1,24 . NOTES AND 



solitary place, I saw a bee-hive, composed of a piece of button wood, which was 

 cut out of the woods full of bees. Dr. Williams, in his history of Vermont, (a work 

 of great merit,) says, " From our earliest acquaintance with Lake Champlain, 

 the honey bee was to be found in the open lands along those shores, at the dis 

 lance of one hundred miles from the english or french settlements, and long be- 

 fore those settlements had begun to attend to the cultivation of this animal j 

 and from the first settlement of New-England hunting for their nests has been a 

 favourite and profitable amusement." Upon the whole, although the balance 

 of authority is greatly against the bee as an indigenous animal of North- Amer- 

 ica, yet I am by no means satisfied that the weight of reason is not in the 

 other scale. 



Qussre ? Would it not be well to import the stingless bee of Mexico, that 

 makes the aromatic honey of Estabentun, and also the bee of the Niger, whose 

 produce is so superior, both in delicacy and tast to the best honey of the south 

 of France ? 



NOTE 31. 



I Jjave made the number of serpents much too great I do uot believe there 

 are twenty species in the whole United States. 



Rattlesnakes are of Mo kinds : one considerably larger than the other. This 

 serpent is never seen farther north than the mountains which surround Crown 

 Point, in that direction. Henry saw one, two degrees farther north, to the 

 northwest of French river, which discharges itself into Lake Huron. This cir- 

 cumstance was considered a very extraordinary one, and it greatly alarmed the 

 superstitions fears of the indiaus. It is not true that the hog is invulnerable to 

 the attacks of the rattlesnake. He fights it as he would any other animal, and, 

 If wounded, invariably falls a victim. In Lowthorp's Abridgment of the Trans- 

 actions of the Royal Society, (roZ. 3.) a story is told of a rattlesnake, in Vir- 

 ginia, which had got into a place where there were pigs ; two dogs were set up- 

 on the snakej and were mortally wounded ; " the howling of the dogs gave no- 

 tice to the sow, and made her come furiously bristling, and she run immediate- 

 ly into her den ; but being likewise bit by the snake, she setup a terrible 

 ^queak, and run also into the river, and there died." 



Dr. Barton says, (in opposition to the vulgar opinion,) that the crepitaculuni 

 does not give any certain indication of the reptile's age ; for that, in general, 

 -:cry old rattlesnakes have very fe^r bell?, or rattles ; and he asks, u Do the 



