I have seen croquet grounds no bigger than a bed quilt in front of the little one-room cottages.

The Frenchman knows the importance of such things as that, has meals out of doors in fine weather, goes on little picnics, and keeps madame contented in the country.

A swing, or a seesaw, and a tether ball (a ball swinging from the top of a pole eight feet high) for the children will help to keep the family peace.

CHAPTER XIII

FRUITS

Fruit raising can succeed in either of two ways. Either planting the orchard in some one fruit and specializing thereon, or diversifying the operation to cover many varieties. In the first way it is usual to establish orchards in favorable localities without special regard to nearness to market; because in these days of refrigerator car lines the product of an orchard in any part of the country can be sent to market quickly enough to avoid loss. Where many varieties are grown, the best site is usually near a large city where the grower can market his own product on wagons and get the benefit of retail prices.

Remember that it is far more profitable to raise twenty baskets of fine, well-shaped, clean, handsome apples or peaches or any other hand-eaten fruit, than to raise a hundred barrels of stuff that is good only for the common drier or for the mill or hogpen.

Care and common sense are the jackscrews to use in raising fine fruit.

The apple is the great American fruit for extensive orcharding. The question is whether there is a profit in apple growing. The answer is, where the conditions are favorable and when the business is well conducted there is. Under average conditions, with poor business management, there is little or none.

As Professor S. T. Maynard in Suburban Life tells us, "In a suburban garden of one of our Eastern cities are seven Astrachan trees, about twenty years old, from which have been sold in a single season over one hundred dollars' worth of fruit. A friend near Boston put three thousand barrels of picked Baldwins into cold storage. None of the fancy apples sold for less than three dollars a barrel, and the others netted more than two dollars. They were the product of less than forty acres of trees which had been planted about twenty-five years. Another fruit grower showed me several returns of commission men of five, six, and even seven dollars a barrel for fancy Baldwins. At such prices, and under such conditions, there is a large profit in apple growing."

"The other side of the picture, however, is the more common one. A friend sent fifty barrels of fancy Baldwins to a commission house, to be shipped to European markets, the returns for which were just enough to pay for the barrels. The majority of apples grown in the United States are sold to buyers, one buyer in each section, for a dollar to two dollars for No. 1 quality, and a dollar for No. 2. With the cost of barrels at about forty cents, labor for picking, sorting, and packing, these prices leave little or nothing for the use of the land, cost of fertilizers, spraying, thinning, etc., all of which are necessary for growing fruit of the best quality."

Holmes further says, in substance, that we must make the trees grow vigorously, whether upon poor or good soil. Growth is the first requirement. To do this, we need a strong, deep, moist soil,—good grass land well underdrained makes the best. If this is on an elevation with a northern or western exposure, it will be better than a southern or an eastern one. While apple trees will grow on a thin soil, so much care and fertilizing is required that the crop will be of little or no profit upon such land. Lastly, we must protect our fruit from insect and fungous pests.

On land that is free from stones and not too steep, thorough and frequent cultivation will give the quickest and largest returns. On such land, hoed garden or farm crops may be profitable while the trees are small, but after five or six years it will generally be found best to cultivate it entirely for the growth of trees. Organic matter in the form of stable manure or cover crops will be needed, and must be applied in the fall or very early in the spring to keep up the supply of humus in the soil.

Stony land that cannot be plowed or cultivated except at a great cost may be made to grow good crops of fruit.

While the trees are young, the soil should be worked about them for the space of a few feet and then the moisture retained by a mulch system, making use of any waste organic matter like straw, leaves, meadow hay, brush, and weeds cut before they seed. Most of the first prize apples at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo were grown under the "turf-culture" system.

Unless you have trees already on your land, it is too long to wait six or seven years for a crop. We can graft good fruit on almost any tree, though the new dwarf trees will bear much sooner, and if we have trees we need not even wait for the harvest of our crop, since the windfalls will keep us in apple sauce, jellies, and pies, for no apple is too green for apple sauce, not even the ones that the boys can't bite.

The greatest difficulty in the profitable growth of the apple is the market. Much of the profit in apple growing, whether in the East or the West, will depend upon the extent of the business done, especially if one is a considerable distance from markets. The above are the essentials noted by this practical scientist. Next to the apple crop, perhaps the most important fruit crop for shipping is the peach. The locality is perhaps the most important consideration in a peach orchard. In the Eastern and Southern states, and in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and, of late years, Georgia, peaches flourish and produce enormous crops. As a general rule, the nearer the orchard is to large bodies of water, the more likely one is to get a crop, as the temperature of the water prevents a too early budding out in the spring and delays killing autumn frosts.

Generally speaking, a sandy, porous soil is best for peaches, but they may be raised on clay lands if provided with plenty of humus.

Another fruit which is profitable in districts suited to its growth is the grape. Bulletin No. 153, Cornell Experiment Station, says: "Grapes are a dessert fruit. They are not used to a large extent in the kitchen (though they might be), so there are few incidental or secondary products; that is, they are not dried, canned, made into jellies, and the like, to any extent, that is, in the United States.

The grape is peculiarly a sectional product. Central New York has a large area devoted to it. In northern Ohio, a strip along Lake Erie, and some of its islands, are devoted almost exclusively to grape vineyards. In districts where grapes are intensively grown, a great part of the crop is used for wine, and American wine is extensively sold m our home markets, although it frequently has foreign labels.

Any one purchasing a farm should plant some grapevines for home use. Grape juice is easily made and kept and is a pleasing beverage. Grape jelly is excellent and could be readily marketed in any nearby town, since there is very little, comparatively, on sale. A grape arbor gives shade, needs little care, and can be planted near the house where it will not interfere with the crops. For you cannot cultivate all of your land; some grassy space must be left around the house if only for drying clothes. But if ground is scarce, vines or lima beans can be trained up the back porch or up the sunny side of the house; or a few climbing nasturtiums will give decorations without care, while the young leaves make a good salad.

Of home orchard fruits, the plum, pear, and quince are all profitable specialties, especially for intensive acre raising. In general, the same remark may be made of them as of the other fruits, that they need careful selection of land to get the best results. The cherry has recently come to be recognized as a good commercial specialty. Mr. George T. Powell, in The American Agriculturist, says: "The crop is a precarious one to market.... The risk and loss may be largely reduced by making a proper selection of site for the orchard. This should be on high ground where the air generally circulates freely. This is especially necessary for sweet varieties. The soil should be rich, with naturally good drainage."

He says: "I have had Rockport trees produce four hundred pounds each and the fruit net ten cents a pound for the entire crop. The English Morello trees may be grown fifteen feet apart each way, which will allow two hundred trees to the acre. The larger trees ought to be planted somewhat thinner.... Cherries are packed largely in eight-pound baskets and in strawberry quarts. Each basket is filled with carefully assorted fruit, every imperfect specimen being taken out, after which they are faced by placing the stems downward so that the cherry shows in regular rows upon the face. Girls and women do this work. The Eastern fruit grower must bear in mind that he has to meet in his market the competition of the Pacific coast growers, who excel in fine packing; and although our Eastern grown cherries are of a finer flavor, they are sent to the market in such a crude manner and in such unattractive condition that they sell for much less than the California fruit."

Regarding bush berries, he says, you will get a small crop the second year after planting and for the third and subsequent years a full crop. The important thing is to keep the dead canes well pruned out, as the cane borer is one of the worst insect pests. When they appear they can be stopped by cutting off the shoot several inches below the puncture as soon as it begins to droop, and burning the part cut off. Again, Mr. Powell says, "Currants require rich soil. A clay or heavy loam is better than a heavy dry soil. They should be planted in the fall. The average from ten thousand bushes should be about four quarts each. The cherry currant is perhaps the largest in size, but not so prolific as some others. Currants are shipped and sold in thirty-two quart crates and have to be carefully packed to get to market in good condition."

Gooseberries are raised by the acre. Mr. A. M. Brown, Kent County, Delaware, in The American Agriculturist, tells of a plantation in Central Delaware where over twenty four thousand pounds were gathered from a scant four acres. The product was sold to the Baltimore canners for six cents a pound, making $1440 in all. In addition to the gooseberries grown on six acres, a large crop each of apples and pears were grown on the same ground. Like currants, the gooseberry must be sprayed to destroy the worms, and cut back and burnt to destroy the cane borer.

There is little special knowledge required, however, in raising this fruit, and it is well adapted for growers with small acreage and little money.

In going into the cultivation of bush fruits, it is usually best to grow them in great variety near the market where they are to be sold. The bush fruits are then uniformly profitable. In Suburban Life Mr. E. C. Powell tells us that the spring is the best time for planting raspberries and blackberries, just as soon as the ground is dry enough to work. The first season the plots should be well tilled. It is possible to grow vegetables between the rows the first year before the berries begin to bear, but unless pressed for space, it probably doesn't pay.

Perhaps the best of small fruits, however, and most largely used is the strawberry. The strawberry can be planted by the acre. The ground must be rich loam and plenty of humus, well drained, with a southern exposure. Well-grown plants set out in the open will bear a small crop the first season, but will not become of maximum bearing till the second year. After the crop is taken off in the fall a mulch of straw or leaves should be placed over the plants to protect them during the winter. The strawberries are picked by boys and girls.

The strawberry is an exceedingly profitable crop if properly handled, and is one of the best small fruits for people with little capital. While the price in the general market varies from fifteen to thirty cents per quart, they sometimes run as high as fifty in the early spring; yet it is possible to grow strawberries worth six dollars a quart by intensive culture in greenhouses. Mr. S. W. Fletcher, in Country Life in America, says: "The forcing of strawberries is a specialized industry of the highest type. Everybody cannot make it pay everywhere.... Strawberries are forced in pots or in benches. The pot method is preferred by those who find a demand for the highest quality of fruit regardless of expense.... If fruit is desired for Christmas, the plants are not checked to any extent, but are kept in continuous growth. The conditions of springtime are simulated as far as possible. At Christmas time a quart box of forced Marshall strawberries sells at from one-fifty to eight dollars per quart, averaging about four dollars."

Our most valuable allies against the insect armies are toads, bats, wasps, dragon flies, and birds; they enjoy the battle.

There cannot be too many toads or bats. Toads will eat all sorts of flies, potato bugs, squash bugs, rose bugs, caterpillars, and almost anything that crawls.

If the wasps become a nuisance, it is easy to poison them; but the birds are often a nuisance—the robins eat the strawberries and cherries the instant they are ripe. They soon get used to scarecrows; and to cover the fruit with nets gives the insects a free hand. Some growers raise sweet cherries or other fruits specially to feed up the birds so that they will let the rest alone. Early rising and a plenty of cats is about the best remedy. A man, or even a woman, working on the land is the best scarecrow.

There are a few other fruits that grow wild in certain sections and are gathered and sent to market. Among these the cranberry is the most important. It grows in nearly inaccessible bogs, principally in New Jersey, and the usual custom is for owners of land on which there are cranberry bogs to let out the bog to pickers on a percentage basis. Cranberries can be cultivated, and there is a considerable profit in the business. The swampy nature of the ground needed, however, will deter all except the most persistent from this industry. Some cranberry bogs bring as high as a thousand dollars an acre.

The blueberry or huckleberry, or, as we call it in Ireland, the bilberry, or frohen, grows wild in the northerly states, and is much sought after in the market. Many efforts have been made to grow the blueberry commercially; but, as is well said by Mr. J. H. Hale in the Rural New Yorker, "The blueberry proved to be a good deal like Indians—it would not stand civilization, and was never satisfactory, although I monkeyed with it for a period of about ten years." Mr. Fred W. Card, of Rhode Island, in the same issue reports a similar experience. With our present knowledge of the blueberry, it is doubtful if it can be made a commercially cultivated crop. Lately, however, it is claimed that it can be grown in very poor, non-nitrogenous soil.

