VOL. XXXr.} PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 500 



manner of growing, and alated leaves, it very much resembles the sumach or 

 rhus : the fruit is a white roundish dry berry, growing in clusters, so like that 

 of toxicodendron triphyllon folio sinuato, pubescente, Inst. R. Herb. 6ll. 

 Hederae trifoliae Canadensi affinis planta : arbor venenata quorundam H. R. 

 Paris, as scarcely to be distinguished from it. 



uin jiiccount of a Method lately practised in New- England, for discovering 

 where the Bees Hive in the JVoods, in Order to get their Honey. By the 

 same Mr. Dudley. N° 36;, p. 148. 



The hunter, in a clear sun-shiny day, takes a plate or trencher, with a little 

 sugar, honey or molosses spread on it, and when got into the woods, sets it 

 down on a rock or stump in the woods: this the bees soon scent and find out; 

 for it is generally supposed a bee will scent honey or wax above a mile's distance. 

 The hunter secures in a box, one or more of the bees as they fill themselves, 

 and after a little time, lets one of them go, observing very carefully the course 

 the bee steers; for after he rises in the air, he flies directly, or on a straight 

 course to the tree where the hive is. 



For this purpose, the hunter carries with him his pocket compass, his rule, 

 and other implements, with a sheet of paper, and sets down the course, sup 

 pose it be west; by this he is sure the tree must be somewhere in a west line 

 from where he is; but still he wants to know the exact distance from his station. 

 To determine this, he makes an ofF-set either south or north, suppose north, 

 100 rods; he then takes out another bee, and lets it go, observing its course 

 also very carefully; for this being loaded, will, as the first, after having 

 mounted a convenient height, fly directly to the hive. This second course 

 the hunter finds, for instance, to be south, 54° west. There then remains 

 nothing but to find out where the two courses intersect, or the distance from 

 B to A, or from c to a, as in fig. 15, pi. 13, for there the honey-tree is 

 situated. But if the course of the second bee from c had been south-west 

 and by south, viz. to d, then the hive-tree must have been there, for there 

 the lines are found to intersect. 



The foundation of all this is the straight or direct motion of bees, when 

 bound home with their honey; and this is found to be certain by the observa- 

 tion and experience of the hunters every year, and especially of late years, 

 since this mathematical way of finding honey in the woods has been used with 

 such success. 



Note, that all the bees we have in our gardens, or in the woods, and which 

 now are in great numbers, are the produce of such as were brought in hives 



