eroded, often gullied farms became unproductive. Farm after farm was abandoned, and in many instances sold for taxes, and more than one-third of the population of Pendleton County moved away. Then sweet clover was introduced, and, finding a congenial home on the limestone hills, spread in every direction. With the renovation of the soil the farmers returned, and dairy farming and the sale of sweet clover seed brought prosperity and comfort to northern Kentucky. Both the yellow and white species are grown extensively. Beginning with the first of June there is a continuous honey flow until fall, and 75, 100, and even 200 pounds of honey per colony have been obtained. In Pendleton and Bracken counties, the average size of the apiaries is about 60 colonies; and in each county there are more than 3000 colonies. In addition to sweet clover, white clover, black locust, tulip tree, fruit bloom, milkweed, catnip, motherwort, and aster are common. In Franklin County, 30 miles southwest, conditions are not equally good, and the apiaries contain only about ten colonies.

Around Lexington there are some 1600 square miles on which there is a luxuriant growth of the well-known Kentucky blue grass (Poa pratensis), so called from the blue color of the seed-vessels. White clover is most abundant in this region; but it is too far south for the secretion to be reliable. Black locust is common in the villages and on farms everywhere in Kentucky, but is less abundant in the forests. Other honey plants are sweet clover, dandelion, alsike clover, goldenrod, and aster. The blue-grass region is not as good a location for beekeeping as Pendleton and Bracken counties, as they have an advantage in growing large quantities of the two sweet clovers. According to Garman, the spring and fall honey flows are apt to be separated by a severe drought in August and early September that often causes a period of famine for the bees. If their surplus is taken away completely they suffer during this interval from lack of stores. When white clover fails the drought is especially trying to bees, since they can get little nectar until the blooming of the goldenrods and asters in the fall. At Stanford, in Gerrard County, at the southern extremity of the Lexington Plain, there are only a few bees, and the apiaries are small. White clover is a comparative failure every alternate year; but field asters and goldenrod never fail to furnish winter stores. The Lexington Plain, or blue-grass region, is surrounded by a ridge, or a series of knobs, 200 feet high, the boundary of the Highland Rim Plateau, in which this great plain was formed by erosion.

South and west of the blue-grass region extends the Highland Rim Plateau covering fully one-half of the state. The southern portion of this plateau, drained by the Cumberland River, and the southwestern portion, drained by Green River, have a limestone soil suitable for the cultivation of cereals and grasses. In Edmonson County, the seat of Mammoth Cave, the limestone is full of caverns and subterranean rivers. Away from the Cumberland hills, clover, locust, and aster are the most valuable honey plants, supplemented by dandelion, maples, willows, fruit bloom, tulip tree, raspberry, horehound, catnip, milkweed, smartweed, persimmon, redbud, honey locust, ironweed, and motherwort. But ten miles eastward, among the “Cumberland knobs,” buckwheat, sourwood, and asters yield the surplus, which is colored dark by the buckwheat. In Lincoln County, clover is reliable about four years in six, locust one year in five, and aster every year, if the weather is not cold and rainy. Buckwheat yields heavily some years in the southern part of this county; and in Pulaski County, near the south border, there is another large buckwheat-growing area.

In western Kentucky there is a second coal-field, 4000 square miles in extent, parts of which have a very fertile soil. In general the eastern, southern, and southwestern portions of the state are most backward in honey production, and furnish