A variety, however, called the Garden Blueberry, gives almost incredible yields, five bushels being reported from sixty plants. It keeps all winter on the branches, if stored in a cellar, and is of fine flavor and especially good for preserves. A little frost improves it.

But wild berries, crab apples, and elderberries and others, are good to preserve and find a ready sale if attractively put up; they also help out the table greatly. Then think of the fun!

In recent years, certain varieties of nuts, like the English walnut, the pecan, and the hickory nuts have been grown commercially. In the South particularly, the pecan has been found a good crop to plant on cotton plantations which have been overworked. In the Rural New Yorker, Mr. H. E. Vandevan gives an account of an old cotton plantation of 2250 acres Iying on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. The pecan tree was indigenous to the land, and the wooded portion of the plantation has thousands of giant pecan trees growing on it. The previous owners of this plantation had done all in their power to destroy these trees, but they flourished in spite of that. Mr. Vandevan, however, saw in the pecan a large profit, and he has planted ten thousand trees on six hundred acres, all in a solid block. The trees are set fifty feet apart both ways, except where a roadway is left. Between the pecan trees Mr. Vandevan has planted fig trees for early returns, with the intention of canning the fruit.

The English walnut is grown principally in California. Its value has been recognized only recently, as all of the nut crops take a good many years before the trees begin to bear. Nut growing on a small scale is not of much value to a man with a little bit of land, except as an additional source of income.

If you find a sweet chestnut tree or a shell-bark hickory or two in your wood lot, they will well repay protection and careful cultivation.

If you don't, why—there are great promises in quick maturing nut trees. There is now an English walnut which is claimed to bear the third or even the second year after setting out. My own small experience with these in New Jersey, however, has not been a success.

CHAPTER XIV

FLOWERS

Every city in the United States affords an opportunity for flower gardening and nurseries, but a study must be made of the market in order to know what is best to raise and where to raise it.

The choice of crops depends on the popular taste. The flowers which are now in greatest demand are the rose, carnation, violet, and chrysanthemum.

Near every large city there are hundreds of florists with glass houses, some covering twenty acres or more. There were over 2000 acres of flower land under glass reported at the last census. As almost all industries to-day are specialized, so is floriculture; in one place we see ten acres of glass given over to the rose, in another thousands of dollars devoted to the carnation or the violet, while one grower in Queens, Long Island, has 75,000 square feet of glass for carnations.

The specialist who devotes his thoughts and energies to raising one flower can produce better results than if he raised a variety. He has only one crop to market, and can do it more successfully than with a number of crops. If he raises enough to make himself a factor in the market, he can sell direct instead of sending his product to a commission man, thereby receiving better prices.

Little capital is required to start; intelligent effort is the road to success. Very few, indeed, who are now leaders in floriculture, started with more than $500 capital, and many with much less. One of the largest growers of roses in the United States, whose plant covers more than ten acres, did not have $500 when he started, and many others not so well known are making handsome livings and have accumulated thousands of dollars of property from a start of less than $500.

But practical knowledge is much more necessary than in raising vegetables, as small mistakes will have more serious results. Therefore, if you have some capital and wish to go into flower raising, it will pay you, if circumstances permit, to hire out to a florist, even at small wages, till you have learned the business—even though you have raised flowers successfully in a home garden.

Mr. Frank Hamilton, manager of C. W. Ward's of Queens, tells of at least a dozen men, who have been in their employ during his twenty-five years' experience, some of whom got only twenty dollars a month at first, and afterwards started in a small way for themselves, who are now making a substantial living.

Although the market depends largely on the wealthy class in the large cities, many florists devote considerable time and space to flowers which are bought by the poorer class of city dwellers who have no space or time to raise their own.

There are always good markets somewhere for the crop, and it is not an uncommon thing to ship flowers from New York to Chicago, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, or vice versa. The chances of success for a lover of flowers are better in this business than in any in which one with a like amount of capital can engage. If the business at first is not large enough to use all his time he will find no trouble in securing employment in his immediate vicinity. There are always some who want such a person to care for their lawns or to give some time to their conservatories.

In the last ten years the business has doubled, and while many have gone into it, the profit they are making indicates that supply has not kept pace with demand, and that it is not likely to be overdone the near future.

Professor B. T. Galloway, in an article in The World's Work, says, "An acre of soil under glass pays fifty times as much as an acre outdoors. There are annually sold in this country six to seven million dollars' worth of carnation flowers There are no less than eight to ten million square feet of glass in the United States devoted to this flower alone."

Although Mr. Rockefeller's place at Tarrytown is the largest competitor in the New York market for violets, there is no local monopoly in that, and the local producer with personal attention can do well.

In the Country Gentleman an account is given of a violet farm on the north shore of Illinois, where two women are supplying local florists.. One of them says: "We started our farm last spring in the face of most discouraging prophecies from our friends and the keenest competition of violet growers of New York. But we believed we could be successful. We had studied the best scientific methods of growing the plants, had imported the best soil obtainable, and built a greenhouse fully adapted to our needs, so we just went ahead and we found it to be a paying proposition.

"Our first experiment was in using cuttings from the violet farm of a lady at Lansing, Michigan, who has been a most successful grower. These did not thrive, and we next imported 3000 cuttings from the Tarrytown neighborhood, where violet culture has been most successful.

"The first rule is to keep the temperature of the greenhouse between forty-five and fifty degrees. Violets are spring flowers, and wither and droop if the temperature is not at the right degree. Most people think the double violets have no fragrance because most of those that we get lose their fragrance in transit.

"We supply 2000 flowers a week, and as they reach our patrons within two or three hours at the most from the time of cutting, they retain their fragrance. They are also larger and of a deeper color than the New York flowers. Next year we hope to go in on a much larger scale.

"While the work is not hard, it requires infinite care and vigilance when the little plants are growing. As a career for a woman, violet growing offers greater inducements than anything I can think of."

Then, surely, others can succeed in other flowers at other places. While there is little choice between the standard styles of greenhouses for violets, there should be abundant provision for supplying fresh air, either from the sides or top, whichever is chosen. The system of ventilation should admit of operation either from the inside or the outside of the house, as fumigation with hydrocyanic acid gas is sometimes necessary, in the fumes of which it is impossible to enter, unless with a gas mask.

The arrangement of the house should secure the greatest possible supply of sunshine in December and January, and the least possible during the growing season, when, as Miss Howard points out, it is necessary to secure as low a temperature as possible, so as to obtain good, vigorous, healthy-growing plants. The best site is a level piece of ground, or one sloping gently to the south.

Of the diseases to which cultivated violets are subject Mr. P. H. Dorsett, of the Department of Agriculture, names four as especially dangerous: Spot disease, producing whitish spots on the foliage; root rot, apt to attack young plants transplanted in hot, dry weather; wet rot, a fungus apt to appear in too moist air or where ventilation is insufficient; and yellowing, of the cause of which little is known. Any of these diseases is difficult to exterminate when it once gains a foothold. The best thing to do is to get strong, vigorous cuttings, and then to give careful attention to watering, cultivation, and ventilation, and the destruction of dead and dying leaves and all runners as fast as they appear.

Among insect enemies, the aphids, red spiders, eel worms, gall flies, and slugs may be mentioned. Most of these can be easiest controlled by hydrocyanic acid gas treatment.

Chrysanthemums, especially of preternatural size and bizarre colors—the college colors at football games, for instance—are in great demand. They are extremely decorative, and their remarkable lasting quality insures their permanent popularity. I have heard that the unexpanded bud can be cooked like cauliflower for the table; but we have not learned to use them in that way. In Japan and China the leaves of the chrysanthemum are esteemed as a salad. One attempt has been made by English gardeners to introduce this use of them into England, but it was unsuccessful.

The annual shows of chrysanthemums and of roses indicate the importance of the business.

It is not generally known, but the poppies are coming into favor for cut flowers in spite of the fact that they do not keep very well. Miss Edith Granger avoids this difficulty, as she explains in the Garden Magazine, "by picking off all blooms that have not already lost their petals in the evening, so that in the morning all the open flowers will be new ones. These are cut as early as possible, even while the dew is still upon them, and plunged immediately into deep water."

You need not be discouraged by the low prices at which flowers, especially violets and roses, are often offered in the streets. Those flowers are the discarded stock or delayed shipments of the swell florists. You will find that those flowers are fading, or revived with salt, and will not keep.

That they are so peddled, shows that everybody, at hotels, dinners, funerals, weddings, in the home, and the young men for the young women, want flowers, the loveliest things ever made without souls. We have only to supply such a want to find our place in life.

As a side line the common flowers will bring good prices; mignonette, bachelor buttons, cosmos, and even nasturtiums, which you can't keep from growing if you just stick the seed in the ground, or lilies of the valley, which you can hardly get rid of once they start, never go begging, if they are fresh.

A favorite flower with many is the sweet pea, which can be grown out of doors in the summer time where you have a good depth and quality of soil.

I have seen May blossoms and autumn leaves on the branch and even goldenrod brought into town and sold at good prices.

Enterprises often look attractive at a distance; for instance, raising orchids, especially as some of the flowers remain on the plants ready for market for weeks and bring high prices. But to ship flowers at a profit they must be in quantities, else the expenses eat up the returns, and they must be shipped with considerable regularity, else you lose your customers. To get such a supply of orchids would take a very large capital and involve so much labor that it is doubtful if more than good interest could be realized on it.

Many florists make money by keeping constantly on hand ferns, palms, and other plants like rubber trees, which they rent out for social functions, weddings, and other occasions. Most florists in the larger cities have also quite a thriving business in tree planting, which is everywhere on the increase. A highly specialized department of horticulture is that of raising young trees and plants to sell for improving grounds, planting orchards, or similar uses. The nursery business bears much the same relation to the commercial florist or orchardist as seed growing does to the market gardener.

Certain communities, through favorable soil or climate, are best adapted to the production of nursery stock. Consequently, one finds this industry most highly developed in scattered localities. It is true that people with small capital should not tackle a business so technical as this.

The business of bulb production is another highly specialized department. In certain sections of Holland large areas of the rich lowlands are given over to bulbs of various kinds of lilies, nearly all of which are propagated in that manner. To attain perfection, at least in the North, most bulbs require deep, rich, warm, and highly manured soils; and assiduous attention at every stage. In many plant specialties, the gardeners of Europe still far surpass our own, because conditions there have forced them to make use of every available means to increase production. The immense price that European gardeners have to pay for land has been a most potent factor in forcing them to seek out and apply the most ingenious forcing methods. The time is upon us here in America also when we must find out the highest use of land and apply it to that use.

As the aesthetic qualities of our people become more highly developed, the business of raising flowers must become of increasing importance, and will readily reward any one who goes into it conscientiously. Flower growing is peculiarly adapted to women, since the work is light There are few disagreeable features, unless it be the handling of the manure incidental to the best results.

Still, the enjoyments of agriculture depend upon individual tastes. I have seen "lady gardeners" picking strawberries with the footman holding up an umbrella to screen them from the sun.

Some women would like that, some not.

CHAPTER XV

DRUG PLANTS

A source of profit from land to which little attention has been given in the United States is collecting or raising plants, some part of which may be used for medicinal purposes. We condense from Farmers' Bulletin No. 188, United States Department of Agriculture:

Certain well-known weeds are sources of crude drugs at present obtained wholly or in part from abroad. Roots, leaves, and flowers of several of the species most detrimental in the United States are gathered, cured, and used in Europe, and supply much of the demands of foreign lands. Some of these plants are in many states subject to anti-weed laws, and farmers are required to take measures toward their extermination.

The prices paid for crude drugs from these sources save in war time are not great and would rarely tempt any one to this work as a business. Yet if in ridding the farm of weeds and thus raising the value of the land the farmer can at the same time make these pests the source of a small income instead of a dead loss, something is gained.

