80 AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



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 prec- 

 pices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up 

 the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but re- 

 solved to return on the morrow. The next day we 

 come back and commence operations in an opening 

 in the woods well down on the side of the mountain, 

 where we gave up the search. Our box is soon 

 swarming with the eager bees, and they go back to 



