ae BEES. 
seem magnified many times. We see them bridge | 
the little gulf between us and the woods, then rise 
up over the tree-tops with their burdens, swerving 
neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is al- 
most pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the 
mountain and unwittingly guiding us to their treas- 
ures. When the sun gets down so that his direction 
corresponds exactly with the course of the bees, we 
make the plunge. It proves even harder climbing 
than we had anticipated; the mountain is faced by 
a broken and irregular wall of rock, up which we pull 
ourselves slowly and cautiously by main strength. 
In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from 
every pore, we reach the summit., The trees here 
are all small, a second growth, and we are soon con- 
vinced the bees are not here. Then down we go on 
the other side, clambering down the rocky stair-ways 
till we reach quite a broad plateau that forms some- 
thing like the shoulder of the mountain. On the 
brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and we 
scan them closely and rap upon them with our ax. 
But not a bee is seen or heard; we do not seem as 
near the tree as we were in the fields below; yet if 
some divinity would only whisper the fact to us we 
are within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is 
not in one of the large hemlocks or oaks that absorb 
our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet 
high, and which we have seen and passed several 
times without giving it a thought. , We go farther 
down the mountain and beat about to the right and 
left and get entangled in brush and arrested by pre- 
-eipices, and finally as the day is nearly spent, give 
up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but 
resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we 
a 
