APID^ — BEES. 191 



took only what their Bees could spare, killing no stocks ex- 

 cept such as were feeble or diseased. The following epitaph, 

 taken from a German work, might well be placed over every 

 pit of these brimstoned insects: 



Here Rests, 



cut off from useful labor, 



a colony of 



INDUSTRIOUS BEES, 



BASELY MURDERED 



BY ITS 



UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT 



OWNER. 



To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson's verses : 



Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit. 

 Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched. 

 Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night, 

 And fixed o'er sulphur! while, not dreanaing ill, 

 The happy people, in their waxen cells, 

 Sat tending public cares. 

 Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends, 

 And, used to milder scents, the tender race, 

 By thousands, tumble from their honied dome 

 Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame I^ 



It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell ob- 

 serves, to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially 

 as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter, 

 they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot, 

 who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned 

 with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he 

 persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined 

 him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his 

 corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the 

 stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very 

 gently. For some time much less than usual came into the 

 sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length 

 he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was 

 carried off by the Bees to their hives : on examining this, he 



^ Quot. by Langstroth on the Honey-Bee, p. 281. 



