FRANCIS HUBER, 195 



day to refresh without overpowering ? How, in short, tie np 

 without spoiling the delicate sweets of bee labour ? 



Abridgments of all history make, as we think, and began to 

 feel when we were yet too young to think about it, the dullest 

 of all dull reading. They strain the memory because they do 

 not interest the mind, and are therefore, by the way, the least 

 adapted to young people. To put epitomes into the hands of 

 children is, as an American writer justly observes, as if we were 

 to give them distilled spirits instead of diluted liquids. It is 

 detail and minutiae which make historic relations pleasant to 

 follow ; and as with the history of men, so it is tenfold with 

 that of bees; the miniature marvels of whose proceedings 

 require for due appreciation to be followed in the minute 

 records of insect biography. 



Well, we are lingering still on the threshold of the 

 hive ; and here, just as we have penned the words ' ' insect 

 biography/' there meets us a venerable shade who must detain us 

 yet a little longer. How can we enter the bee-hive without a 

 tribute of admiration and respect to him who for us and for 

 thousands has laid the secrets of the bee-hive open without a 

 word as well as thought of Francis Huber, the bees' best 

 biographist? the great, the good, the gifted, yet bereft the 

 clear-sighted, yet the sightless Huber. At this season, nearly 

 a century ago, did he first open on the summer sunshine those 

 admiring and inquiring eyes, which for only a brief portion 



