HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 



The honey-bee came to America with civiHzation, 

 — probably with the Pilgrims. Such industrious 

 and thrifty little people, withal so warlike upon 

 occasion, and sometimes without, were likely to 

 find favor with the pious fathers, who themselves 

 possessed and valued these traits. After getting 

 some foothold in their new home, they would have 

 had a hive or two of real English bees brought 

 over in some small tub of a ship, tossed and buffeted 

 across the wintry seas. 



How the home feeling came back to the Puritan 

 housewife when the little house of straw, built in 

 England, was duly set on its bench, and in the first 

 warm days of the early spring its inmates awoke to 

 find themselves in a wild, strange land, and buzzed 

 forth to experiment on the sap of the maple logs in 

 the woodpile. How sweet to her homesick heart 

 their familiar drowsy hum, and how sad the mem- 

 ories they awakened of the fields of daisies and 

 violets and blooming hedgerows in the loved Eng- 

 land never to be seen again. 



There was rejoicing in the straw house when 

 the willow catkins in the swamp and along the 

 brooksides turned from silver to gold, and a happy 

 bee must she have been who first found the ar- 



