AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. OL 
many times before I chanced upon its retreat; and 
then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees 
but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower 
looks, with its deep blue petals folded together so 
tightly —a bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun 
among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and 
cloaked. The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries 
to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom with 
the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into 
the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, 
but he had never returned with the knowledge he had 
gained. 
After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we 
reach a point where we will make our first trial—a 
high stone wall that runs parallel with the wooded 
ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad 
field. There are bees at work there on that golden- 
rod, and it requires but little manceuvring to sweep 
one into our box. Almost any other creature rudely 
and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into 
a cage in this way would show great confusion and 
alarm. ‘The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee 
has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of 
death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, 
but to carry home as booty. “Such rage of honey in 
their bosom beats,” says Virgil. It is quick to catch 
the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall 
to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the 
wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head 
and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is 
oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, 
come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few 
paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring 
the box against the blue sky as a background. In 
