Chapter 2 HARVESTING NATURE'S CROPS

PICKING BERRIES

The berry picking season begins "'long about knee-deep in June" with the first wild strawberries. It does not end till the last cranberry is harvested on the eve of Thanksgiving Day at the end of the drowsy Indian summer. There is money to be earned at this occupation wherever there is ambition to overcome difficulties and force of character enough to step aside from the beaten paths. Fortunately berries are ripe in vacation time. For some people berry picking has almost if not quite the fascination of fishing. It lacks the objectionable features of hunting, fishing and trapping. Guns, tackle, and traps are unnecessary in this gentler sport. No costly tools are required. A light pail, flaring somewhat at the top, is a good receptacle. A wire bent into an S-shaped hook is handy to swing the pail over the forearm while the ambidextrous picker almost doubles the day's harvest if the fruit is extra plentiful.

There is hardly a state in the Union which has not plenty of wild fruits. The young citizens of each state should know these fruits and make the most of them. Some states or regions have fruits peculiar to themselves. Wouldn't it be worth while for the domestic science or cookery teacher in a country school to show her pupils how to utilize these home products? We hear talk about the cost of materials for use in classes in cookery. To let our wild fruits go to waste is poor economy whichever way we look at it. Wouldn't you, if you live in northern Michigan, like to exchange a pot of thimbleberry jam for one made in North Carolina from persimmons? Or if you live in Montana would you exchange buffalo berry marmalade with a Florida friend for guava jelly or preserved cumquats?

WILD RASPBERRIES

Just the other day a girl from the shore of Lake Superior told me of a camping trip on a part of the lake shore inaccessible except by water. A storm on the lake kept them from going home when they had expected so they gathered raspberries and canned and jammed them till their sugar gave out, then until every available cooking utensil, even the coffee pot, was full and the supply of berries was as unlimited as ever. These great, luscious fruits, she said, were as big as the end of her thumb, and fairly falling off the bushes with the weight of juice.

Doesn't it make your mouth water? The pickers who live near the woods up there bring berries to town in milk pails. The fruit box may be more elegant, but there is a bountiful sound about the milk pail that takes my fancy. Of course, one gets scratched while berry-picking; but in what a good cause. Is there something wrong about boys and girls who prefer boxed berries and smooth hands to wild fruits and scratches? There are thousands of dollars wasted every year that might be working on some boy's or girl's schooling, just because nature's crop of raspberries isn't half harvested.

Wild raspberries should be canned, jellied, or jammed by the regulation methods. With a good oil stove all the work can be done in the open air.

THIMBLEBERRY

Do you know the thimbleberry? Some call it the flowering raspberry. You will know by its shape and general look that it is a cousin to the black raspberry although it is flatter, seedier, and more sharply acid. It grows on a bush or shrub somewhat like a raspberry, but its leaves are broad, like grape leaves. Instead of thorns its twigs are clothed with sticky hairs. The colour of the fruit is pinkish purple.

Thimbleberries grow often along woods margins, just back of the fringe of wild red raspberries. You are lucky if you get two cupfuls of the thimbleberries while your companion is picking two quarts of the raspberries. Yours pack more closely and the fruit is not so abundant.

The number of people who have tasted thimbleberry jam is small. I am told by one who has made it that you can get any price you ask for tiny glasses of it, even a dollar a glass, from people who "must have it." Made just as one does other jams, equal parts of fruit and sugar, there is nothing tastes quite like it.

BLUEBERRIES

Blueberry pie was a staple and justly popular dessert in a certain college dining-room, where I first made its acquaintance. It was, of course, made of canned blueberries, and we used to wonder where they all came from. We certainly never saw them growing in the Mississippi Valley. The blueberry belt is a wide one and includes all the eastern and central states. I first saw them growing on Cape Ann, and later on the New Hampshire hills. The women and children used to bring them in small pails to sell at the doors of their less enterprising neighbours. But the price was always high and the berries not first class, unless we gathered them ourselves. It takes a lot of picking to get two quarts. One gets an entirely wrong impression of the blueberry business from these experiences.

The great canning factories do not depend on a haphazard crop. In New England and the eastern states there are thousands of acres of waste land, shorn of its forest, where blueberries grow in greatest abundance. It is not possible to estimate with any accuracy the value of this wild crop. Pickers get from one and one-half to three cents a quart, and the boxes sell in retail market at from twelve and one-half cents to eighteen cents a box. Northern Michigan shipped five thousand bushels one year. They ship better than softer fruits, but the price is always high and the supply small because the canning factories are near the fields, and shipping is expensive. One large factory uses seven hundred bushels a day. The total product of the Maine canneries ten years ago was worth over one hundred thousand dollars. That must be where our college cook got her supply.

Huckleberry and blueberry are the names used most commonly and you will meet people who know one from the other. But as both are blue and there are high bush and low bush huckleberries, as well as high and low bush blueberries, it is useless to discuss the names. Both are right and a huckleberry in Ohio may be a blueberry in Maine.

A sort of rake to gather blueberries is used for the low bushes. But hand picking is best. The rake tears the bushes so, and the berries have to be put through a fanning mill twice to free them from leaves and rubbish. This process fits them for the canners who are not as particular as we wish they were.

The blueberry bush is a kind of Indian. It does not take kindly to gardens and other civilized places. It thrives and yields abundantly if given a chance on its native hillsides, and comes up by the million wherever the cutting of the timber lets in the light. By burning over the blueberry land in very early spring while the ground is wet, those in charge can keep down the alder, poplars, birches, and other non-money-making growths, and this is taken by the blueberries as their chance. They come right up, and deliver a tremendous crop the first year after the burning.

WILD GRAPES

We used to gather wild grapes along the river bottoms in the middle West when we went nutting. Sometimes our nutting excursion turned out to be a grape harvest. These grapes were small, almost black under their thin coat of bloom, in clusters like miniature garden grapes. Oh, but they were puckery when green, but the frost sweetened them. The vines grew tremendously, way to the tops of the trees, their stems like great ropes, which we used for swings. The grapes were really mostly seed and skin, but there was juice enough to stain our aprons, and give the teeth and tongue an unmistakable telltale hue. There was juice enough for a kind of jelly which I believe had the peculiarity of never "jelling" properly. It is good, though, and they were well worth the sugar to make them edible.

I was surprised at their size when I first saw the big summer grapes of the eastern hedge-rows and banks. But their flavour is no great improvement over that of the frost grape. There is more pulp, though. My barberry gathering friend, who admits that she is "fond of all sorts of woodland flavours," gathers these grapes in August before they begin to change colour. She makes the only really green grape jelly I have seen. This is her receipt:

Wash the stemmed grapes very carefully to rid them of dust and possible taint from poison ivy, with which they often associate. Put them into a preserving kettle with a very little boiling water, cover and let them steam till tender. (No boiling here.) Strain to get rid of seeds and skins. (Work fast at this point, because delay may cause the change of colour we wish to avoid.) Weigh the juice and an equal amount of white sugar. Heat sugar and juice separately, without scorching. Stir the hot sugar into the boiling juice, let boil up, skim, and put into dry, hot glasses. If it boils a long time it loses the green colour, and its flavour of the wild out-of-doors.

Green grape jelly that is really green is a triumph. It would bring a price.

ELDERBERRIES

Elderberries have almost gone out of fashion in these days of refrigerator cars and cold storage, when fruits from all parts of the world are brought to our doors. But I am antiquated enough to like the rather flat, seedy things, and the "runny" jelly is of a wonderful colour and flavour. Best of all is the fun of gathering the broad, flat clusters, always seeing a finer one just a few steps farther on or just over the fence. The golden-rod is brilliant in the September sunshine, the asters like star stuff sifted in every fence corner, while the fox grapes clambering over stray trees along the line fence fill the air with fragrance. Perhaps I could get on without the elderberries, but the New England conscience requires some practical excuse for traipsing off over the fields when there is useful work to be done indoors. Elderberries canned in a thin syrup, one cup of water, two of sugar, and all the berries the jar will hold, are excellent for steamed pudding. Drain off the juice, and stir the berries into the batter just as you would blueberries, mulberries, or any other fruit. The colour of the pudding will be awe-inspiring but with the juice for sauce it is good, really.

BARBERRIES

Our Westchester County hostess always took a basket on her arm when she went for a walk. She had an unusual taste for wild flavours of all sorts and her guests were always sure of some delightful surprise at her table. In September there is a choice of wild fruits, and everybody recognized the necessity for a basket. I wondered, though, when we passed, unnoticed, bushels of elderberries, and rods of browning grapes, and headed for a group of dogwood trees. But although the berries were thicker than I ever saw on the dogwood, they were only admired and left for the sun to burnish. High on a bare hilltop we sat where the view was panoramic. The lady with the basket betook herself to a fringe of tall, ruddy bushes on the brow of the hill, and I found her busily filling her basket with barberries. She did not wait to pick them singly but snipped off the laden twigs with scissors, avoiding thus the angry thorns.

"What are they good for?" I asked, as I tasted again the sharp, astringent flavour and felt that indescribable pucker on tongue and lips that goes with it. The barberry had long been a favourite with me; the bush for its wayward grace and its cunning flowers, the berries for their exquisite bloom and for tasting so unlike any cultivated thing. But I had never dreamed of making jelly of them.

"Jelly," said our hostess. "It's particularly good with game."

Of course it would be good with game, but can you imagine eating barberry jelly with corn-fed pork or with fat mutton?

The berries should be gathered before they are fully ripe and treated like currants, although the yield of juice is meagre. Add a little water and heat slowly. Strain and add "pound for pound" of sugar. Put in tiny glasses. Any one in search for a unique Christmas gift for an epicurean uncle would find barberry jelly fills the bill.

In Salem, Mass., I saw barberries for sale in the market. They looked mightily out of place along with pineapples, watermelons, grapes, peaches, Japanese plums, and other conventional market fruits.

BAYBERRIES

Two friends of mine, summering on Cape Ann, discovered there to their delight, a low shrub, growing in great profusion on the rocky hills. The foliage was of a rich green colour, of a leathery texture, and was possessed of an aromatic odour at once delightful and wholesome to their senses. They were seized with a great desire to take home with them a quantity of this plentiful foliage to make into pillows or to feed the fire on the hearth that they might inhale its fragrance, and be reminded of Cape Ann and the summer sea.

So they procured huge gunny sacks which they were at some pains to stuff to their utmost capacity. They have a snapshot of themselves, bent double under the weight of the great sacks. With the help of a friendly native they succeeded in transporting the burdens to the express office, and addressed them home. We cheerfully paid the expressman's charges at the home end, having been advised that the bags were coming, and carried them to the attic floor where they were to be spread to cure. But when the contents came tumbling out, its pent-up fragrance was familiar. Then was it possible those blessed geese had been spending their precious vacation days gathering bay berry leaves? It was even so, and we had paid nearly two dollars express on the bags-and our woods were full of it! What a laugh we had at their expense when they came to reimburse us.

