Nick Carter Stories No. 122, January 9, 1915: The suicide; or, Nick Carter and the lost headCarter, Nicholas (House name)
General
Nick Carter Stories No. 122, January 9, 1915: The suicide; or, Nick Carter and the lost head
Carter, Nicholas (House name)
Detective and mystery stories, American -- Periodicals; Popular literature -- Periodicals
The English newspapers recently made what they declared to be a
startling discovery of extensive underground galleries at Totternhoe, in
the Chiltern Hills, which the Germans had dug, supposedly for some
mysterious military purpose. The residents of the neighborhood even
described the Germans and the mysterious way in which their excavations
were conducted.
William M. Safford, whom the _Observer_ describes as a distinguished
American scholar, now writes to that newspaper declaring that he made
the excavations. Mr. Safford says he discovered a cavern, which was
nearly closed, and that his excavations in it disclosed carvings on
stone dating 1613.
Quits Cattle for Turkeys.
Herding turkeys is a new way of making a living discovered by J. W.
Abrams, of Springfield, Colorado. Abrams herds nearly a thousand turkeys
through the Colorado alfalfa fields every year, letting the birds feed
on grasshoppers. Two especially trained collie dogs assist in the work
of herding. The ranchers are glad to have the pests which destroy their
crops eaten from the fields, so Abrams and his outfit are welcome
wherever they go.
An old cow pony, with a slicker, a shelter tent, and a cooking outfit
packed on his back; two beautifully marked collies, and a thousand
bronze turkeys, strutting and gobbling, make up the outfit. Abrams
always herds within reaching distance of a stream, so his charges can
get plenty of water.
When the turkey herder sold his flock last year at Thanksgiving time,
the $2,450 he received was almost clear profit. Abrams had 980 birds,
averaging ten pounds apiece. He topped the market with his
grasshopper-fed turkeys, receiving twenty-five cents a pound on the lot.
The only expense the birds had been to him was for oil to run his
incubators, feed during the first six weeks of their lives, when they
were too small to herd, rent on the ten-acre place where they were
hatched, and the cost of raising a small field of spelt in which they
ran to fatten after the fall frosts had killed the grasshoppers. Some
turkey hens which he kept through the winter laid the eggs he set in the
incubators.
“It isn’t difficult to teach young turkeys to let dogs herd them,”
Abrams said. “They are rather timid at first. But Jeff and Mutt, here,
have been trained never to frighten the birds. You’ll notice they never
bark at them, just growl a little and pretend to snap at their legs when
they don’t behave. Turkeys are stupid birds, you know. Every flock has a
leader, who walks ahead. The others follow him blindly. I always keep an
old gobbler from the year before for a leader. He is used to the dogs,
and Jeff and Mutt manage the flock by guiding him.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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