March 13, 1873. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTIGULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



235 



this town (Derby), who has beau lately proved to be guilty of 

 these malpractices, publicly declared that he knaw a fortnight 

 before the Show that my birds would be passed over. How "he 

 knew " is not difficult to judge. 



Has not the time arrived when fanciers should demand a 

 revision of the judges of bird shows ? The Cheltenham stain- 

 ing case, the matter I now call attention to, and several other 

 malpractices well known to me and to others, and which can 

 be substantiated by the clearest evidence, warrant the fullest 

 consideration of this subject. — E. Bemrose, Derby. 



COCKATOO CBAVINa FOR ANIMAL FOOD. 



I riND an Australian Rose-breasted Grey Cockatoo very craving 

 after meat, but all authorities seem to agree that meat must on 

 no account be giveu. Can yon explain how it is, that contrary 

 to the usual unerring instinct of animals, the bird desires what 

 is hurtful ? Is it possible that in Australia they eat insects, aud 

 if so, whether British caterpillars might not be acceptable ? — 

 G. S. 



[On no account give the Rose-breasted Cockatoo meat, for it 

 is most injurious, as all Parrots and Cockatoos are strictly seed 

 and fruit eaters. The reason your bird has such a craving for 

 meat is that it has at some time been improperly fed. It is 

 highly necessary that all birds kept in confinement should be 

 dieted, and their food varied as much as possible. Feed your 

 ))ird on hemp seed, a little sopped bread and milk, fruit, and 

 plenty of green food, and be sure to let it have free access to 

 f ome large, clean, dry grit, which you will find the bird will 

 enjoy, and which will help to do away with its great desire for 

 meat or bones. I do not at all think your bird would eat cater- 

 pillars, and I should most certainly advise you not to try it, but 

 to feed it on the food most conducive to its health. — W.] 



Courage of the Game Cook. — Much might be said respect- 

 ing the prowess of the Game cock, his powers of endurance, or 

 his courage in defending his wives and family. Thus, a cock 

 bred in 1814 by J. H. Hunt, Esq., of Compton Pauncefoot, 

 Somerset, seeing a hen and her brood attacked by a fox, which 

 actually seized and was carrying off the hen, flew at the fox aud 

 killed it, of which occurrence a plate was published at the time. 

 Another cook is recorded to have killed a large mastiff ; and had 

 we space we could multiply such stories almost ad infinitum. — 

 [Wright's Illustrated Book of Poultry.) 



Home-made Wines.— We are informed that at the request of 

 the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, our corre- 

 spondent, Mr. Robert Fenn, of Woodstock, so long associated 

 with the home manufacture of grape, gooseberry, and other gar- 

 den fruit wines, has sent to the International Exhibition, at 

 South Kensington, about thirty samples in bottle of the results 

 of his labours in wine-making for the past fifteen years. 



THE HIVE CONTROVERSY. 



Mr. Pettigrew, although he has refused to compete with the 

 fctraw skep against the bar-frame hive, has given no valid or 

 satisfactory reason for doing so, considering that he upholds the 

 former against every other hive extant. His proposals, made 

 some six weeks ago, were so impracticable, and so little likely to 

 settle any question at issue, as has been clearly shown by your 

 able correspondent, Mr J.. Lowe, page 191, that I regarded them 

 more as a "dig "at the bar-frame principle than as otherwise 

 ■worthy of notice, although Mr. Pettigrew says they were " fair 

 and comprehensive." He wants a competition to include "five or 

 six kinds of hives," but in bee culture I maintain there are but 

 two kinds of hives extant — viz., those with fixed and those with 

 moveable combs ; and whatever may be the size, shape, make, 

 material, or system, all hives must be of one kind or the other, 

 as all advanced apiarians will agree ; and it is really between 

 these two principles that the competition must take place if a 

 competition be at all necessary. 



What kind of trial Mr. Pettigrew intended, and what his idea 

 of the bar frame principle is, maybe gathered from his own words, 

 " I myself would exclude the owners from interfering with or go- 

 ing near their hives during the season of trial, for it is not a ques- 

 tion of good management ; " so that because Mr. Pettigrew's skeps 

 cannot be managed, all the advantages of the bar-frame moveable 

 comb principle must be thrown away. In my letter of February 

 6th I advanced the broad principle that all hives with moveable- 

 combs are superior to those with fixed combs, and I offered to 

 accept any conditions which Mr. Pettigrew or any other gentle- 



enough, and I should have been governed in my choice of hives 

 for the respective trials entirely by the conditions which I 

 expected to have forced upon my acceptance. I entirely deny 

 that any merit is due to any class or variety of hive as a means 

 in itself of acquiring honey ; so that if the proposed competition 

 took place, it is probable that in the class for swarms results 

 would be pretty equal, as I offered to submit to Mr. Pettigrew's 

 own terms, leaving the bees entirely to themselves. A competi- 

 tion between the two classes of hives for multiplying stocks and 

 swarms and raising queens is one in which Mr. Pettigrew must 

 well know he has no chance, as the facilities given to all opera- 

 tions by the bar- frame principle with judicious management 

 would leave him nowhere. The trial of honey-getting in my hands 

 as against him would have further proved the value of manage- 

 ment, for with the aid of the honey-slinger I am confident I 

 could have at least double his quantity of honey, notwithstand- 

 ing all the supering, nadiring, or eking, or any other means short 

 of " clever trickery," which he may or may not understand or 

 adopt. 