The bayberry shrub is also called wax myrtle and it is easy to see why, when you find the berries in October. They are gray, almost white, and you see that each one is covered with tiny drops of wax that has oozed out of the berry and dried on its surface.

Bayberry is called candleberry, too, because of the use our great-grandmothers made of the wax. Bayberry dips have come into fashion again and people who make them skilfully find a ready sale for their product.

MAKING BAYBERRY DIPS

To make bayberry candles you must first gather the wax-covered berries. Get them early, for, as cold weather comes on, the pellets of wax drop off. Two quarts make only a little ball of wax, so you must gather an enormous quantity of the berries. Put them into water and bring it to a boil, stirring well to be sure that all the wax is melting. Being lighter than water the wax will rise to the surface. When you think all the berries are bare, take them from the fire. As the water cools, the wax hardens on top. If the berries do not all go to the bottom you will have to melt the wax again over a slow fire or in a double boiler until the wax rises clean at the top; all dirt and refuse on its lower surface can be scraped off. Do not let the wax burn. Smoke is a sure sign that it is too hot. In a double boiler there is no danger.

To make the dips, take regular candle wicking, a soft, white, loosely twisted cord, cut it twice the desired length for the candle. Double it and twist enough to hold it together. The loop at one end is convenient to hold it by. Dip into the hot wax and then as it cools draw the wick down with finger and thumb so that it hangs straight and kinkless. A second dip adds a little to the diameter of the candle, the third another layer and so on till your first bayberry dip is finished. If the first effort is not a good shape and has to go back into the pot you needn't be discouraged. Didn't the first chocolate cream you ever made look like a chestnut gone wrong? But with patience it is possible for even a beginner to produce very shapely candles. They do not need to be absolutely regular. Paraffin or tallow candles, moulded just alike by the hundred thousand dozen, may be as round and perfect as machinery can make them. Part of the charm of the bayberry dips is in these slight irregularities of shape and size.

WILD CRAB APPLES

Thickets of small trees, bearing little solid green apples are a feature of almost every farm in the prairie states. They are common also on the hilly pastures of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and New York. The South, too, has its native crab apple. School children the country over loved in my day to fill their pockets with the hard, sour, little fruits and nibble at them surreptitiously under cover of a broad geography. But perhaps children's tastes have changed since that far time.

Modern geography must be different, anyhow. I saw one the other day shaped just like a fifth reader or history or any other. It just looked like any book, not one bit like a g'ography.

The little crabs were made into sauce or "butter," by pioneers of the prairie states. We washed, quartered, and cut out the wormy places, stewed them till soft with a little water, then put them through a coarse sieve to take out seeds, cores, and skin. The pulp was then sweetened with sorghum molasses and boiled; stirring is necessary to prevent burning. The appetites of those days did not demand dainty fare. Well do I remember a small visitor to whom our cookery was new whose demand for crab-apple-sauce-if-you-please was hard to satisfy. I believe crab apple jelly would be regarded a great delicacy by people of good taste, if once they had a try at it.

PERSIMMONS

The children of the persimmon belt, which includes a much larger part of the eastern half of the United States than many suppose, all know that the fruit of some trees is better than that of others. The 'possum knows, too, and lucky is he who finds both "fruits" on the same tree. There is a market for persimmons if they are gathered after frost, and a greater demand may be created. Seeing an unfamiliar fruit in the market is very likely to awaken the interest. Whether the buyer will want a second basket or not depends entirely upon the cleverness of the person that supplies the demand. The thoroughly ripe fruit is, according to an experienced traveller, "entirely without bitterness or astringency, sweet, rich, and juicy." What more can you say about watermelon or strawberries? But if you who gather the fruits persist in hurrying them green into market you may expect that the prejudice against persimmons will grow stronger.

HAWS

Is there any good reason why some of the people who used to be boys should never have a chance to taste any thorn apples now that they are older? Perhaps these grown-up boys deserve to be punished for deserting the old haunts, but give them a taste of what the open road has to offer and maybe they will be tempted back to a simpler life.

The fruit of the May haw or apple haw of the far South is sold in the markets of some cities and is made into preserves and jelly. The Washington thorn which grows wild in Virginia and the other states not far from the capital city is also cultivated in many gardens farther north. It has run wild from these gardens and ranges over New York, Pennsylvania and neighbouring states. Though usually small, its berries are a beautifully shining scarlet and very numerous. It is worth risking a pound or so of sugar just to see what jelly they would make. The pear haw has a thick, juicy flesh, and some of the yellow ones are equally good.

WILD PLUMS

The wild plums of the East did not strike the early settlers as very much worth while. They were almost all seed and skin and the rest was "pucker." Quite naturally the plums of the mother country were preferred and sprouts were brought over and set in the gardens of our forefathers. These plum emigrants did so well in the new country that they escaped from the gardens into the pastures and roadsides, coming up wherever seeds were dropped. In such places they still flourish and are thought of as wild plums. They are gathered for market, but compare unfavourably, except with very old-fashioned people, with the garden-grown fruits of the same or similar varieties.

The pioneers of the middle West, however, found very fine plums growing wild in plentiful thickets. We used to gather these native plums in the Mississippi Valley, in great tubfuls. We not only appreciated the crop nature provided for us every year, but were far-sighted enough to realize that the time would come when the march of civilization would tramp out the plum thickets. So we planted them in orchards and gardens, taking those trees that had given us the best crops of the biggest, finest fruit. In fact, the pioneers did just what we ought to be doing all over our country with other wild fruits and with nuts. The wild goose plum is a native which has founded a race of which there are many named varieties, much bigger and finer than the little, old, wild grandmother of the plum thicket, but they all have still that same tart tang, just under the skin, that gave to our wild plum "jell" its incomparable flavour.

Are the wild plums all forgotten? Must all fruit come out of boxes and have that stale taste of the town? Must it lose its characteristic aroma and give off only that general "markety" smell? Is "goin' plummin'" entirely out of fashion, even in the prairie states? I don't believe it is as bad as that. Do you believe that moving pictures or shoot the shoots or merry-go-rounds can begin to compare with such simple pleasures as plumming, graping, berrying, and nutting? I have tried both, and give me the old, homely pleasures every time.

The following extract from "The Tree Book" so well describes an annual outing of pioneer children that it is quoted in full:

"'Do you calculate to go a-plummin' this fall?' The question was quietly put in father's judicial tones, but it sent an electric thrill from head to toes of every youngster. Mother's reply sent an answering current, and the enthusiasm of the moment burst all bounds. 'Well, you better go this afternoon. I can spare the team and wagon, and I guess John is big enough to drive. There's no use goin' at all if you don't go right off.'

"So mother and the children rode out of the yard, she sitting with her young driver on the spring seat, the rest on boards laid across the wagon box behind. What a jouncing they got when the wheels struck a stone in a rut! But who cared for a trifle like that? John's reckless driving but brought nearer the goal of their heart's desire.

"A lurid colour lightened the plum thicket as it came in sight. The yellow leaves were falling and the fruit glowed on the bending twigs. Close up the wagon is drawn; then all hands pile out, and the fun really begins. How large and sweet they are this year! Mother knows how to avoid the puckery, thick skin in eating plums. The youngsters try to chew two or three at once and their faces are drawn into knots. But they soon get used to that.

"Now the small folks with pails are sent to pick up ripe plums under the trees, and warned against eating too many. 'Remember last year,' says mother, and they do remember. The larger boys spread strips of burlap and rag carpet under the fullest trees, in turn, and give their branches a good beating that showers the plums down. With difficulty the boys and girls make their way into the thicket; but torn jackets and aprons and scratched hands can be mended-such accidents are overlooked in the excitement of filling the grain sacks with ripe fruit. How fine 'plum butter' will taste on the bread and butter of the noon lunch when winter comes and school begins. (The Pennsylvanian's love for 'spreads' on his bread leavened the West completely.)

"Other neighbours have come, and started in with a vim. It seems unreasonable to take any more. The bags are full, and there are some poured loose into the wagon box. Besides, everybody is tired, and John shouts that the hazel-nuts are ripe on the other side of the log road.

"A great grape vine, loaded with purple clusters, claims mother's attention. There will probably be no better chance for grapes this fall, and the sun is still an hour high. John chops down the little tree that supports it and the girls eagerly help to fill the pails with the fruit of the prostrate vine, while John goes back to command the hazel-nut brigade and sees that no eager youngster strays too far.

"Mother's voice gives the final summons, and the children gather at the wagon, tired but regretful for the filled husks that they must leave behind on the hazel bushes. A loaded branch of the grape vine is cut off bodily, and lifted into the wagon. The team is hitched on, and the happy passengers in the wagon turn their faces homeward."

Such was the poetry of pioneer life. Pleasures were simple, primitive, hearty-like the work-closely interlinked with the fight against starvation. There was nothing dull or uninteresting about either. The plums and grapes were sweetened with molasses made from sorghum cane. Each farmer grew a little strip, and one of them had a mill to which every one hauled his cane to be ground "on the shares."

Who will say that this "long sweetenin'" was poor stuff, that the quality of the spiced grapes suffered for lack of sugar, or that any modern preserves have a more excellent flavour than those of the old days made out of the wild plums gathered in the woods? And this is also true: There is no more exhilarating holiday conceivable than those half days when mother took the children and "went a-plummin'."

NUTS

The wild nuts gathered in this country for sale or home use in the North are chestnuts, hickory nuts, black walnuts, butternut, hazel-nut, beechnut; in the South, the pecan and the chinquapin; in the far West, the pine nut. The least known of these in eastern markets are the pine nuts, which form a very staple article of food for many tribes of Indians in the Great Basin. John Muir says that there are tens of thousands of acres covered with nut pines. An industrious Indian family can gather fifty or sixty bushels in a month if the snow does not catch them. The little cones are beaten off with poles as the trees are not high, and are heated till they open and the nuts fall out from under the scales. I have eaten pine nuts in Turkish restaurants. They came as a surprise in a dish of eggplant stuffed with chopped meat, raisins, nuts, bread crumbs, and I know not what all else.

The native chestnut, though smaller, is far sweeter than the popular Spanish one. But it looks as if some foreigner must take the place of our native chestnuts in the woods as well as in the market. The chestnut disease which has driven the trees out of the parks and wood lots near New York City is baffling the scientists. Every year the deadline moves westward and southward and northward from its center. Perhaps a cure will be found before all the chestnuts are gone. If any region has a few trees which seem to withstand the disease while all the rest die, those trees should be preserved and used to propagate a race of chestnuts which would be immune. It may be that the Spanish and Japanese chestnuts will prove hardier than our own. These are being grown quite extensively in some Eastern states. They bear when remarkably young. Japanese chestnuts begin to bear, according to the nurserymen, "at three years of age, bear from three to seven nuts in a bur, each nut measuring from four to five inches in circumference." Trees five years old bear two or three quarts each and the yield increases rapidly from year to year. These bring fancy prices in city markets and are eaten either raw or cooked.

