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)_ is 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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