THE PRODUCTS OF THE HIVE

Besides honey, bees make use of wax to construct combs, bee-bread for larvæ food, and propolis for glue. If you think the bees gather honey from the flowers you are greatly mistaken. Nobody knows yet quite how honey is made. Chemists say that it has in it water, grape sugar, a little formic acid, some mineral matter, albuminoids, and essential oils. But this list leaves us little the wiser. No chemist has been able to combine these materials into honey. The nectar gathered by bees passes directly into a receptacle, the honey-sack or honey-stomach, which is used for that purpose only. It does not go the same road as the bee's food. The notion that bees swallow the nectar and then unswallow it is as erroneous as it is unappetizing. The flavour, body, and colour of honey depend on the source of the nectar, the age, the amount of chemical change wrought by the bees, and the completeness of the ripening process which goes on in the hive before the cells are capped. Honey is a very wholesome sweet, far more easily digested than cane or grape sugar.

If the making of honey is mysterious, what can we say of wax production? In the height of the honey season we can watch the bees making wax through a glass-sided hive. Mrs. Comstock says: "A certain number of self-elected citizens gorge themselves with honey and hang up in chains or curtains, each bee clinging by her front feet to the hind feet of the one above her, like Japanese acrobats; and there they remain sometimes for two days until the wax scales appear pushed out from every pocket." Sometimes a honey-and pollen-laden bee will come home from pasture with flakes of wax exuding from the wax plates on her abdomen. But this happens only when wax is needed for comb making. At other times no amount of honey gorging will produce a scrap of wax. Does this not hint at mystery and something higher than mere intelligence?

You would think in such a perfectly organized community there would be something like specialization. Such appears not to be the case. All the workers seem to do all the different kinds of things. Let us say a bee goes out and gets a load of honey the first thing in the morning. When she comes in she goes to the comb to deposit her honey, then to the brood cells where she combs the pollen off her legs into a cell where it is stored to feed the young bees later. Perhaps she sees in passing some cells which need capping, does that, then away to gorge herself with honey and make wax, then builds her own or her neighbour's wax onto the comb. If the day is hot it may occur to her and a thousand others to construct a living fan and keep the air stirring inside the hive by waving their wings. In a system like this there is no resting, no play, no shirking, no specializing. There is always work to do and always somebody doing it with a will in the perfect socialism.

Many boys and girls of these days are fortunate in having had at school an observation hive. No bee-keeper will be long without one if he has any curiosity about what is going on in the dark hive, or if he is ambitious to solve some of the mysteries. An ordinary hive can be made into a good observation hive by putting a pane of glass in the sides and top. There should be hinged doors to fit tightly over the glass. A two-frame hive devised by Prof. V. L. Kellogg has both sides of glass so that the whole domestic economy of the bee family can readily be observed.

DISEASES AND ENEMIES

You will not be in the bee business long before you learn that bees have diseases and enemies. In fact, it is better to face that fact at the beginning and learn how to recognize and combat the troubles. Carelessness along this line is inexcusable and will surely cause failure. Several states have official inspectors whose business it is to know bee diseases and methods of controlling them. He is required to inspect apiaries where diseases are suspected, and the best thing to do is to interest him in your work and get all the help from him you can. An ounce of prevention will save a pound of cure, every time.

If there is a Bee-Keepers' Association in your county, by all means join it and help make it a live, active organization. The United States Department of Agriculture can give you much needed information as to who the men are in your locality who are officers in the associations and official inspectors.

MARKETING HONEY

The best honey market is the home market as I have said. You may have to work up a demand in your neighbourhood and there are many ways to do this which ingenious boys and girls will devise. Most of us, if we can afford to use honey at all, know it only as a "spread" for hot biscuits or griddle cakes. But not every one knows that honey is a very much more wholesome sweet than cane sugar. Many people cannot eat sugar at all, but find honey does not cause indigestion. If you could persuade your neighbours to buy your honey for their children instead of candy, "all-day-suckers" coloured with cheap dyes, and sirups made of nobody knows what, you would be doing something worth while.

Honey is used in cooking too, in many ways. Get your mother or sister interested in trying some receipts in which honey takes the place of sugar. If you make a success of this you can get other people to making honey cakes, thus creating a demand for your product.

