DISEASES OF BEES. 195 



ther is sufficiently favourable to admit of their 

 going out; in consequence of which, they fall 

 to the ground and perish. 



SCHIRACH and others recommend, in cases of 

 Faux Couvain, to cut out the infected combs, and 

 to clean and fumigate the hive by burning aro- 

 matics under it. 



In BUTLER'S Feminine Monarchic, we are gravely 

 told of a certain bee-mistress, who, finding her 

 hives fruitless, and their tenants pining away with 

 sickness, by the advice of another female, went to 

 receive the eucharist, and having kept it in her 

 mouth, placed it, on her return home, in one of 

 the diseased hives. The plague ceased ; honey 

 accumulated ; and, on examining the inside, she 

 found a waxen chapel and altar, of wondrous 

 architecture, and even bells of the same materials. 

 Gent. Mag. 1809. p. 316. 



To prove that there is much of fancy in the 

 traditional accounts respecting bee-maladies, I 

 will mention the various hypotheses concerning 

 dysentery. COLUMELLA speaks of its arising from 

 the bees feeding upon honey collected from elm 

 and spurge blossoms : my own neighbourhood 

 abounds with both ; but I never met with nor 

 scarcely heard of dysentery among the bees here, 

 EVELYN in his Sylva expresses doubts upon the 

 subject ; and DR. EVANS says he made particular 

 inquiries of some friends in Worcestershire, which 

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