Cornstalks yield another crop that is little known. Collectors of insects use thin sheets of cornstalk pith to line their insect boxes. It is peculiarly adapted to this purpose. They cannot get a large supply of it, yet what boy in any great corn state could not get a ton of it if he had the gumption. Ask the entomology man in your state Experiment Station, if he needs cornstalk pith. If you live in a cactus country, ask him if he could use thin slices of the pith from the flower stalk of the giant cacti. FRAGRANT HERBS AND GRASSES Of the fragrant herbs, grasses, and shrubs which nature provides, nothing is more in demand than sweet grass. In the parts of the country where it is abundant, people still gather and cure it and make useful baskets and mats of it. Sometimes it is combined with birch bark or porcupine quills or both by skilful Indian women who learned how from their grandmothers. The good market for such things will keep the art of basket making from becoming a lost one. Indian maidens are not the only ones who have learned basket weaving. Indeed this has almost taken the place of patchwork, for girls, except in very old-fashioned families. Clever girls will not be content to use only such conventional materials as raffia and reeds. Often the colours of those you buy are so crude that you cannot make really artistic things of them. Some of the native grasses, flower stalks, strips of palmetto, rushes, soft inner corn husks, cat-tail leaves, and sedges are used. One basket maker has used the shiny brown stems of maidenhair ferns and the effect is very pretty. Another uses long pine needles in her weaving. Most of these materials are unfit for use when dry and brittle, but books on basketry tell just how they can be made pliable. Grasses are usually at their best just after flowering. The dried leaves of sweet fern, sweet clover in blossom, balsam fir, and bayberry make sweet smelling cushions and bags for bureau drawers and couches. BALSAM LEAVES In gathering what you hear called "pine needles" for pillows be sure you have the right kind of trees before you begin to gather the leaves. Pine needles are long and stiff and sharp. A pillow made of dried ones would not be a very fragrant nor a very comfortable thing. What you want is the short, soft leaves of balsam fir. These retain their wholesome odour after being dried. In five minutes you can learn to tell the balsam from spruce, hemlock, and cedar, the other common short-leaved native evergreens. BIRCH BARK Camping parties often leave a trail of devastation behind them which would shock the most hardened and wasteful one of the lot. This is largely if not entirely because they are ignorant, not because they are intentionally breakers of the laws of the woods. Indeed they are probably very ardent believers in the theory of conservation. Has it never occurred to them to practise it?