the murderous system of our honey-farmers, combined with the increased consumption of foreign honey-(12,000l.'s worth of which was imported last year)-tell a different tale. It would be a better sign of bee-prosperity in England if the increase in the importation were removed from the honey to the wax; for the staple of the wax of commerce is the produce of the wild bee -of the honey of commerce that of the domesticated bee; and it is a singular fact, illustrating the history of these two species in relation to civilised and uncivilised man, that, while the bushmen of the Cape look with jealousy on the inroads of cultivation, as destroying the haunts of the only live-stock they possess, the Indians of America consider the same insect as the harbinger of the white man, and say that, in proportion as the bee advances, the red man and the buffalo retire.

We have spoken of the possibility of bee-pasturage being overstocked, and such may be the case in certain localities in England; but we are very confident that this is not the general state of the country. We are assured that hives might be multiplied in England tenfold, and yet there would be room: certainly, more than five times the quantity of honey might be taken. But then it will require an improved system of management, more constant attention paid to the hive, more liberal feeding in spring and autumn, and more active measures against their chief enemies. In all these matters we must look to the higher classes to take the lead. We know many, both rich and poor, who do not keep bees, on account of the murder they think themselves forced to commit: let such be assured that this slaughter is not only unnecessary, but unprofitable too. But, on the other hand, let no one fancy that all he has to do is to procure a swarm and a hive, and set it down in the garden, and that streams of honey and money will forthwith flow. Bees, like everything else that is worth possessing, require attention and care. 'They need,' said a poor friend of ours, a deal of shepherding;' and thus, to the cottager who can afford to give them his time, they may be made a source of great profit, as well as pleasure. Our own sentiments cannot

be given better than in Mr. Cotton's words:

I would most earnestly beg the aid of the clergy and resident gentry -but, above all, their good wives; in a word, of all who wish to help the poor who dwell round about them in a far humbler way, yet perhaps not less happily; I would beg them, one and all, to aid me as a united body in teaching their poor neighbours the best way of keeping bees... A row of bees keeps a man at home; all his spare moments may be well filled by tending them, by watching their wondrous ways, and by loving them. In winter he may work in his own chimney-corner at making hives, both for himself and to sell. This he will find almost as profitable

VOL. LXXI. NO. CXLI.

D

as

as his bees, for well-made hives always meet with a ready sale. Again, his bee-hives are close to his cottage-door; he will learn to like their sweet music better than the dry squeaking of a pothouse fiddle, and he may listen to it in the free air, with his wife and children about him.'

The latter part of this has, we fear, a little too much of the green tint of Arcadia. It is seldom, indeed, that you can get a husbandman to see the peculiar excellences and beauties of his own little world; though it is only fair to add, where you find the exception, the bee-master is for the most part that man. The great matter is to get the man who does love the dry squeaking of the pothouse fiddle,' and the wet potations that succeed thereon, to keep bees: and this can only, and not easily then, be done by showing him the profit. Fair and good housewives-if ye be readers of the Quarterly-don't bore him with long lectures; don't heap upon him many little books; but give him a hive of the best construction-show him the management—and then buy his honey; buy all he brings, even though you should have to give the surplus to some poor gardenless widow. But only buy such as comes from an improved hiveand you can't easily be deceived in this-which preserves the bees and betters the honey.

Then when you pay him, you may read to him, if you will, the wise rules of old Butler-exempli gratiâ :

'If thou wilt have the favour of thy bees that they sting thee not, thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly; thou must not come among them having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of Leeks, Onions, Garlic, or by any other means; the noisomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of beer: thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness,' &c. &c.

He makes a very proper distinction, which our Temperance Societies would do well to observe, between a cup of beer,' and 'drunkenness ;' and indeed there seems to be a kind of beecharm in a moderate draught, for Mr. Smith, a dry writer enough in other respects, says, 'Your hive being dressed, rub over your hands with what beer and sugar is left, and that will prevent the bees from stinging them; also drink the other half-pint of beer, and that will very much help to preserve your face from being stung.' (p. 34.)

We hold to the opinion already expressed of presence of mind being the best bee-dress, notwithstanding the anecdote told of M. De Hofer, Conseiller d'Etat du Grand Duc de Baden, who, having been a great bee-keeper, and almost a rival of Wildman in the power he possessed over his bees, found, after an attack of violent fever, that he could no more approach them without exciting their anger-in fact, when he came back again, they

tore

tore him where he stood.' Here, then, it is pretty evident,' says the doctor who tells the story, that some change had taken place in the Counsellor's secretions, in consequence of the fever, which, though not noticeable by his friends, was offensive to the olfactory nerves of the bees.' Might not a change have taken place in the Counsellor's nerves?

As Critics as well as Counsellors may be stung, we have, for our own good and that of the public, examined all the proposed remedies, and the result is as follows:-Extract at once the sting, which is almost invariably left behind: if a watch-key is at hand, press it exactly over the wound, so that much of the venom may be squeezed out; and in any case apply, the sooner of course the better, laudanum, or the least drop of the spirit of ammonia. Oil and honey, which are also recommended, probably only act in keeping off the air from the wound. The cure varies very much with the constitutions of individuals; but the poison being acid, any alkali will probably be serviceable.

