1900-1901. | Nature Study. 243 
native country, the interest of which, for the field naturalist at 
least, is inexhaustible. Some years ago, in company with a 
- geological party, I visited Mull. N weurelly the Ardtun leaf-beds 
were the chief object of attraction. We went to them and 
dug out from underneath the sheets of basalt pieces of leaves 
cof dicotyledonous plants, some of them resembling plane-tree 
‘leaves. The leaves are in considerable quantities: they have 
been blown, possibly by autumnnal winds, into some lake or 
stream, and have been there covered over by showers of 
oleanic ashes, and afterwards by enormous sheets of basalt 
from a neighbouring volcano. Like Pompeii and Herculaneum, 
they have been preserved through the ages, only unlike the 
‘old Italian towns they have had mountains of basalt—a 
Hebridean Pelion and Ossa—piled over them. Since these 
_ tender leaves grew, the fiord of Loch Scriddan and the valley 
of Glen More have been excavated through the sheets of 
-voleanic rock; all the valleys of the West Highlands, in fact, 
have been formed. The sight was very impressive, because it 
gave us some idea how long the Highland valleys had existed, 
and , judged by geological time, it was not so long ago after all. 
It was since plane-trees and cinnamon-trees srcisitads almost 
the same as those living now; and these perishing trees have 
more enduring forms than the solid rocks on which they orew. 
Another point to be noticed is that living, growing, devel- 
Oping objects are the most suggestive. Suppose we take 
this time an example or two from living things which we 
 cultivate——for a field naturalist can come into touch with 
nature best of all by growing things—by becoming for the 
time the developed gardener or shepherd. There are few 
things we may obtain more suggestions from, particularly 
about human society, than from domestic bees. I have 
kept bees for a very long time—not for their honey, but 
because a hive seems to throw much light on many and 
profound social problems. In my young days—it was 
before frame hives came into general use—we kept our 
bees in “skeps,” and we often killed them in order to get 
the honey. It was the most foolish thing a beekeeper could 
I do not speak of its cruelty. The best, the most active 
of the bee colonies were killed off, because their hives con- 
tained the most honey, and the more backward—the inferior 