In growing chestnuts it is the practice first to cut down the old native trees. As in all likelihood these would be dead in a few years anyhow, this is economical. Dead lumber is not as valuable as live lumber. The first year after a chestnut is cut, a crop of young suckers come up around the stump. These shoots are grafted with scions of a desired variety. There is a good story of a lad of twelve years of age who asked his father to graft a chestnut tree. Although the man was grafting apple trees at the time he laughed at the boy's idea. The lad did not forget and years after he put his idea into practice and now owns a chestnut grove which brings him an income of thousands of dollars. His chestnut groves are on waste land unfit for ordinary farm purposes. If one farm boy in every county would take an interest in growing the nuts that belong to his region, think how the value of the nut crop would increase. Every boy knows that the hickory nuts on one particular shell-bark are bigger and sweeter than on every other one he knows of. He and his friends try to get there first, before the "other gang" do, and make sure of their share. But does he ever plant any big sweet nuts along a fence row and take care of the young trees till they are big enough to take care of themselves? In the seventeenth century there was a law in certain European countries that every young man should plant a certain number of walnut trees. Unless he could prove that he had complied with the law, he couldn't marry. What a good idea! With such a law we might have more fine trees and fewer hasty marriages.

CHINQUAPINS

A coloured girl brought me a pint of chinquapins from her home in Ca'line County, Virginia; I sampled them eagerly, taking great pleasure in their diminutive prettiness, tidy shape, and rich, dark colouring. I kept a handful securely tied in the little salt bag in which they had made the journey and took them to my native state to show to the children, who had never seen a chestnut tree of any kind.

When I took the bag from the trunk, there was a dustiness about the feel of it that aroused my suspicions. I emptied the contents into a flat dish. There were my nuts, their glossy brown shells as smooth as ever, but empty. Rolling about amongst them were a lot of the plumpest little white grubs, fairly bent double with corpulency. There must have been one for each nut, for not a sound kernel was left.

I learn from chestnut-wise people that these weevils are another great enemy of chestnut culture, no remedy having been found.

The chinquapin is the Southern child's chestnut. It is sometimes a tree, but more often a low shrub. The bur is round and has only one nut in it. A good many are marketed, especially in Southern cities, and bring a good price when fresh. The weevils enter the nuts before they are mature and it is difficult to find the bad nuts till too late to prevent a disagreeable impression. This interferes with the popularity of the chinquapin as a dessert nut.

HAZEL-NUTS

The American hazel-nut flourishes over the eastern half of the United States. It is a sweet little nut, much more to my taste than the bigger filbert, which is so popular in our markets. We used to gather hazel-nuts in the edge of woods which fringe the little rivers of the Mississippi Valley. The bushes grew in thickets and while the big brothers and sisters gathered the nuts from among the closely interlaced branches that grew scarcely higher than their heads, the smaller fry crept in underneath and getting about on the floor of the woods searched for nuts that had ripened early and dropped from the browning husk.

There is no progress in simply going out in the fall and taking what nature furnishes. Unaided, the good mother goes on producing the same small nuts, caring just as patiently for the inferior ones and even encouraging the nut weevils to prey upon them. But I wonder if some boy or girl who thinks there isn't any interesting work to be done on the farm, could not make some experiments in hazel-nut culture.

The bushes grow readily from seed, but seedlings do not always produce as fine nuts as those that were planted. For this reason one can save time by selecting the bushes that bear the largest crop of fine nuts and propagating those. They grow in any well drained, fairly rich soil and I know of hundreds of miles of fence rows answering these requirements, which now produce poison ivy, cat brier and other harmful crops. Hazel bushes make a beautiful fence row, and yield a salable crop. Hazel bushes propagate naturally by suckers and layers. By manuring well in summer long shoots for layering will be forced. "These should be staked down in winter or spring and covered with earth. They may be removed to nursery rows or orchard at the end of the first season." So says W. A. Taylor in the "Cyclop?dia of American Horticulture." The same writer gives directions for pruning as follows: Strong shoots should be headed back to promote spur formation (the nuts are borne on short side shoots) and old wood that has borne fruit should be removed annually. Suckers should be kept down unless wanted for propagation. March or April is the best time to prune as they blossom very early and one must avoid cutting off either the young nuts or the pollen-bearing flowers. The nuts should be gathered when the husk begins to brown at the edges. If left longer, as is most often done, in the case of wild nuts, a large proportion of the crop falls to the ground and is lost. Beside, the dried hulled nuts do not bring as high a price as the fresh unhusked ones. If kept long in the husk they will mould, unless dried thoroughly. The nuts, however, will keep through the season in a cool place.

WALNUTS

The fruit of the black walnut is enclosed in a globe-shaped husk. All country boys and girls know how that husk smells and how it stains the fingers. The nuts are very oily and must be treated carefully. They should be dried, preferably on the garret floor, hulled and stored in a cool, dry place. If for market, they should be sold immediately. They are very likely to grow rancid if kept. Billy, in the "Limberlost" story, had a piece of heavy plank with a hole in it, just big enough to let the husked nut through. He put an unhulled nut over the hole, then with a wooden mallet, he drove it through the hole. It came through clean.

The butternut or oilnut is from a tree closely related to the black walnut. It is called also white walnut. The husk is not so thick as that of the black walnut and adheres stubbornly to the nut if left to dry. The nuts get rancid if kept warm and should be marketed as soon as dry or kept stored in the cold and eaten before spring.

Pickled walnuts are a highly prized delicacy in households where "culturine" has not taken the place of old-fashioned household arts. The nuts are gathered when green, before the shell has hardened. If a knitting needle can be pushed clear through the nut, it is not too old for pickling. You will be fortunate if you can get a receipt from some housewife who has time for real culture as well as for making pickles.

Receipt for Pickled Walnuts.-(From my great aunt's cook-book.) Ingredients: One hundred walnuts, salt and water, one gallon of vinegar, two ounces of whole black pepper, half an ounce of cloves, one ounce of allspice, one ounce of root ginger sliced, one ounce of mace.

Gather the nuts in July when they are full grown. They should be soft enough to be pierced all through with a needle. Prick them all well through. Let them remain nine days in brine (four pounds of salt to each gallon of water), changing the brine every third day. Drain them, and let them remain in the sun two or three days until they become black. Put them into jars, not quite filling them. Boil the vinegar and spices together ten minutes, and pour the liquid over the walnuts. They will be fit for use in a month, and will keep for years.

BEECHNUTS

The boys of your neighbourhood may not know that the smooth, gray-barked trees with very long, slender, pointed buds are beeches. They may never have noticed the wonderful gray-green colour nor delicate texture of the newly opened leaves, nor the soft, silky flower head that bears the pollen. Too many boys think these preliminaries are of no importance. The chances are strong that when October ripens the nuts, nobody has any difficulty in locating beech trees, if there are any in the vicinity. Usually, in the wild woods, they grow in large groups of various sizes; the big trees sheltering the little ones until they are strong enough to live in the full sunlight. Do boys and girls find the beeches by instinct just as the mice, the blue jays, the squirrels, and the foraging hogs do?

Do you know why it takes so much longer to gather a pint of beechnuts than the same amount of hazel-nuts? They are pretty small; yes, but there's another reason. If you were to count your beechnuts, you would find it takes many more of them by count to make a pint than of the round nuts, because of their triangular shape. They fit so snugly that your pint measure of beechnuts is almost solid nuts. They are about the sweetest of the wild nuts. They are very rich in fat too, and in olden times an oil for table use was made from beechnuts. Olive oil takes its place now and costs less. There is a market for all the beechnuts you can gather. Dealers in tree seeds often have difficulty in filling orders. As the nuts do not germinate till April they may be gathered at any time during the winter, unless the wild folks have gathered them all. The chances are that to get any you would have to go early and search sharply. Once or so in a lifetime the burrow of a white-footed mouse is discovered near beech woods. Are you hard hearted enough not only to break and enter, but also to burgle his hoard? Rather admire the little creature's industry and resolve to go and do likewise.

HICKORY NUTS

America is the only country that has native hickory nuts. Of these the best nut producers are the shagbarks and the pecans. These two nuts are increasingly popular. People are planting these nuts and experimenting with new varieties, with grafting and cultivation, as never before. Pecan orchards are being planted in many regions and hickory nuts are being studied with a view to improving the kernel and reducing the hardness of the shell. The value of hickory wood in the making of tools and for fuel has made the lumber more profitable than the nuts. But with improved varieties this may not be true. The poor quality of the wood of the pecan has saved these native trees from destruction.

Hickory nuts have a husk as every country child knows; but the husk has a good-natured habit of splitting neatly into four equal parts which fall away from the nut when dry. There are several kinds of hickory which produce sweet, edible nuts, but the nuts of the true shagbark are the best. They grow on low hills near streams or swamps in good soil in the Eastern and Middle states as far south as Florida, and as far west as Kansas. The king nuts of the Mississippi are bigger, but not so good, although the price you get for them is good and the baskets fill faster than with the little shagbarks.

PECANS

This nut tree grows in the South, and as the wood is too brittle to be very valuable nobody has cut it for lumber. Tremendous interest has been aroused during the past ten years in pecan growing. Pecan orchards are being planted in all sorts of soil, good, bad, and indifferent. The wisest planters have gone to nature to learn what kind of conditions the pecan requires. By cultivation and fertilizing and otherwise improving good natural conditions, many growers are succeeding. By planting nuts from trees that produce fine ones abundantly every year, and by budding these trees with scions from still finer specimen trees great improvement has been made. I have a picture of a pecan tree in Georgia, sixteen years old, which is nearly fifty feet high. It has borne already three hundred and fifty pounds of nuts and this year's crop will be over a hundred pounds. This tree has never had to fight weeds, has always had plenty to eat and drink, was protected in winter while young, and now it is ready to foot all its own bills and give a fine profit. How many of us are ready to do that at sixteen years? The cultivation of pecans is only just begun. Very little of the annual crop of these nuts is harvested in orchards. In "The Tree Book" the author says that ninety-five per cent. of the crop is still gathered in the woods. The annual crop is tremendous, and the pickers get only three to ten cents a pound for the ungraded nuts. For the very best nuts, mainly sold for seed, the retail price is from fifty cents to a dollar a pound, which is from one to two cents per nut.

