2f)4 State Board ok Agricultuue, &c. 



when we hear of persons imputing- the loss of tlwir fruit 

 crop to the bees. Some time since, a good woman <;ame to 

 her neiiijhbor, who kept a do/en colonies of bees, and asked 

 him to shut up ] lis hives as • his l)ees were taking all the 

 sweet out of her liowers and it made her currants sour- 

 Within the past year, even, a somewhat celebrated natural- 

 ist in our own country has advised the wholesale destruc- 

 tion of bees by feeding them with sweets mingled with 

 poison. It is not the object of this paper to discuss the 

 morality of such advice or its effects upon good neighbor- 

 hood, but rather to show that the interests of the fruit 

 grower and honey producer and general farmer are, and 

 must ever be, mutual. 



To the superficial student of nature, its processes often 

 seem contradictory and unaccountable, wliile, to the more 

 careful observer, all is order and harmony. 



Few are the pei'sons who do not kno^^', at least theoreti- 

 cally, the injurious effects of what is called in and in 

 breeding among animals. The same is true, to a great ex- 

 tent, among birds and insects, and even plants are subject 

 to the same law. In order that seed may be produced, it is 

 necessary that the grains of pollen from the stamens should 

 come in contact with the stigma of the flower. In very- 

 many specimens of plants the stamens and pistils are found 

 in the same flower, but they are not unfrequently placed in 

 such a position that it is next to impossible for the dust 

 from the stamens to drop upon the stigma of the same 

 flower ; and, where it can, it has been shown by Darwin, 

 Gray and other eminent botanists that such dust has less 

 fructifying power than that from the blossoms of other 



