all, in that gospel of love for God and love 

 for man which was taught by Jesus. It is 

 because we have this reverent faith that I 

 am led to protest against the mixture of 

 cant and conceit and mock humility which 

 appears in nauseating excess in the Decem- 

 ber Gleanings. 



He first speaks of " Our New Home." All 

 are glad to hear of this new building, for 

 Mr. Root has been very industrious, and 

 deserves in this respect the reward which 

 his industry has brought. But he goes on to 

 say, "I sometimes wonder, even now, if it 

 is not a mistake God has made, and if it 

 will not be taken away and given to some- 

 body else. I fear I shall get mad and smash 

 things again, and wrong and abuse those 

 who are so patiently doing my bidding." 



Well, Uriah Heep, you need not fear that 

 God will take your elegant workshop from 

 you. God is not nearly so mean as your 

 small soul makes you think he is. He has 

 no desire to steal your building for which 

 you have worked hard, and bestow it upon 

 somebody to whom it does not belong. 

 When he becomes a common thief, we will 

 all stop worshipping him. 



A kind subscriber promptly sends his own 

 subscription and that of another, in advance, 

 for next year's Gleanings, accompanying 

 the money with some friendly words. 

 Whereupon Mr. Root says : " God will 

 bless you, my friend, for the unselfishness 

 which makes you think of my factory, and 

 myself, an almost utter stranger, rather than 

 of your own factory, and yourself, who very 

 likely are far more deserving of help than I 

 am." 



Now, Uriah Heep, what is the use of that 

 cant ? If the subscriptions are paid for 

 Gleanings, and that paper is honestly 

 edited and sent, there is an end of it. You 

 need not play the part of lick-spittle by 

 making believe that you are " so 'umble." 

 Besides, if you really think that Mr. 

 Green deserves to have the Gleanings sent 

 to him free, that he is "more deserving of 

 help" than you are, it is your duty to return 

 to him the money and tell him you will give 

 him your paper for a year. And then, 

 having done this Christian duty, do not blow 

 a trumpet before you to announce it to the 

 world. 



Another correspondent, in a friendly note, 

 tells how he was led to do a generous act by 

 thinking of " Our Homes," and of what, as 

 he thought, Mr. Root would have done under 

 similar circumstances. Then this disciple 

 of humility gushes thus : "May God bless 

 and guide you, my young friend, and may 

 you learn to look to Him, if you do not 

 already, rather than to my poor self, for an 

 example." 



Did blasphemy and self-conceit ever reach 

 a higher level than this ? This Uriah Heep 

 of real life is far superior to his great photo- 

 type in Dickens' immortal fiction. The 

 great novelist does not tell us that his 

 "'umble Uriah" ever thought of declining 

 to stand beside God as an example for an 

 admiring world to follow. This height of 

 self-conscious humility and of blasphemious 

 conceit was reserved for that greater Uriah, 

 who pours into Gleanings the sickening 

 emanations of his mock humility. 



Common Sense. 



^ttttiQU Utftjes* 



E2P The bees cultivated in the northern 

 districts of China, appear to be only a vari- 

 ety of the common kind, somewhat smaller 

 in size. 



B3iF° Cuba has about 1,500 apiaries furnish- 

 ing enormous quantities of wax and honey,, 

 the latter of very inferior quality. Bees- 

 are kept in a rude and slovenly manner. 



ISF* It is stated that two agriculturists of 

 the department of the Ver France, recently 

 discovered their bees feeding upon cakes of 

 oil seed, which had previously been sub- 

 jected to the oil press and which was being 

 beaten up into a paste with water to be used 

 as manure for potatoes. The bees were 

 afterwards allowed abundance of this food 

 and their owners have since been rewarded 

 with nearly ten times the usual increase. 

 So says an exchange. 



Foreign Items, 



GLEANED BY PRANK BENTON. 



Several translations from the American 

 Bee Journal appear in recent numbers of 

 Italy's apiarian journals. 



Was St. Ambrose, the Archbishop of Mi- 

 lan in the 4th century who so boldly inflicted 

 penance on Tlieodosius the Great for his- 

 execution of 7,000 citizens of Thessalonica, 

 really the tutelar genius of apiculture ? 



None of the foreign journals of apiculture 

 which come to us, present the neatness and 

 taste in typography and binding, nor the 

 completeness of indexing which our own 

 American Bee Journal exhibits. £'- 

 Apiculteur of Paris, which is just entering 

 its twenty-third year, comes nearest to it. 

 Its editor is, unfortunately, the leader of 

 the fixistes— the class of apiculturists in 

 France, whose members, as the editor of 

 L'Ape Italiajw (Turin) expresses it, " de- 

 fend with drawn sword the ancient system 

 of immovable combs." 



Glucose or Grape Sugar as Bee 

 Food.— On this subject the conclusions of 

 Mr. Ch. Zwilling, one of the editors of the 

 apiarian journal published in Strasburg, 

 agree with those of Ch. Dadant and Chas. F. 

 Muth, and those contained in Dr. Kedzie's 

 excellent article before the Michigan Bee- 

 keepers' Association at its meeting in Grand 

 Rapids last month. Last September a cor- 

 respondent stated to Mr. Zwilling that he 

 was feeding his bees by placing near the 

 hive, water sweetened with glucose, where- 

 upon Mr. Zwilling replied: "This may 

 answer, provided the coming winter should 

 not be long and that it should be such as to 

 enable your bees to fly from time to time to 

 empty themselves ; otherwise this water 

 sweetened with glucose might easily pro- 

 duce dysentery. Feeding with candy made 

 of sugar-syrup is preferable, and costs little 

 more." 