One rather alluring fact contained in an article by Dr. True, is that a shortage has become keenly felt in "Golden Seal," which the early American settlers learned from the Indians to use as a curative for sore and inflamed eyes, as well as for sore mouth. The plant grows in patches in high open woods, and was formerly found in great abundance in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but is now so rare that its price has risen from thirty-five cents wholesale in 1898 to over seventy-five cents a pound. Persons in different parts of the country have undertaken the production of Golden Seal on a commercial scale. More than six hundred dollars' worth can be grown on an acre: so a crop this year would be a fortune. The methods of raising it can be ascertained upon application to the Department of Agriculture.

Ginseng is one of the drug crops which paid handsome returns a few years ago, perhaps because it takes from five to seven years to grow from seeds; but so many went into that line that few men to-day make anything at it. Furthermore, the Chinese, who use a large part of it, will buy only the wild roots—and they know the difference. Those who control the trade have burned quantities in the effort to keep up the price.

There are some drug plants which might be raised with success by those who would specialize in one plant, but the lesson we learn from ginseng should act as a warning.

Raising drugs is one of those things that seems to be more profitable to teach others to do than to do yourself. A well known Professor said to me: "If I were twenty-five and knew what I know about drugs and the market for them, I should go into the drug-raising business. But I should expect to lose money for some years. If I were a small clerk, say, or an old man who wanted to get out of city life, and I had $500 I really wanted to venture in drug raising, I should divide it in half—half I should put in the bank and the other half I should throw into the Hudson River. Then I should be sure of $250 instead of being drawn on to spend it all."

"Most of the people who have been in the business, notably the Shakers, who used to do the most of it, are gradually getting out of it. The few men who make money raising drugs keep it to themselves."

In many cases when weeds have been dug the work of handling and curing them is not excessive and can readily be done by women and children.

Too much emphasis cannot be placed upon the importance of carefully and thoroughly drying all crude drugs, whether roots, herbs, leaves, barks, flowers, or seeds, and putting them under cover at nightfall. If poorly dried, they will heat and become moldy in shipping, and the collector will find his goods rejected by the dealer and have all his trouble for nothing. Leaves, herbs, and flowers should never be washed.

It is important also to collect in proper season only, as drugs collected out of season are unmarketable on account of inferior medicinal qualities, and there will also be a greater shrinkage in a root dug during the growing season than when it is collected after growth has ceased.

The roots of annual plants should be dug in the autumn of the first year just before the flowering period, and those of biennial and perennial plants in the fall of the second or third year, after the tops have dried.

After the roots have been dug the soil should be well shaken from them, and all foreign particles, such as dirt, roots, and parts of other plants, should be removed. If the roots cannot be sufficiently cleared of soil by shaking, they should be thoroughly washed in clean water. Drugs must look wholesome at least. It does not pay to be careless in this matter. The soil increases the weight of the roots, but the purchaser is not willing to pay by weight for dirt, and grades the uncleaned or mixed drugs accordingly. It is the bright, natural looking root, leaf, or plant that will bring a good price.

After washing, the roots should be carefully dried by exposing them to light and air, on racks or shelves, or on clean well-ventilated barn floors, or lofts. They should be spread out thinly and turned occasionally from day to day until completely cured. When this point is reached, in perhaps three to six weeks, the roots will snap readily when bent. If dried out of doors they should be placed under shelter at night and upon the approach of rain.

Some roots require slicing and removing fibrous rootless. In general, large roots should be split or sliced when green in order to facilitate drying.

Barks of trees should be gathered in spring, when the sap begins to flow, but may also be peeled in winter. In the case of the coarser barks (as elm, hemlock, poplar, oak, pine, and wild cherry) the outer layer is shaved off before the bark is removed from the tree, which process is known as "rossing." Only the inner bark of these trees is used medicinally. Barks may also be cured by exposure to sunlight, but moisture must be avoided.

Leaves and herbs should be collected when the plants are in full flower. The whole plant may be cut and the leaves may be stripped from it, rejecting the coarse and large stems as much as possible, and keeping only the flowering tops and more tender stems and leaves.

Both leaves and herbs should be spread out in thin layers on clean floors, racks, or shelves, in the shade, but where there is free circulation of air, and turned frequently until thoroughly dry. Moisture will darken them.

Flowers are collected when they first open or immediately after, not when they are beginning to fade. Seeds should be gathered just as they are ripening, before the seed pods open, and should be winnowed in order to remove fragments of stems, leaves, and shriveled specimens.

The collector should be sure that the plant is the right one. Many plants closely resemble one another, and some "yarbs," contrary to the popular impression, are deadly poison—nightshade (belladonna) and the wild variety of parsnips, for instance. Therefore, where any doubt exists, send a specimen of the entire plant, including leaves, flowers, and fruits, to a drug dealer or to the nearest state experiment station for identification.

Samples representative of the lot of drugs to be sold should be sent to the nearest commission merchant, or drug store, for inspection and for quotation on the amount of drug that can be furnished, or for information as to where to send the article.

In writing to the different dealers for information and for prices, which vary greatly, it should be stated how much of a particular drug can be furnished and how soon this can be supplied, and postage should always be inclosed for reply. The collector should bear in mind that freight is an important item, and it is best, therefore, to address the dealers accessible to the place of production. The package containing the sample should be plainly marked with contents and the name and address of the sender. When ready for shipment crude drugs may be tightly packed in burlap or gunny sacks, or in dry, clean barrels.

Burdock root brings from three to eight cents per pound, and seed five to ten cents. About fifty thousand pounds of the root is imported annually, and the best has come from Belgium. Of dock roots, about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, at from two to eight cents.

The field for the sale of dandelion root is large.

Of couch grass, the roots of which cause much profanity in this country, there are some 250,000 pounds annually imported at from three to seven cents per pound.

A common weed with which there is a considerable trouble is the pokeweed, the root of which brings from two to five cents per pound and the dried berries five cents per pound.

Forty to sixty thousand pounds of foxglove are imported from Europe. Analysis has shown that the leaves of the wild American foxglove are as good as the European article, the price of which per pound ranges from six to eight cents.

Of mullein flowers about five thousand pounds used to be imported, chiefly from Germany. The leaves are also imported.

Dried leaves and tops of lobelia bring from three to eight cents per pound, while the seed commands fifteen to twenty cents per pound.

Of tansy about thirty-five thousand pounds have been imported annually at a price rallying from three to six cents.

The flowering tops and leaves of the gum plant are used as drug. They bring from five to twelve cents per pound.

Boneset leaves and tops bring from two to eight cents per pound. Catnip tops and leaves two to eight cents per pound.

Of horehound about 125,000 pounds are imported annually, prices being three to eight cents per pound.

Blessed thistle is cultivated in Germany, and it is imported to a limited extent.

Yarrow is a weed common from the New England states to Missouri. It is imported in small quantities, and brings from two to five cents per pound.

Canada fleabane brings from six to eight cents per pound. Of jimsonweed, leaves are imported, from 100,000 to 150,000 pounds annually, and 10,000 pounds of seed. Leaves bring two and one half to eight cents per pound, and seeds from three to seven cents per pound.

Of poison hemlock, seeds are imported from ten to twenty thousand pounds annually. Price for the seed is three cents per pound, for the leaves about four cents. The flowers are also used.

The American wormseed has been naturalized from tropical America to New England; the seed commands from six to eight cents per pound; the oil distilled from this seed brings one dollar and a half per pound.

Black mustard, which is a troublesome weed in almost every state in the Union, is nevertheless imported in enormous quantities, the total imports of the seeds of the black and white mustard amounting annually to over five million pounds, the prices being from three to six cents per pound. All these prices and quantities were before the war and may greatly change after it.

In studying the wild drug plants, one may learn the immense variety of field salads and greens. On a visit to the Spirit Fruit Society at Ingleside, Illinois, one of the girls took me out to gather wild vegetables for dinner. We pulled up about a dozen varieties out of the corners of a field; two or three of the nice looking ones that I gathered the young lady threw out, saying she did not know them; but it seemed to me that she took almost anything that was not too tough. The following are commonly used as salads: Dandelion, yellow racket, purslane (pusley), watercress, nasturtium; and the following as greens for cooking: narrow or sour dock, stinging nettle, pokeweed, pigweed or lamb's quarters, black mustard. Young milkweed is better than spinach, and also makes an excellent salad. Probably all the salad leaves could be cooked to advantage. Rhubarb leaves and horseradish tops are garden greens usually neglected most unfairly.

Osage Orange (maclura aurantiaca) is generally supposed to be poison, and is described in Webster's dictionary as "a hard and inedible fruit," but I have found one kind, at least, superior to quinces.

Capsicum or red pepper, licorice (the imports of which have all been in the hands of one person), camphor, belladonna, henbane, and stramonium are possible fields for culture; but they are all experiments.

If you are growing poppies for the flowers it might be worth while to gather some opium, especially if the new process succeeds in separating morphine directly from the plant.

Caraway seeds, anise, coreander, and sage are common garden plants that may be sold as drugs.

CHAPTER XVI

NOVEL LIVE STOCK

Occasionally we hear stories of the wealth which is being made on a frog farm here or there. But as a rule little commercial success has attended attempts in this direction.

The difficulty lies in feeding them. A single frog can be fed by dangling a piece of meat before it, but it would be impossible to feed thousands this way. There are so many enemies that few tadpoles become adult frogs; besides, the frog is a cannibal and will eat not only the larvae or eggs, but the tadpoles and young frogs as well.

Frog culture is successful in some places where ponds are large enough to be partitioned, separating the tadpoles and young frogs from the old ones, and where insects are abundant enough to supply food naturally for them. Near San Francisco there are a number of frog ranches. Even in 1903, according to Mary Heard in Out West, one ranch sold to San Francisco markets 2600 dozen frogs' legs, netting $1800. This was considered poor. Frogs' legs are sold to hotels and restaurants, and bring in New York, according to size and season, from fifty cents to a dollar a pound.

Tons of frogs come to New York markets each year from Canada, Michigan, and from the South and West. Few people outside of the cities eat them. The United States Fish Commissioners reported the product in one year: Arkansas, 58,800 lb., valued at $4162; Indiana, 24,000 lb., valued at $5026; Ohio, 14,000 lb., valued at $2340; Vermont, 5500 lb., valued at $825, etc.—a total of $22,953.

The enormous and increasing prices of large diamond backed turtles, and the cheapness of little ones shows that maturing, at least, if not actually breeding them, would be well worth investigation. Many wealthy New Yorkers send direct to Maryland for their supplies. Where turtle meat is bottled or canned, the snapping turtle and the common box tortoise are sometimes used as "substitutes." Both are capital eating.

The carp is one of the most excellent fresh water fish, and is of great value on account of the facility of culture and the enormous extent to which this is carried on. "In Europe some artificial ponds comprise an area of no less than 20,000 acres, and the proceeds amount to about 500,000 pounds of carp per annum." (Hessel, in "Carp and Its Culture.")

It attains the weight of three to four pounds in three years without artificial feeding, and much more under more favorable conditions. It lives to a great age and continues to grow all the while.

"In Europe it is common to see carp weighing from thirty to forty pounds and more, measuring nearly three and one half feet in length and two and three quarters feet in circumference."

It lives on vegetable food, insects, larvae, and worms, and will not attack other fishes or their spawn. It is easy to raise, and, provided certain general rules are followed, success will attend its culture.

The localities best adapted to a carp pond are those in which there is sufficient water at hand for the summer as well as the winter. A mud or loam soil is best adapted for such a pond. A rocky, gravelly ground is not suited for carp; the water should be the same depth all the year, as variation has an injurious effect on the fish.

Carp spawn in the spring. In stocking a pond three females are calculated to two males. The females lay a great number of eggs, but only a small number are impregnated. The most liberal estimate will not exceed from 800 to 1000 to one spawner, the aggregate per acre amounting to from 4000 to 5000.

The large cities containing large numbers of Europeans furnish the principal markets for carp. The Jewish people will not, as a rule, buy carp unless they are alive, so it is not an uncommon thing to see fish dealers in the Hebrew quarters pushing through the streets carts constructed as tanks and peddling the carp alive.

