APPENDIX. 127 



ternal door of the collaterals. I think the bees will mingle, though I 

 suppose the queens will do battle for the throne, and two of the three 

 perish. If the bees agree, and I think they will, the work will go for- 

 ward with great rapidity, and they will probably fill all three of the 

 boxes. The centre one will hold enough for them all, and I shall take 

 the two collaterals for rent and cost of the experiment. I say the cen- 

 tre box will support the bees through the following winter, for, by a 

 long repeated series of experiments tried in France, it has been ascer- 

 tained, that three and even four united stocks will not consume five 

 pounds more of honey, than one stock alone. This fact is not gener- 

 ally known in this country. The experiment was instituted by M. 

 Jonas de Gelieu, minister of the churches of Colombier and Auver- 

 nier, in the principalities of Neuchatel. It may be found in the 'Bee 

 Preserver' of M. Gelieu, translated from the French and published at 

 Edinburgh in 1829. You will perceive that if this union of stocks 

 can be effected in the fall, there will be no need of suffocation to get 

 at the honey, for the apiarian can take, say, two hives, unite the bees 

 with those of a third, where they may pass the coming winter, and 

 have all the honey and wax of the two for use or for sale. This is a 

 very important discovery, and ought to be tried here. M. Gelieu's 

 method of wintering bees, by placing the hives without floor boards, 

 on rafters laid a foot apart, across a perfectly dark and cold room, is 

 very excellent and should be generally tried. I have five hives so placed 

 by way of experiment." 



[K.] 



Dykeing Salt Marsh. — Letter to Commissioner of Agricultural 

 Survey. 



" Newbury, Nov. 15, 1837. 



" Sir, — In compliance with your wishes, I will detail with as much 

 minuteness as my recollection will permit, the method pursued, and the 

 result of my experiments on the subject of dykeing. 



About fifteen years since, I enclosed ten acres of salt marsh by dyke- 

 ing. The next season, I drained it by ditches eighteen inches wide 

 and three feet deep — at about tliree rods distance from each other over 

 most of the lot ; in two instances, I left them six rods apart. 



