averaging about four dollars."

Our most valuable allies against the insect armies are toads, bats,
wasps, dragon flies, and birds; they enjoy the battle.

There cannot be too many toads or bats. Toads will eat all sorts of
flies, potato bugs, squash bugs, rose bugs, caterpillars, and almost
anything that crawls.

If the wasps become a nuisance, it is easy to poison them; but the
birds are often a nuisance--the robins eat the strawberries and
cherries the instant they are ripe. They soon get used to
scarecrows; and to cover the fruit with nets gives the insects a
free hand. Some growers raise sweet cherries or other fruits
specially to feed up the birds so that they will let the rest alone.
Early rising and a plenty of cats is about the best remedy. A man,
or even a woman, working on the land is the best scarecrow.

There are a few other fruits that grow wild in certain sections and
are gathered and sent to market. Among these the cranberry is the
most important. It grows in nearly inaccessible bogs, principally in
New Jersey, and the usual custom is for owners of land on which
there are cranberry bogs to let out the bog to pickers on a
percentage basis. Cranberries can be cultivated, and there is a
considerable profit in the business. The swampy nature of the ground
needed, however, will deter all except the most persistent from this
industry. Some cranberry bogs bring as high as a thousand dollars an
acre.

The blueberry or huckleberry, or, as we call it in Ireland, the
bilberry, or frohen, grows wild in the northerly states, and is much
sought after in the market. Many efforts have been made to grow the
blueberry commercially; but, as is well said by Mr. J. H. Hale in
the _Rural New Yorker,_ "The blueberry proved to be a good deal like
Indians--it would not stand civilization, and was never
satisfactory, although I monkeyed with it for a period of about ten
years." Mr. Fred W. Card, of Rhode Island, in the same issue reports
a similar experience. With our present knowledge of the blueberry,
it is doubtful if it can be made a commercially cultivated crop.
Lately, however, it is claimed that it can be grown in very poor,
non-nitrogenous soil.

A variety, however, called the Garden Blueberry, gives almost
incredible yields, five bushels being reported from sixty plants. It
keeps all winter _on the branches,_ if stored in a cellar, and is of
fine flavor and especially good for preserves. A little frost
improves