One enterprising chap made a great success by first going from house to house and giving away samples of his honey. He also left a self-addressed postal card with prices and order blank printed on one side, and nine out of ten of the people he called on sent orders. It seemed a pity to waste a good postal card and everybody likes to help a bright boy along; and beside they wanted the honey! It might be well to have a little pamphlet telling about your honey and of the many uses it may be put to, with a receipt for honey cake, perhaps. You will get a reputation, if you try, for pure products, neat packages and courteous dealings. As your output increases from year to year your market will grow, until you, like the boy we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, have a business worth at least a thousand dollars.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH HONEY BEES

It was just by chance that I ever got started in keeping bees. There were several boys about my size in the neighbourhood at my home and we used to go swimming and play ball together. One fine spring day a few of us were walking down the road toward the swimming pool when we found a swarm of bees on a fence post. One of the fellows knew how to hive the swarm, so we got a box from the store and watched while he got the bees into it. It was the first time that I had seen a swarm hived and the performance proved very interesting to me.

I bought that swarm in the old box for seventy-five cents, very well satisfied with the bargain, for of course the box would be full of honey in a short time!

The colony was placed upon a bench in the front yard. One night the old bull got out and upset the bench. The bees were ready to sting anything next day. I bundled up until I was sting proof and then got them straightened up. The combs were broken which gave the bees a setback from which they did not recover. I did not get any honey from them and they died out in the winter.

An old bee-keeper who lived near us gave me two swarms the next spring. One of them left the hive and flew to the woods and the other was weak and died. It began to seem as though bees were hard to keep. I got a book called "A B C of Bee Culture," and read it. I soon learned that bees should be kept in movable frame hives so they could be easily handled.

I had no bees now, but, although we were laughed at, my father and I entered into a partnership. He furnished the hives and implements and I furnished the bees and labour. We were to divide profits equally. We bought two hives, a smoker, and a bee veil. I caught one swarm in the woods and bought another. They were both late swarms and died in the winter.

Success was still far off and things did not look very bright, but I had learned how not to do lots of things. The two hives we had were not the best, so we sold them and bought five of a different kind for the next spring. The outlay was large and no profits, but I was determined to succeed.

In the spring I caught a swarm early in the season and it made a few pounds of surplus honey which we used at home. During the latter part of August my chum and I were out squirrel hunting and he found a swarm that had built combs on the limb of a large tree. We got it into a hive and I bought his share of the swarm. This colony needed feeding, so I fed it on sugar and water. Both colonies lived through the winter and made a strong start in the spring. Each gave a swarm and I caught both.

The book and the old bee-keeper taught me that Italian bees were better than the wild bees, so I invested in two Italian queens which I got by mail from a queen breeder. I killed the old queens in two of the colonies and introduced the new ones. They did some good work that summer and lived through the winter. The next spring I had two colonies of black or wild bees and two of Italians. The blacks together made about twenty pounds of surplus honey, while the two Italians made nearly two hundred pounds. This showed me that there was a great difference in bees. Each colony swarmed once, making eight in all.

We had now made a success and the business was on a good footing even after four years of failure. That last honey crop was worth about thirty dollars, and the bees and hives were worth about forty-five dollars. We were encouraged.

That fall I was sixteen years old and had decided to go to college. The president of the agricultural college in this state offered me a chance to work my way through college by taking charge of the bees on the college farm. I gladly accepted it and sold my bees at home.

Life at college was very different from home life, but the bees always furnished a source of pleasure and recreation during my spare moments on week days and on Saturdays. In the summer months I either worked with the government bee-men or for the college.

The bees have not only given me lots of pleasure, but they have made it possible for me to pay my entire tuition and expenses for five years at college. Besides studying and attending to my bees, I have had time for much other fun, and this year I made the 'varsity football team and played in every game.

Some people think that the honey is not worth the stings, but my advice is to get a colony and try your hand.

Sydney S. Stabbler

HOW I EARNED TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS

I had helped with the bees more or less all my life, so that I already knew how to handle them when my high school course was broken into by illness and I had an enforced vacation of one year and a half. I was able at this time to devote to the bees one full season, that is, from April through July.