Who picks all these nuts in the woods? Surely, the boys and girls of the pecan belt do their share. Do they do it in a primitive way or are their methods worthy of the up-to-date American youngster? Professor Hume of the Florida Agriculture Experiment Station (Bulletin No. 85, 1906) gives suggestions for gathering the pecan crop in the orchard which ought to be useful to the "wild picker." The nuts ought to be gathered as soon as the most of the burs have opened. In orchards, the pickers use ladders for young trees and climb the big ones and gather the nuts by hand into sacks. Beating and shaking the trees is only resorted to for the nuts that are entirely out of reach. If allowed to fall on the ground so many of the nuts are lost that the profits are materially lessened. If practicable a large sheet should be placed under the tree to save this loss.

The nuts should be spread under some sort of roof to cure, which requires ten days or two weeks.

Have you ever tried the experiment of sorting and grading the nuts you gather? The fruits of wild trees vary greatly in their size and general appearance. The wholesale dealer who buys nuts undoubtedly grades them and gets a fancy price for the big ones. Why should you not benefit by this?

Pecans are graded by sifting them through screens, the mesh of which lets only those of small size through. You might build up a private trade in wild nuts by packing your best nuts in attractive pasteboard boxes and charging a good retail rate for them. The inferior nuts you could well afford to sell at the lowest wholesale price as your average would be higher than the wholesaler would pay for unsorted nuts.

Your fancy nuts would have to be polished in order to compete with the nuts sold in city markets. The polishing does not make the meat any sweeter, but it does make a more attractive dessert nut, especially now that folks are used to seeing them polished. This is done by putting some dry sand into a barrel with the nuts and rolling the barrel about till the nuts are polished. If you have a worn out barrel or box churn, as we once had, that would be just the thing. Fancy packages of five to ten pounds would be very much in demand at Christmas. The big cities are well supplied with this sort of thing, but in the smaller cities and larger towns there are always some people who know a good thing when they see it and to whom the local markets often fail to supply these little luxuries.

NUT GROWING

In Bulletin No. 125 of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station published in 1908 you may read: "The young and middle-aged should not only plant nut trees themselves, but should encourage the children to do likewise. Every farm boy ought to have a small nut nursery and be taught to plant and care for nut trees. Nothing more creditable could be done in the schools than to interest the boys and girls in the possibilities of nut production and to celebrate Arbor Day with the planting of nut trees."

Doesn't that read like sound advice? Think of the land on your father's farm to-day that is not working. Or if there isn't any idle land can you not persuade him to lend you an acre or so for experimental purposes? The chances are that he will encourage and help you because he wants you to be interested in the farm. But you may say to yourself: "Not much! I don't mean to stay on the farm. I'm going to work hard and get an education. I want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a banker." Nevertheless, you take the Maryland man's advice and set out some nut trees. Let us say you start your nut orchard at age fourteen when you have three years yet in the high school. Your trees will be set so far apart that some other crops will be grown between them; corn, potatoes, melons, or anything that requires good cultivation and fertilization. When you finish the high school your nut trees will not look very big, but promising. You go on to college and in four years you will see a big change. No crop is in sight yet but you are only twenty-one and ready to go to work. You may forget all about those nut trees for a few years but they are not forgetting their business. They will bear a few nuts some year, as if to try their hand at a new enterprise. Some day when you are needing a sum of money to start in business for yourself, and you are wondering who will lend you that much, you will get word from the folks at home that they have harvested your first crop of pecans or English walnuts or Spanish chestnuts and have deposited a thousand dollars in the bank in your name as the net profits. Will you try it?

Before planting nut trees it is important to learn all you can by reading and by correspondence with your Experiment Station experts about the kinds that will do best in your region and on your soil. If more boys used a little forethought we should have fewer young college men struggling along on small salaries in work they dislike, just for lack of a tidy sum of ready money to set them on their feet at the critical time.

There are good reasons for this greater interest in nut growing in the United States. The use of nuts is more common than formerly but they are still a luxury. Wild nuts are scarcer, owing to the destruction of the trees for lumber. The food value of nuts is better understood than formerly, and many articles of food are manufactured now from nuts. Nuts as meat substitutes have come into prominence within a few years. This creates a demand which will increase. There is no danger of over-production. Now is the time to get into the nut business.

TREE SEEDS

In his book on "Forestry" Professor Gifford says: "Collection of tree seeds should yield good returns if properly conducted." That is good news, for if ever a crop was allowed to go to waste it is this crop of tree seeds. Any one who has seen a forest of young maples cut down by lawn mowers in the helplessness of their seed-leaf stage realizes that with any sort of forethought those seeds might have been made a source of income.

Professor Gifford says a little farther on that many of the seeds of our native trees can be more easily obtained in Europe than in America. We may learn many lessons in economy from our neighbours over there.

But who is going to harvest the tree seeds? A mechanic who earns a good wage cannot afford to gather tree seeds; neither can a bank clerk unless he does the work in his vacation. But our boys and girls are often at a loss to find ways of earning money. Here is a crop they can gather without danger of trespassing. There is a market for this harvest. Some tree seeds are difficult to get and expensive; red pine for instance. Spruce trees produce seed only once in seven years. This keeps the supply short. In a spruce seed year every seed should be gathered. Pecks of hard maple seeds are swept up by street cleaners every year on our home street. They are worth a lot of money, yet the boys on the street never have all the cash they want to buy baseball gloves and circus tickets and bicycles. No enterprising reader of this book need ever lack for pocket money.

Remember, Professor Gifford said, "Collection of tree seeds should yield good returns if properly conducted." Every business to be successful must be conducted properly. There are some simple principles. You need not be an expert forester but the more you know about trees the better. If a dealer buys six quarts of red maple seeds of you he will be disappointed if you send him silver maple, discouraged if you send him sugar maple, and disgruntled if you send him ash. Furthermore, he will not send you the money nor any orders for more. If there is a maple tree with a peck of seed on it in your yard, in five minutes or less time you can find out what kind it is with "The Tree Book." Before the seeds are ripe write to a several seed men and tell them what you have; ask if they want any, at what price, and on what date. Some trees ripen their seeds in the spring, shake them off, and let the wind scatter them. In the case of some kinds, the seeds sprout within a few days after they reach the ground. These should be gathered as soon as ripe, spread out to dry for a few days, and planted within a few weeks at latest. Seeds of other kinds do not grow till the following spring. None of these should be allowed to dry too thoroughly. Nuts and acorns for seed should not be allowed to get dry over winter. These should be packed in moist sand and kept cool but not frozen. Cherry, plum and peach pits are better for being frozen.

The supply of white pine seed is never equal to the demand. The market price is said to vary from two dollars fifty cents to four dollars fifty cents per pound. You get a little over a pound of seeds from a bushel of unopened cones. White pine trees require two years to mature their cones and they set seed only once in every four or five years. But every year there will be some trees bearing seed. Nineteen hundred and four was a big "on" year in the New York white pine forests. You can tell when the tiny cones first appear that a crop is coming. The cones should be watched as August wanes and gathered before they open. September is the month as a general thing. Boys can earn thirty cents or so a bushel gathering the full cones. But I should not be satisfied to let the other fellow get all the profits just because he knows how to cure and market the seed. That is easy. Spread the cones out in the barn to dry. Slat trays are best to get free circulation of air. You can make these at odd times before the crop is ready. A fanning mill comes in handy to thrash and free them from rubbish and imperfect seed. Market them immediately to avoid loss. If you are to keep the seed for home consumption, mix with dry sand and store in a cool but not too dry place. If allowed to dry or freeze and thaw they lose their vitality. Tree seeds need pretty careful handling.

Any one interested in gathering tree seeds should get information from books and bulletins on forestry. He should write to firms who make a specialty of selling tree seeds and they will help him by giving directions about the treatment of seeds.

Did you ever wonder where the nursery men get the thousands of apple trees they sell every year? Go a step back of the budding or grafting that is done in the nursery. Where did the little tree come from whose top was cut off after the first bud was set? It came from a seed; just any apple seed. And where do apple seeds come from? From apples? Yes, just any apples. Did you ever make cider on your farm? You put in whole apples, skin, core, stem, seeds, and all; shovelled them into the hopper. The pulp was squeezed dry and thrown away, wasn't it, at your cider mill? That is proof of the wastefulness of some good farmers. If the pulp were washed in tubs, the seeds would find the bottom (or the top) and they would bring a good price per pound.

COLLECTING CHRISTMAS GREENS

Once upon a time everybody who wanted Christmas greens had the fun of gathering his own. That was in the generation when all the grandmothers lived in the country and only the plain fathers and mothers and children lived in the cities. But now we children have grown up and our children want to go to grandmother's house for Christmas just as we did. Can't you imagine how surprised and disappointed they are to find their grandmothers living in city houses, even in flats? Didn't we tell them about going out to gather holly and mistletoe and ground pine and hemlock and even how we used to cut the Christmas tree itself in grandpa's woods? In the middle West where Christmas trees do not grow in the woods we used to choose a shapely young oak. To make it look like an evergreen we used to get grandpa to go out with his big jack-knife and cut off the largest branches he could spare from the evergreens in the door yard. With good, strong twine we tied these to the branches of the oak. When all the decorations were on and the oranges and the apples and the popcorn strings and the candles and the presents, we children who had never seen a real live Christmas tree couldn't have told the difference. We didn't even mind the fact that some of the oak's outer branches were pine, some were spruce, some were cedar. It was all evergreen to us and all Christmassy. We were easy to please.

But now-alas! The gathering of Christmas greens has been commercialized. It has ceased to be fun, and has become a business. The boys and girls may share in the profits and perhaps get some fun out of it if they go about it right.

Holly, which of all the Christmas greens is the most popular, is a hardy and beautiful tree, which grows wild in great numbers in the Southern states and in the Chesapeake region. Many country boys and girls make easy Christmas money from the holly trees in their own woods. To these boys and girls I want to say "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg." A tree with fine berries on it this year will, if treated right, produce a good crop again in a few years. Pruning is good for a tree, but brutally hacking its head out destroys the tree's future, and the boy who does it is not a good citizen.

Holly wood is close grained, light, and tough and is valuable in some forms of cabinet work. Here is an industry that might be developed as a side issue in the holly trade.

The best market calls for holly wreaths. I have a picture of a girl of fourteen who can make sixty wreaths in a day and she gets six and a half cents for each. That is good wages for a girl of her age, but she must get pretty tired making wreaths every minute all day long. If she could help her brothers gather the holly for part of the time, it would be easier on her back. The wreaths are made on frames of twigs, twisted into circles, and tied. Young twigs of any flexible shrub are used. Somebody has to gather these. It is a wonder that more holly trees are not planted in door yards. And wouldn't it be a good idea for some boys to begin a plantation of holly now so they can reap the harvest later? Holly will not go out of fashion in a great many years. But at the present rate the supply cannot last. The amount used every year is past belief. From one small railway station 150,000 wreaths! One year, several carloads were burned because the market was overstocked.