Some years ago carp ponds were quite a fad among farmers of the Central West. Americans have been slow to adopt the German carp as a food fish.

Trout, of course, can be raised, and the high prices which they bring, both in market and for fishing privileges, make them very attractive; but the cold running water needed makes opportunity for breeding them with access to a good market generally unavailable to owners of five acres.

There is another fish, famous for its eating qualities, which well repays effort put upon its production. I refer to the black bass. It is indigenous to the waters of the Eastern states, where it is usually found in creeks or rivers. It can be successfully bred in properly constructed ponds.

Mr. Dwight Lyell, in Forest and Stream, has this to say about a breeding place for the small-mouthed black bass. "The pond should be six feet deep in the center and two feet around the edge; the bottom should be of natural sand; water plants should be growing in profusion, particularly such aquatic plants as the Daphnia, Bosmina, and the Corix, to furnish food for the young bass. A good size for a breeding pond is 100 X 100 feet." For spawning, artificial nest frames are built in rectangular form. They are made two feet square without bottoms. On two adjoining sides these frames are four inches high and on the other two adjoining sides sixteen inches high. These frames are made because the bass needs a barrier behind which the spawning may be done and which will protect the nest when made. For raising the fish to a size large enough for food, ponds can be of any convenient size. In order to keep the water in healthful condition the pond must be fed by a flowing brook with some provision to prevent the water being disturbed by freshets. This can usually be arranged by a sluice to carry off the surplus water during heavy rains. Black bass raised in shallow ponds will take the fly all summer, so that considerable may be made from fishing privileges.

In the absence of minnows, which are the food of the bass, they must be fed on fresh liver cut in threads like an angle worm to tempt the fish. Even then the liver diet must be varied by feeding minnows from September until the bass goes into winter quarters. In no other way can fertile eggs be assured for the spring hatching. Minnows left in the pond all winter will breed and so furnish fry on which the young bass can feed the next summer."

What has been said refers particularly to the small-mouthed black bass. The conditions are substantially the same for the large-mouthed bass (which grows to a much larger size), except that the bottom may be made of Spanish moss imbedded in cement.

There is a growing market for the young bass or fingerlings to stock streams and ponds. The relation between the producer of stock fish and those who expect to raise bass of a marketable size is about the same as exists between the professional seed grower and the market gardener. It is much better for the small farmer who has or can make an artificial pond to buy his fingerlings from the professional breeder, who has facilities which are too elaborate to be duplicated on a small scale.

Fish culture, except under government auspices, is little known in the United States.

American Homes and Gardens has an account of the breeding of pheasants, which is of interest. That it is possible to breed pheasants, even around an ordinary suburban home, is shown by Mr. Homer Davenport, the famous cartoonist, who succeeded in breeding and raising some of the choicest pheasants on his place at Morris Plains, New Jersey.

A great variety of species are commonly bred, but all of them came from China or India. The pheasant can be tamed by careful handling, but cats and dogs and other small animals must be kept away. The pheasantry should be placed on high, well-drained ground with a southern exposure, where the soil is good enough to raise clover, oats, and barley. The quarters for pheasants and the management are very much like those for fancy chickens. The yard should be inclosed by wire netting both on sides and top to keep the birds from wandering away; and there should be houses for roosting and breeding with nesting quarters attached.

In Central Park, New York, the running space allotted to three or four birds is not more than ten by twenty feet, and Mr. George Ethelbert Walsh tells of a case where sixty pheasants were kept in excellent condition in a house ten by fifty feet, with five yards attached, averaging 10 X 25 feet. However, with pheasants, as with all the bird family, especially turkeys, the more ground they have for ranging the less liable they will be to disease. The chief difficulty in breeding game birds like the pheasant is to secure the insects, such as flies, maggots, and ant eggs, which are the natural food of the young. Sufficient green food like lettuce, turnip tops, cabbage, etc., must also be provided. There is always a market at fancy prices for more of the matured birds than can possibly be supplied.

Some people make money in breeding or training fancy birds like canaries, mocking birds, finches, parrots, and so on; but this industry can be carried on almost as well in rooms in the city as in the country. Specializing on any kind of animal rearing must be gone into with extreme caution, because in the breeding of animals there are many factors to be dealt with which do not confront the breeder of plants. Make haste slowly, and before branching out be sure that you master each step in its turn.

An industry which is practically unknown in this country, but which flourishes in Burgundy, France, is the raising of snails for food. Those who are shocked by this will be surprised to learn that snail culture was practiced by the Romans at the time of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey, as Jacques Boyer says in American Homes and Gardens. The snail lays from fifty to sixty eggs annually. They are deposited in a smooth hole prepared for them in the ground and hatched within twenty days. So rapidly do they grow that they are ready for market six or eight weeks after hatching. The snail park is made by inclosing a plot of damp, limy soil with smooth boards coated with tar to prevent the snails climbing out, and held in place by outside stakes strong enough to withstand the wind. The boards must penetrate the soil to the depth of eight inches at least, and at a level with the ground they must have a sort of shelf to prevent the snails from burrowing under them. When the snail encounters an obstacle in its path, it lays its eggs, sensible beast. Ten thousand snails can be raised on a plot of land one hundred by two hundred feet. The ground is plowed deeply in the spring, the snails are placed on it and covered with from two to four inches of moss or straw which is kept damp. They must be fed daily with lettuce, cabbage, vine leaves, or grass; as they eat at night, they are fed shortly before sunset. Aromatic herbs, like mint, parsley, etc., are planted in the inclosure to improve the flavor of the snails.

In October, the snails having become fat through the summer, retire into their shells, the mouths of which they close with a thin gelatinous covering. They are now ready for picking, and are put on screens or trays which are piled together in storehouses, where they remain several months without food. When the fast has been sufficiently prolonged, the shells are brushed up and the snails cooked in salt water in a great pot holding about ten thousand. When cooked, they are immediately sent to the consumer in wooden boxes holding from fifty to two hundred. The business is a very profitable one, as the snail is considered a great delicacy by epicures.

Perhaps the silkworm is not exactly in place in a chapter on Novel Live Stock. It is at present not much more than an interesting experiment, but there will be money in silkworm culture as soon as a market for the product is developed. The main difficulty is lack of food, as the worm thrives best on the leaf of the white mulberry tree. Until a substitute is found, it will be necessary therefore to set out young trees, which in two years will bear enough leaves to supply food. The labor of silkworm rearing all comes in one month. It can be carried on in any large, airy room The eggs are hatched by the summer heat, and the worm does not become a heavy eater until the last two weeks. It sheds its skin four times, and after the final moult it climbs into loose brush prepared for it and spins the cocoon. These are then dried and shipped.

At the South, where the climate is well suited for silk culture, an obstacle has been found in the unadaptability of the cheap labor, particularly colored labor, to the delicate handling, and especially winding of the silk from the cocoons.

Many people make money by breeding dogs. Not much land is required and very little capital, as kennels can be multiplied as demand increases. There is always a profitable market for dogs, and some of the lap species, like the King Charles spaniel, bring fabulous prices. Hunting dogs, such as setters, pointers, retrievers, really require a game country and a practical hunter who can train the puppies, to make much of a success of it; with these, if properly handled, the business is a safe one, as there is little other technical skill required beyond ordinary care, such as is given to domestic animals.

Cats are a better venture than dogs because they are sold to women who will pay any price for what strikes their fancy. Fashions in cats change about as fast as fashions in coats, but cats breed faster than coats wear out, so it is quick business.

Just now, coon cats, tortoise-shell cats, and bizarre colors of Persian cats are mostly in vogue, but the tailless Manx cat, and even freaks like the six-toed cat and Iynx cats always find a ready market.

Of course, these can be raised in the city, but if it is done in a large enough way to make a living out of it, the Board of Health and the neighbors will raise—something else.

Fishing and hunting are primitive industries of which we think only in connection with wild land. But every bay and pond and wood will supply at least some subsistence or profit to the intelligent seeker.

Oysters, clams, crabs, mussels, frogs, and common fish are found in abundance in many places, and help out with table expenses. Even English sparrows are delicious.

Almost any wild animal is much more wholesome to eat than pork. Squirrels and even weasels are cleaner feeders than pigs, and the Indians eat them with great relish, while everybody knows the keenness of the darkies for "coon." Most snakes are better eating than eels and not near so repulsive—when you get used to them.

The woodchuck is a nuisance to the farmer, covering his field with loads of subsoil from the burrow and then eating the tender sprouts; and the farmer does not know enough to eat his tender corpse, but he is good to eat. If a rabbit and a chicken could have young, it would taste like a woodchuck.

Muskrats, mink, raccoons, and gray and fox squirrels are easily trapped; and the skins of those killed in that way find a steady market. Skins of poisoned animals do not sell so well, as they are rough and dry.

In order to be profitable, these do not need to pay very well in proportion to the time they take, since they are hunted as recreation and at odd times.

But there is a larger field in raising wild animals, which our Western people have not been slow to avail themselves of, and we hear of men being prosecuted for breeding wolves, coyotes, and bobcats, a kind of lynx, to get the government bounty for the snouts or scalps.

In a legitimate way profit may be had from such animals.

Ernest Thompson Seton has an article in Country Life in America, on raising fur-bearing animals for profit; this offers a good chance for small capital and large intelligence. He suggests the beaver, mink, otter, skunk, and marten, and says that whoever would begin fur farming is better off with five acres than with five hundred. He describes two fox ranches at Dover, Maine. They raise twenty to forty silver foxes a year, on a little more than half an acre of land. The silver fox's fur is one of the most valuable on the market and sells at an average of $150 a pelt, that is, $3000 to $6000 gross for the year's work. Foxes are not expensive to breed, their food consisting chiefly of sour milk and cornmeal or flour made into a cake, and a little meat about once a week.

The capital required is small. A fence for the inclosure should be of one and a half inch mesh No. 16 galvanized wire, ten feet high, with an overhang of eighteen inches to keep the foxes from escaping, and is about the only outlay except for purchase of stock.

Stakes should be driven close to the fence to keep them from burrowing out.

They are naturally clean animals, and with careful attention are free from disease. Mr. Stevens reports that in his two years' experience he has had twenty to thirty foxes and lost none by disease, while Mr. Norton, with five years' experience, carrying thirty to forty, reports that one to two die each year.

They breed as well in captivity as in their wild state, usually bringing forth a litter of six or seven in the spring. These breed the following spring and their fur is ready for market the following December. And now breeders sell fine stock to other breeders who are entering the industry, sometimes getting three to four hundred dollars per pair. Mr. Seton remarks, "I am satisfied that any man who has made a success of hens can make a success of foxes, with this advantage for the latter a fox requires no more space or care than a hen, but is worth twenty times as much, and so gives a chance for returns twenty times as large."

This is an infant industry, but if others can get the same results, it will pay handsomely. To get the best furs, however, requires a district where the winters are cold and long.

There are a few skunk farms in the West. It is said that the scent gland can be taken out, though that is not necessary, and that the farms do well. Their oil is also said to be valuable. But while skunks are so common there cannot be much in breeding them.

If your fancy goes to "critters" rather than crops it is much better to raise game birds. Wild turkeys raised under a hen or in an incubator and made pretty tame (if too tame they do not thrive so well in a small area), "wild" ducks, grouse, partridges, quails, even wood ducks which build their nests in trees are no longer experiments.

All the common enemies you have to contend against are foxes, dogs, cats, rats, mink, skunks, hawks, owls, crows, frogs, turtles, snakes, poachers, game legislators, and disease.

It has been calculated that one pair of quails and its progeny would produce five or six million birds in eight years if there were no losses. But so would chickens; and probably you will not get that many.

All about these game birds is set forth in an advertising booklet called, "Game Farming" of the Hercules Powder Co., which has offices in a dozen cities, so we need not enlarge.