My father allowed me the use of bees, hives, combs, etc., for queen rearing. The queens I sold for seventy-five cents and one dollar each, according to the grade. To my father I furnished one hundred queens at the reduced price of fifty cents each as rent for the bees, hives, etc. I had about ninety nuclei of two frames each. During the swarming season I used a good many natural cells from the better colonies. Later I used artificial, dipped cells which I made myself. In the latter case I took larvæ from the very best queens in the apiary and placed the cells in queenless colonies to be developed, or sometimes in colonies which were superseding their queens. When the cells were nearly ready to hatch they were placed in the nuclei where the young queens remained until they commenced laying, when they were ready for sale.

Altogether I made a little over one hundred dollars that season. I was then eighteen years old and determined to go to college. Two years later I began my studies at the University of California, working for my board in a private family and drawing from the one hundred dollars for incidentals. Clothing I had received at home and had made myself for the most part.

The San Francisco earthquake occurred on the eighteenth of April, in the spring of my freshman year, and college was closed immediately, so that I was able to enter again into the queen rearing business. That season I sent out advertising cards to the members of the California Bee-Keepers' Association and sold nearly all my queens to them. The financial result was nearly the same as for the former season.

So in all I made about two hundred dollars, which paid for the incidentals during three years of my college career which is as far as I have gone. By "incidentals" I mean books, paper, and such necessities, also subscriptions to the college daily paper, class and association dues, tickets to college jinks, theatricals, games, etc. I also spent a good deal for tickets to concerts, plays, etc., as that was my first opportunity to hear the great musicians and actors and I considered that a part of my education.

Flora McIntyre

PROFITS OF BEE-KEEPING

I have been asked to tell something of my early experiences as a bee-keeper, for boys and girls who may become interested in this very fascinating, and, I may say at the same time, profitable, pursuit.

I think it may be said of bee-keeping as sailors say of seafaring—once a bee-keeper always a bee-keeper.

I should like to tell you in a few words what can be expected from a dozen and a half hives of bees with an average of one and one half days a week spent in the apiary. I believe really, though, that when I began keeping bees it was not because I expected to make much money. The whole story of the bee life, as read from different books which I secured after becoming interested, was so wonderful and fascinating that I could hardly wait until spring so that I might study the two hives acquired through the winter. That first spring and summer there were only those old box hives, which could not be opened for inside study, and all observations had to be confined to watching the bees from the outside. The next summer some modern hives that could be taken apart and every nook and corner laid open to observation were bought. In the fall I was very fortunate in securing eighteen colonies of bees at an auction sale, paying therefor only fifty cents a colony, much to my satisfaction and my neighbours' amusement. Most of the hives were frame, but of an undesirable sort of frame. The next summer these colonies were transferred to up-to-date hives. That summer, and for the next succeeding six summers, these colonies did not fail to yield on an average about seventy dollars' worth of honey and wax. Counting out winter losses the number of colonies per year would average twelve, the number of pounds of honey about three hundred and seventy-five, worth twenty cents a pound. The bees received only a small part of my time each day.

Later, when a student at the Ohio State University, as manager of the apiary there, about the same results were obtained, so that an average of about five dollars a hive is a conservative estimate. If one begins in a small way, in a few years he should be able to manage one hundred colonies. But it should be remembered that the yield per hive may decrease somewhat as the number of colonies increases, because of the danger of launching in the business on a large scale. The best insurance against loss is a thorough study and understanding of all the details by the practice of bee-keeping on a small scale for a term of years first.

I may say that the income from the bees aided not a little in helping me through college, and I may say, also, without exaggeration that this interest in bees by one enthusiastic student helped in no small degree toward the inauguration of a course in bee-keeping at our own Ohio State University. To make the story complete I think I should add that the writer of this article is at present engaged as assistant in apiculture, doing experimental work in apiculture in the government apiaries at Washington, D. C.

There is opportunity for those who wish to take up some problem relating to apiculture as a subject of investigation, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations will no doubt in the future give more and more attention to the investigation of problems related to this interesting and profitable pursuit.

