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15 



at Paris for his collection of hives, and upon ■whose hives 

 this professor turns his wit, he says (referring to my bar- 

 framed hive), this is said to approach nearest to the natural 

 habitat of the honey bee. "Why many of you have seen 

 wild bees, they form no nest, they swarm into narrow trees, 

 or clefts of rocks, and this bos cannot be much like a 

 natural habitat, but a lady's work box, at least that is the 

 kind of criticism these professors use, and I think their 

 ignorance is so self evident that I need only show you that 

 this "bar-framed hive," being a box within a box, has a 

 space all round it, which keeps up the interior atmosphere 

 to an equable condition, and also, is always dry and clea n 

 from the dead bees being shot off the inclined alighting 

 board. I will not, like the American writer, give you the 

 69 reasons or requirements for a perfect " bee-hive, or bee- 

 box," which M. Langstroth claims as his invention, which 

 exist in the bar-frame, as you can judge for yourselves by 

 looking at the one before you. I had the vanity, when a 

 young man, to take out the patent only in France, and 

 after that period, 1843, it became known more generally in 

 Germany and America, although I had used the hive, with 

 the assistance of some other friends, some years before that 

 time, and I am glad to find that after all the invention is 

 thus traced to an Englishman ; and the bar-frame hive was 

 first constructed, and the term given, by myself, although I 

 regret to find some of the writers in the bee hive articles 

 have attempted to appropriate to themselves the first intro- 

 duction, through their American cousins and cousin 

 Germans ; indeed I have some of the correspondence by me, 

 which proves that in the American courts that an attempt 

 to patent my bar-frame hive was frustrated by the proofs 

 the court had, that I had invented and used that kind of 

 hive before, but the amusing part of this book of the 

 American divine stops not at hives and bars, but actually 

 takes poor Hood's puns and ludicrous wood cut, and intro- 

 duces the unfortunate beering as well (a man buffetting of 

 course with an angry swarm of bees.) I believe I have 