CHAPTER XVII

WHERE TO GO

Intensive cultivation, raising a big crop on little land, can be carried on most profitably near areas of dense population; for perishable products, like fruits and vegetables, can be best marketed near the consumer. The limit for delivery by auto is about fifteen to twenty miles, and then only if roads are good; if the land selected lies on the line of a railroad which gives equal terms to way freight and to through freight, you will fare nearly as well. Railroads control agricultural development. Sparsely settled regions always practice extensive cultivation, raising light crops on big farms, because only such crops can be grown as can be raised on large areas by machinery, and are not perishable. Staples like corn, wheat, pork, and beef are transported at low prices for long distances by the railroads. This forces the settlers in newly opened portions of the country to sell in a market created by the railroads, in competition with what is produced within the areas of intensive cultivation, that is, with access to adjacent markets.

So we find the bonanza wheat farms of California, the Dakotas, and the Canadian Northwest, the pampas of the Argentine, the Steppes of Russia, and the Indian uplands devoted to wheat raising; in the United States corn belt, fields of from five to twenty thousand acres are still not uncommon. Conversely, intensive cultivation is most advanced in China, where a dense population forced the people long ago to bring into use every foot of tillable soil that is left open to them.

Near the towns of the United States a few market gardeners supply such vegetables as the people do not raise for themselves. The states along the Atlantic seaboard have all the facilities for successful intensive cultivation—a dense population and idle, cultivable land. In choosing a location, the home crofter should well consider his experience, and try to enter a community where he can engage in analogous pursuits. Dairy regions never have enough men who understand cattle and horses; fruit-growing districts always need experienced pickers; market garden regions need men who understand rotating crops and making hotbeds, transplanting, etc.

If you have a little money, you can probably do best by buying and draining some swamp land, which is the most productive of all, as it contains the washings of the upland for centuries. Swamp land can usually be cleared and drained for from thirty to forty dollars per acre. It can be bought very cheap and when ready to cultivate will have increased many times in value.

The next best is the "abandoned" or worn-out farm. Proper methods of cultivation will bring it back to more than its original fertility. The Eastern states from Maine to Virginia abound with them at from five to twenty-five dollars per acre. In many cases the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked.

The nearest land easily available in the East is in the state of New York. The writer believes it is true that "there are twenty thousand farms for sale in this state, and nearly, all at such low prices and upon such favorable terms as to make them available for any one desiring to engage in agriculture or have a farm home. The soil of these farms is not exhausted, but on the contrary is, with proper cultivation, very productive. Nearly all have good buildings and fences, are supplied with good water and plenty of wood for farm purposes, and in nearly all cases have apple and other fruit trees upon them." (List of Farms, occupied and unoccupied, for sale in New York State. Bureau of Information and Statistics, Bulletin, State of New York, Department of Agriculture.)

These farms are distributed all over the state, some in nearly every county. In Sullivan County, for example, there are farms for sale ranging in price from ten to one hundred dollars per acre. These can, almost without exception, be bought by small payments, balance on long mortgages, and it is wonderful how cheap they are. In Ulster County thirty farms, some of which I have seen, are offered for sale at trifling prices.

Of course, many of these farms have been sold since the first editions of this book, and the prices have advanced, perhaps on the average doubled; but cheap automobiles have improved roads and have made others available that were useless ten years ago. The development of the Southern states, with eradication of the cattle tick (the cause of "Texas Fever") and irrigation and rotation of crops, has opened up new countries. N. O. Nelson writes he has bought many Louisiana farms for his cooperative enterprise for about what the improvements are worth.

Cut over woodlands which we have learned to make produce incomes of about five dollars each year per acre by intelligent forestry, as well as swamp lands which we now know how to make healthful by drainage and by the extinction of mosquitoes, can still be had at low prices in New York and other states. Numerous others are in the market from five dollars per acre up, and so it goes through the state, from Wyoming County in the extreme western end, where farms ranging from thirty to three hundred acres are in the market at from thirty to forty dollars per acre, to St. Lawrence County in the north, where land can be bought as low as fifteen dollars per acre.

When it is considered that these lands are within easy access to established markets with transportation and mail facilities, rural delivery, and telephone a proper idea may be formed of their value in opportunity. The authority quoted further states that "probably fifty thousand agricultural laborers can find employment on the farms of New York at good wages. Families particularly are wanted to rent houses and work farms on shares." Wages for new hands run from twenty to thirty dollars and upwards per month with board. Men who know how to milk are especially in demand throughout the dairy regions. These conditions make it possible for experienced farmers, although entirely without money, to get to the soil.

Over three hundred thousand aliens annually settled in the cities of New York State during some years in the last decade. These people could be got out of the cities, where in normal times they are little needed, into adjacent country districts where they are much needed.

In the Real Estate Record and Guide, Mr. A. L. Langdon says: "It is most remarkable that there are on Long Island, within from thirty-five to seventy miles of New York, thousands of acres of land which have never been cultivated, which have for years produced nothing but cordwood, and which the owners allow to be overrun with fire almost every year. A large part of this land has soil two or three feet deep underlaid with gravel. The best water in the world is abundant and the climate is more equable than on the mainland, and in each locality where any reasonable effort has been made to cultivate the soil, it has produced plentifully of all fruits and vegetables which can be grown in this latitude."

Long Island should produce all the fruit, vegetables, poultry, eggs, and milk needed by its own residents, with a large surplus for the city markets, instead of getting, as it does, a large part of its supply of these things from the city.

When it is considered that about a quarter of a million acres of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncultivated waste, and that there are about a million adult workers in the city, the importance of the experiment is obvious; especially as we learn from the United States census that over ten thousand of these workers are already in agricultural pursuits within the city limits.

"Here midway on Long Island, and just beyond the limits for a man to locate who expects to earn his living by daily work in the city, is a territory about forty miles long and ten miles wide which by intensive farming would yield a good living for more than two hundred thousand inhabitants. In this agricultural section, a man of small means who expects to live on the land the year round, should purchase a plot not too small to produce enough to support himself and family and a surplus to sell, not less than six acres. Probably all men have more or less land hunger a desire to own land and it is a worthy object to encourage to the extent of inducing a man to purchase what he can pay for and be satisfied with, but it is a shameful thing to induce a poor man, who has to earn his living in New York, to buy on the installment plan a small lot so far from his place of employment that he cannot live on it and travel to and from his work every day, and where there is the strongest probability that he will never make more than two or three payments, and will consequently lose what he does pay." The writer hears of one plot which was sold nineteen times and the contracts defaulted on after payments, before any one took title.

If the seeker is not satisfied with the opportunities which the state of New York offers, he may turn to New Jersey, equally accessible and equally rich in chances.

New Jersey Year-Book: "There are in the southern part of the State large tracts of land which are still uncleared, or covered with brushwood, and which are adapted to tillage and capable of producing large crops of small fruits and market garden vegetables. The wood on them is mainly scrub oak, with some dwarfed pitch pine and yellow pine, and hence they are called oak lands to distinguish them from the more sandy lands and tracts on which the pitch pine grows almost exclusively. The latter are known as pine lands. The total area of cleared (farm) lands in the southern division of the State, southeast of the marl belt, is about 450,000 acres. The pineland belts have an aggregate area of 486,000 acres, making at least 800,000 acres accessible by railways from the large cities and also near to tidewater navigation. The maps of the Geological Survey show the location and the extent of these lands, their railway lines, and their relation to the settlements already made and to the cities.

"The soils of these tracts are sandy and not naturally so rich and fertile as the more heavy clay soils of the limestone, the red shale, and the marl districts of the State, but they are not so sandy and so coarse-grained as to be non-productive, like some of the pineland areas. The latter are often deficient in plant food and are deservedly characterized as pine barrens, being too poor for farm purposes. The growth of oak and pine, as well as chemical analyses, shows that the oak-land soils contain the elements of plant production. They are not so well suited to pasturage or to continuous cropping as naturally rich virgin soils; they are better fitted for raising vegetables, melons, sweet potatoes, small fruits, peaches, and pears than wheat, Indian corn, hay, and other staples. The eminent superiority of this kind of farming in New Jersey over the old routine of wheat, corn, hay, and potatoes is well known. These South Jersey soils are easily cleared of brushwood or standing timber, and of stumps, with a hand or horse-power puller which is a cheap affair, and the wood is salable in all this part of the State at remunerative prices, often bringing more than the original cost of the land. The long working season and the short and mild winter favor the arrangement of work, so that all is done with the least outlay for help. They also favor the mosquitoes.

"The success of Hammonton, Egg Harbor City, Vineland, and other places is notable, and equally good results are to be had at a hundred or more places as well situated as they are. These lands are sold at low figures, and the settler saves in capital and interest account. Only the difficulty of getting money to help in building interferes with rapid settlement.

"The West Jersey Railway, the Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia and Reading's Atlantic City Railroad, the Philadelphia and Seashore Railway, the New Jersey Southern Railroad, and other branch roads afford excellent facilities for access to New York, Philadelphia, and the cities of the State. The Cohansey, Maurice, and Mullica rivers head well up near the northwest limits of these lands, and their navigable reaches run for miles across them. The waters of the Delaware Bay and the ocean are within a few miles of a large part of this oak-land domain.

"The advantages of an old settled and Eastern State, within easy reach of these large markets, of land which is easily tilled and generous and quick in its response to feeding, and at low prices, make them equal to, if not better than, the rich prairie soils of a new West, or the low prices and cheap lands of the abandoned hillsides of New England."

Wages for unskilled farm labor are about the same as for New York—twenty to twenty-five dollars per month. The canning and fruit industries make room for a large number of people in the late summer and fall, who may thus, by taking a temporary place, kind some permanent location where they may improve their health and fortunes.

"Delaware also offers unequalled opportunities to immigrants. It is ideally situated on the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay, and is penetrated by numerous creeks and rivers.

"The railroad, steam, and electric facilities of the State are developing steadily year by year, while every section of the State possesses easily navigable streams, with vessels for carrying freight and passengers.

"Over fifteen millions of people live within a radius of three hundred miles; the large majority reside in cities and towns and furnish the finest markets in the world. Within five hundred miles are more than one third of the people of all North America.

"Wilmington is a city of seventy-five thousand people, is growing rapidly, and is becoming a great manufacturing place.

"These people may be reached in one day by the luscious fruits that grow in Delaware, and every one of them is perfectly happy when he gets a Delaware peach. Many other Delaware products are as good as the peaches.

"As cattle and wheat raising developed in the great West, Delaware people thought that they were ruined. They did not change at once, but slowly discovered that the light lands are wonderfully productive of fruits and vegetables, and that they pay much better than cattle and grain ever could. But these new methods have not been adopted in all parts of the State, so that land neglected and unprofitable is for sale. The tides of immigration have swept westward and left Delaware untouched. Men, money, and enterprise are needed.

"There are few unoccupied or 'abandoned' farms in Delaware." The land is mostly held by descendants of the early settlers, who form a species of landed aristocracy. Lately, owing to the younger members of these families having become established in the newer states and on account of the death or incapacity of the older members left in possession, there has been a marked tendency to sell off these farms. However, "a large proportion of the farms in Delaware are not for sale at any price. Some of them have been in the same family for generations, and if put on the market would sell for from one to two hundred dollars per acre."

The soil is all the way from a heavy white oak clay, which is too stiff and too sticky for most crops, to very light sand.

The heaviest clay is made lighter and more porous, and the lightest sand is readily made retentive of moisture and extremely productive, by plowing in different kinds of crops as green manure, such as cow peas, soy beans, the vetches, etc.; crimson clover, winter oats, rye, turnips, and numerous other crops may be sown in August or later, and produce a fine crop for turning under early in the spring. Crimson clover grows nearly all winter. Pure cold water is reached at from twenty to fifty feet by dug or driven wells.

The climate is good; there are no cyclones. There is some damp weather in winter, but there are no malignant fevers, and there is little or no malaria, except in a few marshy places. There are some mosquitoes and flies, but they are not especially troublesome, and there are no poisonous reptiles.