Arthur H. McCray

VIII

RAISING SILKWORMS

The best food for silkworms is the leaf of the white mulberry. If you have already a hedge of this or several trees you can begin at once. If not, several years must elapse while you raise your preliminary crop of mulberry trees from seeds or cuttings. It is useless to buy silkworm eggs if you have not the wherewithal to feed your infant caterpillars. You may not think of going into silkworm rearing in a commercial way but only as an interesting bit of nature study. Why not make up some neat attractive cases, each containing a little collection illustrating the four stages of the growth of this insect? Heat a few eggs to destroy life, then glue them to a card; preserve a caterpillar in a vial of alcohol; glue a cocoon to a card; pin and spread two of the moths, a male and a female, and pin them into the box. From such a box school children will get a far more definite idea of insect metamorphosis than they will ever get from a book on zoölogy. Such little collections ought to sell well in schools where nature study, zoölogy, or agriculture is taught.

The mulberry silkworm makes the best silk, although it is by no means the only silk-spinning insect. Every now and then we read of some one who is experimenting with the silk of our American or giant silkworms, the Promethea or the Cecropia, or with the silk spun by spiders. But none as yet compares with Bombyx mori in either quantity or quality of its product or in ease of rearing or in reeling of the silk.

The adult moth lays between three and seven hundred eggs during the first three days after she emerges from her cocoon. In a week or ten days she dies, her work finished. Moths in the wild state are at some pains to deposit their eggs on the favourite food plant of their young, but in the case of Bombyx mori this instinct has been lost in the countless years of domestication. The eggs, when laid, are moist with a sort of glue which secures them to the surface upon which they are deposited. The winter is passed in the egg stage. A cool, dry place is safest for them, where no sudden changes of temperature are possible. A steady temperature of thirty-five degrees is ideal, and they must be enclosed in something that is mouse proof, though not air-tight. A perforated tin box is right for this purpose. Silkworm eggs for study may be obtained from dealers in miscellaneous insects, birds, animals, etc.

As spring approaches you must watch the mulberry leaves and make your preparations. Any room in which temperature and ventilation can be regulated will serve for rearing silkworms. You should have some racks made of lattice work, and shelves, open to the air, on which to place them. I have seen a clothes-horse, with racks resting upon the rungs, used for this. A supply of cheap wrapping paper or newspapers should be on hand to put on the shelves, and some coarse netting, the use of which will be described later. Do not make the mistake of getting too many eggs. An ounce does not seem like very much, but the well-grown worms from an ounce of eggs ought to have at least seventy-five square yards of shelf space. They will require during the first six days only eleven pounds of leaves, six meals a day, but during the eight days just before spinning they will require over half a ton of food. Imagine lugging in two hundred weight of fresh mulberry leaves five times a day to feed these ravenous things so dependent upon you!

Warmth and moisture are required for hatching the eggs. As the spring advances and the mulberry shows signs of putting forth its leaves, the silkworm eggs should be spread thinly on sheets of paper on the shelves in a temperature of about fifty-five degrees Fahr. The temperature should be increased after three or four days and gradually raised to seventy-three degrees Fahr. Sprinkle the floor to make the air moist, but do not wet the eggs. At this temperature hatching will take place after about ten days' time. Watch the eggs. When they begin to whiten you must get to work, as the first worms will soon be out. Take two thicknesses of coarse tulle or bobinet cut the size of the racks. Chop some young, tender mulberry leaves very fine. Scatter a thin layer of these bits over the cloth and lightly lay it over the hatching eggs. No sooner do the young silkworms become aware of the presence of their favourite vegetable than they make their way to it, coming up through the holes of the bobinet as easily as "rolling off a log." They are tiny creatures. Eight of them laid end to end would hardly measure an inch. As hatching usually takes place in the morning, by ten o'clock the worms will all have crawled through the netting to the leaves on the upper layer of the net. This can now be transferred to the rearing shelf. The netting should be kept well stretched, as the worms may be injured if buried down amongst the leaf bits. All through life silkworms must be handled with extreme care. If necessary to lift any individual from one shelf to another it should be done with tenderest touch. Rough treatment is fatal.

