NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 79 



smoke into the hive, and waiting a minute or so till the Bees are 

 filled, may do almost anything he pleases with them. 



Honey is not really made by Bees, but simply gathered from 

 flowers ; thus almost any one can tell by its taste and appearance 

 from what class of plants the honey has come. Bees also obtain 

 large quantities of honey from what is known as " honey dew," 

 which is often found in abundance on the leaves of the lime, 

 the oak, the plane, the hazel, and the bramble. 



Of course the test of a successful bee-keeper is his honey 

 harvest, and truly in Ayrshire we have the men who can in- 

 duce Bees to build their combs so beautifully straight, so sym- 

 metrical, so even on both sides, and so perfectly finished, that 

 one could believe they were cast in a mould to pattern. These 

 bee-keepers took their immense harvest over 400 miles of 

 railway, without breaking a single comb, to the Crystal Palace 

 Show in SejDtember, 1874, which was the finest display ever ex- 

 hibited in Britain ; and again to the City Hall, Glasgow, in 

 September, 1875, under the auspices of the Caledonian Apiarian 

 Society. This Society is making strenuous endeavours to waken 

 up the people to the vast stores of honey that are every year 

 wasted on our heather hills and in our clover fields. 



[During the meeting of the British Association, it placed in 

 the Kibble Crystal Palace an " Observatory Hive," where every 

 visitor had an opportunity of seeing the interior economy of 

 a hive and its inhabitants. Sept., 1876.] 



Mr Bennett placed on the table, in illustration of his remarks, 

 a series of specimens of honey, combs, wax, etc., with an example 

 of the Lanarkshire bar-frame hive and its various appliances. 



IV. — Notes on the state of Vegetation in the Public Parks in January, 

 1876, as compared with the corresponding month in previous years. 

 By Mr Duncan M'Lellan, Superintendent of Parks. 



In the course of his remarks, Mr M'Lellan enumerated seventeen 

 species and nine varieties of plants, which were seen in flower 

 during the month in the Queen's Park, while in Kelvingrove, 

 where the situation is damper and the park much shaded by large 

 trees, only a few of those named were in flower, and that towards 

 the middle and end of the month, and at the beginning of the 

 year not a blossom could be seen. In the Alexandra Park, which 



