Wild rice grows in swamps, shallow lakes, and sluggish rivers covering immense areas in the Mississippi Valley and the middle North-western states. Mud is a necessity to its growth. It grows taller than a man's height above the water and its seed comes in a loose spray at the very top of each stalk. The plants die every year and new ones come up from seed. The grain begins to ripen early in September and keeps on until heavy frosts. This is all right for ducks but it makes harvesting a very difficult task. The Indian women of the wild rice regions go out and shake the heads over their boats. They have to go again and again. If they left it till all the grain had ripened they would get very little seed, because the wild rice falls as soon as it is ripe and lies in the mud till spring. The long-hid secret of the many failures to get wild rice to grow from seed was discovered by some scientist to be this habit of lying in the mud over winter. Thoroughly dried seed does not germinate. Wild rice is queer looking stuff. The grains are black and very long and slender. Some of them are an inch long. It is said by some to be very good eating, especially as prepared by the Indians. They parch it usually, but sometimes it is made into a sort of porridge and eaten with maple sugar. Practically, the best market for wild rice will always be amongst the wild fowl and it is a sportsman-like act to gather the seed and propagate it for their sake. GATHERING SPRUCE GUM If spruce gum were used only in the manufacture of "chewing-gum" we had much better let the crop go unharvested. It serves a useful purpose in the tree which produces it. When you have a cut or bruise you like to put something on it that excludes the air. The tree acts on the same principle. The live part of the tree is just underneath the bark. Trees are liable to many kinds of injuries. The winter winds strain them sometimes to the point of splitting, a heedless woodsman blazes the bark in passing, wild creatures gnaw or scratch the trunks, a woodpecker digs a hole through the bark. Any injury of the living layer is like a "hurry call" to the cells where the resin is stored. These cells are the health department. They send out to the injured part a covering of balm, a salve which seals the wound effectually from contact with the air. We cannot say that the tree knows that the air is full of the germs of decay and that to let them get a foothold means decay and sure death; but the tree has something that serves the same purpose as knowledge. Physicians make use of the resinous gums in preparing medicines, and druggists always try to keep a stock of spruce gum on hand. Collectors find their best market for it in the drug trade. The best quality brings as high as one dollar and fifty cents a pound, while one dollar a pound is not too much to expect for the average collection.