October 18, 1864, ] 



JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



823 



are so fond of warmth that they will crawl up the support of 

 a hive, and sometimes get into it. The bees are powerless 

 to sting them ; but on one occasion I noticed a snail get into 

 one of my hives, and after trying various expedients, the 

 bees actually built it up all round with propolis until it was 

 suffocated, and then let it remain in its sarcophagus, as it 

 caused no smell. But the bee's greatest enemy is man with 

 sulphur. 



Bees are very kind to their sick or wounded companions. 

 They will take a wounded bee on to the alighting-board in 

 the warm sun during the day, and lick it, take it in at night, 

 and bring it out in the sun on the following morning. Bees 

 are early risers, being at work by dayk'ght, and they never 

 work after four o'clock in the afternoon. They are very 

 tidy and cleanly — you have no idea how often the hive-floor is 

 swept out. None are lazy but the drones. They are very 

 loyal, defending their queen from all attacks. They are not 

 pugnacious ; their stings are only used in self-defence, as 

 they know that as their sting remains in whatever they 

 attack, they are sure to die after it. 



A vote of thanks to the reverend lecturer concluded, the 

 proceedings. — Eaton Cliff. 



[For the correction of many of the mistakes made by the 

 rev. lecturer, we refer our readers to Mr. Woodbury's two 

 letters in pages 140 and 141 of our present volume, but we 

 cannot refrain from noticing one or two additional blunders. 



Surely Dr. Cumming must have been very unconscious of 

 what has been passing in the apiarian world during the 

 present century, when he hazarded the assertion that no 

 new facts had been brought to light by apiarians since the 

 days of Huber. Is parthenogenesis in the honey bee no 

 new discovery? and can he possibly be ignorant of the 

 numerous facts investigated and proved by means of the 

 Ligurians — such as, for example, that bees do not always 

 return to their own hive, nor are they invariably slaughtered 

 when they attempt to enter a strange one ; also that Huber 

 was mistaken in dividing worker bees into two kinds — viz., 

 nurses and wax-workers, the fact being that both are iden- 

 tical in every respect except age ? Huber has also been 

 proved wrong in other particulars, such as his statement 

 that bees will invariably accept another queen at the expira- 

 tion of twenty-four hours from the loss of their own, and 

 that workers will at no time attempt to employ their stings 

 against a stranger queen. 



A queen bee is not nearly so graceful and elegant in form 

 as a worker. Although she is ordinarily treated with great 

 attention and apparent respect, no special "ladies in wait- 

 ing" accompany her ; nor does she ever give "instructions," 

 for the duties of the hivo are carried on with perfect regu- 

 larity during the interregnums of the swarming season, and 

 whilst her majesty is absent on her nuptial excursions. 



If the lecturer had read even Huber with attention he 

 would have learned that there is sometimes such a thing as 

 polyandry (not polygamy) among bees ; and if he were 

 aware of what is passing around him he would have known 

 that this fact had been confirmed by more recent observers. 



When Dr. Cumming commences with " I have made a dis- 

 covery," we may be pretty sure he is about to resuscitate 

 some long-exploded fallacy, and this proves to be the case 

 with his theory in respect of drones. We need hardly say 

 that the queen never " selects " a husband, neither is a 

 single worker anything like a match in point of strength 

 for " a great burly drone," unless the latter has been much 

 weakened by exposure to cold or starvation. 



It is tolerably evident, also, that the lecturer has never 

 seen a large, or even an ordinary-sized swarm, or he would 

 have doubled his numbers, and trebled or quadrupled his 

 measurements. It must indeed be but a poor swarm that 

 on a hot summer's day forms a cluster only " 7 to 9 inches 

 long and 3 or 4 inches in diameter I" 



What a lazy race of bees the doctor must possess if they 

 "never work after four o'clock in the afternoon!" Truly 

 they would appear to have joined the " nine-hours' move- 

 ment;" and we fear we may yet learn, on the lecturer's au- 

 thority, that they have resorted to trades' unions and paid 

 emissaries, in which case we may congratulate ourselves on 

 being at such a distance from him that our bees are likely 

 to escape contagion, and continue working as heretofore all 

 summer through till darkness compels a cessation of their 

 labours. 



