The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1890-10-17
FROG M PAYS.
Indiana Man Tells How Trick IL
Done--An Industry That Runs ITSELF.

Talk about your mushrooms or
poultry, your beef or peaches, your
early vegetables or orange%n said Mr..
John NJ. Francis. of Milton. Ind. "vou
can raise all of them you like. As for
me, I'll raise frogs.
= Mr.. Francis is an eccentric Indiana
man about 60 years old, whose boast
it is that he has never missed a Demo-
cratic convention. State or national,
since he was old enough to vote.
.NNhy." said he in pursuance of his
theme. II have a friend at home who
raises frogs by the thousand, aud you
can Just bet your last dollar it pays.
I'm going into tho business myself just
rs soon as l can lind a decent piece OF
water for the purpose"
How do you do itY'
II don't do it. / shall not do iteven
after I've started Il frog farm. They
do it themselves. All you've got to
do is to plant them aud feed them.
They'll do all the rest"
plant thempn
"Ycs plant them. Find II few acres
of shallow water and turn a few thou
sand tadpolesl Dose there. Where do
you get the tadpoles? Any country
boy can tell you that. You can tell
frog spawn as far us you n see it
pale, jelly-like stuff, like the white of
an egg. with thousands of black spccks
i'll il. The specks are the eggs and the
Notwithstanding stuff floats along the
shore of q pond-specks and all. After
a while the specks begin to wiggle, and
then they begin TO grow-live on the
white-of-egg stuff, I suppose then
they are tadpoles; pollywogs, some Of
the boys call them. You get them in
a scoop made of mosquito netting
early in the spring, and put them in
your shallow water. right in the edge
of it. The shallow water must be full
OF grass and reeds, and the little fell
lows will then grow fast enough. BY
the middle of summer they are nearly
big enough for market, and if you
feed them right they will be eight
and ten inches; yes, sometimes a foot
long, the next season. 1t is worth a
long journey and Il good deal of mon-
ey to sec them fed. You take u lot of
grain. generally middlings, or some
Thing Of that kind, 60 10 your pond
uiu olOW IL IOlu. Auc lIUSS huUW
what that means, and they come jump
ing up like grasshoppers in August.
They get SO tame you can handle them
just as a woman does her pet chickens.
These big fellows don't sing, rs the lit
tic marsh frog do. by the way, like the
tenor, in a boys choir when his voice
is about to change, but they have COED,
big basso-profundo voices-Fred Stein
roices-and they never get tired of
singing so long as the sun keeps be-
low the horizon.
"How do you catch thcmP"
Take a bright lantern and 90 right
in the middle of them. They come
up aud stare at the light by hundreds,
half-blinded by the glare, and you just
pick them up by the hand, stow them
away in damp grass and send them to
market, where they are worth my
where from 81 to 50 dozen, according
to size. Oh, l tell ,y,u, there's lots Of
money in frogs. l know of II MAJ
who made 500, 900 in frogs legs just
after the war, but he was away down
East.
',Of course there are other things
you can raise if you have Il frog farm"
said Mr.. Francis. You can raise fish
in the deep water, putting up a fence
TO keep them away from the frogs, you
know. Then you eau raise pond lities,
and that is one of the most profitable
crops in the world. That is what I'm
going to Provincetown for. There is
n pond down OIL Cape Cod where blue
pond lilies grow. Not like the blue
Zanzibar lilies that you see in your
FOUNTAIN basins in New York, but or
binary pond lilies, only that they are
blue instead of white. They say these
lilies will not grow anywhere else, but
but | don't believe it. I'm going to
get some root anyway and try it,
N. 4 Star.