For young worms the newly opened leaves are the best. As they grow older their tastes change and the more mature leaves may be given. A quantity of leaves may be gathered at one time and kept fresh. The leaves themselves should never be put into water. Prepare the food by removing the foliage you intend to feed from the stems. Then chop or cut it into fine shreds. Six times a day a small quantity of the prepared leaf should be sprinkled lightly over the netting.

Like other caterpillars, silkworms shed their skins at certain intervals. The six-day period between hatching and the first moult is called "the first age." On the fourth day it is best to change the beds, as the droppings from the worms and the litter of uneaten leaves are not healthy for the moulting caterpillars. Spread fresh leaves on nets and place over the worms in the evening. By morning all will be ready for the clean shelf and doubled space. As the sixth day approaches, the worms lose appetite and cease to move about. Finally the skin whitens, the head seems to grow larger, and each little creature pulls himself out of his old skin and finds himself clad in a new suit. I imagine he must feel very much as a boy does when on the first really warm day in April his mother allows him to shed his winter underwear, get his hair cut short, and wear his summer blouse and knickers.

The young worm, however, does not feel very lively at first. No food should be given for several hours. When signs of waking are evident, food should be given and the worms transferred to clean shelves by means of the nets. On the third day they should be changed to fresh papers. Four meals a day are needed by the caterpillars at this time. The second age is shorter than the first, being only four or five days. The skin now changes in colour from gray to yellowish white. After the second moult their food need not be cut much, but they require a lot of it, as they should double their size during the third age, which lasts six or seven days. If the weather is pretty warm their development is faster. They should never be crowded nor allowed to go hungry. Always change to clean shelves when the dead leaves and excrement become the least offensive. This odour, which you can escape by leaving the room, may be deadly to your pets. They are helpless to escape it, and are entirely at your mercy.

During the fourth age, i. e., after the third moult, give more space and feed small branches with leaves on. Always remove every berry from the mulberry branches or the worms will eat them and be made sick. Their appetites are enormous, their growth rapid. Change the beds four times during this period of nine days.

After the fourth moult the worms pass into the last age. Five or six days of voracious feeding brings them near that most dramatic event in their lives—the cocoon spinning. For three days, now, instead of eating steadily they wander aimlessly about, as if seeking they know not what; they wag their heads; they behave in an altogether restless and uncertain way. Is it some mortal ailment or mere "weakness of intellect?" You are expecting this and have prepared for it beforehand. They will not need to search long for a place to mount and spin in safety and security their cocoon of shining silvery silk. Farmers' Bulletin, No. 165, recommends the use of small, clean, leafless brush tied together into bundles and fastened between the shelves in rows a foot or so apart. Some use a sort of rack or ladder of narrow strips of wood which should be placed upright on the shelf where the worms can easily find it. They spin between the slats. Any worms which seem not to be ready to spin with the others should be fed until they, too, feel the impulse to travel.

As the process of spinning takes some hours, there will be no difficulty in observing it from start to finish. You are entitled to this exhibition, for, without your constant care and feeding, these creatures would not have been able to develop. The dull, inactive silkworm has acquired wonderful agility, and without practice is able to weave himself into his sleeping bag with astonishing celerity, reeling out his twelve hundred or sixteen hundred yards of silk in one continuous thread. There are no knots or kinks in it. It is inaccurate as well as rather silly to refer to the cocoon as a shroud or burial casket, as some do. The creature inside is just as much alive as ever it was.

The cocoons with the live pupæ inside are called green cocoons. To prepare them for market they are usually subjected to heat either in the oven or by steaming. No water should touch the cocoons, neither should the oven be hot enough to brown them. After heating they should be dried in the sun or other heat. Open one when you think they may be dry; if they are, the pupæ inside can be rubbed into powder with the fingers. A good price per pound is paid for dried cocoons, but it takes five hundred or more to weigh a pound.

If you have never seen a moth emerge from its cocoon you should keep several of your cocoons. In eighteen or twenty days the moth comes out, usually in early morning. Invite your friends to have a look, too. Must the moth break the threads in getting out, or is the cocoon woven in a manner to provide a gateway when it shall be needed? How does the creature get out anyway, and what is it like when it first arrives in the open? Wonderful happenings must have been going on inside to make a winged moth out of that naked caterpillar. Something left in the cocoon rattles when you shake it. Examine the dried ball and you will recognize in it the cast-off clothes, hat, coat, socks, and boots that he had on when he shut himself in. There, too, is the brown shell he wore as a pupa. You may think you know these things by reading about them, but you do not, really. Hearsay is not the real thing in any realm of life, least of all in the realm of nature.

