ON BEES AND HONEY, 157 



de Coverleysays, in the Spectator, '' a good deal may be said ou 

 both sides of the question," and a good deal has been said and 

 written, and scolded, and we do not thinlc it worth while to both- 

 er the Essex bee-masters about the arguments. Let us be thank- 

 ful for the thoughtful, wise, and excellent provision of the 

 bee's great Creator, and go on with our report. 



We will then say a word or two about the great aristo- 

 crats of the hire, applying that much abused word to .those 

 therein., who live on the labors of others, themselves furnish- 

 ing neither capital, skill nor work^ and whose only office is to 

 assist in propagating the race. A useful and necessary, and 

 indispensable vocation it is, the Committee are willing to con- 

 cede, but they wish the drones had something besides, about 

 which to employ their leisure moments, — 



Those moments' of leisure, 



Not devoted to pleasure. — Old Song. 



The drones then, are, with the exception before specified^ 

 ihe regular-do-nothings of the hive ; your fine gentlemen-at- 

 large, and very portly and well-fed gentlemen too. " They 

 toil not, neitber do they spin ; they lay not up in garners ;" 

 they add nothing to the common stock., and yet, like some 

 animals, that go about on four legs less — like some noisy fel- 

 lows of the GENUS Homo — they make more noise and fuss, than 

 all the ivest of the tenants of .the hive put together. Like 

 furious orators on town-m.eeting days, and at political caucus- 

 es, they keep up a niiscellaneous kind of bother and buzz, 

 with the intent, very likely, to make up in. nois3, what they 

 iack in sense, and to draw upon their inflated selves the eyes 

 of the "dear people," upon whose honey they feed, though 

 contributing nothing thereto. With both these classes, .as 

 Tony Lumpkin says, " It's all Buzz !" 



Fine gentlemen-faexapeds are these same dtones, who get 

 up late and go to bed early, sauntering out, at about ten o'clock 

 in the forenoon, after the sun has dried up all perilous fogs and 

 sickly dampness, and retiring to the inner hive, by four o'clock 

 in the afternoon, io escape all risk of the '• cold evening dew.'* 

 These are like to your Sybarites of Ancient Italy, who slept 

 on beds of roses, and got a pain the side, if one rose-leaf un- 



