1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



l41 



— horribly too near — to the manufact- 

 ured comb described by Prof. Wiley 

 a dozen years ago. 



Making the tubes and cutting them 

 with electric wires, plastering on a 

 floor as a base for the cells, dipping 

 this in a liquid of glucose and trash, 

 and perhaps fitting on a roof by some 

 "hocus-pocus" method is too near the 

 precipice ! Then how easy to be cheat- 

 ing the bees, robbing honorable apia- 

 rists, defrauding consumers, and de- 

 stroying the pursuit ! 



Is it not putting a club into the 

 hands of the enemies of the pursuit to 

 beat out the brains of the apiarists ? 

 If not, it is standing on dangerous 

 ground. 



True, I graut you it is intended for 

 honorable work, but it makes dishon- 

 est work possible and should be 

 shunned as you would an adder. I 

 surely think it will injure the sale of 

 honey and destroy the pursuit unless 

 a halt is called. 



Another danger is seen. It may give 

 chance for the "midrib" scare to arise 

 again and be a detriment to the honey 

 consumption. To apiarists let me say: 

 Do not think of such a thing as using 

 even thin brood foundation in the 

 sections, nor countenance the Weed- 

 abomination, called " manufactured 

 comb." 



The remarks of Mr. T. F. Bingham 

 are to the point and very appropriate. 

 He says, " Butter is butter, but melt- 

 ed butter is grease ; so comb is comb, 

 but melted comb is wax." Let us be 

 very careful not to allow the pursuit 

 to be injured by the use of too much 

 wax in the sections of comb honey. 



San Francisco, Cal. 



Literary Iten^s. 



" The Proper Use of Wealth " is the 

 subject characteristically discussed by 

 Chauncey M. Depesv, Miss Grace Dodge, 

 Mr. and Mrs. John Swinton, and others 

 in a Symposium in Demorest's Magazine 

 for May. It will well repay reading. 



THE FIRST RAILROAD IN AMERICA. 



Gridley Bryant, a civil engineer, in 

 1826, projected the first railroad in the 

 United States. It was built for the pur- 

 pose of carrying granite from the quar- 

 ries of Quincy, Massachusetts, to the 

 nearest tidewater. Its length was four 

 miles, including branches, and its first 

 cost was $50,000. The sleepers wrre of 

 .stone and were laid across the track eight 

 feet apart. Upon rails of wood, six inch- 

 es thick, wrought iron plates, three inch- 

 es wide and a quarter of an inch thick, 

 were spiked. At the crossings stone rails 

 were used, and as the wooden rails be- 

 came unserviceable they were replaced 

 by others of stone. — May Ladies' Home 

 Journal. 



" Does Modern College Education Edu- 

 cate, in the Broadest and Most Liberal 

 Sense of the Term?" is one of the 

 most important enquiries that could be 

 set on foot. This discussion, which is to 

 be taken part in by President Gilman of 

 the John Hopkins, President Dwight of 

 Yale, President Schurman, of Cornell, 

 President Morton of the Stevens Institute, 

 Hepry Thurston Peck of Columbia, Bish- 

 op Potter and others of the most distin- 

 guished men of both the United States 

 and Europe, is begun in the April Cos- 

 mopolitan by a radical inquiry into the 

 educational problem along the lines of 

 Herbert Spencer. President Gilman will 

 follow in a direction almost equally 

 searching. Altogether there is promised 

 the frankest possible expression of opin- 

 ion, and it seems probable that it will be 

 the most thorough comparison ever made 

 of educational methods with the needs 

 of every day life at the close of the nine- 

 teenth century. 



