504 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



others raise the young and j)rotect them ; eaeh 

 bee does its ])art of ihe labor in gathering in 

 the stores and nursing the young ; and I have 

 noticed for some years past their mode of 

 gathering pollen or bee bread. It is this : — 

 AVlien a bee goes out after food, it alights on 

 some kind of llovver and gathers a part of its 

 load ; then goes to another of the same kind, 

 and perhaps a third, to obtain a load. An- 

 other bee goes out and if it alights on another 

 kind of flower it keeps to that kind till it gets 

 a load. But how is this known ? You go to the 

 hive and wateh them as they eonie in ; some 

 I'.ave yellow pollen on their legs ; others havt; 

 light color ; others have dark ; but no bee 

 has two colors on bis legs. If you see any 

 you will see more than 1 have, for 1 never 

 did ; and I have supposed that they stored it 

 in different cells for a change of foo<l. The 

 other day in overhauling a hive, I broke out a 

 new piece of coud> and found the different 

 colors in different cells, which confirmed my 

 belief ; for I suppose they like a change of 

 food as well as humans. 



Another curiosity is their coming out and 

 alighting before going off; for amongst the 

 hundreds that I have hived I never had one 

 swarm leave direct from the hive. Another 

 curious thing is their rearing the males and 

 nursing them so tenderly ; and after they 

 become useless they destroy them. But in- 

 stinct has directed them to do it. Another 

 curious thing is that, when they get to be too 

 numerous, the mother bee should call out a 

 part of the brood to go with her and leave the 

 others to take care of the young. Why not 

 call them all out to go with her ? Because in- 

 stinct has ordered it otherwise. Certain ones 

 go out with her while others are coming in 

 with stores for future use. A certain part of 

 them don't seem to have any inclination to 

 follow the mother bee, nor do they mourn the 

 loss, for another is provided. 



How wisely the Creator has arranged every 

 part and movement ! It is curious, too, how 

 the eggs in the drone cells are all drones, and 

 those in the Avorker cells are all workers. We 

 would suppose they would get mixed up like 

 hen's eggs. Again, when they want a <jueen 

 why not make a mistake sometimes and 

 take a drone egg ? And also by feeding 

 a certain kind of food, make a (jueen instead 

 of a worker. Again, the queen before she is 

 hatched is head downwards, which would seem 

 to be unnatural ; but the All-wise has made 

 every part perfect. — A. Wilson, in itiiral 

 New Yorker. 



HARD AND SOFT "WATER. 



Dr. l^etheby, at a recent meeting of the 

 medical otllcers of health of Creat Britain, 

 took occasion to renew his statement, already 

 referred to in our pages, of tlie superioi-ity, 

 in a sanitary ])oint of view, of a hard-water 

 supply to towns over that of soft water. 



Basing his arguments first upon ])hysiological 

 considerations, he maintained that the earthy 

 nuitters in the hard waters were essential for 

 the construction of the osseous tissues, and 

 that they su[)plied nuu'h of the calcareous 

 salts necessary for the nutrition of the frame, 

 and that, by repudiating their use, we should 

 ix' throwing away one provision of nature for 

 this purpose. No one could say that a hard 

 water was not far more agreeable to drink 

 than a soft water. He maintained, in the 

 second place, that the finest specimens of the 

 English race were to be found in regions 

 where the waters were hard, from flowing out 

 of, or over, calcareous strata. The same was 

 the case with cattle and horses ; witness those 

 reared in such counties as Durham and Leices- 

 ter, and the horses of Flanders, while the 

 Shetlands only produced a race of ponies. 

 I>ut his principal argument was that on classi- 

 fying the towns of England, so far as their 

 water suj)ply was known, according to the 

 degrees of hardness of the waters : the aver- 

 age of the death rate was least in those towns 

 supplied with hard water, and increased as 

 the waters became softer and softer, until it 

 M'as highest in those where the water supjilied 

 was most soft. These statements, however, 

 were met with much vigor by several speakers, 

 among the most eminent of whom was Mr. 

 Wanklyn, who endeavored to show that the 

 deductions of Dr. Letheby were based upon 

 incorrect premises, and that the case was very 

 far from being proved. — Ag. Department Ee- 

 2)o7i. 



FoRKiGX Wool. — According to the Circu- 

 lar of Geo. AV. Bond & Co., of Boston, there 

 has been imported into the United States dur- 

 ing the past six months ending June 30tb, 

 16,754,215 pounds of foreign wool. Of this 

 amount, live millions have come from England, 

 five millions from Ijuenos Ay res, three and a half 

 millions from the Cape of Good Hope, a mil- 

 lion and two-tenths from Turkey, and the bal- 

 ance from France, Brazil, and sundry other 

 places. The importations are the largest that 

 have ever been made, exceeding by about a 

 quarter of a million pounds the importations 

 for the corresponding period of 1863, which 

 was, up to that time, the largest ever made, be- 

 ing 16,486,170 pounds. Last year, 1870, the 

 importations for the six months, were only 

 6,951,516 pounds. The Circular says: "The 

 demand for army clothing in Europe com- 

 pletely used up the surplus stock of coarse 

 wools, and the world over they are scarce and 

 high. We never remember such a dearth of 

 them in this country as at present." — Michi- 

 gan Farmer, 



Dwarf IIagwkk.I). — At a late meeting of 



the Academy of Natural Sciences of I'hdadel- 



])hia, Mr. Thomas Mechan exhibited a small 



I plant of the common ragweed, Ambrosia arte- 



