Show BUCOLIC BONANZAS V ftltj J O lIE eyo ot one of our U Western contemporaries S To bas been caught by the L A K single line In a days mar Belgian W fSW ket report that no gian luircs arc on sale Commenting Comment-ing on this It observes that the state went Is not iu any way remarkable for there never were any Belgian hares on sale as a food product though three years ago It was promised tlucatenedtlat they would glut the narkets Just where n craze like Holglan hare mania definitely ends Is rather hard to say but clearly It has ended when Its fruits arc no longer offered In the marts When plug long balls were first asked for in a store that didnt keep them anymore any-more It marked the end of that obsession ob-session and this ease Is like uito It The cult of the Belgian hare certainly cer-tainly hud some oteworthy features The creatures flesh was to supply us with an excellent grade of canned chicken or might be eaten under Its own name for that matter while Its skin was the aw material for Imitation Imi-tation sealskin The amazingly prolific pro-lific qualities of these animals and ho extremely bninll expense of bringing them to maturity were always al-ways n trifle hard to reconcile with the fact that they cost ten or fifteen dollars a pair Still prices were prices and the only possible danger ahead was that the animals would I In time become rs common ns cats and as cheap Bur lnstea1 of fulfill lug Its predicted destiny the Belgian bare has within a few years vanished van-ished from the ken of even the back pages of the magazines Its fate is by no means unique This unreliable creature Is merely one of a considerable group of products animal anti vegetable through which fortune is promised i any ono who has a little lit-tle surplus capital and Industry to dispose of Among there may be mentioned men-tioned the squab the tulip the riu room the spring chicken the watercress water-cress and the ginseng plant If it were not for these the rural districts would never get even with the bunco games of the city or the salted mines C of the mountains Of course we would not inluuute for a momcnf that each and every ono of these is not altogether alto-gether estimable nor that large amounts of money have not been honestly hon-estly made from their exploitation But they nil agree In this one particular particu-lar it Is impossible to figure out on paper any way of losing money upon them while it is extremely difficult in practice to make any I Who for Instance has not contemplated contem-plated the establishment of a chicken farm One can begin his calculation on a basis of the minimum number of fowls assume that they will lay only half as many eggs as such birds actually ac-tually do assume that half the eggs never hatch that half the chicks die In infancy that half the remainder are carried off by hawks before they are marketable that an epidemic of the pip or other ailment makes a clean sweep of half the poultry yard biennially bi-ennially ant that the ruling prices for broilers are cut in two and expenses ex-penses doubled still the calculation points unerringly to a snug fortune at the end of ten years and three or four chickens to the square foot of ground still left over Similarly every one is familiar with the fact that an income of several thousand a year can be realized from an ordinary cellar If only it be planted plant-ed with mushrooms The ginseng craze which was based perhaps on more alluring promises than any of its predecessors is only now passing The Department of Agriculture which had promptly issued a bulfetln warning warn-ing prospective growers that the ginseng gin-seng industry was mighty uncertain was long in receipt of a half hundred hun-dred letters a day from all parts of the country Inquiring about tie prospects pros-pects If fifteen thousand a year took the trouble to look for trustworthy otllclal Information what must have been the number who took the advertisers ad-vertisers statements for granted I For nil the unimpeachable demonstrations demon-strations of unavoidable profits it is nevertheless truo that some men engaged en-gaged in poultry raising enjoy only moderate wealth Wo are told by veracious marketmen that by no means all ot the mushrooms and squabs In the stalls were brought in by the raisers In their own automobiles automo-biles We ourselves know of several persons who go on working for modest salaries In spite of the fact that they Invested in fifty ginseng roots back In 1002 These things are strange but we cannot doubt the evidence New York Post |