In studying the wild drug plants, one may learn the immense variety of field salads and greens.  On a visit to the Spirit Fruit Society at Ingleside, Illinois, one of the girls took me out to gather wild vegetables for dinner.  We pulled up about a dozen varieties out of the corners of a field; two or three of the nice looking ones that I gathered the young lady threw out, saying she did not know them; but it seemed to me that she took almost anything that was not too tough.  The following are commonly used as salads:  Dandelion, yellow racket, purslane (pusley), watercress, nasturtium; and the following as greens for cooking:  narrow or sour dock, stinging nettle, pokeweed, pigweed or lamb’s quarters, black mustard.  Young milkweed is better than spinach, and also makes an excellent salad.  Probably all the salad leaves could be cooked to advantage.  Rhubarb leaves and horseradish tops are garden greens usually neglected most unfairly

Osage Orange (maclura aurantiaca) s generally supposed to be poison, and is described in Webster’s dictionary as “a hard and inedible fruit,” but I have found one kind, at least, superior to quinces.

Capsicum or red pepper, licorice (the imports of which have all been in the hands of one person), camphor, belladonna, henbane, and stramonium are possible fields for culture; but they are all experiments.

If you are growing poppies for the flowers it might be worth while to gather some opium, especially if the new process succeeds in separating morphine directly from the plant.

Caraway seeds, anise, coreander, and sage are common garden plants that may be sold as drugs.

CHAPTER XVI

NOVEL LIVE STOCK

Occasionally we hear stories of the wealth which is being made on a frog farm here or there.  But as a rule little commercial success has attended attempts in this direction.

The difficulty lies in feeding them.  A single frog can be fed by dangling a piece of meat before it, but it would be impossible to feed thousands this way.  There are so many enemies that few tadpoles become adult frogs; besides, the frog is a cannibal and will eat not only the larvae or eggs, but the tadpoles and young frogs as well.

Frog culture is successful in some places where ponds are large enough to be partitioned, separating the tadpoles and young frogs from the old ones, and where insects are abundant enough to supply food naturally for them.  Near San Francisco there are a number of frog ranches.  Even in 1903, according to Mary Heard in Out West, one ranch sold to San Francisco markets 2600 dozen frogs’ legs, netting $1800.  This was considered poor.  Frogs’ legs are sold to hotels and restaurants, and bring in New York, according to size and season, from fifty cents to a dollar a pound.

Tons of frogs come to New York markets each year from Canada, Michigan, and from the South and West.  Few people outside of the cities eat them.  The United States Fish Commissioners reported the product in one year:  Arkansas, 58,800 lb., valued at $4162; Indiana, 24,000 lb., valued at $5026; Ohio, 14,000 lb., valued at $2340; Vermont, 5500 lb., valued at $825, etc.—­a total of $22,953.