AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



393 



\VILI.TA]»I Ttt'EVOY. 



Prof. Thomas Shaw, of the Ontario 

 Agricultural College, has kindly furnish- 

 ed the following sketch of Mr. William 

 McEvoy, the well-known Foul Brood In- 

 spector for the Province of Ontario, 



WILLIAM McEVOY. 



Canada. Mr. M. is the first Canadian 

 bee-keeper that we have presented in 

 our biographical department since mak- 

 ing it a weekly feature of the Bee Jour- 

 nal. His many friends across the line, 

 as well as those on this side, will read 

 with much pleasure this sketch of his 

 life, and the description of his work in 

 the interest of bee-keeping. Prof. Shaw 

 writes thus : 



The country is a grand place in which 

 to commence life. If our young people 

 could be made to see this truth in its 

 true light, fewer 6f them would ever 

 leave it for the more or less precarious 

 existence of the towns and cities. Nearly 

 all of those who make their mark in 

 life, have been cradled in country 

 homes, and the subject of the present 

 sketch is no exception. 



Wi!liam McEvoy was boj-n in the 

 county of Walton, in the Province of 

 Ontario, in the year of 1844. Some 

 years previously his parents had emi- 

 grated from Ireland, and while William 

 was still quite young, they took up their 

 abode in Woodburn — a beautiful little 

 country village in the county of Went- 

 worth, where his father fell a victim to 

 the cholera scourge in 1854. Mr. Mc- 

 Evoy, who has lived in Woodburn ever 

 since, was thus thrown at an early age 

 upon his own resources, and, to use his 

 own expression, has virtually had "to 

 paddle his own canoe" ever since. His 

 early education was therefore of the 

 most rudimentary kind. The chasing of 

 butterflies through the happy, livelong 

 summer days, with the writer and other 

 village lads, and the daily summer visits 

 to "Twisses" big raspberry patch, had 

 to give place all too soon to labor for the 

 farmers in the neighborhood. 



It was fortunate for Mr. McEvoy, 

 that while yet a lad, he engaged for 

 two or three seasons in succession with 

 Mr. William McWaters, one of the neat- 

 est and most successful farmers of that 

 part of Ontario. The example of neat- 

 ness and painstaking shown by Mr. Mc- 

 Waters, left a life impression upon Mr. 

 McEvoy, who, from that time to the 

 present, has allowed no work to pass 

 through his hands which was not done 

 in the best form. He soon became ex- 

 pert in handling the plow, and other 

 farm tools. 



But it was in connection with the bee- 

 industry that Mr. McEvoy was to make 

 the great discovery which was to bring 

 him fame in bee-circles, wherever the 

 Anglo-Saxon tongue is spoken — I refer 

 to his discovery of the cause and cure of 

 " foul brood." For this discovery, and 

 for the success which has attended his 

 efforts in destroying it in the Province, 

 Mr. McEvoy is deserving of the gratitude 

 of his countrymen, and has rendered 

 magnificent service to the bee-keeping 

 industry for all time. 



These great results, as is frequently 

 the case, have grown out of very small 

 beginnings. In 1864, Mr. McEvoy 

 bought two old box-hives with the bees 

 in them, from a farmer in the neighbor- 



