May 25, 1S71. ] 



JOUENAL OF HOBTICULTUEE AND COTTAGE GAEDENBE. 



377 



their music all out of time and harsh, and who would pounce 

 on any poor bird if at liberty — still it you hanker after bird 

 pets in the form of fancy Pigeons, that hankering can be 

 gratified by keeping the Londoner's Pigeon, his bird for a 

 century at least, the elegant-shaped and elegant- coloured 

 Almond Tumbler, or his kindred Short-faces. A little room or 

 a tiny greenhouse will do, an invalid may tend them and enjoy 

 them, and as they must not fly they are the birds for the city, 

 or for those persons who are obliged to remain iu-doors. 



Bat there are the ladies, I can suit their special tastes, too. 

 The older who remember how neatly the cottage bonnet looked, 

 and neater the face inside, they may have reminders of both 

 in Jacobins, whose modest folding feathers half hide their 

 pretty faces. Or are you a young lady of the present day, with 

 chignon and tiny bonnet pinned to the hair ? then the IJelmet 

 and the Turbit will do for you. Are you Anglo-Catholic, or 

 you would say Catholic without the Anglo ? there are Nuns, 

 Priests, Monks, and Carmelites for you. Or does some ena- 

 moured swain declare in your listening ear (foolish fellow !) 

 that you are an angel? you can keep Archangels for company. 

 Or are you matron, and the lord of the house and of your heart 

 has begun to lose his ambrosial locks, and that youngest pet, 

 his pet, thinks it fine fun to stand tip-toe behind papa's chair, 

 and " kiss the bald place," and run off with a shriek, hoping 

 to be run after ? t'aen like master like Pigeons, for there are 

 Bildpates to match; or has he a hirsute chin? there are 

 Beards. Or are you tender on " a soldier covered with lace," 

 as the nursery rhyme had it ? you em have dashing Dragoons, 

 or heavier Horsemen, or puffing Trumpeters. Then ladies 

 always love the pure white Fantail, the ladies' Pigeon. If you 

 do_, be sure and have both varieties, the stouter and flatter- 

 tailed Englishman, and the tiny tremulous Scotchman. The 

 latter always remind me of a paroshial story. I had long sus- 

 pected an old woman of frequenting the publichouse ; one day I 

 oaught her coming out of one, with too ruddy a face and too 

 Jjright an eye. Nest day I brought round the subject when in 

 her cottage. She, woman-like, quickly retaliated and declared 

 she had not been well ever since I saw her, and it was my 

 'fault, for it was far too bad of me " to make her go all 

 of a tremble like that." Certainly the Scotch Fantail goes 

 all of a tremble like the old woman. Some ladies, too, seem 

 now-a-daya always making point lace, they may keep Lace 

 iPigeons. 



Belt, joking apart, the wonderful variety in the birds will 

 suit almost all, if not all varieties of tastes. There is the odd 

 little Air Tumbler, or rather house Tumbler, which, though it 

 cannot fly up to a bench without tumbling, delights some 

 persons. But there is one class of mind and taste, and a very 

 increasing class apparently, I mean those who enjoy the excite- 

 ment of keeping birds for showing, and who dream of silver 

 medals and glittering cups, just as others, myself among them, 

 like only to keep the birds for home interest and amusement. 

 Well, the losers of prizes have a better chance now than ever, 

 for a few years since poultry only was exhibited, but now 

 Pigeons are almost always shown with poultry ; and was there 

 ever .such a Columbarian treat as the thousand Pigeons last 

 winter at the Crystal Palace Show ? No doubt the fancy will 

 go on and increase every year, suiting every taste, and persons 

 of each taste may know now what variety to keep. — Wiltshiee 

 Eeotoe. 



CRITICISM FROM BEYOND THE STYX. 



Eespeoted Sirs, — Tou are not, I believe, spiritualists, and 

 so do not often receive communications from the place whence 

 I date this letter. I write in my character of " a blessed 

 ghost." Coleridge, in his "Ancient Mariner," uses the term, 

 ■which the Times Bee-master applied to me. He, panseiolist as 

 he is, cannot of course be in error. As a prophet he foresees 

 the future, as a scholar (?) he knows the past. Things pre- 

 sent, therefore, confined as they are to the Infinitessimally 

 small portion of time which separates the past from the future, 

 cannot be unknown to him. Several years ago he announced 

 my decease in these words — "The Rev. Chas. Cotton, whilst 

 he lived, the Prince of Bee-masters," page 91. Much obliged 

 to him for the compliment, though I am sorry to say I cannot 

 return it. 



