Herbage and Shrubs spontaneously produced. 239 



attested, would have appeared fiction. This inimitable 

 gala dress of nature, and the immense numbers of 

 bees, with their '"''busy hum^^'' frequenting the blos- 

 soms and fruit; with the rugged and diversified moun- 

 tains on its borders, would have furnished a scene of 

 pastoral imagery, for poetic description. 



The county of Northampton is remarkable for pro- 

 ducing abundance of honey. I have counted 120 straw 

 bee hives near one farm house ; and have been told that 

 others of those rude apiaries, exhibit much greater 

 numbers. The farmers there sow buckwheat, as a sub- 

 stitute for better grain, more extensively than in any 

 other district of countr}^ The blossoms afford a pa- 

 bulum for their bees. They are forced into this cul- 

 ture, by the injuries done, in many parts, to their crops 

 of winter gi-ain by frosts. 



There is such a coincidence in some of these, and 

 the facts related by Hearne, that I think they not only 

 support each other, but unite in proving the tendency 

 in the system of nature, to changes and successions of 

 the products of the earth. 



Richard Peters* 



Dr. James Mease,^ 



Secretary Agric, Soc. Philad. 



