CHAPTER XX 

 BEE-HUNTING 



THE mere mention of these words always brings 

 to us memories of high hills, wound about by 

 picturesque roads, bordered by rail fences, from the 

 corners of which the goldenrod still flung its banners 

 to the breeze, though September and, mayhap, 

 frosts had come. Beyond the fences were knolly 

 pastures, cropped close except where the mullein, 

 the thistle and the immortelle vaunted their immunity 

 from the attacks of grazing herds; and still beyond 

 were upland meadows, green with second-crop 

 clover; and crowning all were forests beginning to 

 glow with autumnal hues. Forth into such roads, 

 pastures, meadows and woodlands were we wont to 

 fare of a sunny morning, to hunt bees with our 

 father, whose woodcraft was not the empty accom- 

 plishment of the man of this generation, but was 

 attained on those same hills of western New York 

 when he was a pioneer boy, and the deer and the 

 wolves roamed those forests, and the beavers built 

 their dams in the valley. 



Our equipment for hunting was a bottle of diluted 



honey; a box with a sliding glass eover, containing 



pieces of empty comb; and a sharp stake, four feet 



high, topped with a cross-piece on which to set the 



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