HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



: 75 



a compact body, remaining quiescent until their 

 companions have passed over Ibem, when they 

 continue the march, and so, until the last bee has 

 entered. 



Now and again the queen mother may be seen, as 

 she follows in the wake of her hurrying children, 

 but invariably wriggles her way beneath and between 

 their bodies. It is a pretty and not soon to be 

 forgotten sight, and although oft repeated, one I 

 never tire of looking upon. The singularity of the 

 whole proceeding is that the creatures should so 

 simultaneously be seized with a common impulse, 

 probably one analogous to that which in the face of 

 a common danger impels a panic-stricken multitude 

 to flee — the alert senses, when strained to their 

 utmost, by some inconceivably rapid process of the 

 mind, catching the faintest indications of danger or 

 deliverance. 



Let me here remark, that these somewhat hastily 

 arranged notes are intended not so much for the 

 bee-keeper as for the naturalist. To him I would 

 say that the pursuit will afford an inexhaustible fund 

 of pleasant interest. He must, however, permit me 

 to warn him against the adoption of many of the so- 

 called scientific methods of bee-keeping ; if some of 

 these were to be generally adopted every particle 

 of pleasure would soon be scienced out of the pursuit, 

 and it is more than probable that, in process of time, 

 •every bee would be scienced out of creation. 



My pets, like their master, are decidedly old- 

 fashioned, and do not take kindly to any new method 

 not unquestionably preferable to that it is intended 

 to supplant, and surely when we derive both pleasure 

 and profit from the little toilers' labours, it is but just 

 that we should, in return, consider not simply their 

 preservation, but also their comfort. This can be 

 best done by observing three conditions insisted 

 upon by all practical bee-keepers. They must be 

 well fed, and kept warm and dry, and all means to 

 this end should be provided with a view to simplicity, 

 economy, and efficiency. Some of the most advo- 

 cated of modern methods fulfil none of these con- 

 ditions, being complicated, costly, and inefficient, 

 and I am not at all surprised that so many persons 

 abandon the pursuit as being risky and profitless. 

 Hitherto I have had no reason to regret my conserva- 

 tism, for, although during the six years I have kept 

 bees 75 per cent, of my neighbours' stocks have 

 perished, mine have never shown the least indication 

 of unhealthiness, and, if I except the loss of a stock 

 through misadventure, I have never had a single 

 casualty of any kind whatever. To the present day 

 all my stocks are vigorous and strong, how long they 

 will remain so I fear to hope, since a so-called 

 scientific bee-keeper in the neighbourhood, some 

 short time since, informed me that he had lost nearly 

 the whole of his stocks through foul-brood. 



Sivalcliffe, Banbury, Oxott. 



NOTES ON THE LEMMING. 

 By John Wager. 



{Continued from /. 256.] 



THE sudden advent of such hosts of lemming is 

 naturally a marvel to the peasants, as, indeed, to 

 others— and I met with several who still held to the 

 faith of theirfathers, recorded with credence by Pontop- 

 pidan and Olaus Magnus before him, that these curious 

 little creatures drop down from the clouds. When 

 at Flaam, in Kaardalen, near Urland, a tall, grave- 

 visaged man said, in answer to my enquiry, " Jeg tror 

 de komma fra himmel, i regn, eller snoe, eller i 

 hvirvelvinde — I believe they come from the heavens, 

 in rain, or snow, or whirlwinds." Others, less 

 certain, asked my opinion respecting this high 

 descent ; and a peasant at Graven, on the Hardanger- 

 fjord, where they were numerous at the time, said 

 that on a former occasion they appeared in such 

 numbers and were so destructive that the people were 

 quite alarmed, believing not only that they had 

 dropped from the heavens, but had been sent as a 

 judgment from God. The more intelligent of the 

 Norwegian peasants said they came from the north ; 

 but from what particular part of that indefinite region 

 they could not suggest. At Utne I was told that on 

 a former visitation they had, on the approach of 

 winter, drowned themselves by thousands in the 

 Hardanger-fjord. It has already been stated that I 

 met persons in Swedish Lapland who thought the 

 lemming-swarms came from the sea or the clouds ; 

 and my friend the Lapland pastor also asserts in a 

 letter, that among the mountains there are peasants 

 who insist that they rain down from the sky, not 

 being able otherwise to account for their sudden 

 appearance in such astonishing numbers. 



It is an old belief, and not confined to the vulgar. 

 Olaus Magnus, the learned Archbishop of Upsala, 

 writing in the sixteenth century, says, in the quaint 

 language of an English translation, published in 

 1658, that in Helsingia and other parts of the North, 

 they ' ' fall out of the air in tempests or sudden 

 showers ; but no man knows from whence they 

 come, whether from the remoter islands, and are 

 brought thither by the wind, or else they breed of 

 feculent matter in the clouds ; yet this is proved, that 

 as soon as they fall down there is found green grass 

 in their bellies, not yet digested. These, like locusts, 

 falling in great swarms, destroy all green things, and 

 all dyes they bite on, by the venome of them. Their 

 swarm lives so long as they feed on no new grass ; 

 also they come together in troops like swallows that 

 are ready to fly away ; but at the set time they either 

 dye in heaps, with a contagion of the earth (by the 

 corruption of them, the air grows pestilential) and 

 the people are troubled with vertigos of the jaundice, 

 or they are devoured by beasts, commonly called 

 Lekat or Hermelin, and these ermins grow fat there- 

 by." Tontoppidan does not feel quite sure that 



