Still, the enjoyments of agriculture depend upon individual tastes.  I have seen “lady gardeners” picking strawberries with the footman holding up an umbrella to screen them from the sun.

Some women would like that, some not.

CHAPTER XV

DRUG PLANTS

A source of profit from land to which little attention has been given in the United States is collecting or raising plants, some part of which may be used for medicinal purposes.  We condense from Farmers’ Bulletin No. 188, United States Department of Agriculture: 

Certain well-known weeds are sources of crude drugs at present obtained wholly or in part from abroad.  Roots, leaves, and flowers of several of the species most detrimental in the United States are gathered, cured, and used in Europe, and supply much of the demands of foreign lands.  Some of these plants are in many states subject to anti-weed laws, and farmers are required to take measures toward their extermination.

The prices paid for crude drugs from these sources save in war time are not great and would rarely tempt any one to this work as a business.  Yet if in ridding the farm of weeds and thus raising the value of the land the farmer can at the same time make these pests the source of a small income instead of a dead loss, something is gained.

One rather alluring fact contained in an article by Dr. True, is that a shortage has become keenly felt in “Golden Seal,” which the early American settlers learned from the Indians to use as a curative for sore and inflamed eyes, as well as for sore mouth.  The plant grows in patches in high open woods, and was formerly found in great abundance in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and West Virginia, but is now so rare that its price has risen from thirty-five cents wholesale in 1898 to over seventy-five cents a pound.  Persons in different parts of the country have undertaken the production of Golden Seal on a commercial scale.  More than six hundred dollars’ worth can be grown on an acre:  so a crop this year would be a fortune.  The methods of raising it can be ascertained upon application to the Department of Agriculture.

Ginseng is one of the drug crops which paid handsome returns a few years ago, perhaps because it takes from five to seven years to grow from seeds; but so many went into that line that few men to-day make anything at it.  Furthermore, the Chinese, who use a large part of it, will buy only the wild roots—­and they know the difference.  Those who control the trade have burned quantities in the effort to keep up the price.

There are some drug plants which might be raised with success by those who would specialize in one plant, but the lesson we learn from ginseng should act as a warning.