estimated that on every quarter section of well cultivated land in this state not less than a ton of honey is evaporated from the flowers and is lost for the want of bees sufficient to gather and store it. One can easily imagine what a terrible waste is going on on nearly every farm in this great state of ours, and which has a future before it of whose greatness we have not yet dreamed. Honey is food as well as medicine, and we have for many years challenged the statement that not a family could be found in this great state into whose every day diet honey entered who were anything else but healthy. There is more nutriment in a single pound of honey than can be found in two pounds of pork, and there is more medicine in the same pound of honey than any pharmacy in the state will sell for fifty cents. We are aware that these are pretty strong assertions but we have the goods with which to back them. During the years that have intervened between the Lewis and Clark expedition, the march to Fort Kearney and Mr. Stilson's capture up in the Loop country, the honey bee has continued to be a pioneer in this state and has forged ahead until beekeeping has been profitable way up in the northwest in the country formerly called "the Bad Lands," but a point in this state where hundreds of people desire to settle, but where the desirable lands are all taken.
     The subject of bees is such an inexhaustible one that one might write volume after volume and then have not half told what there is to be said about them. The organization of the honey bee, its wonderful habits, the complete government of the colony on the democracy plan, with no kaiser to disturb the internal workings of the hive, are all wonderfully interesting. One thing that causes the bee hive to be a most interesting place to visit is that every one appears to be busy at work and the ones that do not work and are not profitable are dragged out and allowed to perish as a very true reward of their inability to produce anything. This is what causes the bee hive to be profitable. Do not imagine that one could plant a colony in his back yard and then go round and gather honey at pleasure. Such is not the condition. Nature in her wonderful wisdom never intended to arrange anything in that manner. If it were so every one might become a politician in this state, and just work the bees for all there was in them. There are three great principles which are applicable to successful bee-keeping: Carefulness, promptness and gentleness. Bees are a great bundle of nerves, in which some 20,000 compose the little antennae in front of the bee's head. I only mention this little organ to give you a faint idea of the great mass of nerves in the bee's little body. Scientists assert that bees do not hear, yet one has never handled bees for any length of time without being satisfied that they have means of hearing and understanding one another. Their wonderful nervous organization render them susceptible to any sudden jar, yet one might fire a gun above the hive without a single bee apparently taking any notice of the occurrence, yet the tap of one's finger upon the hive would anger every bee within. Ladies are wont to make the most successful beekeepers for the reason that they have these attributes of success more than we men have. At the present time good extracted honey is going quickly at 20 cents per pound. A good colony of bees has been known to have stored as much as from ten to twelve

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pounds in a single day. Ordinarily about ten cents per pound would be considered a fair price. Bees do not make honey, they simply gather the nectar as it is deposited in the flowers, carry it home and evaporate it to such a consistency that it will keep for years. Every flower produces a different kind of nectar and the expert can tell what flower it was gathered from on sampling it. Here in Nebraska the great possibilities are alfalfa, white clover and sweet clover. They are as natural to the soil in every part of the state as are the weeds.

     The term "dry farming" has now become familiar in all sections of the country. The very expression is associated with a rather indefinite system of farming, the most definite phase of which is a shortage of water.
     The conditions that determine dry farming are a dry subsoil and a limited rainfall. The amount of rainfall which enters the soil is at best only sufficient for the current needs of the vegetation that occupies the soil. If it were greater, the vegetation of this section, instead of being short grass on the hard land and thin vegetation on the sandy land, would be greater. This condition of a water supply only sufficient for the current needs of the vegetation does not admit of the accumulation of ground water or a water table, and results in a subsoil permanently dry. Under such condition, it is found necessary

to depart to some extent from the farming practices that prevail under more humid conditions.
     Within the territory described as dry farming sections are considerable areas that cannot be rightly spoken of as dry farming land. Wherever soil is subirrigated, i. e., where sheet water comes close enough to the surface to supply the growing crops with water, farming cannot be said to be dry farming. Obviously where water is applied by irrigation it is not dry farming.
     During the past several years the stigma which had become attached to dry farming has been more or less removed through a more thorough understanding of the situation. For years during the early settlement of western Nebraska and other portions of the plains, there were so many failures in farming operations and so much loss of capital that the so called dry farming area came to have a bad reputation. Several factors were responsible for this condition. Probably the greatest factor was the lack of experience. The pioneers naturally had no one to follow and no history to look to. They saw only the beautiful-lying and fertile soil ready for the plow. In breaking it up they attempted to grow crops which they had brought from farther east and naturally used methods applicable to more humid sections. Another big factor was the lack of capital. The majority of the settlers had little more than enough capital to get them located. Their funds were insufficient to carry them through any period of stress, and one failure was enough to wreck their hopes and send them back east. They were all in the same boat, and one who had failed in crop could not borrow of the next man, because he was in similar condition. Interest rates were excessive and money hard to procure. Under these rather hazardous conditions it is not strange that a stigma should have become attached to dry farming.

Nebraska Institute for Feeble Minded Youth, Beatrice, Nebr.