Seriously, we think it a great pity that Dr. Cumming 

 should attempt either to lecture or to write upon a subject 

 regarding which he knows so little. Compliments on his 

 " versatility," and the " thanks " of town audiences who in 

 this particular are necessarily ill-informed, may be gratifying 

 to his vanity; but his evident want of information with 

 regard to bees must make the judicious grieve. Occupying 

 as he does no mean position in the very highest and holiest 

 of professions, he might surely leave apiarian science (to 

 which, as he most truly says, he has contributed nothing 

 whatever), to be taught by those who really understand it.] 



COOES, COOKEKY, AND WILTSHIEE BACON. 



Man is a carnivorous animal, also an herbivorous, also a 

 frugivorous, also — for I might possibly add another " also" — 

 what does man not eat ? The earth, the sea, the moun- 

 tain, the plain, are alike ransacked by him for food ; but 

 flesh is not good when raw, nor vegetables nice when 

 not cooked, and fruit, although pleasant enough to the 

 palate as plucked from the tree, is improved after having 

 been submitted to the action of fire. Witness an apple- 

 dumpling — a dish fit for a king. Why, did not its very manu- 

 facture cause wonder to arise in the breast of George III. ? 

 in honour of which event it ought to have been called 

 " King's dumpling." As James I., at the banquet at Hough- 

 ton Tower, near Preston, is said to have knighted then and 

 there a loin of beef, so " farmer George " should have taken 

 the wonderful dumpling under kingly patronage for ever. 



Now, it seems, possibly by accident, that man in very 

 early days cooked his food; he became, or found, a cooking 

 animal. How does this matter stand now that the world 

 is in round numbers some six thousand years old? We 

 will in our investigation of this subject go no further than 

 our own country. Well, in every cottage cooking is going 

 on at some time of each day, usually in the evening, for 

 although the labourer and mechanic may do with bread 

 and cheese, or a slice of cold bacon and bread, at their brief 

 meals in the day, yet they naturally, when they come to sit 

 down and feed in earnest, like a hot supper. Cold food 

 may do in the daytime, but hot bacon and potatoes or 

 greens and hot pudding at night. Then, again, cooking is 

 going on in the mansion all day long ; cooking for hot break- 

 fasts, for lunch, for dinner, besides preparing all sorts of 

 things to come in at future times. In houses of the middle 

 class cooking occupies even necessarily a great deal of 

 thought and time. Now, who, as a rule, is cook ? Well, 

 we reply, women, though with a full recollection of male 

 cooks rushing across our old college court at Cambridge, 

 white-aproned and white-capped. Yes, as a rule, woman is 

 the cooking animal. Among the countless thousands of 

 benefits and comforts coming to us from woman's presence 

 in the world stands this — she cooks for us. And now for a 

 little homily upon this subject of cooking. 



I am sure it occupies too much thought and time, in- 

 finitely more than it did when our fathers were in our places. 

 We are grown very heathens, and the first question practically 

 asked in our houses is too often, " What shall we eat and 

 what shall we drink?" with this commentary, let the most 

 luxurious viands be prepared in the most luxurious way. 

 If asked to give an example in proof of the extravagance of 

 the age, I would point to the increase in cooks' wages. A 

 good old body, cook in old days in a mansion well known to 

 me, had but .£14 a-year, and managed to save a fortune out 

 of it. One of her successors had .£40 per annum. Cooks 

 now can get any wages, they are the only servants who can 

 rapidly make money. As to governesses, why the ccoks would 

 not change places with those poor young ladies — of course not. 



Then, look at the alteration in respect to the dinners. 

 They used to be plain and good, roast and boiled, with a 

 side dish or two. Now, in the same house are side dishes by 

 the dozen. Hence it comes to pass — how intolerably long 

 dinners last ! — you sit down at half-past seven, and finish 

 possibly at half-past nine, then dessert j and so the whole 

 evening is consumed in gourmandising. People give dinner 

 against dinner, side dish against side dish, vieing as to 

 excess and richness of food ; they talk of having had " such 

 a feed at Mr. Plutocrat's." What animals ! their horses would 

 use the same words if they could but talk. 



