212 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



for his adverse judgment, ana another, for 

 a dozen years, makes him feel that he has 

 an enemy on his track ; yet the true critic 

 must be just to both, and keep sweet through 

 it all. Moreover the true critic must see and 

 mention the shortcomings and flaws even in 

 very able papers and writers. The true teach- 

 er does this for his ablest scholars. It is a 

 sad damage to a scholar to think that there 

 are no defects in his work which mortal man 

 can discover. Ability to see faults does not 

 necessarily imply superiority, or even equal- 

 ity. Man criticises cake without being able 

 to make cake at all. Had I lived in Homer's 

 day I think I could have told him, moderate 

 as my own literary capital is, that his terriiic 

 and ingenious gloating over human slaugh- 

 ter, while indeed increasing his popularity 

 with the crowd in his own generation, would 

 lower him a little in the estimation of all 

 good men for all coming time. And so I 

 think I'll take courage and mention the de- 

 fects of the big papers and writers just when 

 they think they have none. Any man that 

 lives may utterly mistake in such work, and 

 surely so may I, but here goes all the same. 



BEE-KEEPERS' Enterprise. 



The Enterprise has a very fair stock of 

 juvenile merit. If we should take its first 

 number and compare it with the initial num- 

 bers of Gleanings. A. B. J. and Review, these 

 leaders in the class might some of them look 

 a little abashed. Our last baby's strongest 

 merit seems to be individuality, a way of 

 doing very commonplace things in such a 

 style that they almost seem unique. The se- 

 lection of a large amount of quoted matter 

 from other bee papers is a commonplace af- 

 fair ; but the style in which it is done in the 

 department called " Gleanings from our 

 Neighbor's Wheat Fields," gives it an inter- 

 est, and gives us an interest in the doer of 

 it, Most papers wishing to quote my count 

 of words in the various bee journals would 

 just chop it out unchanged. Not so editor 

 Sage. He adds up the totals and then com- 

 ments on the results of his own work. This 

 sort of art and industry, which makes into 

 practically original matter the things which 

 are quoted is very valuable either in an edi- 

 tor or any other writer, and it promises well 

 for the future of the journal. A lazy editor 

 don't put editorial elbow grease into clip- 

 pings. 



There is also a plainly visible inclination 

 (shown by Mnmm'a Visit on the first page) 



to draw strongly on the editor's own person- 

 al experiences. This is an excellent remedy 

 to prevent that unnaturalness which is the 

 curse of so much of modern writing. We 

 can all find " a touch of nature " by looking 

 inside ; yet few seem to have wit enough to 

 do that. 



I'm not sure about the wisdom of giving 

 up part of the rather scanty space to child- 

 ren's letters. The cartoon on A. I. Root is a 

 decided hit ; yet I'm not sure it looks just 

 right to see so youthful an urchin guying his 

 grandpa. A. I. Root is to apiculture what 

 Horace Greeley was to the Republican party; 

 and as in the other case the business of 

 poking fun at him is considerably overdone. 

 The favorite source of quotation seems to 

 be Mrs. Harrison. Might have chosen a 

 worse one surely. Brother Pratt opens the 

 second number with a stray straw sort of 

 article which is very good, only lacking the 

 humor of its prototype. Yet one bushel of 

 his " sound grain " seems to me to be un- 

 sound — where he gives unqualified prefer- 

 ence to cotton string for transferring. All 

 right when honey is coming in freely ; but 

 sometimes bees are transferred when they 

 are secreting no wax, and rather disinclined 

 to work with wax at all ; yet all the while 

 they may be A No. 1 at nibbling up string. 



There is nothing juvenile about the ap- 

 pearance of the Enterprise — fresh and bright 

 as a new pin, or a prosperous journal ten 

 years old. 



The Michigan Bulletin. 



Bulletin 96 of Michigan Agricultural Sta- 

 tion is devoted to honey matters, and writ- 

 ten by Prof. Cook. It is a matter of regret 

 that it cannot be fully reviewed without re- 

 viving the dead snakes of the sugar honey 

 quarrel ; but I think part of its valuable con- 

 tents are available. Bonnier is cited as a 

 specially valuable authority on the composi- 

 tion of the nectar of flowers. He clears up 

 matters somewhat by arranging the different 

 sugars found in nectar into two classes, glu- 

 coses and saccharoses. Cane sugar stands as 

 the principal one of the saccharoses. And 

 here I would predict that chemistry will 

 eventually divide what is now known as cane 

 sugar into a group of sugars. There 

 are three things which determine chem- 

 ical diversity ; (1) Different ingredients, 

 (2) Different proportions with the same 

 ingredients, and (3; The different ways 

 in which the atoms are put together 



