84 AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



crawl home; then came others and others, little 

 bands and squads of them heavily freighted with 

 honey from the box. The tree was about twenty 

 inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the 

 ax mark down. This space the bees had completely 

 filled with honey. With an ax we cut away the 

 outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. 

 Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb so 

 that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the 

 root of the tree and trickled down the hill. 



The other bee-tree in the vicinity to which I have 

 referred we found one warm November day in less 

 than half an hour after entering the woods. It also 

 was a hemlock that stood in a niche in a wall of 

 hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree 

 hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The 

 bees entered a small hole at the root, which was 

 Reven or eight feet from the ground. The position 

 was a striking one. Never did apiary have a finer 

 outlook or more rugged surroundings. A black, 

 wood-embraced lake lay at our feet ; the long pano- 

 rama of the Catskills filled the far distance, and the 

 more broken outlines of the Shawangunk range filled 

 the rear. On every'Jband were precipices and a 

 wild confusion of rocks and trees. 



The cavity occupied by the bees was about three 

 feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in dia- 

 meter. With an ax we cut away one side of the tree 

 and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It 

 was a most pleasing sight. What winding and dev 1 " 



