[MISSOURI WILLOW FARM.]
East Kansas City is one of the most important centres in the Missouri Valley in the business of shipping willows. In the last three months alone the Kansas City Southern Railway has hauled from there 140 flat carloads of trimmed willows, and is taking out more as fast as the willow plantations can furnish the crop.
The roots of the willows keep the sand from shifting along the river banks; but the use of the tops of willows in fighting currents of water is comparatively new. Government work with willows requires that the trees shall be more than twelve feet high and between 3/4 and 2-1/2 inches in diameter at the butts. After a patch of these trees has been cut the ground looks like a stubblefield of corn. The new sprouts, however, look more like a field of wheat—if wheat only had that peculiar reddish tinge that willows take on at this time of the year. In two and a half to three years after cutting willows will grow up again to the size required for dikes or for plaiting into mats.
The willows now being bought by the railway are for use in checking the inroads of the Arkansas River between Spiro and Fort Smith, Ark. The dikes that are being constructed run out into the river 150 feet and are of willows held in place with large steel cables. Since December 11 nearly 800 carloads of trees—not all of these willows—have been dumped into the river.
The sand filling the crevices between the bundles of willows makes a strong and economical pier. The steel cables insure the safety of the pier until the sand has done its work.
In cutting and trimming the willows the harvesters use nothing but ordinary corn knives.
[ANIMALS THAT DREAD RAIN.]
Lions, tigers, and all the cat tribe dread rain. On a rainy day they tear nervously up and down their cages, growling and trembling. The keepers usually give them an extra ration of hot milk. That puts them to sleep.
Wolves love a gray day of rain. They are then very cheery. Treacherous as the wolf is, no keeper need fear him on a rainy day. He is too happy to harm a fly.