74 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



THE OUTLOOK. 



There can be nothing cheery about the outlook of our country 

 villages unless everybody gets awake and keeps awake. To do thi& 

 you must use every possible means within your power to work intelli- 

 gently and systematically ; keep all classes and factors interested in 

 their sphere ; let no one be idle and then no one will retrograde ; stamp 

 the word progress on every enterprise ; do not complain about society, 

 but begin to do something for the community in which you live, and 

 the product of your labors will be a living monument to your success. 



Our villages are here to stay, let us make the best of them. Their 

 society can be purer than that of the city, and the atmosphere more 

 wholesome to the breath. The boys are not thrown into corrupt 

 crowds, and the expenses of foolish fashion avoided. 



Progressive villages make grand nurseries for childhood, good 

 homes for those who are weary and need rest, cheap places of abode 

 for the poor, and their good influences may be made to reach into the 

 country for miles away. This is what is meant by C jristian civilization, 

 and to accomplish it we must have faith in righteousness, liberty and 

 home. 



Bees and Fruit-growing. 



At the January meeting of the Jasper County Borticultura! Society at the 

 city hall in Carthage, the following paper on the " Influence of the Bee on Fruit- 

 growing " was read by W. W. Sewall, and at the request of the Society we produce 

 it in these columns as a matter of interest to all the bee-keepers and fruit-growers : 



The term bee is a common name applied to a very large family of 

 honey-loving or honey-bearing insects, amounting in all parts of the 

 world to many species. Like many other useful members of the insect 

 creation, wonderful habits of life and mysterious methods of repro- 

 duction, as well as the wide influence they exert, and important bearing 

 they sustain to reproduction in the vegetable kingdom, it is at best but 

 poorly understood by the masses, and is frequently, by the thoughtless, 

 maligned and blamed as an enemy of the fruit-grower. 



It is neither the object of this paper to enumerate nor describe 

 the numerous different species of solitary and social bees, nor my 

 present intention to set forth the wonderful endowments of the com- 

 mon hive-bee by describing its power of flight, its wonderful ability to 