The time has come already when raising Christmas trees is necessary. They still come up like weeds in the woods where enough mature ones are left to seed the bared hillsides. The harvest begins in November and the trees are cut and sorted, roped to preserve their branches, in bundles of eight or less or singly, and stacked along the roads to await shipment. Hundreds of thousands are harvested every year. "No-Christmas-tree" clubs are being formed now to try to stop this wastefulness. We go too much to extremes. One Christmas tree used to be enough for all the grandchildren; but nowadays every one must have his own. If our children's children are to have real Christmas trees the boys of to-day must plant the seeds of the beloved balsam fir.

The man who discovers and makes popular a new kind of Christmas greens does everybody a good turn. One of the most remarkable "ten-strikes" ever made along this line was a sort of accident. A man who calls himself "Caldwell, the woodsman," describes his experience as follows: "It was several weeks before I found the evergreen that was to make the town of Evergreen, Ala., famous throughout the decorative world. Wandering through the woods one day, my attention was attracted to a beautiful green vine hanging from the topmost limb of a small dead oak. I caught hold of the vine and pulled it down, and was much astonished at the ease with which it came out of the tree, and the fact that it seemed in no way injured by my rough treatment. On carrying it to my new home, I arranged it around the mirror in my room, and, after leaving it there for about a week or ten days, found that it was as fresh and green as ever."

Mr. Caldwell saw that in wild Southern smilax he had found a plant that possessed all the good points required for wholesale decorations. It is used everywhere now. City florists cannot get enough of it. The plant is a perennial, renewing itself every year, and grows in greatest profusion in its wild habitat. He had an uphill job, though, convincing the fashionable florists of the value of this plant. But he persevered and now he ships five thousand cases of it a year at an average profit of one dollar per case.

Young long-leaf pines grow in the South and are now used extensively for Christmas decoration in the North. It seems a pity to kill a pine tree every time one of these is cut, but in places where the seedlings come up too thick for good forest growth cutting out some is a benefit. If only the gatherers would be conservers as well!

The collecting of ferns in the woods is a business suited to the country boys and girls. This has grown to a really great enterprise since the rage for country things has struck city people. There is some sham about every fad of this kind, but the fern gatherers are not shamming. They do the real work. To succeed in this, one must not work haphazard. He must know just what his customer wants, and the buyer must know just what the collector can supply. Ferns is a big group of plants, and some of them you couldn't sell. If Christmas ferns grow plentifully in your woods, you can gather them by the thousand fronds. But will the florist buy those leaves which have the brown spots (or spores) on the under side? Find out before you waste your time. Those spores are more valuable in the woods than on the garbage heap. The boys who pull the plants up by the roots are killing their own goose. The fern can spare all the perfect leaves you find on it in the fall without much if any damage. A new crop will be forthcoming next year if the roots are undisturbed. Scissors and care used in gathering only good leaves will pay now, as well as in the future.

There are a number of wild things that deserve more popularity. Bitter-sweet is lovely and lasts forever, nearly. You seldom see it in the market, though. Sumach too, has great decorative value, yet whoever saw it in a florist's window? Cattails, pussy willows, spice bush, dogwood flowers and berries, Solomon's seal, and a score of other wild flowers are already in use. But there are others you may be able to introduce to city people. It is surprising what they will buy and admire if it comes from the country. I rode on a suburban car one day behind an armful of poison ivy. It was brilliantly beautiful and I suspect the gatherer wished I had kept still when I told her what it was. If she hadn't had a child with her, I should have let her risk it. Maybe she was immune. Most people are. The funniest thing I ever saw for sale was a basket of skunk-cabbage flowers on Broadway. The shrewd old farmer who had them for sale got a quarter for two. He called them Japanese lilies.

I wonder that the winter berry has not found more favour for decoration. Two kinds of shrubs with this name are common in our Northern woods. They are both hollies, but, unlike the Southern holly, lose their leaves. One has bright orange-coloured berries, the other is covered with a great profusion of bright scarlet fruits. Nothing could be more effective in a large vase in a dark corner. They light up handsomely at night or in the sunlight.

MEDICINAL PLANTS

There are a good many kinds of aromatic roots and medicinal plants which are kept in stock at drug stores. Some of them are rare and bring a good price; like golden seal at a dollar or over per pound. Digitalis in the drug store is foxglove in the garden; but who ever thinks of gathering its leaves and finding a market for them? Somebody must or the supply would run out. The leaves of the second year's growth are dried for medicinal uses.

Wild ginger root is used in preserves and for confectionery. I have seen it in market and wondered who gathered it. Preserved calamus root, too; who buys that unless it is Br'er Rabbit? There is a Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture on "Weeds Used in Medicine" that you ought to have. The list of weeds used in medicine will certainly surprise the unenlightened. How do you know that your doctor isn't dosing you with burdock, dandelion, dock, pokeweed, foxglove, mullein, tansy, boneset, catnip, horehound, fleabane, yarrow, or jimson weed? All these and many more common weeds are collected by somebody, dried, and used in medicine.

POKEWEED

Pokeweed roots are poisonous. The berries are not. They are used to make a syrup with which to colour frosting for cakes and the like. Receipts for this are to be found in many cook books. But the best part of pokeweed is not the fruit. In early spring, when asparagus is expensive and scarce, the pokeweed shoots grow rank and as thick as your thumb in fence corners. They will take entire possession of a large garden in two years if given the least encouragement. I cut the stems when about a foot in height. They are covered with short leaves which are best removed except at the end of the shoot. Cook exactly like asparagus, and dress with butter or cream. They resemble asparagus somewhat, but are more delicate in flavour and less woody in texture.

WALKING STICKS

I once knew a stubborn man who was convinced that an unproductive orchard full of old gnarled trees on his place was good for nothing but firewood. He had the trunks cut into stove lengths and then burned the brush in ten huge piles. As the last pile was about to be fired, a manufacturer of umbrella handles offered him ten dollars for what was left. Imagine his feelings! Thousands of handsome walking sticks and umbrella handles are made of apple, cherry, and such woods. The makers cannot get enough of it and yet every year how much salable wood must be burned in the form of prunings. There is a true story of a young man in Florida who paid his way through college by collecting orange wood suitable for walking sticks. This wood is still popular for the same purpose, and the idea is worth passing along.

Walking sticks decorated by nature

Roots of quaint or grotesque shape are often found in the woods and may be used as handles of umbrellas or walking sticks. I have a stick made of a small sapling upon which a branch of bitter-sweet had entwined. As the sapling grew in circumference, the coils of the climber had not been loosened but had become imbedded in the wood of the little tree. The long vine was not cut off, but trimmed and wound round and round at the head of the stick to make it large enough to grasp comfortably. Such a stick is an interesting gift for a friend.

Another pretty bit of nature's handiwork is a walking stick engraved by the engraver beetle. These little insects make their burrows just under the bark and they often work on small branches of a great variety of forest trees. Remove a bit of loose bark and ten to one you will find it carved with a more or less intricate design by the engraver beetle. Could you do as neat a piece of work? A thorough brushing and oiling are all that such a stick needs to make it an ornament to the hat-rack.

Sticks intended for handles or canes cannot be bent when dry. They should be steamed until flexible or buried in hot, wet sand till you can shape them. Boiling for a half-hour will sometimes make a piece supple. Fasten in the desired shape with stout cords and dry thoroughly before releasing. Sticks that are slightly crooked may be straightened by putting them into a bundle with perfectly straight pieces and winding with strong rope; let them dry in this bundle. Sticks which are to be peeled should be partially dried first but not by artificial heat. Rapid drying is likely to split the stick.

WILD FLOWERS FOR CITY CHILDREN

Children who live in the country part or all of the year do not know how much pleasure they might give if they would gather wild flowers and send them to city children. There is a society which distributes flowers thus collected in New York but maybe there is none in the city near you. The commonest flowers, even the weeds like daisies and dandelions and black-eyed Susans, are eagerly taken home by children who are so poor that they never even saw a park, much less a meadow. In one city school over two hundred children had never seen a dandelion. A lady once started with a bunch of daisies to give to a city friend. She was met at the ferry with, "Please give me a flower." She went on up the street. "Won't chu gimme one o'yer flowers?" Children seemed to appear from every direction; maybe they were always there and she had not noticed them before. The grown-up friend did not get any flowers but she got a good story instead. Mr. Jacob Riis founded a flower mission on a similar experience. It is fun to gather flowers anyhow, and if you can make some other child happy even for a few minutes it would be even more fun. This is only a hint.

SHELF FUNGI

Have you seen those outgrowths on dying and dead trees which stand out like a shelf? They are called bracket or shelf fungi. If you have an artist friend who can make beautiful things on these by carving them with little engraving tools, gather all you see for her.

Photograph by Verne Morton

Gathering Wild Flowers for City Children

DANDELION GREENS

Do your folks cook dandelion greens? Mine never did but since seeing them for sale at so much per half-peck I have come to think that they must be eatable and have wished we had gathered and sold the bushels that grew in our lawn.

CORN HUSKS

Corn husks is a crop that used to be more eagerly harvested than now. In the corn belt, where the husking is done in the field, the husk is left on the stalk and would therefore be hard to get. But where corn is snapped, husk and all, and left to be husked at leisure in field or barn, the husks can be saved with profit. For summer beds they are cheaper and softer than hay. For porch cushions they are far superior to excelsior. For braiding into mats they are really valuable, and well-made ones bring a good price.

Cornstalks yield another crop that is little known. Collectors of insects use thin sheets of cornstalk pith to line their insect boxes. It is peculiarly adapted to this purpose. They cannot get a large supply of it, yet what boy in any great corn state could not get a ton of it if he had the gumption. Ask the entomology man in your state Experiment Station, if he needs cornstalk pith. If you live in a cactus country, ask him if he could use thin slices of the pith from the flower stalk of the giant cacti.

FRAGRANT HERBS AND GRASSES

Of the fragrant herbs, grasses, and shrubs which nature provides, nothing is more in demand than sweet grass. In the parts of the country where it is abundant, people still gather and cure it and make useful baskets and mats of it. Sometimes it is combined with birch bark or porcupine quills or both by skilful Indian women who learned how from their grandmothers. The good market for such things will keep the art of basket making from becoming a lost one.

Indian maidens are not the only ones who have learned basket weaving. Indeed this has almost taken the place of patchwork, for girls, except in very old-fashioned families. Clever girls will not be content to use only such conventional materials as raffia and reeds. Often the colours of those you buy are so crude that you cannot make really artistic things of them. Some of the native grasses, flower stalks, strips of palmetto, rushes, soft inner corn husks, cat-tail leaves, and sedges are used. One basket maker has used the shiny brown stems of maidenhair ferns and the effect is very pretty. Another uses long pine needles in her weaving. Most of these materials are unfit for use when dry and brittle, but books on basketry tell just how they can be made pliable. Grasses are usually at their best just after flowering.