The population is mostly native, five sixths white, one sixth colored. The white population is almost entirely of Anglo Saxon descent.

"Perfect titles may be secured, but all titles everywhere should always be searched by a competent lawyer, the usual fee for which is ten to twenty dollars.

"Farm hands receive from twenty to twenty-five dollars per month and board, for a season of nine or ten months, sometimes for the whole year. Day hands receive from seventy-five cents to two dollars per day and board themselves."

Those who are tempted by the advertisements for fruitpickers should beware. Delaware, like some other states, allows fees to constables and to the "squires"—Justices of the Peace they would be elsewhere—for arrests, and it is a common practice to advertise for fruit pickers, then arrest them as tramps when they come, and the next day release them on condition that they will leave the county at once—and leave the trap open for the next comer.

Delaware peaches have made fortunes for many, but will make still greater fortunes in the future for the owners of the land.

Pears, plums, grapes, watermelons, and cantaloupes thrive, and find an ideal home, and small fruits all flourish. Sweet potatoes yield bountifully and are of the finest quality. Asparagus and early white potatoes pay handsome profits. Tomatoes, the great canning crop, are grown by the thousands of acres.

"The grasses and clovers grow in luxuriance, and hence dairying and beef production are profitable. Poultry pays as well as anywhere else; chickens often run on green clover all through the open winter.

"The game consists of various species of ducks, quails, reed birds, hares, marsh rabbits, and other small creatures. Shad, trout, herring, crocus, black bass, pike, white fish, rock fish, oysters, clams, crabs, and terrapin are abundant in Delaware waters."

The tax in the rural counties is generally sixty cents on the hundred dollars. Besides this there are taxes on business and a very light school tax. There is no state tax, yet the state makes large appropriations for the support of the public schools, which are free to everybody.

Maryland has established a State Bureau of Immigration in Baltimore to give information to home seekers, and advise them as to choice of location, opportunities for getting started in agricultural production, and aid them in any way consistent with a State Bureau. Most of these facts are taken from such reports.

Southern Maryland and the eastern shore are especially adapted to gardening and trucking, as well as fruit growing. Land is cheap and can be purchased in tracts of any size from an acre upwards, at from ten to fifty dollars per acre. Farms from twenty acres to seven hundred acres and up are for sale in nearly every county in the state. The removal of a large part of the negro population from the country to the cities has resulted in the partition of the large estates into smaller farms, thus affording an opportunity for home seekers who are seeking cheap land amid congenial surroundings. Nearly all of these farms have buildings, some in need of repair, others in very good condition.

For those who wish to avoid the hard work of breaking woodlands, the eastern and western shores offer abundant well-cultivated lands with buildings, orchards, and woods, in the immediate vicinity of navigable rivers and railways, on good roads at from twenty dollars per acre upwards. That seems cheap.

For settlers who are accustomed to mountainous regions, western Maryland has land for sale at even cheaper rates.

"There are many large tidal marshes in Maryland, as might be expected in a territory watered like this state. They are of the richest soil to be found, because the Chesapeake Bay is a great river valley, receiving the drainage of a vast area of fertile land, comprising nearly one third of New York and nearly all of the great agricultural states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Every year this drainage brings down a black sediment, called oyster mud, which is deposited on the marshlands and enriches the soil, making it, with proper cultivation, of productivity like that of the rice and wheat fields of Egypt. These unreclaimed lands are used chiefly for grain."

Proper drainage of small tracts of this land would bring unsurpassed and absolutely untouched fertility.

The Chesapeake River valley is not so large as that of the Nile or Ganges, but is of enough consequence to play an important part in human affairs and to support in comfort and prosperity a population as large as that of many famous states.

"The eastern shore is uniformly level, with good roads. The proximity of the ocean and the bay greatly modifies the temperature. It has a great trunk railway, with connections along its entire length, called the Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania railroad, which furnishes direct transportation to Philadelphia, New York, and other northern cities."

"On the eastern shore there are many thousand acres of land devoted to garden truck, and the strawberry crop has of late years become of importance. Over one hundred carloads of strawberries are shipped daily during the season to the Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston markets."

Land properly cultivated will yield four thousand quarts of strawberries to an acre.

The canning of various fruits and vegetables has grown to be larger than that of any other state and is one of the most profitable of the industries of Maryland. The principal articles canned are peaches, peas, and tomatoes.

The tomato crop is also profitable to the grower. The young plants are set out in the spring; many do this with a machine, but two persons can easily plant seven acres in a day by hand.

An acre will produce from six to eighteen tons of tomatoes, according to the quality of the soil. All such products bring better prices now in Maryland markets than they did before canning was resorted to. The Maryland tin can is known wherever civilization reaches.

Tobacco is extensively produced only in southern Maryland, although it can be raised in any section of the state.

In the neighborhood of the larger cities trucking and fruit growing are profitable, combined with poultry raising, often on farms of not more than five or ten acres.

Many farmers devote part of their time successfully to bees, and there is nowhere a better climate for flowers than that of Maryland. Two English florists who have settled in Baltimore County, ten and thirteen miles northeast of the city, daily send to all parts of the United States and even to Canada many large boxes of beautiful roses, carnations, violets, and other choice flowers. Both of these men began on a small scale and have prospered.

The farmer who has a couple of thousand dollars to pay cash for a small farm in Maryland is assured of a good living. But also a less favored settler, if he has only from four to eight hundred dollars, can have a good start in Maryland, and probably as good a chance for independence and prosperity as anywhere.

Families of immigrants when traveling to the Western, Northwestern, and Southern states of America have to spend from one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars for railroad tickets from New York to their destination; by going to these adjoining states they can save all that money, and invest it in land.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Immigration also publishes information for the home seeker.

To most people the name Virginia carries with it limitless vistas of tobacco fields covered with darkies plying the hoe, or picking off the ubiquitous worm. Before the War this picture would have been a true one; but since the awakening of the younger generation to a better understanding of her resources, together with the withdrawal of large numbers of the colored people into industrial occupations, no state offers more attractive inducements to the homecrofter than Virginia. In climate, diversity of soils, fruits, forests, water supply, mineral deposits, including mountain and valley, she offers unsurpassed advantages. Truly did Captain John Smith, the adventurous father of Virginia, suggest that "Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation."

Virginia lies between the extremes of heat and cold, removed alike from the sultry, protracted summers of the more southern states, and the longer winters and devastating storm and cyclones of the North and Northwest. Its limits north and south correspond to California and southern Europe.

The climate is mild and healthful. The winters are less severe than in the Northern and Northwestern states, or even the western localities of the same latitude, while the occasional periods of extreme heat in the summer are not more oppressive than in many portions of the North.

Tidewater Virginia, or the Coastal Plain, as it is sometimes called, receives the name from the fact that the streams that penetrate it feel the ebb and flow of the tides from the ocean up to the head of navigation. It consists chiefly of broad and level plains, while a considerable portion, nearest to the bay, has shallow bays and estuaries, and marshes that are in most instances reached only by the ocean tides. These marshes abound with wild duck and sora. Tidewater is mainly an alluvial country. The soil is chiefly light, sandy loam, underlaid with clay. Its principal productions are fruits and early vegetables, which are raised in extensive "market gardens," and shipped in large quantities to Northern cities. The fertilizing minerals—gypsum, marl, and greensand—abound, and their judicious use readily restores the lands when exhausted by improvident cultivation.

Middle Virginia is a wide, undulating plain, crossed by many rivers that have cut their channels to a considerable depth and are bordered by alluvial bottom lands that are very productive. The soil consists of clays with a subsoil of disintegrated sandstone rocks, and varies according to the nature of the rock from which it is formed.

The principal productions of middle Virginia are corn, wheat, oats, and tobacco. The tobacco raised in this section and in Piedmont, known as the "Virginia Leaf," is the best grown and the best known in the United States. In this section, as in Tidewater, the low bottom lands formed by the sediment of the waters are exceptionally productive.

The Piedmont section is diversified and surpassingly picturesque. The soil is heavier than that of middle Virginia, the subsoil being of stiff and dark red clay. On the slopes of the Blue Ridge grapes of delicious flavor grow luxuriantly. These produce excellent wines, and the clarets have a wide fame. The pippin apples of this section are of unrivaled excellence.

The "Great Valley," as it is descriptively called, is in the general configuration one continuous valley, included between the two mountain chains that extend throughout the state; it is one of the most abundantly watered regions on the face of the globe. Deep limestone beds form the floor of the Great Valley, and from these beds the soil derives an exceeding fertility, peculiarly adapted to the growth of grasses and grain, and it bears the name of the "garden spot" of the state.

Five trunk lines of railroads penetrate and intersect the state. The lines of steamboats that ply the navigable streams of eastern Virginia afford commercial communication for large sections of the state with the markets of this country and of Europe. Norfolk and Newport News maintain communication with the European markets by steamers and vessels, while from these ports is also kept up an extensive commerce along the Atlantic seaboard. The seaports are nearer than is New York to the great centers of population, and areas of production, of the West and Northwest.

Market garden crops of every description can be grown. The following result was obtained on a four-acre patch near Norfolk:

"The owner stated that in September he sowed spinach on four acres. Between Christmas and the first of March following he cut and sold the spinach at the rate of one hundred barrels to the acre, at a price ranging from two to seven dollars per barrel—an average of $4.50 per barrel. Early in March the four acres were set out to lettuce, setting the plants in the open air with no protection whatever, 175,000 plants on the four acres. He shipped 450 half-barrel baskets of lettuce to the acre, at a price ranging from $2 to $2.75 per basket.

"Early in April, just before the lettuce was ready to ship, he planted snap beans between the lettuce rows; and today, June 2d, these are the finest beans we have seen this season.

"The last week in May he planted cantaloupes between the bean rows, which, when marketed in July, will make four crops from the same land in one year's time. The cantaloupes will be good for 250 crates to the acre, and the price will run from $1 to $1.50 per crate. A careful investigation of these 'facts, figures, and features' will show that his gross sales will easily reach $2000 per acre; his net profits depend largely upon the man and the management; but they surely should not be less than $1000 clear, clean profit to the acre."

"This is for farming done all out of doors. No hothouse or hotbed work—not a bit of it, with no extra expense for hotbeds, cold frames, or hothouses."

"Intensive," thorough tillage and care of the soil will probably pay as well here as at any point in the United States.

Apples are the principal fruit crop of the state. There is a yearly increasing number of trees. In one of the valley counties a seventeen-year-old orchard of 1150 trees produced an apple crop as far back as 1905 which brought the owner $10,000, another of fifty twenty-year-old trees brought $700. Mr. H. E. Vandeman, one of the best-known horticulturists in the country, says that there is not in all North America a better place to plant orchards than in Virginia; on account of its "rich apple soil, good flavor and keeping qualities of the fruit, and nearness to the great markets of the East and Europe."

The trees attain a fine size and live to a good old age, and produce abundantly. In Patrick County there is a tree nine feet five inches around which has borne 110 bushels of apples at a single crop; other trees have borne even more. One farmer in Albemarle County has received more than $15,000 for a single crop of Albemarle Pippins grown on twenty acres of land. This pippin is considered the most delicious apple in the world.

The fig, pomegranate, and other delicate fruits flourish in the Tidewater region.

New England, from Maine to Rhode Island, is suffering from one disease—lack of intelligent labor. Thirty years ago the sons and daughters who, in the natural course of events, would have stayed to cultivate the home acres, left to form a part of the westward throng making for the level, untouched prairies of Illinois and Iowa.

The old folks have died or become incapacitated. New interests chain their children to adopted homes. Result,—unoccupied lands by the hundred thousand acres, awaiting energy, skill, and faith.

