56 THE RING OF NATURE 



the distance of several hundred yards, it must 

 appeal to the delicate sense of an insect for a mile. 

 Sight too might find it almost as far. When from 

 the opposing height we have had the whole dark 

 wood under view, the sallow bushes in full bloom 

 have stood up not so much like vividly coloured 

 things as like illuminations. 



Sure enough there are upon the sallow at its 

 blooming, specimens of nearly every insect awake. 

 Blue-bottle and green-bottle flies buzz about in 

 their short undignified way, and with them the 

 drone-fly, earliest and latest of all summer's mani- 

 festations. He is not very wonderfully like a bee, 

 but there are comparatively few of my acquaintance 

 who dare so far rely on his fly-hood as to catch him 

 in the hand. 



If you were to take a bull calf, kill it without 

 breaking the skin, and place it in a stone vault 

 with the windows open, it may be that in time 

 the drone-flies would lay eggs in it, and a swarm 

 of rat-tailed maggots live in it till they in turn 

 became drone-flies, and a person lacking in ento- 

 mology, approaching at the right time, might 

 declare that he saw thousands of bees. That 

 at any rate was an old recipe from before the days 

 of Virgil for obtaining a swarm of bees. Not many 

 years ago the plan was tried by a Cornish gentle- 

 man, who declared it to be a success. 



The real hive bees are here too, rounder of 

 body and more stately of flight, not alighting with 

 an impertinent jerk, but coming deliberately to 



