^3^ 

 121 3 



BEES. 



Amid the profound pysteries and inexhaustible profusion of 

 life by which we are surrounded, and which only deepen and 

 increase to our eyes, as science leads us further onwards — 

 (not to baffle our inquiries, but to streng-then, by disciplining", 

 the minds of the inquirers) — amid all the various manifes- 

 tations of the boundless power of God, there is not, probably, 

 one individual subject fuller of interest ahke to the practical, 

 the popular, the scientific, or the poetical mind, than the 

 natural history of the Honey-Bee. To men of business en- 

 gaged in rural pursuits, there is the great question of profit 

 to be considered ; to those who look merely on the surface of 

 things for amusement, there is the spectacle presented of an 

 insect community, constituted under a regular government, 

 and exhibiting various social phenomena, which are not the 

 less attractive that they are but partially understood; the 

 man of science sees involved in the life of bees some of the 

 most perplexing but attractive problems that can possibly 

 engage his attention within the wide circle of created being- ; 

 whilst to all in whom the poetical or idealizing faculty exists, 

 there is the additional interest derived in part from the 

 habits of the bees themselves, and partly from the attention 

 paid to them by the great human masters of " the art 

 divine,' who, from the days of Virgil, down to those of 

 •Shakspeare and Milton, have loved them, ay, and under- 

 stood them too in essentials, and have, in loving- them, 

 given the bees a new claim to the love and attention of all 

 >other men. The picture of a bee-kingdom, which Shak- 

 «peare has drawn in the following lines, has the precision of a 