Ten dollars an acre is a common price for the rocky hills of New England. The choice river bottoms, and land near the larger cities is as high priced as similar land anywhere else. Intending settlers can buy small areas for little money; usually the smallest farms have good buildings worth in many cases more than the price asked for the whole farm. Climatic conditions are not favorable to single cropping. In the old days general farming, grain, beef, sheep, and hogs were the rule; nowadays, special crops, dairying, fruit growing, etc.

Tobacco is the great staple in the rich Connecticut River bottoms, and even on the uplands, if properly manured, it pays from one to three hundred dollars per acre. Tobacco can be raised on small areas far from the railroad, as, when properly cured and packed for shipment, it is not perishable. To many the worst feature of New England is the climate—long, cold winters and short summers. Maine being farthest north suffers most in this respect, but that does not prevent her producing hundreds of thousands of tons of sweet corn for canning and vast quantities of eggs and butter. Fruit does well on the lower coast; a small orchard of peaches or plums will in three or four years from planting make a comfortable living. Bush fruits grow in abundance and give never-failing crops.

Poultry is peculiarly successful on the rocky hills, because they are nearly always dry or well drained. Dairying can be made to pay if near a creamery, or where milk can be sold at retail. The prospective settler here should bear in mind that wherever he goes, the first year will produce little more than a kitchen garden; the second enable him barely to pull through, and the third give him a start at a permanent income. In farming, as in all other businesses, only those will succeed who know what they want and how to get it; who have selected with care the locality best suited to the special crops they intend to raise; and after having once made a selection, stick until they have compelled success.

The lure of the vast West and of the new South is not forgotten; but the time has passed when the young man could go West to take a farm of Uncle Sam's. Desirable land is too expensive for the pioneer, and the constant toil and comparative isolation of the prairie farm offers but a poor sort of liberty, though it still affords a living.

But close to the growing towns in those states small plots of land can still be had to work with the same bright prospects that are offered near the great metropolis.

In nearly all the sections within the area of intensive cultivation, timber is still plentiful enough to make it the cheapest building material; and persons who really want to get to the land can contrive a sufficient shelter, like a pioneer's, for from two to five hundred dollars.

CHAPTER XVIII

CLEARING THE LAND

It is pretty good fun to hack at bushes and to chop trees down and then to chop them up. If there is only a small part of the land to be cleared, a man can easily learn skill with the ax and do it at odd times, but he was a wise old man of whom his little girl said, "When grandpa wants anything, that moment he wants it." It is now that we need the land; but even if it is covered with trees, there is no cause for discouragement. Lumber is so high that the local or portable sawmill men will buy the timber by the acre. They will cut the trees and haul the logs.

If you decide to cut a tree yourself, a little inquiry will show for what purpose it will bring the highest price. Locust sticks, for example, four to six inches thick, will bring in New York ten or fifteen cents a running foot for insulator pinions. If a maple proves to be either "curly" or "bird'seye" (this depending not on the variety, but on the accidental undulations of the fiber), it will be in demand for the manufacture of furniture.

Sugar maples ten or fifteen feet high can be transplanted or sold. Nut and fruit trees will nearly always be worth keeping.

Cedar sticks fourteen feet long will bring twenty cents in most places for hop and bean poles. See what can be sold instead of burned, and don't cut down recklessly; an unsalable tree may be valuable as a windbreak or as shade for your house. The wrong tree for shade is the dense foliaged, low-branched tree which forms a solid dome from the ground up. The right tree, in the opinion of Henry Hicks (in Country Life in America), is the American elm, which ought to be called the umbrella tree. Pliny speaks of the plane tree, our sycamore or buttonwood, as excellent, because of the horizontal branches which, like window blinds, allow free passage of the breezes while intercepting the heat of the sun.

The ideal shade tree is a canopy like a parasol over the house, with high, leafy branches that do not shut off light and air from the windows. This cools a house by keeping the sun off and cools the air by the rapid evaporation from its leaves, and will make it ten to fifteen degrees cooler in summer. It will be cheaper and more effective than a combination of awnings, piazza, and eaves. Woodman, spare that tree.

Stumps may be burned out To get a good draught, bore a hole in a slanting direction far down among the roots. The smoke goes through the hole first and then the flame, boring the body to the roots deep enough to plow. Land can also be cleared by dynamite. We condense from Edith Loring Fullerton in Farming, on what has been done.

To go into the desolate, uncultivated, burned over "waste lands" near a great city and put ten acres under cultivation in the shortest possible space of time was our problem. We undertook it at short notice in an uncertain season—the autumn—with the determination to get at least a portion of the land seeded down to winter rye before cold weather prohibited further work.

United to this problem was that of working a small farm to its utmost capacity rather than half cultivation of a large one, which is difficult to handle from lack of time and labor and an unwise proposition for the East under the most favorable circumstances.

Ten acres of scraggy-looking woodland was purchased, sixty-eight miles from New York City on the north shore of Long Island. The plot had a few second and third growth oak and chestnut trees and "sprouts" along the borders. All else had been burned, and the center of the acreage exhibited the mangled and blackened remains of a once thrifty woodland.

We proceeded to choose as our helpers native Long Islanders whom we were desirous of allowing to work. We succeeded by strenuous efforts in getting together a "gang" of both colored and white men to the stupendous number of eight. They fell to work with a right good will, at first cutting down here and trimming up there as directed. However, after giving them a fair trial, we decided that they must be replaced by Italians. The question of housing the eighteen Italians soon came up. Tents might be adopted or even the unsanitary "dugout" be allowed to mar the landscape. A shanty was entirely too ugly to suit our tastes, and also expensive, and useless when the men were through with it. Tents were too airy, as we knew the work would continue until freezing weather, and perhaps well into the winter. We "passed" on the "dugout." The ideal was something that would be of use after the work of clearing was completed, and for that purpose we decided upon "condemned freight cars." They cost but ten dollars each, the railroad being glad to get rid of them. We bought two, ultimately using one for a chicken house and the other as a barn. In the meantime it was decided to remove the stumps by dynamite, as trying to yank them out by stump pullers or by mattock and plow was both slow and brutal. The ordinary custom of allowing nature to work six years at the stumps and gradually eliminate them by decay was not to be thought of.

Dynamiter Kissam, a Long Island expert, arrived and set to work, using fuses for small stumps up to two feet in diameter.

With the advent of the Italians work began in earnest; they cleared out every useless tree, cutting cord wood where any could be obtained and burning the branches and charred trees as they went. They also cleared out all underbrush thoroughly.

The dynamiter with his helper followed them up. This is the most exciting and interesting part of clearing land by modern methods.

The dynamite is put up in half-pound sticks. They are a little larger than an ordinary candle and are wrapped in heavy yellow paraffined paper. One folded end of this paper is opened up and a hole made by a wooden skewer into the dynamite stick, which is plastic and resembles graham bread in color and consistency.

For magneto-battery work where several charges are required, a copper cap in which is a minute quantity of fulminate of mercury, and which is exploded by a spark, is attached to fine electric wires and sealed by sulphur. This cap is placed in holes in the sticks of dynamite, and then securely tied by drawing string tightly around the paper which is raised to admit the cap.

In preparing a charge for fuse ignition, the cap is crimped to the end of a piece of mining fuse and this is inserted in the dynamite stick and securely fastened as previously described.

These prepared charges are placed in a basket and carried very tenderly to the stumps which have been prepared by the dynamiter's assistant. All the work is handled very carefully, for while there is not much danger of an accident unless fire is placed near the explosive, nevertheless extreme caution is used at all times. It requires a nature serene, calm, and deliberate.

Deep oblique holes were then made with a round crowbar under the stump singled out for execution. This hole should be as nearly horizontal as possible and directly under the stump so that all the explosive force may be expended on the wood and not on the earth between the dynamite and the stump. The earth acts as a cushion and the natural tendency of dynamite to exert force downward is counteracted.

As soon as a small strip was blown, the Italians, gathering up all the stumps, roots, and fragments, removing any pieces that were loosened but not completely torn out, and piling them at intervals, immediately burned them. This cannot be done when stumps are removed by any other method, for by the digging process the earth must be picked and scraped from them and ultimately the stump hacked in pieces before it will burn.

By our method the stump is burned and the finest kind of unleached wood ashes—containing lime to "sweeten" and potash and phosphoric acid to furnish plant food—are spread upon the ground a few hours after the stumps are blown out. These ashes would under other circumstances have to be purchased at a cost of perhaps two dollars a barrel, and as five barrels at least to the acre are required for good fertilization, these ashes gave us the first credit upon the books.

Following the burners came the manure spreaders; five carloads of manure had been purchased and was delivered before it was needed. When the manure was spread upon the land (one half carload to the acre), the plow started its work smoothly and with none of the strain and jerk on man and beast usual in new land. The soil was turned over with the greatest ease, for the explosions had shivered and torn out even the smallest roots, so the plow ran through the ground much more easily than in sod land.

Our friable, sandy loam, with a light admixture of clay, pulverized and aerated by the explosions, was in market garden condition at once and without the year's loss of crops assured by old methods.

A tooth harrow was next run over the plowed section, and gleaners followed the harrow, picking up the fine roots as they were brought to the surface. As piles of these fine roots grew, they were burned and the ashes immediately spread upon the land. The tooth harrow was run again across the rows, the disk harrow following chopped and pulverized the earth into the finest possible condition. Thirty five and one half working days after Larry and his gang arrived, rye was drilled into three and one half acres.

The condemned freight cars were placed upon skids and drawn to the desired position over soaped planks. They were raised from the ground to give good under ventilation. The north and east sides are filled or banked up with sand which came out of the well. This keeps out the cold winds, and, in the case of the chicken-house car, allows the fowls a shaded shelter on hot summer days.

The chicken-house car was placed facing the southeast. The western end has a large glazed sash placed on it, and two in the southern side. One half the car was partitioned off for roosting quarters, while the other half serves as a laying and scratching house. This farm keeps only a few chickens for family use.

The artesian well was started in October. The well was, naturally, a necessity, but there was much to be considered in regard to the method of pumping. Under ordinary circumstances a windmill would do, and is generally a good auxiliary; a ten-foot iron tower and a ten-foot fan wheel cost about fifty dollars, but our farm is not to be allowed to be a failure for lack of water in a dry season. In case of drought (and every summer brings one of greater or less duration) water must be on hand, and as a drought usually is accompanied by windless weather, the windmill could not be depended upon. An engine was obviously necessary. Both gasoline and kerosene engines were closely investigated, with the result that a kerosene oil engine was decided upon. (The new style of heavy oil engine is better and cheaper to run. Ed.) An advantage of the engine over a windmill is that it will furnish power for cutting wood, grinding grain, or lighting the buildings, a two and one half horsepower engine running twenty-five 16 c.p. lights easily.

The rye was turned under green in the spring to furnish humus, the greatest and only vital need of this particular spot of virgin soil.

Since that was written an excellent and cheap stump puller has been introduced, but the account of work is still typical. Dynamiting is still the modern way to clear land as well as to break up a stiff subsoil or hardpan, so as to loosen the earth to let deep roots like trees or alfalfa go down and to secure drainage.

Primitive American man regarded trees as "lumber" instead of as timber and still destroys countless millions in valuable wood as he "clears the ground."

After it is cleared, it is vital to keep it cleared of weeds, which worse garroters of crops than trees. To do that we don't need to bow to the Earth, nor to hammer her with a hand hoe.

"The Man with the Hoe" began to be a back number when Arkwright invented the ark or the mule or whatever he did invent. The man with the wheel hoe is the man that is "It." A wheel hoe costs from $6 to $12, and will do the work of several men without breaking the heart or even the back of one of them. It has as many attachments as a summer girl and is equally versatile. It must be run between the rows as soon as the ground is dry after every rain, so as to slay the weeds before they are born. If you don't they will slay your profits, if not yourself.