IX

MAKING COLLECTIONS

Collecting plants has always been an important feature of practical scientific work. Great sums of money and many years of time have been spent in searching through little-explored countries for new plants. Agents of many governments, representatives of great nursery companies of this and other countries are all the time looking, looking, often at the cost of the greatest hardship, for new plants. Why is this? Not as you will readily conclude, merely to add new specimens to museum collections, nor merely to find and name a new species, though some collectors are in the field for these purely scientific reasons. But our Department of Agriculture is on the lookout for new plants from foreign parts which will be commercially valuable to us. Our enterprising nurserymen are after the same game. At the present time very great interest is being taken in plants from western China, a vast and little-explored region. Strangely enough, the plants from that far away country seem to be peculiarly fitted to thrive here, and while the government and the nurserymen are telling the people about these new plants, the botanists are trying to discover the reasons why Asiatic plants fit our conditions better than the plants of Europe seem to.

The making of collections of plants, then, is a big, important work, and well worth the while of any boy or girl. If you would read stories of exciting adventures, narrow escapes, thrilling encounters amid romantic surroundings, read some of the accounts of scientific explorations. The collectors of plants and insects in the Philippines, Central Asia, little-known islands of the far East, and such "wild nations," must needs be men of valour, and to know any one of them is a liberal education.

Making a collection of plants is probably not the best way to arouse an interest in outdoor life. Indeed it was made such a deadly dull business for me that my early interest was entirely "nipped in the bud" and lay dormant many, many years. Collecting is one of the recognized and useful ways of introducing ourselves to our neighbours of the vegetable kingdom. Living in a plant-infested world as we are elected to do, eating plants, wearing their products, utilizing them in all our arts, buying and selling them daily, unable to get through an hour of the day without being constantly reminded of our entire dependence upon the members of the vegetable kingdom, what is more natural than that we should wish to know them? To know their names is not the end and aim of plant study. The name is a convenient handle for a plant. It enables you to talk about the plant to others without the necessity of a lengthy description. It enables you to read understandingly what other students have said about the plant in books. It is only the beginning, like the introduction to a stranger. To make of a stranger a friend, you must know something of his family, of his relation to the rest of the world, how he lives, gets a living, how he makes use of his faculties, what are his peculiarities, his habits, his environment, in fact all about him. In discovering the name of a plant by use of a botanical key you learn a few but not all of these things.

As with some people so with some plants, the more you know of them the less you think of them; the less you wish to have to do with them. Take poison ivy for an example. Knowing its characteristics you pass it by without touching it. You observe it from afar off, so as to be able to warn others of its whereabouts. On the other hand, if you had only known well the giant puff-ball you so wantonly crushed under your heel, you might have enjoyed a delicious supper of creamed mushrooms.

Making a collection of plants is an extremely simple job. The materials needed are not expensive nor hard to get. Here is a list of what is required for a beginner's collection:

(1) A dozen or so newspapers.

(2) Driers, two or three dozen, 12 × 18 inches.

(3) Two boards, 12 × 18 inches.

(4) A stone of twenty to thirty pounds weight.

(5) Mounting paper.

(6) Genus covers.

Cut the newspapers into half sheets. Each specimen is to be placed in a folded piece of this. The driers may be cheap blotting paper or pieces of carpet felt, cut to the desired size.

Arrange a specimen just as it was taken from the ground, inside of one of the half pages of newspaper. While it is not desirable to put too much time on the arrangement of each specimen, it is as well to place it in a natural position and in such a way that the leaves will not lie all over each other and the flowers be crowded so that the appearance will be awkward. But do not overdo this: if a flower droops naturally, do not make it stick upright. With one of the boards as a foundation build your pile of pressing plants up as follows: Lay on two or more driers, then a folded newspaper holding a specimen, then a drier or two. (If the specimen is a juicy thing, several blotters are needed between it and the next one.) Now another specimen, a drier, a specimen, etc., until you are through with the day's collecting, or until the pile begins to topple. Finish with a drier, then put on the other board, and weight it with your big stone.

