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esteem. Its drooping blossoms protect the honey from 

 moisture, and they can work upon it when the weather is 

 so wet that they can obtain nothing from the upright 

 blossoms of the clover. As it furnishes a succession of 

 flowers for some weeks, it yields a supply almost as lasting 

 as the white clover. The precipitous and rocky lands, 

 where it most abounds, might be made almost as valuable 

 as some of the vine-clad terraces of the mountain districts 

 of Europe. 



" Dr. Bevan suggests the use of lemon- thyme as an edging for 

 garden walks and flower beds. No material good, however, can be 

 done to a large colony by the few plants that can be sown around a 

 bee-house. The bee is too much of a roamer to take pleasure in trim 

 gardens.* It is the wild tracts of heath and furze, the broad acres 

 of beau-fields and buckwheat, the lime avenues, the hedge-row 

 flowers, and the clover meadows, that furnish her haunts and fill 

 her cells. To those who wish to watch their habits, a plot of bee- 

 flowers is important, and we know not the bee that could refuse 

 the following beautiful invitation of Professor Smythe : 

 " ' Thou cheerful Bee! come, freely come, 

 And travel round my woodbine bower ; 



Delight me with thy wandering hum, 

 And rouse me from my musing hour : 



Oh ! try no more those tedious fields ; 



Come, taste the sweets my garden yields : 



The treasures of each blooming mine, 



The buds, the blossoms all are thine ! 



And, careless of this noontide heat, 

 I'll follow as thy ramble guides, 



To watch thee pause and chafe thy feet, 

 And sweep them o'er thy downy sides ; 



Then in a flower's bell nestling lie, 



And all thy envied ardor ply ! 



Then o'er the stem, though fair it grow, 



With touch rejecting, glance and go. 



* I should almost as soon expect, from a small grass-plot, to furnish Ibod for 

 herd of cattle, as to provision bees from garden plants. 

 13* 



