Hospital for Tuberculosis, Kearney

to the cream station, and do not have to 'trade it out.' We get real money for our cream and eggs, and for our poultry when we sell it. Our receipts from cream and poultry products average more than $80 a month over and above the expense of maintaining the dairy and poultry pens. This has spelled prosperity for us, and a position of comfort that I never dreamed could happen, when in the old days I churned and traded my butter and eggs over the counter for a few pitiful articles of merchandise. The poultry end of farming should receive more attention, and more scientific care, than seems to be the rule. It is no longer the wife's share of the farm, with her expected to do all the work. It is really one of the chief factors in farm prosperity these days."
     The woman quoted above lives in York county. Her experience is the experience of hundreds of other farm wives in Nebraska.
     Omaha, Lincoln, Beatrice, Hastings, Grand Island and Kearney, not to mention numerous other Nebraska cities, are stable markets for dairy and poultry products. Immense creameries in Lincoln and Omaha create a constant demand for cream at prices remunerative to the dairymen. They maintain immense cold storage facilities, thus providing a stable market for eggs the year around. There is no danger of over-production of poultry and eggs, and Nebraska, with climatic conditions favorable and with advantageous location, offers unusually good opportunities for poultry and egg production on a large scale. By all means it should be given consideration by those who are already farming on a small scale, and by those who are planning on acquiring a farm home in Nebraska.

     The Honey Bee was really the pioneer in this great state of ours. As early as in 1804, when the Lewis and Clark expedition journeyed up the Missouri River, a bee tree was discovered near the mouth of the Niobrara river. A note was made of this by the explorers because the soldiers cut the tree and ate so freely of the honey that it killed one of them. We do not desire to be understood that honey is poisonous, but that these wild bees had lived up there in comparative quiet. The sting of the honey bee is heavily charged with formic acid, a very deadly poison, and we have no doubt but that a single drop of this poison either taken in the stomach or injected into the circulation would in some instances cause death. We have learned better how to take the honey without getting it in any way contaminated. In cutting this bee tree the bees gathered on and over their stores, running out their stings and in the jar of cutting the tree the poison dropped off into it. Soldiers in those days did not fare so sumptuously as they do at this time, and were not accustomed to eating honey, and evidently ate rather too much. Again the party that went across Nebraska to locate Fort Kearney discovered a bee tree on the Little Blue River in this state. In the early part of 1871 our old friend, L. D. Stilson, late of York, Nebraska, was hunting up on the Loup River, not far from where Loup City is now located. His camp was located quite a distance back from the river in a dry canon, and in going down to the river after water he was suddenly pounced upon by a party of Sioux Indians and tied to a scrub oak tree which proved to be inhabited by a swarm

Nebraska Industrial Home for Women, Milford

Boys' Industrial School, Kearney

of bees. The Indians were not dressed in a manner that would ward off an attack by angry bees, and they stung the half-naked Indians, causing them to dance about considerably. Mr. Stilson knew a good deal about handling bees and was afterwards a very potent factor in building up the bee industry in this state. Signalling to the Indians by sign language he told them that he could take the bees out of the tree and the honey out also. At this they released him and gave him an axe, and he cut the tree, took out the honey, brushed off the bees and gave it to the Indians to eat. His ability to handle bees without being stung so thoroughly impressed the children of the plains as being something supernatural that after guarding him for a couple of hours his guard departed, allowing him to go about his business. Mr. Stilson hitched up his team and moved out of the range of Indians without being farther disturbed. It has been known that there are but few states in the Union where so great a variety of flowers bloom as in Nebraska. Our soil is naturally adapted to growing alfalfa, and alfalfa yields nectar in abundance. Again, sweet clover has been found to thrive in this state, yielding nectar from June 1 till after the first hard frosts in the fall. This plant is fast becoming the great forage plant of the west. Not only this but a great fertilizer of sandy localities, producing tons upon tons of honey, and at the same time enriching the soil so quickly that an acre of our sand hills country will, under the cultivation of sweet clover, sustain about three head of cattle where only one can be pastured at the present time. Sweet clover thrives in every county in this state and has far greater prospect for the Sand Hills of the great northwest of this state than many might at first imagine. We have