The dried leaves of sweet fern, sweet clover in blossom, balsam fir, and bayberry make sweet smelling cushions and bags for bureau drawers and couches.

BALSAM LEAVES

In gathering what you hear called "pine needles" for pillows be sure you have the right kind of trees before you begin to gather the leaves. Pine needles are long and stiff and sharp. A pillow made of dried ones would not be a very fragrant nor a very comfortable thing. What you want is the short, soft leaves of balsam fir. These retain their wholesome odour after being dried. In five minutes you can learn to tell the balsam from spruce, hemlock, and cedar, the other common short-leaved native evergreens.

BIRCH BARK

Camping parties often leave a trail of devastation behind them which would shock the most hardened and wasteful one of the lot. This is largely if not entirely because they are ignorant, not because they are intentionally breakers of the laws of the woods. Indeed they are probably very ardent believers in the theory of conservation. Has it never occurred to them to practise it?

In the matter of collecting birch bark much damage has been done. Some people in whom you have confidence say: "Oh, no. It doesn't hurt the tree." So you strip off layer after layer; such a fascinating occupation, I do not wonder you hardly know when to stop. But read what Miss Rogers says in "The Tree Book:" "The feminine tourist in Northern woods loses no time in supplying herself with birch bark note-paper. The bark is usually removed in thick plates, from which the thin sheets may be stripped at leisure. These sheets are orange-coloured, with a faint purplish bloom upon them and darker purplish lines. Alas! for the zeal of these tourists. They usually cut too deep, and the strip that tears off so evenly girdles and kills the tree, because nothing is left to protect the living cambium. A black band (of mourning) soon marks the doomed tree, and it eventually snaps off in the wind."

I know a girl who killed thirty-seven beautiful birch trees before any one showed her how she could get plenty of bark and leave some for the tree beside. She was perfectly horrified when she realized what she had done. So few people know that the live part of the tree is not at the heart-that is quite dead-but just under the skin. Cut off the bark in any large quantities and your tree falls an easy prey to disease.

Hiawatha was not the first Indian to use the canoe birch for practical purposes. His ancestors used this bark for all sorts of utensils, dishes, baskets, buckets, and for their canoes. They sewed the pieces together with fibrous roots and filled the cracks with wild gum or pitch. The Indians of nowadays have degenerated and the things they make have become less artistic. I lately saw a buckskin pouch, decorated with exquisitely woven bead work, in simple but charming design. It was a piece of real Indian handiwork, but the whole effect was spoiled by a lining of coarse red and blue and green gingham and the pouch flap was secured by a thong looped over a large white agate shirt button!

In trying to imitate the Indians at their game of making things out of birch bark, quills, sweet grass, and other natural materials, let us keep clear of the shops and use only what combines naturally and artistically.

PORCUPINE QUILLS

"Give me of your quills, O hedgehog!" Hiawatha was talking to a porcupine, for the chances are that he never saw a hedgehog. Poets ought to know better than to confuse their "critters."

A real Indian boy in the woods knows that porcupines give up their quills all too willingly. It is strange that the wild beasts of prey and the domestic dogs cannot learn this and let the porcupine alone. They have no quarrel with him. He eats the bark of trees, and goes about his own affairs. There isn't a word of truth in the story of his shooting his quills. No doubt he would if he could, if sore pressed, but he can't. He bristles them up when attacked and then woe be to the tender nose that touches the sharp points! The quills let go of their original owner very easily, but being barbed on their outer end they bury themselves in the soft parts of the attacking animal. With no thought of revenge in his rather witless head, the porcupine may pronounce the death sentence on his captor.

Porcupines are hunted for their quills and easily captured by men as they are slow and awkward. The quills take a pretty polish and their cream white and shaded brown colours blend softly with the tints of birch bark and wild grasses with which they are combined by basket and mat weavers.

MAPLE SUGAR MAKING

Most of the fifty million or so pounds of maple sugar made in this country is made in six states, Vermont, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. The boys and girls of these states have exceptional opportunities of studying the mysteries of tree life and of sharing the bounty the maples provide. I was not brought up in any one of the above-named states, yet I remember the maple sugar making in the woods along the river. One of my early recollections is of a party of Indian women, on piebald ponies, bringing fascinating heart-shaped cakes of maple sugar to exchange at the farm for fresh meat. Theirs were no pale, an?mic, delicate squares of creamy texture, but ruddy and hard. Less discriminating than now, we children ate with relish the coarse sugar almost black from the bits of bark, chips of leaves, and twigs which had undoubtedly been boiled with it. Nor did we innocents turn from it with loathing when told by a teasing uncle that its colour was due to the sirup having been strained by the Indians through their blankets. We didn't believe it then and I don't yet. How very bad for the blankets!

The Indians discovered the maple sugar industry long before they themselves were discovered by white people. They taught our New England ancestors how to tap the trees and boil down the sirup and how to "sugar off." They had little or no sugar except what the maples supplied. The Indians had very primitive ways of tapping the trees, collecting the sap, boiling, and sugaring. These ways have been improved in the last three hundred years. Although wooden buckets and home-made spiles made of sumach branches may still be used where only a few trees are tapped, the up-to-date sugar maker has modern, patent, covered buckets, spouts, and evaporators. He uses a thermometer and knows "for sure" when to shut off his fire if he wants to make sirup, and how high the temperature may go to make the best sugar. He knows, too, whether he can afford to make sugar which tests eighty per cent. or ninety per cent. pure and get the bounty, if his state pays one, or if it costs him less labour and expense to sell his entire product in the form of sirup.

But scientific methods can never take away the charm of maple sugar making. There is so much yet to be learned from the trees about the whys and wherefores of their behaviour during the harvest, that our interest in maple products increases as our interest in mere "sweets" decreases.

If you have a "sugar bush" planted by your great-grandfather, the chances are that you have had annual opportunities to help in making sugar, ever since you could drive a horse on frosty mornings to collect the sap. But I am going to suppose that during the winter you have been reading "Trees Every Child Should Know" and have been identifying the trees about your home. The maples are about the easiest trees to identify when leafless. Suppose you have found several maple trees, good big ones, right in your own door yard. The hard or sugar maple is the one most frequently used for sugar making, but experiments show that soft maples make good sugar too. It isn't worth while to tap trees in winter. The sugar is in them all right because the leaves were storing up the starch all summer. This starch has been changed to sugar in the living cells of the wood. But you couldn't get any of it until the sap begins to run. It does this with the first warm, sunny days of February.

After locating all the trees you expect to tap, you must make some preparations so that you will not lose any time at the critical moment. I knew one boy who got his bit and brace out the first thing, bored a hole in the tree trunk, and lost about a gallon of sap before he could get a spile and a pail ready to catch it. You want a spile or spout for every pail and a pail for every tree. The patent spouts have a hook upon which the bucket hangs. If you use sumach spiles you may have to set the bucket on the ground where it is likely to get dirt in it, tip over, and it is so far from the spile that the wind blows the sap away from the pail entirely. The pails should be generous in size unless you expect to collect the sap more than once a day. An average yield per day is five quarts per hole. The pails and spiles should be in readiness before "sugar weather" begins. Beside the pails and spouts you need a wooden mallet, and a bit and brace or small auger for the outdoor work; a kettle for boiling down, a large jar to put the fresh sap in, and a dipper to dip it out, a strainer and a skimmer for the indoor work. If you boil your sap outdoors using cheap fuel you will make more out of your enterprise than if you use coal or gas. A good sap-running day is a warm, sunny day after a frosty night. While the days and nights are about the same temperature the sap does not run much.

The best place to tap a tree is about four feet from the ground, and fortunately that is the easiest place to work with the auger or bit. The bit should be bright and sharp; a dull, rusty bit makes a shabby hole in the wood with a lot of woody shreds which clog the flow of sap. Clean out the hole, as any chips left in stop the flow in the same way. The bit or auger used should be about one half inch in diameter. A bigger hole might give more sap but would injure the tree more. The tree fills up the smaller hole in a few years with new tissue. The hole should not be deeper than three inches. It is a mistake to think that the centre of the tree holds the sap. As a matter of fact there is less there than anywhere else and more as you near the surface. The living, active part of the tree is just under the bark. It is necessary to say this over and over again so that people will get it into their minds. The Indians used to tap the trees on the south side because they said more sap came from that side. Experiments show that on warm, sunny days, this is the case. On cloudy days, however, sap comes about equally from holes on all sides. If the trees have been tapped before, it is best to tap at some distance from the old places. The size of the auger and spile should be the same and the latter should be forced in tightly, and not fall out when the pail is full.

Pure sap makes the clearest sirup and the lightest-coloured sugar. Every bit of dust, leaves, twigs, or bark that gets into the pail leaves its mark on the sugar even though strained out. So covers on the pails are preferred if one can afford them. Most of the sap runs between nine o'clock in the morning and noon. It has been found by tests that this morning sap has more sugar in it than that which runs later in the day. It is the custom in some places to throw away the ice if the sap freezes. This is very wasteful, for this ice contains about thirty per cent. of the sugar. Of course, melting ice is expensive business so one must try not to let his sap freeze. The sap in the storage jar or tank must not be allowed to get warm, though, as it may sour. It should be boiled as soon after gathering as possible to ensure best results.

Maple sap contains other ingredients beside water and sugar. In boiling, the water passes off in steam and the sugar and other solids remain. The changes in colour from clear sap to dark brown sugar is caused by the action of the heat upon the sugar and other substances. All sugar makers know that the lightest coloured sirup and sugar can be made from the earliest run of sap. That is because, as the season advances, more of the lime, potash, magnesia, and other substances are present in the sap. You see the tree does not stop work just because you tap it; and the sap is changing every day until, by the time the buds begin to open, the sap is so changed that it does not make good sugar at all.

Water boils when it reaches two hundred and twelve degrees, Fahrenheit, as any thermometer will tell you. In fact, you cannot heat water hotter than two hundred and twelve degrees, for at that temperature the water becomes steam. A mixture of sugar and water will not boil at two hundred and twelve degrees but requires a higher temperature. Therefore, as the water passes off the sap in boiling, and as the amount of sugar per gallon increases, it gets hotter and hotter. It is necessary to watch boiling sap carefully to avoid burning. In making sirup it is important to have it just thick enough to taste right and not so thick that it will granulate. Sirup that weighs eleven pounds to the gallon has long been considered as "just right," and it has been found by testing that if you take the sirup off the fire just as soon as the thermometer registers two hundred and nineteen degrees it will weigh eleven pounds to the gallon and will not granulate. If you take it off when the thermometer says two hundred and sixteen degrees your sirup will be a pretty fair article, but you cannot expect to get as good a price for it, because it has more water in it than there should be in a prime article.

When the sirup has boiled down to nearly two hundred and nineteen degrees, it is necessary to pour it off or strain it through thick cloths to take out the dark-coloured impurities. After this the sirup is heated again to boiling point and sealed in jars or cans.

