468 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July, 1922 



y; 



"OU will no- 

 tice — at least 

 I hope you 

 will — an adver- 

 tisement in this 

 issue h e a d e d, 

 "Evolution at 

 the Bar." When 

 Darwin's work 

 was first men- 

 tioned in print, 

 I made haste to 

 get it. I studied 

 all of his works 

 pretty thorough- 

 ly. At that time, 

 something over 

 fifty years ago, I 

 was more in 

 touch with the 



OUR HOMES 



A. I. ROOT 



a 



Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words 

 of eternal life. — John 6:68. 



And God said, Let us make man in our image, 

 after our likeness ; and let him have dominion 

 over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 

 air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, 

 and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon 

 the earth. — Gen. 1 :26. 



God, be merciful to me a siuner.-r-Luke 18:13. 



crowd of unbelievers than with Christian 

 people, I am sorry to say. My attitude of 

 mind, or perhaps I should say of heart, is 

 explained in a little passage I quote from 

 the book mentioned: 



The warfare of philosophy against Christian 

 faith is readily explained. Man is corrupt. He 

 loves sin. He is conscious of his guilt and fears 

 the penalty. Hence every avenue of escape is 

 welcome if only he can persuade himself that 

 there is no God. no judgment. 



Now, please do not understand by this 

 that I was trausgressiug the laws of our 

 land. I had committed no crime; but I was 

 well aware that I was trampling under foot 

 at least one or more of God's holy laws, 

 and that was why I grasped so eagerly ev- 

 erything that Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, 

 Tyndall, and I do not know but I could in- 

 clude Louis Agassiz also. When I found 

 later, however, that Agassiz had exposed 

 his ignorance by undertaking to teach us 

 about the honeybee, I began to lose faith 

 in some of the vaunted scientists of that 

 time. Well, when the dear Lord lifted me 

 from the "sinking sands" of unbelief a 

 little later, I lost track to some extent of 

 Darwin and evolution; but I managed to 

 keep tab, at least fairly well, on the re- 

 sults of the teachings of evolution. "By 

 their fruits ye shall know them." At about 

 the same time, and perhaps for the same 

 reason, I made a pretty thorough investi- 

 gation of spirit rappings and spiritualism, 

 but soon decided that the exponents of 

 neither one bore "good fruits." 



Now, there is one kind of evolution th;it 

 is all right, and may God be praised for it. 

 This book I have mentioned makes it very 

 plain as to what is genuine evolution and 

 what is false. Let me quote from page 73: 



Evolution is the method of working which pre- 

 vails everywhere, and always has, in hvman af- 

 fair n ; whereas outside of human affairs there is 

 not a trace of it to be found in all the universe. 



Under the manipulation and management 

 of mankind or humanity, created in God's 

 own image, evolution is a blessing to the 

 world. The author of this book sums it up 

 as follows: 



A few centuries 

 ago the crudest 

 implements served 

 the farmer for pre- 

 paring the soil and 

 gathering his crops. 

 Prom those simple 

 beginnings have 

 evolved the trac- 

 tors, harvesters 



. and other modern 

 wonders of farm 

 equipment; and 

 the advance has 

 been by slight, 

 progessive 

 changes. Here is 

 evolution sure 

 enough, and pre- 

 cisely as described 

 by Spencer and 



, other materialists. 



.• So likewise in the 



' department of loco- 

 motion and trans- 

 portation, it is 

 between the wheelbarrow and ox- 



easy to trace, 

 cart of by-gone days, and the auto-car and flying- 

 machine of the twentieth century, a connected 

 line of evolutionary progress. And a similar line 

 may be traced from the birch-bark canoe to the 

 transoceanic liner and the submarine. 



And now read another quotation, from 

 page 75: 



Wherever we look within the realm of human 

 affairs the evidences of evolution stare us in the 

 face; but in striking and significant contrast with 

 this is the fact that, the moment we pass the 

 boundaries of that realm, we strain our eyes in 

 vain for a scrap of evidence to indicate that the 

 process of evolution ever had a foothold. The 

 birds construct their nests, the beavers their 

 dams, the beehives and anx, colonies carry on 

 their complex operations precisely as they al- 

 ways have done. Moreover, each of those crea- 

 tures does its work perfectly at the very first 

 attempt, whereas man makes innumerable failures 

 before he can do anything even passably well. 



Please notice that last sentence, and then 

 consider bees aiid bee culture, with which 

 our readers are doubtless more or less fa- 

 miliar. Did the bee acquire its wonderful 

 ability by slow degrees, or did it probably, 

 like other insects, come into the world, 

 even away back in the days of Adam, a 

 skilled mechanic at the outset? 



This book has only 80 pages. It will npt 

 take one long to read it. Some might con- 

 sider it a rather high price for so small a 

 volume; but when you consider the pains 

 the author has taken to quote voluminously 

 our best authorities of the present day, you 

 will realize what an amount of labor he 

 has bestowed to make this book clear up 

 to the present time. In fact, I think it 

 was first put out as late as April, 1922. As 

 an illustration of the importance of such 

 a work at the present time, and also as a 

 reason why it should be read and consid- 

 ered by every parent and every teacher, I 

 quote from page 71 as follows: 



A parent, writing to a religious periodical, tells 

 of a text-book brought home by his seven-year-old 

 boy, the title of which was "Home Geography for 

 Primary frrade/i." The following quotation will 

 serve to show what is now being taught to children 

 of the most tender years. Discussing the subject 

 of birds, this text-book for primary grades says: 

 "Ever so long ago their grandfathers were not 

 birds at all. Then they could not fly, for they 

 had neither wings nor feathers. These grand- 



