BEES AND HEATHER. 



While from their cells, still moist with morning dew, 

 The winged wanderers sip the honied glue; 

 In wilder circle wakes the liquid hum, 

 And far remote the winged murmurs come. 



Another poet, Charlotte Smith, sings : 



The Erica here, 



That o'er the Caledonia hills sublime 

 Spreads its dark mantle, (where the bees delight 

 To seek their purest honey) flourishes, 

 Sometimes with bells like amethysts, and then 

 Paler and shaded like the maiden's cheek 

 With gradual blushes other while as white 

 As rime that hangs upon the frozen spray. 



This custom of transporting bees from one place 

 to another, says a writer, appears to be of a very 

 ancient origin. Niebuhr states he met upon the Nile, 

 between Cairo and Damietta. a convoy of four thou- 

 sand hives, being transported from one region where 

 the flowers had passed to one where the spring was 

 later. Columella says that the Greeks in like man- 

 ner sent their beehives from Achaia to Attica. A 

 similar practice prevails in Persia, Asia Minor, Italy 

 and on the Rhone. 



An authority on apiculture thus explains the ad- 

 vantage of locating the beehives among the Heather 

 when it is in flower: 



"It is always a good plan to send late swarms of 

 the hive into the Heather-bearing countries ; for the 

 bees being young, and having every inducement to 



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