A gallon of sirup will make between eight and ten pounds of sugar. Can you afford to make your sirup into sugar at this rate? It will depend upon the relative price of sugar and sirup, the cost of your fuel and the value of your time and whether your market wants sugar or sirup. There is a good and increasing demand for pure maple products, especially in the form of confectionery. If you can work up a market for fancy maple sugar in the form of bonbons it will bring a fancy price. This is not so hard as it sounds but it takes enterprise and gumption and perseverance and knack. Here is a job where brothers and sisters can work together to very great advantage and add to their store of college money by discovering and harvesting a crop right at home which in many cases has been neglected for decades. If you have city cousins they will help you sell your products among their mates. It will pay you to prepare small sample parcels, enough to whet the appetite but not enough to satisfy. I remember receiving a number of packages of maple cream from a Vermont friend. The price per pound was equal to that of the finest candy and I wanted to share with all my friends. But I couldn't afford to give away pound packages to everybody. I might have created a large demand for this delicious confectionery, had I been able to get sample packages to give to friends. This year I am to have them.

It adds wonderfully to the attractiveness of maple sugar to have each cake or bonbon wrapped in its own piece of waxed paper. This is a kind of guarantee of dainty handling that is appreciated by the purchaser. A shoe box is hardly a dainty parcel, yet I know of one unimaginative maple sugar man who packs his cakes in just such boxes. There is a chance for some one to "make a hit" in this line.

WILD RICE

Wild rice sells for two or three times the price of ordinary rice and the supply never meets the demand.

"But who wants it and what for?"

Wild rice is not likely to become a popular breakfast food except among the Ojibways, yet a lot of time and effort have been spent on trying to find out how to grow crops of it. The reason for this is that nothing fattens wild ducks, geese, and other game birds quite so satisfactorily. Where the wild rice flourishes there is the hunter's paradise in September. This is reason enough for wanting to grow wild rice. When our true American sportsmen awoke to the fact that game was scarce and realized why, they set about protecting the wild fowl and studying their habits so as to better supply ideal conditions for the remnant to increase. This is conservation and boys that help in such enterprises are truly patriotic citizens.

Wild rice grows in swamps, shallow lakes, and sluggish rivers covering immense areas in the Mississippi Valley and the middle North-western states. Mud is a necessity to its growth. It grows taller than a man's height above the water and its seed comes in a loose spray at the very top of each stalk. The plants die every year and new ones come up from seed. The grain begins to ripen early in September and keeps on until heavy frosts. This is all right for ducks but it makes harvesting a very difficult task. The Indian women of the wild rice regions go out and shake the heads over their boats. They have to go again and again. If they left it till all the grain had ripened they would get very little seed, because the wild rice falls as soon as it is ripe and lies in the mud till spring. The long-hid secret of the many failures to get wild rice to grow from seed was discovered by some scientist to be this habit of lying in the mud over winter. Thoroughly dried seed does not germinate.

Wild rice is queer looking stuff. The grains are black and very long and slender. Some of them are an inch long. It is said by some to be very good eating, especially as prepared by the Indians. They parch it usually, but sometimes it is made into a sort of porridge and eaten with maple sugar.

Practically, the best market for wild rice will always be amongst the wild fowl and it is a sportsman-like act to gather the seed and propagate it for their sake.

GATHERING SPRUCE GUM

If spruce gum were used only in the manufacture of "chewing-gum" we had much better let the crop go unharvested. It serves a useful purpose in the tree which produces it. When you have a cut or bruise you like to put something on it that excludes the air. The tree acts on the same principle. The live part of the tree is just underneath the bark. Trees are liable to many kinds of injuries. The winter winds strain them sometimes to the point of splitting, a heedless woodsman blazes the bark in passing, wild creatures gnaw or scratch the trunks, a woodpecker digs a hole through the bark. Any injury of the living layer is like a "hurry call" to the cells where the resin is stored. These cells are the health department. They send out to the injured part a covering of balm, a salve which seals the wound effectually from contact with the air. We cannot say that the tree knows that the air is full of the germs of decay and that to let them get a foothold means decay and sure death; but the tree has something that serves the same purpose as knowledge.

Physicians make use of the resinous gums in preparing medicines, and druggists always try to keep a stock of spruce gum on hand. Collectors find their best market for it in the drug trade. The best quality brings as high as one dollar and fifty cents a pound, while one dollar a pound is not too much to expect for the average collection.

All the spruces yield gum, but the best quality is said to come from the white spruce. The first thing to do then is to learn to recognize this tree on sight. It will take you and a tree book together about five minutes to distinguish between the three short-leaved evergreens which look so much alike to a novice, the firs, the hemlocks, and the spruces. When once you know the spruces by the looks or the feel, you will begin to know the white from the red and black spruce by the colour. Everything about the white spruce is paler than the others. The foliage is light, almost pea-green, and the bark is not ruddy but grayish-brown. There are thousands of acres of spruce woods in our northern Central and New England states. Boys and girls on camping trips can sometimes collect spruce gum enough to pay expenses and have fun doing it. The only equipment necessary is a heavy pocket knife, a gum spud, a canvas sack, a strong hand, and a pair of sharp eyes. The eyes will get sharper as the knife gets dull and the tree you found nothing on in the morning of your first day may yield a good harvest on the return trip. You will not be able to buy a gum spud, but a tinsmith can make one for you at small cost, according to these directions: Solder a piece of galvanized iron into a funnel six inches deep, three inches across the top, and one inch in diameter at the bottom. A ferrule two or three inches deep and an inch in diameter is fitted into the bottom of the funnel and soldered in tight. Fit a long handle into this affair and your spud is ready. You may count on a good majority of the gum you find being out of reach of the knife but the spud gets it down very successfully.

The best place to find spruce gum is undoubtedly in woods where no one has been "gummin'" before, at least not for five years or so. The most plentiful supply is said to be on slopes where the trees have a southern exposure, and the smaller trees yield more gum than the big ones. Your work is not done with collecting, for in order to get the best price you must present a fancy grade to the market. If your gum is all thrown in together, good, bad, and indifferent, your average price is pretty sure to be less than for a carefully cleaned and sorted lot.

Spruce gum can be collected in summer or winter. Which time is better for you depends on circumstances. There is a peculiar charm about gum hunting on snow-shoes. A young man suffering from too little fresh air and attendant ills might find his health among the spruce trees while the gum paid the bills.

MUSHROOMS

"Are you sure these are good mushrooms?" I asked my seven-year-old daughter.

"Yes. I'm sure. Don't you know Aunt J-- says that all the Coprin? are edible?"

This is a true story and it only goes to show that even a small child can learn that there are a small number of unmistakable mushrooms, which are edible and there is never any danger of being wrong about them. The puff-balls, for example, are all good to eat. When we found the neighbour's children kicking great white spongy puff-balls in the pasture we begged them to let us have them instead. "Pap says they're p'ison" was their reply, but we heeded them not for their "pap" was no oracle of ours. We were quite willing the children should go on thinking puff-balls were poison, if only they would not use them for foot-balls. Nobody in his senses would try to eat puff-balls after they have begun to turn black or brown. But when they are white and tender they are very good. Skin the ball, slice thin, add water and a little salt, and stew for twenty minutes or so. Drain and dress with cream sauce. No doubt puff-ball slices broiled over a camp fire with bacon would be good. I wish I had tried it, but I never have. We will agree that no puff-ball can compare with the pink-gilled meadow mushroom, but we make no such claims for it.

The best place to look for puff-balls is in old pastures in late summer and early fall. The giants are sometimes as big as a milk pail. The pear-shaped ones grow on tree stumps and are as big as your fist or smaller. There is an endless variety of tiny ones of all sorts which are either too tough or too small to bother with. But no puff-ball is "p'ison," not one.

Boys and girls who like to harvest nature's crops are missing a lot of fun besides many pecks of delicious food by neglecting the common edible mushrooms. If you know a few good ones you are perfectly safe. When you have seen them a few times and gathered them a few times and compared them with photographs you are ready to eat them. I should advise always to go mushroom hunting first with some experienced person. Personally I take no risks. For instance if my book tells me that "dangerous fungi resembling this species and sometimes found in company with it-etc.," that's enough. Say no more. I let that one alone. I do not like the company it keeps, and it may be a sheep in wolf's clothing. In my list of edible fungi, common in New York and New Jersey, there are less than a dozen kinds. No one of these looks enough like any other fungus to be mistaken for it. A few good looks at them will fix them in the memory. These are morels, meadow mushrooms, shaggy-manes, inky-caps, oyster mushroom, puff-balls, coral fungi, and chanterelles. The open season for morels is in early spring, when arbutus is blossoming, and later. Coral fungi and chanterelles are at their finest in midsummer, puff-balls in September, inky-caps and shaggy-manes in October, and we ate oyster mushrooms on January first one year, though they appear earlier. The meadow mushroom with white flesh and pink gills is grown indoors and is seen in the market from fall till spring, but nature's crop must be harvested in fall before frost.

Morels.-Morels look like nothing else. When full sized they are six inches high. The hollow stalk is as large as your finger and about half the length of the whole. The top or cap is brownish and so covered with ridges and wrinkles that it would never be mistaken for anything else in the world. You ought to see a picture of it because it is difficult to describe so irregular an object. Look it up in some mushroom book or bulletin in your library.

You never know just where morels may appear. We found them in our garden once. They come up right among the weeds or dead leaves. I have often found them along forest by-paths, especially in wet weather in spring. They are delectable. Perhaps you have eaten delicately broiled slices of tenderloin of young pig. Morels do not taste like this-they look a little like it-they taste very much better. You taste them.

Coral Fungi.-The coral fungi that I eat look like chunks of pinkish or cream white organ pipe coral. They are fleshy, soft, yet firm enough to keep their shape, and the whole mass is made up of tiny thread-or rod-like parts of many branches. There is a fine one which looks like a cauliflower though more yellow. I have found the pink and creamy ones on fallen and decayed tree trunks in deep, cool woods in midsummer. Others equally good grow in thin woods or open places. They vary in size from chunks as big as a walnut to those as big or bigger than your fist. They need careful cleansing under a faucet. Some cooks soak them first in cold water into which they put a little vinegar or lemon juice. They then fry in butter. Another way is to stew till tender in water with lemon juice in it. Then drain and dress with cream sauce.

Puff-balls.-What country child has not puffed the "smoke" from the hole in the top of the tough-skinned little brown balls they find in the fields in autumn? Children generally believe them to be deadly poison and call them "devil's snuff-boxes." Their life history is very like that of other fungi. The most of the year these flowerless and leafless plants spend underground. They spread in a tangle of fine threads all through the soil wherever they find decaying vegetable matter upon which to feed. When their time comes, little white balls push out and up from the threads. These come to the surface and we know them by their shapes and sizes as our different kinds of puff-balls, mushrooms, or other fungi.