Crops grown on that experimental farm are: Asparagus, berries, beans, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, carrots, cucumbers, corn, eggplant, endive, fruit trees, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, limes, melons, martynias, onions, okra, parsley, parsnips, peas, potatoes (sweet and white), pumpkins, radishes, rhubarb, salsify, squash, tomatoes, etc. Marketed strictly choice radishes May 18, peas June 10, lettuce June 21, beans June 29, beets July 8, carrots July 10, cabbage July 11. Surely a rapid result.

Hemp is hardly worth your growing for itself under ordinary circumstances; the returns per acre are not sufficient. But Charles Richard Dodge, in one of the United States Yearbooks of the Department of Agriculture, says that as a weed killer it has practically no equal.

In proof of this, a North River farmer stated that thistles heretofore had mastered him in a certain field, but after sowing it with hemp not a thistle survived; and while ridding the land of this pest, the hemp yielded him nearly sixty dollars an acre, where previously nothing valuable could be produced.

As it grows from Minnesota to the Mississippi Delta, its value for this purpose is considerable.

But there is a way easier and cheaper of clearing land than by blasting, if we can afford to wait a little; and Mr. George Fayette Thompson, in Bulletin No. 27, Bureau of Animal Industry, tells us how, giving some interesting facts about Angora goats, of which the following is a condensation:

To people taking up raw land, particularly where there is a heavy undergrowth to be cleared away, goats of some kind are an invaluable aid. In its browsing qualities the common goat is as good as any, but, aside from the clearing of the land, the profit in his keep is very little, though some demand is growing up for goat's milk for infants and for some fancy cheeses. A much better animal from the standpoint of profit, while in use as a scavenger, is the Angora goat. Their long, silky hair has been used for centuries in making blankets, lap robes, rugs, carpets, and particularly the "cashmere" shawls, formerly a great luxury in this country. Much of the camel's hair dress goods is in reality made from the hair of the Angora goat, or mohair, as it is called. Angora goats thrive best in high altitudes with dry climates. They exist in greatest number in the United States in California, New Mexico, and Texas. They have been used successfully in the Willamette Valley of Oregon to eat the underbrush off the land, doing for nothing that for which the farmers pay Chinese laborers twenty-five to forty dollars per acre. The cost of Angora goats is about ten to thirty dollars each for does, with bucks at fifty to two hundred dollars, so that even with a small area of land to clear it would pay to buy a little flock for that purpose. Dr. Shandley, of Iowa, says that two to three goats to the acre is sufficient for cleaning up land, and that in two years the goats will eat all of the underbrush from woodland, such as briers, thistles, scrub oak, sumac, and, in fact, any shrub undergrowth. They need no other food than what they can secure from the woods themselves. Consequently, the income from the sale of mohair is nearly net.

The more nearly thoroughbred the goats are, the better the mohair and the higher the price. The meat of the Angora goat is superior to mutton, although if sold in the market under the name of goat meat, it commands only half the price of mutton.

As an example of the Angora's utility in cleaning up land, the Country Gentleman says: "Mr. Landrum exhibited ten head at the Oregon State Fair. In order to demonstrate their effectiveness as substitutes for grubbing, he left them on three acres of brush. At the end of the second year the land was mellow and ready for the plow."

It might be possible to build up a business in clearing lands for others by means of a herd of Angoras.

CHAPTER XIX

HOW TO BUILD

If you find an "abandoned farm" on which the buildings are worth more than the whole price asked, as frequently happens, you are all right. Even if the buildings are somewhat dilapidated, you can fix them up for a few dollars. But in buying small plots of ground, larger farms have to be broken up. If you buy from the resident owner, he may sell you five acres off his larger tract, and keep his house to live in. Certain it is that if a farm of 100 acres is subdivided into twenty five-acre farms, at least nineteen new houses must be built, although sometimes an old barn can be made into a fair residence.

If you can do no better, it is possible to start by tenting. An outfit large enough for a family of six would be about as follows:

1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for sleeping 1 wall tent with fly, 10 X 14, for dining

1 old cook stove (to be erected outdoors), 2 floors, 10 X 14, at $5 each

Brown tents, at least for the sleeping rooms, are best; they last longer, are cooler, and do not attract the flies; though indeed we need not have house flies if we keep the horse manure covered up—they are all bred in that. If the tents are in the shade, the cost of the cover or fly can be saved in the dining tent; but it is necessary in the living tent, because wet canvas will leak when touched on the inside. To make the tent warm for the winter, we must bank up to the edges of the platform with earth and cover the whole with another tent of the same shape, but a foot larger in every dimension. These are commonly used in Montana.

It is to be presumed that no one would attempt moving in without household utensils, which may be as simple or elaborate as you please. If there is a sawmill in the vicinity, a temporary shack for winter, say 22 X 30 feet, could be built for from $400 to $600, depending on the interior finish. Partitions can be made very cheap by erecting panels covered with canvas, burlap, old carpet, etc. Such a building does not need to be plastered, but can be made warm enough by an inside covering of burlap, heavy builders' paper, or composition board. Tar paper laid over solid sheeting makes a roof that will last for two or three years. For such a shack draw the plans yourself. All you really need is a living room, bedroom, and kitchen.

A cheap and effective water supply can be gotten from a driven well, which in most places costs about one dollar per foot. Have it where the kitchen is to be, so that the water can be pumped into a barrel or other tank over the stove. With a good range you can have as good a supply of hot and cold water as you had in the city.

If so fortunate as to find a piece of land with a good spring on it, you can lay pipes and draw the water from that. If you can get twelve or fifteen feet fall from the spring to the kitchen, you don't need a pump at all.

For a toilet closet, build a shed four feet wide, six feet long, and eight feet high. Use a movable pail or box. Lime slaked or unslaked or dry dust or ashes must be scattered every time the closet is used. Always clean before it shows signs of becoming offensive: keep it covered fly tight and mix the contents with earth or litter, and scatter on the garden.

A shack can be built of logs which will do for comfort and will look dignified.

Horace L. Pike, in Country Life in America, says: "The lot on which we meant to build our log house stood thirty-five feet above the lake. The problem was how to build a cabin roomy, picturesque, inexpensive, and all on the ground.

"The ground dimensions are thirty-two by thirty feet outside. This gives a living room sixteen by fourteen; bedrooms twelve by twelve, twelve by ten, and nine by seven; kitchen eleven by nine; a five-by four-foot corner for a pantry and refrigerator; closet four by six, front porch sixteen by six feet six inches, and rear porch five by five—705 square feet of inside floor space and 130 square feet of porch.

"A dozen pine trees stand on the lot, and maneuvering was required to set a cottage among them without the crime of cutting one. The front received the salutes of a leaning oak, the life of which was saved by the sacrifice of six inches from the porch eaves, the trunk forming a newel post for the step railing.

"We closed the contract immediately for 120 Norway or red pine logs, thirty feet long and eight by ten inches diameter at butts. The price was low—one or two dollars their like should have brought. We used, however, only eighty-one logs; forty thirty-foot, fourteen eighteen-foot, thirteen sixteen-foot, and fourteen fourteen-foot.

"Work was begun on April 22. Two days sufficed for the owner and one man to clear and level the ground, dig post holes, set posts, and square the foundation. The soil was light sand with a clay hardpan three feet down.

"Twenty-seven days each were put in by two men from start to finish, with assistance rendered by the owner. There were seven days by the mason, eight by carpenters, and four teen and one half by other labor. On June 4 the cabin was ready for occupancy, and the family moved in. The prices, as in most cases cited, are higher to-day. Cheaper transportation or lower tariff may reduce them again.

"Making allowances for increased cost of logs and differences in any of the material cost, this cabin can be duplicated for less than $700 by any one who has the ground, a few tools, and some building ability. It is compact, convenient, and more roomy than a superficial glance reveals, and it can be occupied (slight care is required) from April to November with only the kitchen stove and the fireplace supplying the heat. The same plan can be used for an all-frame structure, perhaps at less cost. It could be sheathed and slab covered in a locality where slabs, edged to six or eight inches wide, could be had; or slabs could be used perpendicularly in the gable ends and on the outside of the rear extension."

We must not overlook the differences in cost of lumber and labor in different places, sometimes more than doubling nor the fact that different contractors will vary often twenty-five per cent in their bids.

A mere cabin, like a wooden tent, 12 X 10 with a platform adjoining, will accommodate one or even two persons and can be built by a contractor even at war prices for about fifty to one hundred dollars. This will serve for tool house or storeroom when a more convenient residence can be afforded. A number of such can be seen at "Free Acres," New Jersey, an hour from New York City on the D. L. & W. Railroad.

Thoughtful provision and planning will go far to reduce costs. A stove pipe which should run up inside the house, not outside, so as to conserve heat and fuel, serves as chimney and fireplace. A Franklin stove, practically an open fireplace set out entirely inside the house, is a practical device, though it costs from $18 to $30. It gives a cheerful open fire to burn wood or coal and has a flat top to keep things hot, a clutch oven of sheet iron, and a bob can be attached to the front of the grate.

But remember that though you may have trees or fallen wood for the cutting it takes a lot of time to cut it. A cylindrical self-feeding coal burner is most economical for heating and a lined sheet iron cooking stove for the kitchen.

A fireless cooker, which retains the heat all day by means of soapstone or insulation and slowly cooks the food without losing the juices, is an economical device. It can be made at home by copying what you see in the stores or by getting directions from the U. S. Department of Agriculture.

Don't forget double windows at least toward the north; and on all windows have heavy holland shades which make an air space between the cold windowpanes and the atmosphere of the room.

Portable houses sound attractive, but they do not pay unless you will need to move them. Manifestly it costs more to make a house like a trunk than like a shed. The houses shipped ready made of the "Aladdin" type, with all the parts ready marked to be nailed together by unskilled labor are a much better investment and are not shaky.

It is true that living is expensive in the train suburbs, when almost all that is eaten comes from the city, with freight and monopoly rates added. But one can raise most of what the family eats, and save besides in car fares and doctor's bills.

The rent, perhaps a quarter of the income, that was paid for a place so small that the cat had to jump on a chair when the baby sat down, will be a clear gain.

Mrs. Warrington's cottage at Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, forms a very interesting subject, and is built from designs of well-known architects of Philadelphia, who have taken up building small, inexpensive modern houses in a practical manner. The house is built with a stone foundation and a wooden superstructure with exterior walls covered with metal lath and cement stucco which is stained a cream color. The trimmings are stained a soft brown and the sashes are painted white. The roof is covered with shingles, and is left to weather finish. The front porch, from which a vestibule leads into the house, has a hooded cover formed by the main roof sweeping down sufficiently to form a protection. The vestibule forms an entrance to both the living room and the kitchen; the kitchen is at the front of the house, allowing the main rooms and a private porch to be at the south side. The interior throughout is trimmed with cypress and stained a soft brown. The second floor joists are exposed to view and are stained in a similar manner, while the ceiling space between the joists is plastered. A broad archway separates the living and the dining rooms, and while it forms a separation, it does not preclude the possibility, when desired, of throwing the two rooms into one large apartment. The large, open fireplace is built of clinker brick, and its facings extend from the floor to the ceiling; it has a wooden shelf supported on corbeled brackets. A semi-boxed stairway rises out of the living room to the second floor. There are three bedrooms with good-sized closets, and a bathroom on the second floor. A cellar, under the entire house, has a cemented bottom, and contains a laundry. This house costs about $2000 complete.

Houses built of cement blocks are growing in favor. Cement blocks can be made anywhere by unskilled labor. All that is needed is a competent foreman to direct the making and seasoning of the blocks and laying them in the walls.

The cost of concrete compared to frame or brick structures is, if anything, all things considered, in favor of concrete. Houses built of wood are likely to become increasingly expensive because of the deforesting which is going on in all parts of the United States.

There are abundant books of plans and costs published, showing what may be built, and several responsible publishers recklessly offer to refund the cost of the plans if the expense of building the house exceeds their estimates.

There are also a number of manufacturers of ready-made portable houses, running in cost from about three hundred dollars for four rooms, upward. Some of these are adapted to all-the-year-round use and may be used where land is taken experimentally.