November, 1914. 



American Hae Journal j 



cities along the way, were already 

 changed to German. Berne! There 

 nearly all is German. Lucerne! Still 

 more German. We change trains at 

 4 p.m. We go due south. The hills 

 get more and more abrupt. The vine- 

 yards have long ago disappeared. Now 

 the wheat and oat fields are replaced 

 by pastures and meadows. The slopes 

 are so steep that, to handle the scythe, 

 without slipping, the mower has to 

 wedge his toes into little cavities on 

 the hillside. Women with rakes and 

 forks stir the hay or pull it down the 

 hill. They make hay ricks about large 

 enough for a man to carry at one fork- 



Ax Cernisco SuL Naviglio. 



From tight to left. C;ount Visconli, Dr. 



Triaca. Miss Valentina Visconli. 



ful. A little farther we see men carry- 

 ing fire wood, in panniers, on their 

 backs, down a steep slope. ' We cross 

 tunnel after tunnel, 80 of them, 2.50 

 bridges, between Lucerne and Bellin- 

 zona. The line enters a narrow gorge; 

 the torrents flow hundreds of feet be- 

 low the track ; the air gets cool and 

 the snow begins to show above us. 

 We stop 8 minutes at Goeschn n, near 

 the mouth of the big tunnel. Every 

 cottage has a monster of a mountain 

 behind it, threatening to fall upon it. 



Indeed we see where big avalanches 

 of snow have cut everything down in 

 their path. It is an e.xciting sight. We 

 buy postals representing half a dozen 

 flashing views, but not more flashing 

 than the sights we have before us. But 

 people live and rear children there, 

 little folks who perhaps don't realize 

 that there is any spot in the entire 

 world more level than this chaos. As 

 we start with two locomotives, we see 

 several automobiles arrive on the road 

 across the torrent. They keep up fairly 

 well for a few minutes, as the road and 

 track are running in a parallel line. 

 But all at once we plunge into the big 

 tunnel and lose sight of them entirely. 

 In a very short time we are out again, 

 but headed north instead of south. The 

 line makes several loops as it ascends 

 into the St. Gothard. At eacl^loop, 

 the train takes a peep in the open, a 

 little higher than before. In each case 



we see the previous entrance below 

 our feet. 



We finally get into the heart of the 

 mountain and spend 15 or 20 minute^ 

 under ground. All at once the speed 

 increases. We have passed the high 

 point and are going down hill towards 

 the south side. As we emerge into 

 Italian Switzerland, the view is changed 

 again. The cottages are of white 

 stone, with dark stone roofs. The 

 fences are all made of thin, flat, tall 

 stones about 18 inches wide and 5 or 6 

 feet long, stuck on end, side by side. 

 Vineyards appear again, but they are 

 trellised on high stakes, joined together 

 with poles, so that the laborer can 

 work under the trellis to cultivate the 

 la id. It is very pretty to look under 

 and see the grapes hanging in an acre 

 or so. Then we see corn, for we are 

 quickly getting into a warm country. 

 There is very little corn grown on the 

 north side of the Alps. 



The signs in the streets are now all 

 in Italian, though we are still in Switz- 

 erland. The villages look old and de- 

 crepit. At last, after nine hours of 

 travel, during which we seem to go 

 through three different countries, all 

 Swiss, we land in Bellinzona, an old 



fortified city, of which we spoke in th 

 issue of our Journal above mentioned. 

 We gave there a picture of the old 

 fortress and an account of our visit to 

 the Biaggi apiary. It is located almost 

 at the foot of an immense bluff, in a 

 ve.y rugged country. Biaggi is very 

 proud of his bees and of the prizes he 

 has won. He showed me certificates 

 received by him at the Swiss Agricul- 

 tural Exposition of 189.5, at the Na- 

 tional Exposition of Geneva 1806, at 

 the Bee and Honey Show of Liege in 

 1890, at the St. Louis Fair of 1904, and 

 at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1907. He 

 has his own independent views con- 

 cerning the qualities of Italian bees. 

 He says that in order to secure the 

 best of those qualities, prolific. less and 

 endurance, we must take them as they 

 are produced by nature and avoid 

 breeding artificially. In a word, he 

 believes in naturally bred queens, and 

 for that reason he takes the greater 

 part of his stock from natural swarms 

 purchased from country people, in 

 Italian Switzerland. 



We stayed with him but an hour or 

 two and hurried to Locarno. We 

 should have liked to spend more time 

 in Tessin. There was another apiarist 



Count Visconti Di Saliceto. 

 President of the Italian Beekeepers' Association 