The driers must be changed every day. Do not disturb the specimens, but lift each folded newspaper from the old to the new pile, building up with fresh driers as before. In a week or ten days most plants will be thoroughly dry. If at all moist they are likely to mould after being mounted and your work will be spoiled. A dried specimen is brittle and needs careful handling.

Mounting paper, to be standard and uniform, should be white, plain paper of a very heavy quality. It costs a cent a sheet, size eleven and one half by sixteen and one fourth inches. No other size would be acceptable if you wish at some later time to donate your collection to the local museum or to sell it to some school.

There are several ways of fastening specimens to the sheet. Some like to use little strips of gummed paper or court-plaster, but old-fashioned glue is about the most satisfactory stuff. It is mussy to work with till you get your hand in, but it holds the plants fast to the sheet, and "that's the intintion." It is best to keep the specimens in the newspaper wrappers until you have a lot ready to mount. Then with a pot of glue, a dry cloth, a damp one, and a small brush you are ready for business. Lift the specimen from the newspaper and lay it first on the mounting sheet to get some idea beforehand of how you will place it. You may have to prune it some to get it all on, but this is not likely as your drying sheets are the same size as your mounting paper. Having decided at what angle to place it, lay the specimen back on the newspaper upside down. With your brush wet, but not dripping, with glue, brush the stems, buds, leaves, and flowers lightly over the back. Lift it again, turning it over as you transfer it to the white sheet. With a light pressure make the parts fast and lay the sheet aside for the glue to dry.

Small specimens should occupy a place just a little below the centre of the sheet, and if more than one specimen is required to show all parts they may be arranged on the sheet as their various shapes and sizes look best.

A few facts should accompany each plant to refresh your memory of that specimen when you come to study it later. These facts should have been recorded by you in whatever way you like and referred to the specimen by a number while in the press. Finally each mounted specimen should have its label, bearing the name of the plant, the collector's name, the date collected, locality, and any useful information regarding it. Glue the label into the lower right-hand corner, which should always be reserved for that purpose.

These loose sheets, covered with mounted specimens, must not be allowed to lie in a shelf or drawer unprotected. Each group of them should be put into a folded sheet of manilla paper. Such a holder is called a "genus cover." Its size, folded, is eleven and three fourths by sixteen and one half inches.

This word "genus" suggests that in time the collector is going to be able so to classify his specimens that each genus cover may contain only plants so closely related one to another that they are of the same botanical genus. The beginner need not be seriously disturbed if there are many plants in his collection that he does not know the names of yet. The collection is for study or it is worth nothing. Knowing plants is more important than knowing names. You cannot handle plants much and observe them in their places without noticing how different they are. Then you begin to see that some are more like than others. This is the beginning of classification. You need not know even the common names of the plants to do this, although you will know some, of course. Professor Bailey says: "Learn first to classify plants; names will follow. Look for resemblances, and group plants round some well-known kind. Look for sunflower-like plants, lily-like, rose-like, mint-like, mustard-like, pea-like, carrot-like plants. These great groups are families."

After you have handled your common plants a good deal you will be surprised to find how easily you can guess at one's family, and guess right.

When you have reached this stage in your collecting you will feel that you need some book to guide you and act as a check on your studies. All the books mentioned in the lists in this book are useful for beginners. If you find a book which pretends to take the place of the plants themselves, you would better throw your money away than buy it. Instead of helping it will hinder your progress. You will find in beginners' botanies what is known as a "key." Now, a key is obviously to unlock something with. If you had a door key which turned with difficulty, or fitted the lock imperfectly you would be sure to have it repaired or get a more modern one. Some of the old botanical keys seem to be rusty and it is difficult to use them. Choose the key that works most easily.

In making a key for classifying plants one begins by dividing the whole vegetable kingdom into two big departments, thus:

A. Plants which never have flowers.

AA. Plants which do have flowers.

As your specimens are all of the flowering kind we shall for the present forget all about the others and begin to divide our big group AA into smaller groups. This is how it is done:

AA. Flowering plants.

