The Library of Work and Play: Outdoor Work

NG BE

e 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 a

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

RASPB

me 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 an

k 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

ammed by the regulation methods. With a good oil

BLEB

e black raspberry although it is flatter, seedier, and more sharply acid. It grows on a bush or shrub somewhat like a raspberry, but its

ies. You are lucky if you get two cupfuls of the thimbleberries while your companion is pic

can get any price you ask for tiny glasses of it, even a dollar a glass, from people who "must have it."

EBE

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 th

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 sup

. But as both are blue and there are high bush and low bush huckleberries, as well as high and low bush blueber

ears the bushes so, and the berries have to be put through a fanning mill twice to free them from lea

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,

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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

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 flavou

ll 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 an

really green is a triump

RBER

rther 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 the

BER

or 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

lips that goes with it. The barberry had long been a favourite with me; the bush for its wayward grace and its cunning flowers, th

stess. "It's particu

ut can you imagine eating barberry jell

e is meagre. Add a little water and heat slowly. Strain and add "pound for pound" of sugar. Put in tiny glasses

ked mightily out of place along with pineapples, watermelons, grap

BER

r, 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

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. T

the berries in October. They are gray, almost white, and you see that each one is co

dmothers made of the wax. Bayberry dips have come into fashion again a

BAYBE

t 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

d 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 patie

CRAB

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

er day shaped just like a fifth reader or history or any othe

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

SIM

s 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, a

A

n apples now that they are older? Perhaps these grown-up boys deserve to be punished for deserting the old haunt

rom 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 b

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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

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 nu

kety" 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

" so well describes an annual outing of p

d 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

on boards laid across the wagon box behind. What a jouncing they got when the wheels struck a stone in a rut! B

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 pucke

es, 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 e

ore. The bags are full, and there are some poured loose into the wagon box. Besides, everyb

l, 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

d husks that they must leave behind on the hazel bushes. A loaded branch of the grape vine is cut off bodily, an

t starvation. There was nothing dull or uninteresting about either. The plums and grapes were sweetened with molasses made from sorgh

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

U

rm 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

enter. 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 state

oy'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

NQU

ure in their diminutive prettiness, tidy shape, and rich, dark colouring. I kept a handful securely tied in the little salt bag in whi

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 p

se weevils are another great enemy of ches

od 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 di

EL-

zel-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

me small nuts, caring just as patiently for the inferior ones and even encouraging the nut weevils to prey upon them. But I wonder if so

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

LN

ould 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" stor

husk is not so thick as that of the black walnut and adheres stubbornly to the nut if left to dry. The nuts ge

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 f

alnuts, salt and water, one gallon of vinegar, two ounces of whole black pepper, half an

(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 in

CHN

er 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,

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

ORY

s, 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

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 F

CA

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.

es 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 in

some sort of roof to cure, which

d trees vary greatly in their size and general appearance. The wholesale dealer who buys nuts un

trade in wild nuts by packing your best nuts in attractive pasteboard boxes and charging a good retail rate for them. The inferior nuts y

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 i

GR

s, 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 credit

d 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

e 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 stru

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 s

E S

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 mow

our native trees can be more easily obtained in Europe than in Americ

out 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 ma

more, 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 s

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

bulletins on forestry. He should write to firms who make a specialty of selling t

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. T

G CHRISTM

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. Wi

has ceased to be fun, and has become a business. The boys and girls may shar

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

able in some forms of cabinet work. Here is an industry t

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 pla

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

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

orists 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, con

seems a pity to kill a pine tree every time one of these is cut, but in places where the seedlings come up to

mer 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 m

re 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 s

re both hollies, but, unlike the Southern holly, lose their leaves. One has bright orange-coloured berries, the other is covered with a great profus

INAL

rice; 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 l

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 bu

KE

, 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

ING

ed, 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 sa

cks decorat

h 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 lon

ten 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 desig

iece 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 straig

RS FOR CIT

erly 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 ap

LF

y are called bracket or shelf fungi. If you have an artist friend who can make beautiful

ph by Ve

d Flowers for

LION

r sale at so much per half-peck I have come to think that they must be eatab

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efore 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 a

urpose. 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

HERBS A

undant, 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

e 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

ossom, balsam fir, and bayberry make sweet smellin

AM L

ff 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 t

CH

. This is largely if not entirely because they are ignorant, not because they are intentionally breakers of the laws of the wo

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

he 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 a

ots 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

irch bark, quills, sweet grass, and other natural materials, let us keep

PINE

a porcupine, for the chances are that he never saw a hedgeho

d 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

The quills take a pretty polish and their cream white and shaded brown colours blend softly with

SUGAR

et 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

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" whe

et to be learned from the trees about the whys and wherefores of their behaviour during the ha

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

ch 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 malle

d 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

ne 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

t 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

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 sir

ary to pour it off or strain it through thick cloths to take out the dark-coloured impu

ring 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

s 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 o

D R

imes the price of ordinary rice an

ants it an

d 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 scarc

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 g

an inch long. It is said by some to be very good eating, especially as prepared by the Indians. T

be amongst the wild fowl and it is a sportsman-like a

ING SP

s 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 th

uce gum on hand. Collectors find their best market for it in the drug trade. The best quality brings as high as

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

ere 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 presen

s. There is a peculiar charm about gum hunting on snow-shoes. A young man suffering from too little f

HRO

ood mushrooms?" I asked m

know Aunt J-- says that al

ve 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

s a milk pail. The pear-shaped ones grow on tree stumps and are as big as your fist or smaller. There is an endless varie

bling 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-bal

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

often found them along forest by-paths, especially in wet weather in spring. They are delectable. Perhaps you have eaten delicately broil

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 yo

f-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 vegetabl

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 puf

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 fee

e inside. It is found on old wood or on the ground as early as July and as late as October. In size the

ear-shaped. The top is wrinkled or corru

s 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

et 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 deli

rse 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 in

e comes up singly and grows tall and perfect, a truly lovely object, pure white, six inches tall, its shaggy head held high, its silve

om 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 doe

ture 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 ph

NG NATUR

e 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 fr

urces, 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 natur

'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

eration know better ways and will not le

HE CREATION OF

plicated 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 pe

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 wanderi

FE WORK WA

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

ed 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 clim

NING OF T

o 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 firs

plants with, but before long I saw th

t to find something of sufficient beauty to make it probable that it would be wanted; next, to fin

the plant at every stage of its growth, finding when it could best be handled, and how best packed for shipment. Almost from

OF COL

d, 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 horiz

heir 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 af

NG A NURSE

ame less important and culture

ts 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 whic

l sorts; in 1888, two hundred and fifty thousand

l P