The puff-balls are white and look like fine cream cheese when they first appear. Their business is to ripen their spores, scatter them, and disappear. The brown smoke or dust of the ripe puff-ball is blown about by the wind and finds its way into the earth in time; each tiny spore or grain of dust can start a new mat of threads down underground. When you puff the devil's snuff-box you are doing the plant just the kindness it was waiting for. When a cow steps on a ripe giant puff-ball a great smoke goes up, and the breeze catches the dust. Some of the spores may be carried on the wind or on the cow's foot to far distant pastures, there to settle down and start a new puff-ball colony. It is just so with all the fungi.

All the puff-balls are edible but one of the most eatable is the giant, which is found in August or September in pastures or other grassy places. When right to eat it is grayish on the outside and pure white clear through. In size this giant varies from six or eight inches through to two feet. Specimens of ten pounds' weight are not rare, and there is record of some twice that size. When yellow or brown inside, the giant is past eating.

The pear-shaped puff-ball is the commonest one. This is a sort of dirty brown colour outside, pure white inside. It is found on old wood or on the ground as early as July and as late as October. In size the balls vary from thimble size to that of a big pear. They grow in companies, sometimes scores together.

The brain puff-ball is larger than the pear-shaped. The top is wrinkled or corrugated, and grayish or reddish in colour.

Chanterelles.-Chanterelles are found in late summer in the woods amongst moss where it is damp and cool. They are red or yellow and look as if you had put your thumb in the middle of the top and pushed it down so that the network of gills appear on the outside. The name means a little goblet, and the perfect ones are goblet-shaped. If you go camping in the woods in summer you are almost sure to find chanterelles.

Meadow Mushrooms.-The wild meadow mushroom usually appears in large numbers after the autumn rains have renewed the pastures. They frequently come up alongside of an old dried patch of cow manure. To make myself familiar with this pink-gilled variety I visited a large market where they had them for sale in all stages, from the little round buttons to the big flat broilers which are turning brown. They are just right when the cap has spread so as to burst the delicate white veil which covers the gills. The flesh is white and the gills a delicate pink. The skin peels off easily like that of a ripe peach. Look them over with great care when preparing for the table. The early worm which is on hand to get a first bite of everything sometimes honeycombs the whole plant. The stems of young ones are tender at the top.

Inky Caps.-You never expect to gather your dinner from an ash heap? Neither did I; but in the edge of the woods nearest us the public used to be allowed to dump ashes. It is now overgrown with golden-rod, iron weed and various other coarse plants. A path leads through it. Last fall we discovered that the place was fairly swarming with Coprinus comatus, the shaggy mane mushroom. This does not look like anything else on land or sea and is delicious. Its relative, the inky cap is just as good to eat, but not so handsome. Both melt away into black ink as they grow old. They should be cooked as soon as possible after gathering. We kept some over night once. Such a sight! They looked like black corn smut.

The Coprin? push up in such tight clumps sometimes that their heads are all out of shape. They rise literally over night. Sometimes one comes up singly and grows tall and perfect, a truly lovely object, pure white, six inches tall, its shaggy head held high, its silver-white gills delicate as tissue paper. A few hours later you will see a ragged bit of pulp rapidly dissolving in a pool of black ink.

Oyster Mushrooms.-The oyster mushroom comes out like the shelf fungi on decaying tree stumps or logs. They are ashy colour or dull white, solid and rather tough, and vary in breadth from two to five inches. As to why they are called oyster mushrooms, opinions differ. The flavour is not oyster-like, though the flesh is about as tough as a boiled oyster. The shape does suggest an oyster shell; perhaps that is the best reason for the name. One edible relative of the oyster mushroom grows usually on decaying elm stumps as late in the year as November.

The first thing to do if you get interested in mushrooms is to get some good illustrated book on them. The chances are that your State Experiment Station has issued a bulletin on the subject. If not you can get those published by the United States Department of Agriculture or perhaps those issued by some neighbouring state. What you want is information on wild fungi, especially the edible ones, not directions about growing the market varieties. When you write for bulletins state just what you are looking for. Pictures, especially photographs, are of the greatest use in identifying specimens. Compare the descriptions and pictures with your mushrooms and do not use them if there is any question in your mind as to what they are. The books mentioned in the appendix of this book have been of help to me.

CONSERVING NATURE'S CROPS

The harvesting of nature's crops is a most fascinating occupation. As boys and girls we do not ask why; we only know what fun it is. If the time ever comes when you wish to forget that you are grown up, nothing will help you like going into the woods, the fields, or the hedge-rows to help the birds and the little fur-coated animals harvest the crops of nuts or berries or other fruit that grow in nature's orchards. With your sack of nuts or plums on your arm, or your pail full of berries, you can easily forget that you live in a flat or work in an office or a factory.

Some people think when they see how much over-ripe fruit is falling to the ground, and how much more there is than can ever be gathered by human hands, that nature is wasteful. Perhaps this is why these same people and others who did not think at all, have been so very wasteful of our country's natural resources, and brought about such a really alarming state of things in our forests. Those who do stop to think will see that although she is lavish, nature is never wasteful. The berries must decay in order that the seeds may germinate, and in moulding they nourish the fungi which are just as important in nature's eyes, so to speak, as the berries are. Nothing is wasted in nature. On the contrary, everything is saved and is made over into some other form. Nothing stands still; transformation goes on continuously. What was soil yesterday is fruit to-day and is built into our muscles and nerves and brains to-morrow.

Every boy or girl that helps to harvest nature's crops can do a little to assist in our great national work of preserving the country's natural resources. Would you ruin a fine young tree just beginning a life of usefulness? By mutilating it past recognition, you may add a few nuts to your this year's store. But what an injustice you are doing to the next generation of boys and girls. You are robbing them. I have heard men say: "When I was a boy we used to bring home arbutus by the wagon load from Coy Glen. But it's hard to find any there now. It must have winter-killed or blighted." My tongue burned to tell them that they themselves were the blight that winter-killed the arbutus and robbed me of my right to gather a few sprays. They had torn it up by the roots in their greed to fill their wagons, and then they cut out all the trees, and the sunlight destroyed all the shade-loving things.

Boys and girls of a more enlightened generation know better ways and will not leave behind them a record of selfishness.

THE STORY OF THE CREATION OF A NEW INDUSTRY

I am glad to tell the methods by which I have developed a good business in collecting and growing California bulbs, as I believe my success can be duplicated in other parts of the country-in fact, one man already makes a good living by exploiting the wild flowers of the Rocky Mountains, several people are exporting the cacti of our desert, and there are several nurseries in the southern Appalachians for the interesting plants of North Carolina.

In 1870, when I was nine years old, my family moved to Ukiah Valley in north-western California, and there I have lived ever since. My early home was a farm, and my first work to raise hops and a mortgage. My education was such as the district school and an abundance of good reading could give me. At eighteen I began to teach school. I was always a lover of nature and fond of wandering about the hills. In Mendocino County in 1870 the country was just emerging from the cowboy era, and little attention was paid to vegetable gardening, while flower gardens were all but unknown.

HOW THE LIFE WORK WAS DETERMINED

There was one notable exception to the indifference to flowers. Alexander MacNab, a Scotchman who had been forced by declining health to leave Glasgow, had found new vigour in California's mountains. The property which he had purchased for a stock range is one of the most picturesque in northern California, and there he built a modest but ideal home. He sent everywhere for flowers, and I know of no place in these later days where more flowers are well grown. He gave to his flowers not only money, but love and himself, and few gardeners were more successful. I often visited there in my boyhood days and the inspiration that I received from this place and from another source determined my life work.

I had a sister a few years older than myself who had been in the East for some years and whose failing health forced her to return to California. She was a flower-lover and soon called upon me to begin a garden on the bare hill where our very plain home stood. It was a work of love, for all of the new soil was carried in buckets, and the water which our hot climate made necessary was carried from a well, but it was a great success. My Scotch friend was most liberal with both plants and instruction, and between the two my bent was well fixed.

THE BEGINNING OF THE INDUSTRY

It was through Mr. MacNab that I got started in the collection of native plants. Woolson and Company, then of Passaic, N. J., were the first American firm to take up the culture of our native American plants as a specialty. They wrote to Mr. MacNab, asking him to secure the native plants and offering to pay for them in eastern grown plants. My love for flowers had interested me in botany, and it was quite natural that the letter should be turned over to me. In my first letter to Woolson I sent a pressed flower of Colochortus pulchellus and received in return an order for one hundred bulbs, which they said they would pay for in cash. This order was filled and it was the beginning of my bulb business.

My first idea was to earn money to buy plants with, but before long I saw that a small business might be built up.

My progress as a collector went hand in hand with my education in botany. My method was this: First to find something of sufficient beauty to make it probable that it would be wanted; next, to find its name, and then to offer it to some one of the very few firms then interested in such things.

Such was the first stage in the development of a new industry, but the latter was no less important, for it involved knowing the plant at every stage of its growth, finding when it could best be handled, and how best packed for shipment. Almost from the beginning I tried to grow the native plants, and botanical study, collection, and cultivation have gone hand in hand since.

METHODS OF COLLECTING

Every year I took longer trips. I went alone, with the lightest of camping outfits, slept on the ground, and penetrated the wildest regions, learning where the desirable flowers grew, and collecting those in demand, at the same time studying the general flora. When I had learned the flora of a region, I tried to train some resident as a permanent collector, for not all of these long trips could be made every year. My horizon fast widened, and through friends, by letters to others, and often by the migration of men whom I had trained, new fields were opened, and later I had men who had been trained under me to send to distant points.

Before I began to collect, others had been in the field, but they were principally wandering botanists who seldom collected over the same ground for two years in sequence. Their collections were of stuff of all grades, often made at the wrong season, and there was no demand except from a few special lists. At first I shared their faults, but after a few years I saw the necessity of making a reputation for reliability, for thoroughly learning the art of packing, and for such grading as would insure uniform quality.

ESTABLISHING A NURSERY BUSINESS

As time went on, collection became less important and culture the central feature of my work.

My first garden was at the farm home; later I spent much time and money in experiments in a reclaimed lake bed near Ukiah, still later at my Ukiah home, and since 1897 in the mountains about eight miles east of Ukiah. Each experiment had its value. No one had grown Californian bulbs in California, and everything had to be learned experimentally. I now have two nurseries. One of them is at Lyons Valley, a lovely spot in the highest part of that branch of the Coast Range which I found six years ago was specially adapted to lily culture. About three quarters of a mile away, at "The Terraces," nature has provided endless variations of soil, climate, moisture, sun, and shade. Here I grow a great variety of bulbs.

In 1886 I sold about seven thousand plants of all sorts; in 1888, two hundred and fifty thousand, and the difference was on business principles.

Carl Purdy

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