But, with reference to the cottager, we must consider the profit as well as the sting; and this it will be far better to underrate than exaggerate. Tell a poor man that his bees, with the most ordinary care, will pay his rent, and he will find that your word is good, and that he has something to spare for his trouble; he may then be led to pay the same respect to his little lodgers as the Irish do to the less cleanly animal that acts the same kind part of rent-payer by them. But when the marvellous statistics of bee-books are laid before a labourer, their only effect can be to rouse an unwonted spirit of covetousness, which is more than punished by the still greater disappointment that ensues. Here follows one of those quiet statements, put forth with a modest complacency that out-Cobbetts Cobbett:

Suppose, for instance, a swarm of bees at the first to cost 10s. 6d. to be well hackled, and neither them nor their swarms to be taken, but to do well, and swarm once every year, what will be the product for fourteen years, and what the profits, of each hive sold at 10s. 6d. ?--

8192

13

4300 16 0

14 'N.B. Deduct 10s. 6d., what the first hive cost, and the remainder will be clear profit, supposing the second swarms to pay for hives, hackles, labour, &c.'

Mr. Thorley, from whose book the above statement is taken, had better have carried it on three years further, which would have given him within a few pounds of 55,000l.-a very pretty fortune for a cottager's eldest daughter: the only difficulty would be to find a man who had heart to get rid of a capital that doubled itself every year. It is like Cobbett's vine, that on a certain system of management was to produce so many upright stems, and from each of these so many lateral branches, and on each lateral so many shoots, and on each shoot so many buds, and every bud so many bunches and pounds of grapes-so that you might count the quantity of wine you were to make on the day that you planted the tree. There is nothing like an array of figures you wish to mislead. All seems so fair, and clear, and demonstrative-no appeals to the passions, no room for a quibble-that to deny the conclusion is to deny that two and two make four. Yet, for all this, the figures of the arithmeticians have produced more fallacies than all the other figures of the Schools. We shall enter, therefore, into no exact calculation of profit and loss, which is, after all, almost entirely dependent on the seasons and the degree of care bestowed. Statistics, such as Mr. Thorley's, might just be as well applied to the stock of graziers without any consideration of the number of acres they held; for he gives us no receipt how to find pasturage for 8000 bee-hives.

if

Dr. Warden, a physician of Croydon, who wrote in the year 1712 a book called The True Amazons, or the Monarchy of Bees,'-and of whom we can discover nothing more than that the front of his bee-house was painted with lions and other creatures not at all agreeable '-found the neighbouring furze of Coombe and Purley not unprofitably gay,' if we may believe his assertion that his bees brought him in 407. a-year: he might have passed rich at that time in such a locality, if his physician's fees brought him in an equal sum. That the ancients did not neglect the profit to be derived from their hives, we learn from Virgil's old gardener-to whom we cannot too frequently recurand from two veteran brothers mentioned by Varro-the type perhaps of the Corycian of the Georgics-who turned the little villa and croft left them by their father into a bee-house and bee

garden

garden-realising, on an average, 10,000 sesterces a-year. They seem to have been thrifty old bachelors, and took care to bide a good market. Among the plunder of Verres were 400 amphora of honey.

We will now suppose that, having made up our mind on the matter of profit, and being sting-proof, we have got an old-fashioned straw hive, which we purchased in autumn for a guinea, safely placed under our heath-thatched bee-house; that we have also got one of the improved Grecian straw hives ready to house the first swarm in. Some fine warm morning in May or June, a cluster of bees having hung out from the hive some days before, the whole atmosphere in the neighbourhood of the bee-house seems alive with thousands of the little creatures, whirling and buzzing, passing and repassing, wheeling about in rapid circles like a group of maddened Bacchanals. This is the time for the bee-master to be on the alert. Out runs the good housewife with the frying-pan and key-the orthodox instruments for ringing-and never ceases her rough music till the bees have safely settled in some neighbouring bough. This custom, as old as the birth of Jupiter, is one of the most pleasing and exciting of the countryman's life; Hogarth, we think, introduces it in the background of his Country Noises,' and there is an old coloured print of bee-ringing still occasionally met with on the walls of a country inn that has charms for us, and makes us think of bright sunny weather in the dreariest November day. We quite feel with Mr. Jesse that we should regret to find this good old custom fall into disrepute. Whether, as Aristotle says, it affects them through pleasure, or fear, or whether indeed they hear at all, is still as uncertain as that philosopher left it, but we can wish no better luck to every bee-master that neglects it than that he may lose every swarm for which he omits to raise this time-honoured concert.*

The whole matter of swarming is so important, that we should be doing wrong to pass it over without giving the following graphic account from the Naturalist's Library :'—

"The laying of drones' eggs having terminated, the queen, previously large and unwieldy, becomes slender in her figure and more able to fly, and begins to exhibit signs of agitation. She traverses the hive impatiently, abandoning the slow and stately step which was her wont, and

* The story goes that the Curetes, wishing to hide the birth of Jupiter from his father Saturn, set up a clashing of cymbals to drown the noise of his infant cries :'Cum pueri circùm puerum pernice choreâ

Armati in numerum pulsarant æribus æra.'-Lucret. ii. 635. The noise attracted a swarm of bees to the cave where the child was hid, and their honey nourished him, hence the origin of ringing. Δοκοῦσι δὲ χαίρειν αἱ μέλιτται καὶ τῷ κρύτῳ κ. τ. λ. Aristot. Η. Αn. p. 299.