I maintain that, having taken bees out of a state of nature for 

 our own profit or diversion, management is everything ; aud if 

 as much time and trouble were taken to inculcate a better know- 

 ledge of the natural history and habits of bees, as is now worse 

 than wasted in useless squabbling about their domiciles, there 

 would be fewer failures in bee-keeping, and less to complain of 

 in regard to hives and their manufacturers and vendors. With 

 a better knowledge of bees, the various systems, so called, would 

 be better understood, and it would be impossible for anyone to 

 make such a mistake as to declare that honey stored in any par- 

 ticular form of hive is better than that in any other. 



It is singular that Mr. Pettigrew should so confound hives, 

 systems, aud management. What is his or any other hive with- 

 out a system ? And what is a system but a system of manage- 

 ment? No system can be other than equivocal which does not 

 insist upon a knowledge of the habits of bees, for it is they that 

 are managed and not their hives, the latter being only the 

 means to that end. 



The larger part of Mr. Pettigrew's last letter is taken up in an 

 endeavour to create an impression against me on account of a 

 reply I gave to a querist in the English Mechanic on October 

 11th, 1872, to whom I gave exactly the reply he has quoted, and 

 I maintain the opinion therein conveyed. Mr. Pettigrew in- 

 correctly says, " I went a long way out of my way to meet him," 

 whereas the truth is the querist who signed himself " M. P.," 

 after asking of me individually by name no less than nine ques- 

 tions, says, "I should like to know somebody's opinion of Mr. 

 Pettigrew's system," and I gave mine, as I consider I had a 

 perfect right to do. Mr. E. Symington in these columns, No- 

 vember 7th, 1872, page 374, and " A Lanarkshire Bee-keeper," 

 on December 12th, page 433, declares there is nothing new in 

 the so-called system ; and the latter gentleman, so far back a^ 

 December 28th, 1871, considers Mr. Pettigrew a bUnd leader of 

 the blind, and asks him for the sake of the readers of this 

 Journal, "and his own honour" to give "an account of his ex- 

 periences with the Ligurian bee." His book is for " the guidance 

 of inexperienced bee-keepers," yet he is wrong in some of the 

 most important facts in the natural history of the bee. The 

 late Mr. Woodbury proved him wrong in his data in queen- 

 raising, and the " Handy Book " contains letters of Mr. .Wood- 

 bury and Mr. Pettigrew, which proved the latter to have been 

 in ignorance of the law of impregnation of eggs. He devotes a 

 short chapter to fertile workers, but confesses he knows nothing 

 about them, and evidently does not believe in their existence. 

 He does not recommend the sulphur pit, but he considers its 

 use as not more cruel than it is to cut the throat of a sheep to 

 obtain the mutton, and after giving most elaborate directions 

 for its preparation and use, accumulates the horror of the thing 

 by directing that a kettle of boiling water should be poured on 

 the half-suffocated bees; and yet he boasts that his "Handy 

 Book " has saved the lives of more bees than all other works, 

 ancient and modern. What would the Rev. Charles Cotton, 

 the " prince of bee-masters," say to this ? — C. N. Abbott, Han- 

 loell, W. 



SAVING A STARVING COLONY. 



Last autumn I wrote to you for advice respecting a hive that 

 had the combs broken or melted down by the sun, all the stores 

 for the winter being wasted. Your advice was to feed liberally. 



I began immediately to feed on the top with syruj), but the 

 bees could not be induced to take it down. I thought first that 

 the bees could not get at it through the perforated zinc, I there- 

 fore took the zinc away and thrust the neck of the bottle through 

 the hole, aud also filled some comb with the syrup, as one of 

 your correspondents recommended some time since, but with 

 the same result. Of course I gave up all hopes of saving the 

 bees through the winter. I thought I would try feeding with 



men thought fair and right, but I showed plainly that I think very dry sugar, letting it go down amongst the bees, and I also poured 

 much more of the " management " of bees than I do of the hives down a Uttle syrup. This I have continued doing uutil now, 

 they are in, provided they have moveable combs and are large and am pleased to say that the bees are living, and, I think, 



