BEES AND HONEY. 391 



and beset on all sides by furious foes. " They cliased you as 

 bees do," said Moses to his charge, " on this side of Jordan," 

 when speaking of the Amorites, and the general diabolism of 

 the children of Israel. And Moses used the very best similitude 

 possible ; for what will give more effectual chase than a posse 

 of enraged bees ? It is verily true that, 



He who'll face the vollied round, 

 They'll put to flight. 



For ages, too, has the bee attracted the attention of man, for 

 the purpose of domestication and profit. Various have been 

 the methods pursued, and multiform the contrivances for hiving 

 and sheltering these insects, from the primitive sections of 

 hollow trees down to the ne plus ultra bee-home of Langstroth. 

 This gentleman, who, like many other scientific men, of both 

 hemispheres, has made the bee the subject of careful study and 

 observance for a series of years, has given of late to the world 

 the book of his experience, and the hive of corresponding 

 fitness ; both of which will be hailed with delight by the apiarian 

 and all searchers into nature's arcana, generally. His hive, 

 under proper management, renders a swarm of bees literally a 

 " thing to play with," as was once remarked to us by a bee- 

 master who was showing off his aptness about an old fashioned 

 hive, but who, unfortunately, was the next instant horribly 

 stung by one of his playthings, which very joom^e</Zy enforced a 

 mind-your-own-business lesson, and left the meddler to his own 

 pungent and stinging reflections. 



The " untutored Indian " knows the bee as the precursor of 

 civilization — tlie forerunner of the white man. When, in his 

 natural solitude, the red man sees the little winged honey-seeker 

 journeying upon his prairies from flower to flower, and hears 

 its industrious hum amidst the arches of his forest depths, he 

 says with a sigh : The white man will soon be here with his 

 plough and axe ; this prairie will be under the dominion of the 

 one implement; this forest will fall before the other; hunting 

 is done, the white man is coming ! 



Small and insignificant as our subject may appear to the 

 unobserving, it is, to the close observer of nature, to the pro- 

 found thinker, to the philosopher, a theme of import and consc- 



