FRANCIS HUBER. 195 



short, tie up without spoiling the delicate sweets of bee la- 

 bour? 



Abridgments of all history make, as we think, and began to 

 feel when we were yet too young to think about it, the dull- 

 est of all dull reading. They strain the memory because they 

 do not interest the mind, and are therefore, by the way, the 

 least adapted to young people. To put epitomes into the 

 hands of children is, as an American writer justly observes, 

 as if we were to give them distilled spirits instead of diluted 

 liquids. It is detail and minutiaB which make historic rela- 

 tions pleasant to follow ; and as with the history of men, so 

 it is tenfold with that of bees ; the miniature marvels of whose 

 proceedings require for due appreciation to be followed in the 

 minute records of insect biography. 



Well, we are lingering still on the threshold of the hive ; 

 and here, just as we have penned the words " insect biogra- 

 phy," there meets us a venerable shade who must detain us 

 yet a little longer. How can we enter the bee-hive without a 

 tribute of admiration and respect to him, who for us and 

 for thousands has laid the secrets of the bee-hive open 

 without a word as well as thought of Francis Huber, the bees' 

 best' biographist ? the great, the good, the gifted, yet bereft 

 the clear-sighted, yet the sightless Huber. At this season, 

 nearly a century ago, did he first open on the summer sunshine 

 those admiring and inquiring eyes, which for only a brief por- 

 tion of a long life were permitted either to behold the glories 



