762 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15 



have brought forward not less than a dozen 

 different systems, but no one would adopt 

 them. The trouble with them all is that they 

 are too good. They go too far. The only 

 advance that has ever been made on this line 

 has been made by the step-by-step met'iod — a 

 word or a class of words at a time. The new 

 must grow out of the old. The old system is 

 not, as Mr. Hutchinson says, radically wrong. 

 English spelling has a phonetic foundation. 

 It is the details that need tinkering with. It 

 is in everybody's power to do a little tinker- 

 ing. Nobody has the power to effect a com- 

 plete reform. 



Addison, N. Y., July 23. 



[Personally we (the Root Co.) approve of 

 the changes suggested by the National Edu- 

 cational Association ; but we do not know 

 whether our readers would sanction it or not. 

 For an experiment we will lay the matter 

 before them ; that is, we should like postal- 

 card votes on the matter. All those who 

 fail to vote, we shall assume have no prefer- 

 ences one way or the other, so that a majority 

 of those who do vote either for or against may 

 decide. 



These changes are very moderate, and are 

 not such as would shock the average reader. 

 I have always felt, however, that to spell the 

 word past for passed, and carry out this rule 

 all through, was perhaps going a little too far, 

 because it includes such a very large class of 

 words, and really saves but little in the way 

 of type ; but when, for instance, we can omit 

 ugh from the words though, although, through, 

 thoroughfare, etc., ue from catalog, decalog, 

 etc., and me from program, then we are mak- 

 ing a step in advance, and about as big a one 

 as would seem to us wise for us to take. We 

 have already begun it by spelling programme 

 program, catalogue catalog, and none of our 

 readers have interposed or objected. Now, 

 will they if we go one step further ? I feel 

 that we can hardly be in sympathy with the 

 movement for shorter spelling without at least 

 putting that sympathy into tangible form. — 

 Ed.] 



— »»»«■ — 



EXPERTS VS. AMATEURS. 



How the Veterans Sometimes Mislead. 



BY R. A. LAPSIvEY. 



Not long ago I was talking with a veteran 

 schoolteacher about text-books for beginners 

 in Latin and Greek. He expressed the opin- 

 ion that eminent specialists, scholars like 

 Gildersleeve, for example, are incapable of 

 writing text-books for beginners. They have 

 gotten so far along in " high larnin ' " that 

 they can not bring their minds down to the 

 simple modes of thought which beginners 

 need. Whether my schoolteacher friend was 

 right as to Latin and Greek text-books, I 

 leave the learned to decide. But it seems to 

 me I see something of this sort in the bee- 

 journals. When the man who has been han- 

 dling bees for 20 or 30 years, making his own 

 hives, inventing bee escaps, queen-traps, and 



what not, undertakes to give us beginners " a 

 certain and practical method " fordoing some- 

 thing, I feel like saying, "Yes, 'certain' un- 

 der your eye, Dr. Miller, and ' practical ' in 

 your hands, Bro. Doolittle " And I feel more 

 like saying something of this sort to-day than 

 ever (only in this case neither Dr. Miller nor 

 Mr. Dooolittle is in it). I have just returned 

 from gazing upon the cold "corpus" of a 

 valuable queen that came to her end through 

 her master's infatuation with one of these 

 " certain and practical methods." I get this 

 queen a few days ago from a noted breeder, 

 and did not wish to lose her, so I tried the 

 introducing-cage recommended by F. Greiner, 

 Gleanings for Oct. 1, 1898, page 727. If the 

 reader will take the trouble to look up that 

 number his eye will be caught, as mine was, 

 by the good looks of that queen -cage. Take 

 a careful survey of those raveled ends of wire 

 projecting from the bottom of the cage. They 

 look in the picture like ten-penny nails, or 

 even railroad spikes. You could stick them 

 through an inch plank, much less a soft bit of 

 wax like a bee-comb. So it looks ; but just 

 make a cage and try it. Those spikes turn 

 out to be limber wires with just a little more 

 penetrating power than a piece of string. You 

 manage to get your queen inside of the cage 

 without pulling her head off or daubing her 

 up with the honey those innocent little wires 

 have set running. You "firmly imbed" the 

 wires into the comb, so you think, and you 

 leave your costly queen in this death-trap 

 among her eager enemies. You look on the 

 third or fourth day to find your queen — non 

 est — in plain English, murdered, and the 

 bees which have gnawed out the comb from 

 around your " safe and practical " cage, play- 

 ing hide and seek among those same seductive 

 little wires. 



I don't know whether this brief narration 

 will display the misleading advice of the ex- 

 perts, or the awkwardness of the amateur. 

 I leave that for the editorial footnote to pass 

 upon. 



Greenville, Va. 



[There is a good deal of truth in what you 

 say with reference to those who write text- 

 books on Greek and Latin, and even on math- 

 ematics. I remember once an instance where 

 a certain professor in mathematics was almost 

 a failure because he saw every thing at a sin- 

 gle glance, while the average pupil under him 

 would have to go from one step to another to 

 follow out a difficult train of reasoning in the 

 solution of a mathematical problem. Wheth- 

 er instructors on the subject of bee keeping 

 are guilty of any of this same fault is doubt- 

 ful ; but if they are, it is in being too positive, 

 sometimes, in laying down certain rules. In 

 reference to the method of introduction, I 

 thou"ht. mvself that Mr. Hutchinson, when 

 he called it " a certain method of introduc- 

 tion," was putting it on a little too strong. 

 But your trouble, I think, was occasioned by 

 the fact that you made too long the strands in 

 the wire cage, and that you pressed the cage 

 at a spot where there was too much sealed 

 honey, causing drip to run down on the queen. 



