sweet clover, black locust, and aster. Of less value are willows, hard maple, dandelion, basswood, tupelo, catalpa, and goldenrod. Too often, says Haseman, the hot dry weather of July and August cuts short prematurely the crop from white clover, or it may, on the other hand, be lost as the result of excessive rain. Spanish needles, heartsease, sweet clover, and blue-vine are less affected by unfavorable weather conditions. Sweet clover is rapidly increasing, hut basswood and the other native trees are fast disappearing; and in the southeast lowlands it is only a question of a few years before the timber will all have been cut and the land reclaimed. The dandelion in its western migration has become valuable for both pollen and nectar in Missouri, and blooms in sheltered places every month in the year. At Brunswick, Chariton County, in the cornfields on the bottom-lands of the Missouri River, blue-vine during the autumnal months may be found twining around every cornstalk. The vine is no larger than a baling wire, but it may reach a length of forty feet. (See Blue-vine.) Wild crab-apple, red-haw, and a large variety of shrubs help build up the colonies for the white clover flow. In the southwestern part of the state and along the Missouri River there are large areas of apple orchards, and many other fruit trees are under cultivation.

The eastern part of the prairie region, north of the Missouri River, is nearly level or gently rolling; but there are large areas which have been eroded by the streams. North Missouri is also called the Glacial Region, since during Pleistocene time it was covered by an ice sheet which deposited over most of its surface a layer of drift 10 to 200 feet in thickness. After the glacial age the wind spread over part of this region a fine fertile soil, known as loess, which reaches its greatest depth along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. The loess soil covers not far from 1000 square miles, and is found in 46 counties. There is very little land which is not under cultivation, and hundreds of thousands of acres are devoted to the production of corn, wheat, oats, and hay.

As would be expected from the physical features of northern Missouri, beekeeping is only moderately successful in most of the counties, and in none of them does the amount of honey produced equal the large yields secured in the best part of the white clover belt. At Maywood, on the Fabius River, in the northeast corner, commercial apiaries contain from 50 to 75 colonies, but the former number is preferable. The honey plants are white clover, alsike clover, sweet clover, heartsease, basswood, Spanish needles, aster, and many minor plants. A good honey flow is usually obtained from either spring or fall flowers. In dry seasons the bloom on the hills is almost entirely neglected by the bees, while they visit in great numbers the flowers of the river bottoms.

In Montgomery County the apiaries are much smaller at present than formerly. A beekeeper at Rhineland describes local conditions as follows: “I have about 80 colonies, and seldom have an entire failure. In a good year I average 60 pounds. White clover is the main summer (June) source of nectar, but in dry seasons it bums out. I seldom fail to secure some honey in autumn.” In Carroll County, near the center of the state, on the Missouri River, the yards seldom number more than 25 to 35 colonies. There are great areas of bottom-land along the river, 40 miles long by two to fourteen wide, which are covered with clover, heartsease, and Spanish needles. There are a few progressive beekeepers here who are fairly successful. Much alsike clover is sown, sweet clover grows wild in many places, and in the fall blue-vine springs up over a large acreage from which wheat has been harvested. The upland, as has already been explained, is not as good territory, and a large crop is harvested only about once in three years. On the lowlands there is, nearly every year, a fall flow of dark thin honey. Extracted honeys may granulate in 40 days, and become solid in three months.