1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



209 



heavy and badly made. To drive the oxen, the 

 driver is armed with a light pole, ten feet long, 

 with an iron point. I was shown a so-called Ameri- 

 can plow, but how different it was from the plows 

 now in use in this country. 



After having followed the creek for two hours, 

 we had to scale for two hours more to arrive at our 

 first halt. It is true that this station was the most 

 distant of all that we had to visit on that day, the 

 other stations being closer to Borgo Priolo. 



A shoemaker, from whom we had bought six 

 queens, asked us to take our breakfast with him. 

 His wine was excellent, and had the bread been of 

 good quality, we would have eaten a royal breakfast, 

 for our incettatore had brought with him good cheese 

 and sausage. I nowhere ate so good cheese and 

 sausage as in Italy. They explained to me their 

 recipe for sausage. Take as much pork as beef, 

 hash the whole, add one pound of salt and one-half 

 pound of ground pepper for every hundred pounds 

 of meat, put in strong guts very tight and smoke 

 it. The shoemaker's wife, seeing that I liked Par- 

 mesan cheese, offered me to taste hers. I accepted 

 and found it good. She then began to explain how 

 they made it, and to make me understand better, she 

 brought the jar in which she kept it. I looked in 

 but did not see any cheese. It was buried under 

 a coat of maggots of all sizes. I then looked at 

 what was left of the cheese I had tasted, and became 

 convinced that I had innocently made hundreds of 

 victims. It was too late. I drank a glass of water and 

 hurriedly brought my mind to other subjects. All 

 this is nothing but custom. In some countries the 

 people eat fried grasshoppers. The shoemaker's 

 wife was very clean and tidy. She had given us 

 a tablecloth and napkins of radiant whiteness, and 

 she was far from suspecting the astonishment and 

 disgust that the maggots of her cheese had caused 

 in my mind. 



In Italy, as in Switzerland or France, in all the 

 houses whose inmates are not altogether destitute, 

 they use large and soft napkins, far different from 

 the American napkins, so short and starched that 

 one would as soon wipe his mouth with a piece of 

 board or pasteboard. In England napkins are 

 smaller than on the continent, but not so extrava- 

 gantly small as they are in America. When I came 

 to this country I sailed from Liverpool. When the 

 hotel omnibus was ready to take me to the boat, 

 I closed my trunk and looked around me to see 

 whether I was not forgetting anything. I noticed 

 a white piece of linen on the back of a chair, and 

 supposing that it was my handkerchief, I took it 

 and put it in my pocket. The next day only I 

 discovered that I had stolen a napkin of the hotel. 



During the breakfast the peddler boy asked me 

 for the second time, whether I would be willing to 

 bring him to the United States. " I would gladly 

 do it," answered I, through Sartori, "if I were not 

 afraid that you would repent of coming. Wine is 

 dear in America." " What is it worth ? " " More 

 than $1.25 per litre." " I don't care," answered 

 he, unwilling to show his deception. But he never 

 again spoke of going to America. It should be 

 admitted, indeed, that a population badly fed could 

 not stand at work easily if they had no wine. 

 During all this day we had not ceased going up and 

 down the ravines of this hilly country. This work 



lasted twelve hours, for our breakfast supported us 

 until nine o'clock P. M., and still I did not feel 

 hungry, thanks to the grapes and wine so generously 

 offered to us by every peasant at whose house we 

 stopped. At first I tried to refuse, but Sartori 

 having told me that these people were superstitious 

 and considered the refusal of a stranger as a bad 

 omen, I accepted and never experienced but a 

 feeling of vigor necessary to perform our arduous 

 work. 



When leaving Milan we had calculated that the 

 gathering of eighty-seven queens would take about 

 two days, and we intended to spend the next day, 

 which was Sunday, at the house of a bee-keeper of 

 Alexandria. But we had not taken into account 

 the time necessary to go from the railroad station 

 to Borgo Priolo, and the interminable journeys 

 across the ravines and over the rocks that we had 

 to scale like goats. The incettatore had assured us 

 that there was not more than a quarter of an hour 

 of walk between each apiary ; but the hours of 

 Piedmont are as interminable as their leagues. 

 The population knows but little how to estimate the 

 length of an hour. How could they know it ? They 

 have no clocks in any place. In Milan I saw clocks 

 on all the public buildings, but I saw only one with 

 two hands, all the rest had but one, and very often 

 it did not work. It is so sweet to let the hours roll 

 without counting them ! This pleasure is better 

 appreciated by Italians than by any other nation in 

 the world. 



The next day being Sunday, we had about twenty 

 queens more to get, I supposed that we would leave 

 them, but Sartori told me, although he is a strong 

 Catholic, that nobody would be offended. Indeed, 

 the population of the villages that we visited fol- 

 lowed us from one apiary to another. Men, women, 

 children, all wanted to see us work. "Tell them 

 that they will get stung if they remain around us," 

 said I to Sartori. "Leave them," answered he, 

 "we will laugh." Truly it was a laughable sight 

 for the most sober mind to see the sauve-qui-peut 

 when the bees assailed the most inquisive of the 

 crowd. The noise, gestures, races, contortions, 

 would have been a fit subject for the pencil of 

 Teniers. Ch. Dadant. 



Hamilton, III. 



(To be continued.) 



[From the San Diego Daily Union of Nov. 21, 1872.] 



Apiaries in San Diego, Oal. 



Extent of the Apiary Business in this County — 

 Established Superiority of San Diego Honey 

 — Profits of the Business — Probable Future 

 of the Industry in San Diego. 

 The honey bee was introduced into this State 

 from the East as early as March, 1853, but the 

 apiary business attained no great importance until 

 several years later. The persons who first attempt- 

 ed the introduction of the bee into California met 

 with many difficulties. Their inexperience in 

 shipping the insect so great a distance, and through 

 hot countries, caused them to suffer severe losses. 

 In some instances entire shipments of hives were- 

 ruined by the destructive worms which had been 

 hatched on entering the warm climate from the 

 eggs laid by the moth previous to starting. 



