398 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



October 



pie apparently expected to see a black 

 man when Mr. Lunelle appeared. His 

 picture is shown, together wit:i G. H. 

 Rea and Otto Hupfel. Mr. Hupfel is 

 a New York business man who has a 

 delightful farm home, not far from 

 the Hudson, and who is an enthusi- 

 astic beekeeper. 



Local Selling 

 To a man from the west the num- 

 ber of roadside markets is a con- 

 stant surprise. New York has some 

 wonderful roads, and farmers living 

 beside them establish markets cf their 

 own for the purpose of selling to tour- 

 beside them establish markets of their 

 roadside markets, where corn, toma- 

 toes, fruit and other seasonable farm 

 products were sold. Many city peo- 

 ple driving through are very glad of 

 a chance to buy fresh produce direct 

 from the farm. Thousands of pounds 

 of honey are disposed of in this way. 

 Many western farmers will do well to 

 give this roadside selling a trial. Ad- 

 ams and Myers, of RansomviUe, N. 

 Y., who are big fruit growers as well 

 as beekeepers, stated to the writer 

 that on one occasion they sold more 

 than $500 worth of fruit and honey 

 at the farm in one day. 



UNEDITED LETTERS OF HUBER 



Introduction 



(Continued from September) 



(Translated from the French by 



C. P. Dadant). 



Here is a resume of the discoveries 

 of Huber, by the noted A. P. De Can- 

 dolle: 



"Ihe origin of beeswax was then a 

 much discussed point of the history of 

 bees, by naturalists: some of them 

 had said, but without sufficient proof, 

 that they made it of honey; Huber, 

 who had successfully unraveled the 

 origin of propolis, confirmed that 

 opinion concerning beeswax through 

 numerous tests and showed especially, 

 with the help of Burnens, how it 

 oozed from the rings of the abdomen, 

 in the shape of scales. He m.ide ex- 

 tensive experiments to ascertain how 

 the bees prepare it for their combs. 

 He followed, step by step, all the con- 

 structions of those marvelous hives in 

 which the bees seem to solve the most 

 subtle problems of geometry; he as- 

 signed the role which each class of 



bees plays in this work, and followed 

 their labor from the rudiment of the 

 first cells to the complete perfecting 

 of the combs. He made known the 

 ravages caused by the sphinx atropos 

 (death's head moth) in the hives 

 which it enters; he even tried to un- 

 ravel the history of the sei;ses of 

 bees, and particularly to seek the 

 seat of the sense of smell, the exist- 

 ence of which is demonstrated upon 

 the entire natural history of insects, 

 while their structure has not y .'t per- 

 mitted to locate it with certainty. 

 Lastly, he made interesting experi- 

 ments on the breathing of bees; he 

 proved by several experiments that 

 those insects need oxygen jujt as do 

 other animals. But how can air be 

 renewed and retain its purity in a 

 hive closed everywhere, except at a 

 small entrance, with a sort of putty'.' 

 This problem required all the .sagacity 

 of our observer, and he came to rec- 

 ognize that the bees, by a peculiar 

 motion of their wings, set the air in 

 motion so as to secure its renewal ; 

 after having taken note of this, he 

 even proved his statement by imitat- 

 ing this ventilation through artificial 

 means. 



These experiments on the breath- 

 ing of bees required some analyses of 

 the air of the beehives, and this re- 

 quirement caused Huber to tome in 

 contact with Senebier, who wur mak- 

 ing analogous researches upon plants. 

 Among the means that Huber had 

 thought out to ascertain the quality 

 of the air in the hives was that of 

 germinating some seeds within the 

 hive, basing himself upon the idea 

 that seeds will not germinate in an at- 

 mosphere too much deprived of oxy- 

 gen. This experiment, though imper- 

 fect for the purpose intended, 

 brought to the two friends the idea of 

 making researches on germination; 

 and the most curious part of this as- 

 sociation of a blind man witii a clear- 

 sighted man, was that it was usually 

 Senebier who suggested the experi- 

 ments, and Huber, the blind man, who 

 executed them. 



n. 



This is what was known, up to that 

 time, of the works of Huber. He 

 died September 22, 1-831, i.nd his 

 life, after 1814, was unknown. It 



New YorW farmer's roadside market. 



was, however, not admissible that he 

 should have stopped making observa- 

 tions, after taking so much interest in 

 the subject for 25 years. Moreover, 

 the end of the preface of the second 

 volume of his 1814 edition indicated 

 exactly the opposite. 



"I might," said he (New Observa- 

 tions, Vol. 2, page 6) "add several 

 observations to those which I now 

 give to the public; but they do not 

 present a sufficiently connected ag- 

 gregate, and I prefer to wait till they 

 may be accompanied with fa -ts upon 

 which they have a bearing." 



A lucky concourse of circum- 

 stances permits me today to partly 

 make good this shortage. 



In 1890, during a visit of apiaries 

 which I made in Savoy, in company 

 with Messrs. De Layens and Cowan, I 

 learned from M. E. Mermey, of Aix- 

 Les-Bains, a young beekeeper who 

 had followed my course of lessons at 

 Nyon, that the father of a neighbor 

 beekeeper, M. Ch. De Loche, pos- 

 sessed among his family papers a 

 number of unedited letters from 

 Francis Huber, addressed to his 

 grandfather, Count Mouxy De Loche. 

 We hastened to visit the Castle of 

 Loche to solicit the permission of 

 reading those letters. The Count was 

 momentarily absent, but we were 

 given the best welcome by his sons, 

 who promised to transmit cur re- 

 quest to their father. The latter had 

 the kindness to visit us that same eve- 

 ning at Aix and did me the great fa- 

 vor of entrusting those letters to me 

 with the permission to publish them. 

 His grandfather, Francis de Mouchy, 

 Count De Loche, born at Gresy-Sur- 

 Aix, in 1756 and deceased in 1837, 

 was an observer and a savant of 

 merit. After having served in the 

 army of the House of Savoy and 

 reached the position of Major Gen- 

 eral, he had withdrawn to Turin, later 

 to Loche, to devote himself more com- 

 pletely to his taste for natural history 

 and archeological researches. He 

 published a gi-eat number of works on 

 natural history, archeology, histoi-y, 

 agriculture, etc. 



But my good fortune did r.ot end 

 there. When I published, in ]894, a 

 new edition of the remai'kable memo- 

 randum of A. P. De Candollfc upon 

 the author of the "New Observa- 

 tions," I sent a complimentary copy 

 of it to Mr. Georges de Molin, en- 

 gineer at Lausanne, grandson of 

 Francis Huber. This kind old man 

 hastened to inform me that he was 

 just then busy sorting papers which 

 had been forwarded to his mother by 

 the heirs of his uncle, Pierre Huber, 

 after the death of the latter, f.i.d that 

 there were among them quite a num- 

 ber of letters from his grandfather, 

 nearly all relative to bees. Although 

 he believed that his uncle had taken 

 from these letters and perhaps in- 

 serted in the "Annals of the Society 

 of Physics" of Geneva anything which 

 might interest scientists, he offered 

 them to me in case I should desire to 

 inspect them. Looking through the 

 above mentioned "Annals," we found 

 no trace of these letters whatever. 



In the file of letters which were 

 kindly loaned to me by Mr. De Molin, 



