Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 February 1893 — A Herd of Crickets. [ARTICLE]

A Herd of Crickets.

“Yes, cold weather is mighty hard on py'cricket herd,” said Afton K. Wooten of Greenfield. Tenn. “>ly erieket herd? Why, haven't you read about it? It was printed in The Republic last spring, just about the time 1 started in the industry. You see, I live in the middle of Tennessee, surrounded by the prettiest lakes the eye ever gazed upon. The waters are tilled with trout and other game fish, and in the spring, summer and fall the Nirarods flock there from all sections of the country. One of the most curious facts about Tennessee fish is that they will eat nothing but crickets. Red worms, sawyers and the like find no fish that will bite at them in our waters except suckers and small perch. The most serious obstacle, therefore, with the fishermen is to get crickets. I organized a stock compauy with a few hundred capital and started to work last spring. I had a huge pasture fenced in with boards about ten feet high, sowed grass, built my hothouses and incubators, and then began gathering in my stock. My pasture consists of about twelve acres, and I calculated that I could well graze 50.000 crickets to the acre. They sell readily to fishermen at $1 per hundred, so you see what a rich harvest there is in such an industry. They flourished like a green bay tree all during the summer and fall, but since the cold spell has reached them they have been dying off at a remnrkably sad rate, and if the freeze should continue much longer I doubt if I will be left with seed for next spring.”—[St. Louis Republic.