B. Flowers not showy, seeds in cones (usually), leaves needle—or scale-like, evergreen (usually).

BB. Flowers showy, seeds not in cones, leaves of various shapes, deciduous (usually).

You will see that in dividing a group it is important that A is just the opposite of AA, and B is just the opposite of BB, and that the place to look for BB is just the same distance over from the margin of the page as B although it may not be on the same page, if there are a great many divisions under B. These little things make the key easier to use than the old-fashioned ones were. Some people still use botanical keys as mental gymnastics but I do not believe in that. After all you are studying plants not keys.

You will want to go back to the group we called A, for to the non-flowering plants belong the lovely ferns which must certainly grace your collection. This is a delightful group to study and it is possible with a reasonable amount of persistence and by exchanging with fern collectors in other parts of the country to get a very nearly if not quite, complete collection of native forms. Only one hundred and sixty-five of the four thousand species of ferns are native to the United States. Such a collection should be very valuable.

Some boys and girls lose interest in collecting plants after the first season, especially if they have done well the first year and secured most of the species in their locality. If the opportunity to collect elsewhere does not come the next spring there can be nothing more interesting than to try to get the same things you already have, but in some other stage of their growth. For example: most collections will have several kinds of violets, blue, white and yellow, in all the beauty of their flowering. But whoever thought of getting one that showed the seed pods? What is a violet's seed pod like anyhow? Is the seed pod of the white one like that of the yellow? Are the seed pods of one plant all alike? When do the pods open and how? How do the seeds germinate and when? These and other questions are waiting to be answered by every plant in your collection. Would it not be fine to know the pure white trillium in midsummer when it has grown a leaf nearly a foot across and has a red fleshy seed case thrust up where it will be conspicuous? Some plants are far more showy in fruit than in flower and you will begin to see why these and other things are true as you carry on your studies throughout the year.

Many a teacher of botany is forced to depend upon pictures when she wishes to teach children to discriminate between two kinds of leaves, kinds of roots, kinds of stems, kinds of inflorescence. What a boon to those teachers would be a collection put up to illustrate the lessons as they came along! I wonder if there is not a market for such collections in schools where no herbariums are made or kept.

For little children, making blue prints is delightful occupation. I knew a child of four who learned to recognize the leaves of most of the common trees one spring by means of this work, and she did every bit of it alone. A small printing frame, blue print paper of the required size, and plenty of water is all that is required. A child soon learns to use good judgment in printing, exposing the frame just long enough to get a fine blue. The outline of the leaf comes out distinctly in white against a blue background. The prints should be thoroughly washed and may be dried on panes of glass.

The blue prints of leaves and of flowers do not show anything but the outlines, of course. Leaf prints of other kinds are made which bring out the veining as well. The outfit for this work is simple. Two print rollers, a pane of glass, and a tube of printers' ink, sheets of paper to print upon, and leaves. Put a small quantity of the ink on the clean glass, and work it into a thin film over the surface. Lay a leaf upon this film of ink and go over it with the inky roller. Transfer the leaf to a sheet of paper and cover with a second sheet. One whirl of the clean roller ought to give you the desired print. It is surprising how delicate and true these are and how perfectly they show the characteristic margin, indentations, venation, and even something of the texture of each leaf. A little practice makes one able to make impressions which are like leaf shadows, so delicate and lace-like can these prints be made. It is an excellent way of fixing the leaf forms in the memory, as well as in the note-book.

In making a collection of plants the same "rules of the game" should hold good as in collecting insects and other natural objects. Take only what you need. Do not uproot and leave to die the near neighbours of the specimens you select. The taking of rare specimens is discouraged. I shall never forget the look of indignation our dear old professor gave an ambitious youth who had uprooted for his paltry collection every plant of a species of rare fern which the professor had been trying for years to re-establish in its old location. After all is said and done, a live plant is better than a dead one. This is all a part of the great spirit of conservation that has so taken possession of our people of late years. Out of these little acts of preserving our resources will grow a more beautiful America and a better appreciation of all things beautiful.

COLLECTING SEA-WEEDS

Every child ought to be familiar with that musical poem of Percival's beginning: