166 JULY 



clover was just shorn by the cutter, as the colour of the 

 field indicates ; and this species, so it is generally, but 

 not quite accurately, said, keeps its honey store just 

 beyond the reach of the hive-bee s sweet tooth. Very 

 soon these clovers cut before their time will flower again, 

 and the hive-bee is often able to reach the honey in the 

 second flowering, if not in the first, for the reason that 

 the flowers come shorter and finer. This unexpected 

 fact begins to emerge from the evidence collected at the 

 ingenious and comely bee-farm added of late years to the 

 equipment of Rothamsted. So the cutting of the meadow 

 will continue, we may hope, to attract the bees and give 

 them rich supplies for their masters, though the red clover, 

 even on a second attempt, can never rival the native white. 

 The single bees do not share the pleasure of the hive- 

 bees ; and they are rather more numerous. The field 

 adjoins a common, adorned, are we to say ? or desecrated, 

 in the interests of golf. That, too, is now a lawn at any 

 rate in regard to the too ample fairways, that beautiful 

 word whose right to the claim some nature lovers would 

 dispute. These fairways are punctured with round holes, 

 at which the thrushes stop, cocking their heads on one 

 side and glinting with a beady eye ; but they discover 

 that the holes are not made by the succulent worm ; but 

 by nesting-bees, most of them, I think, the work of one 

 species or another of Andrena, especially Andrena rufa. 

 The pregnant mother digs a deep hole for her egg or eggs 

 and the Herculean youngster, when hatched, digs itself 

 out in the spring. The single bees on the common must 

 be of the multitude of a strong hive or two. It is a great 

 common for bees. However close the mowers shave 

 the fine fescues in which it excels, the white bedstraw 

 flowers as lowly as a garden arenaria. Shakespeare him 

 self never found a bank sweeter with wild thyme. The 



