138 . MAY 



whose doors are thrown open with a brave invitation to 

 all such guests. Some flowers are self-fertile, and pollen 

 may pass from anther to stygma by other agents than the 

 bees ; but an orchard-keeper cannot, like the fond culti 

 vator of a peach tree under glass, go round from blossom 

 to blossom with a camelVhair brush and paint his flowers 

 into fertility. He has need of the hive and its thousands 

 of inmates, and the wiser will satisfy the need. 



A near parallel to the apple harvest in England is the 

 citrus harvest in Palestine : Cox s Orange and Bramley s 

 Seedling are our answer to the orange and the seedless 

 Jaffa. Now in the orange and grape-fruit orchards, that 

 multiply at an inordinate rate between Jaffa and Jeru 

 salem, bees are being rapidly multiplied ; and it is 

 claimed that the orange honey of the Holy Land is yet 

 sweeter than the honey of Hybla and Hymettus. The 

 orange has the happy way of flowering over many 

 months. The fruit and the flower are seen together, like 

 the young and the eggs in the nest of a brown owL The 

 bees therefore must be resident ; and, in fact, hives grow 

 to be a common acccompaniment of the orange grove. 

 The honey flow is not the sudden thing it is in Kent or 

 Worcestershire, and does not give a like opportunity for 

 such brief, seasonal migrations as some ingenious fruit 

 growers would foster. We are growing more apples. 

 Let us grow also more bees. They are a generous tribe, 

 of whom Virgil, an enthusiast in their culture, ingeni 

 ously wrote : 



Sic vos, non vobis, mellificatis apes. 



6. 



They know the best of England better who have seen 

 and heard spring break in Shakespeare s country, both in 



