296 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



etc. Again, "It pays to be ]>otitrd before 

 speaking quite so dogmatically and boast- 

 ingly." 



Here you assert (dogmatically, too) that 

 Ontario honey did not compete with 

 United States honey. My reply is it cer- 

 tainly did. It surely was brought into com- 

 petition as to its quality, or no prizes 

 would have been awarded to it or any other 

 honey. Quality in honey, like beauty in 

 the world of Nature, is a thing of compari- 

 son. If there were no xiivulard for either, 

 there could be no degree of excellence in 

 either. I did not assert, and I do not now 

 say, that the Ontario exhibit came into 

 competition with the Illinois or any other 

 exhibit, or that the individual contribu- 

 tions in any of these came into competi- 

 tion with one another, in the popular sense ; 

 but I do say that every collection and 

 every individual exhibit in these collective 

 exhibits was judged, and awards granted 

 or withheld, just as they came up, or failed 

 to come up, to an ideal or real standard of 

 quality previously fixed by the Judge ; and, 

 under the circumstances, this was the fair- 

 est test that could have been adopted. 



Now this standard was the touch-stone 

 to which both Canadian and United States 

 honey was brought, and by this standard 

 they were judged; and being judged by 

 this standard, they certainly came into 

 competition. Whichever came nearest to 

 this standard, in their greatest relative 

 quantities, or in the greatest number of 

 their individual contributions, might fairly 

 be pronounced the best. If Ontario stood 

 at the head of the list (as it did) in this 

 test, then its comparative merits were the 

 greater, and it must be considered as rank- 

 ing highest in the competition for prizes, 

 and it is neither dogmatism nor bombastic 

 to say so. Is it correct, then, to say (as 

 you say) that Ontario honey did not come 

 into competition with United States honey? 

 I agree with you "that it pays to be ported 

 before speaking dogmatically or boast- 

 ingly." I have never made a practice of 

 writing at random, or indulging in glorifi- 

 cation without cause. 



Yours respectfully, 



R. McKnight. 



It seems in the foregoing that Bro. Mc- 

 Knight has drawn quite a fine distinction 

 in the matter of honey competition or 

 comparison. Of course, we intended to 

 claim (and do yet) that, as it was generally 

 understood, Ontario honey did not com- 

 pete with United States honey at all, 

 though it may have had to measure up to a 

 certain " standard " fixed in the mind of 

 the apiarian judge by which to decide upon 

 the merits of all the honey exhibited. If we 

 are wrong in our ideas about this, we are 

 certainly willing to be set right by Hon. 

 Eugene Secor, who recommended the 

 awards on honey at the World's Fair, if he 

 can say anything on the subject without 

 being drawn into any controversy against 



his wishes. Perhaps, however, something 

 on the subject would help to straighten us 

 all out, and thus avoid any unnecessary 

 discussion. 



Experiment $$tation«>«. Etc. — Prof. 

 Cook, in referring to the annual support 

 State experiment stations receive from the 

 general government, says: 



Mr. R. L. Taylor is mistaken in the asser- 

 tion that the experiment stations get an in- 

 crease from the government each year. The 

 amount is .$15,000 each year, and only that. 

 The increasing appropriation was for Agri- 

 cultural Colleges. 



About the prospects for a honey crop this 

 year in California, Prof. Cook wrote this 

 on Feb. 19th : 



California has now had 11 inches of rain. 

 They say that 15 inches insures a good crop 

 of honey. 



Importsince of Bee-Keeping'. — 



At the late California convention Mr. 

 Francis W. Blackford, in an essay on bee- 

 keeping, among other facts said that the 

 annual value of honey in the United States 

 is close upon .§100,000,000 ; and the number 

 of colonies of bees kept by apiarists equaled 

 about one-fifth of the number of sheep in 

 the United States. This would place the 

 number of colonies of bees at 9,000,000, 

 which, at an average value of only .$3.00 a 

 colony would represent an investment of 

 $27,000,000 in bees alone. It seems to us 

 that if these flgui-es are anywhere near the 

 truth, bee-culture is deserving of a great 

 deal more recognition than it is now re- 

 ceiving at the hands of the National and 

 State governments. 



Xo Oetect Ci)liicose Adulteration 



— On page 136, in commenting on Bro. 

 Root's remarks on detecting adulterated 

 honey by the taste, we said that if he would 

 only furnish an " easy formula " he would 

 " see how quickly we'll print it;" and also 

 that "for once wanted him (Bro. Root) to 

 come out ahead." Well, in reply to our 

 editorial, here is what we find on the sub- 

 ject in Gleaninys for Feb. 15th : 



Bro. York, replying to our editorial on 

 page 63, wherein we criticised Veteran for 

 not making his glucose test thorough, calls 

 our attention to the fact that the directions 

 that Veteran went by differed from those 

 that we had ; that Veteran's test was thor- 

 ough, according to //« directions. And now 