You will be pleased to hear that an eidolon or ghost of the 

 Journal of Hokticultuke and Cottage Gardener is weekly 

 transmitted to these regions, and a great and anxious crowd 

 there is at the dead letter office when the mail comes in. Last 

 week I noticed there amongst others the Coryciau old man who 



cultiyatea the Asphodels, over which the mighty Achilles is 

 always stalking, and his own lilies and roses to boot, after a 

 method which he has learned from your pages. Aristjeus, the 

 bee-master, was also there. He, too, is one of your readers, 

 and tends the eidola of the bees which he lost in Tempe by 

 disease and starvation, on the system which he has learned 

 from you, and in eonsequence preserves them from hunger and 

 sickness. In his name, then, in connection with my own, and 

 in the interest of the myriads of bees who are every year 

 cruelly and wastefuUy doomed to die, I protest against the 

 recommendation of the "brimstone torch" contained in an 

 otherwise useful letter which you have printed in a late number. 

 It is a retrograde step with a vengeance. I should hardly have 

 been more surprised had Earl Eussell brought in a bill for 

 rekindling the fires of Smithfield and burning Cardinal CuUen 

 and Archdeacon Manning, tied back to back, at the same stake. 

 I fancy that I have done some little good during my lifetime 

 towards disseminating a knowledge Of the better way — better 

 because more profitable, as well as more humane. Bee murder 

 (according to Dr. Cumming's Bee Act) was, I trusted, going out, 

 and so to see it recommended again by a writer in your Journal 

 caused a cold shudder to run through the eidolon of many a 

 bee-master down this way. I beg, therefore, that you will 

 give insertion to this our joint protest, and beg to subscribe 

 myself, as of old, your faithful servant, — Wm. C. Cotton, Vale 

 of Tempe, Elysian Fields. 



P.S. — It you please I will next week send you some recollec- 

 tions of a better way. 



[Pray do, for it will rejoice many others besides ourselves to 

 read the communications from you to the bee world. — Eds.] 



CAUSES OF HIVES PERISHING IN 

 WINTER. 



In compliance with my request, "A Lanarkshire Bee- 

 keeper " gave a description of the mode in which he ventilates 

 his hives dxrring wiater, and I now thank him for doing so. 



As a mere theorist I would condemn the practice of entirely 

 shutting up the entrances of hives in time of snow; but seeing 

 it has been found by actual experiment to be attended with 

 good results, I must, in the absence of proof to the contrary, 

 accept the statement as correct. The surmise, however, that 

 the bees, in the ease mentioned by me, might have perished 

 by suffocation, and not by improper ventilation, was not sup- 

 ported by the evidence presented ; and my present purpose in 

 writing is to attempt to answer the question. How we may 

 know when bees have been suffocated, or have died of cold, 

 or of cold and hunger combined ? 



Whenever the air in a hive becomes close and confined the 

 bees are thrown into a restless condition, and begin to venti- 

 late. If the entrance is entirely closed general commotion 

 follows, and the whole of the inhabitants may be seen running 

 over the combs and up and down the sides of the hive in search 

 of an outlet. As the movement increases the temperature 

 rises, and when the atmosphere within is no longer capable of 

 supporting life the bees fall down in masses on the floorboard. 

 Few, if any, perish in the cells; they lie in heaps, and present 

 a glistening eppearanee, owing to the perspiration with which 

 they are covered. 



But the aspect of things is very different when bees die of 

 cold, or of cold and hunger combined. The approach of this 

 fatal influence excites no commotion ; instead of seeking for 

 an.outletthe bees draw closer and closer together, and if the 

 combs on which they cluster are empty every vacant cell is 

 occupied. In this condition they die; only a few fall down 

 and form little pyramids under the interstices of the combs. 

 When a hive which has died in this manner is turned up 

 and examined, the majority of the bees will be found adhering 

 to each other and etiU suspended between the combs, whilst 

 from every empty cell within the clusters a tail may be seen 

 protruding. 



There is not, I imagine, the least difficulty in ascertaining, 

 from the appearances presented, whether a hive has become 

 defunct from suffocation, or from famine and starvation com- 

 bined. If the bees of a hive die of hunger alone when the tem- 

 perature is high, there is not the clustering together for warmth 

 which has been described. Before succumbing to this cause 

 alone many of the bees, though only able to crawl, find their 

 way to the outside, and the ground in front is sometimes 

 covered with the helpless and the dead. This occasionally 



