AT THE CITY GATES 57 



homeward with their pollen-baskets laden with 

 funereal black. 



But, if you watch a hive at work on any bright 

 spring or summer morning, you will see single bees 

 occasionally pass with loads whose source has 

 never yet been fathomed. The lean, glistening, 

 rufous stuff that is continually borne through the 

 hustling crowd is resin gathered from poplar or 

 pine, and used to glue the straw hive down to its 

 base- board, or to stop up draughty crevices and use- 

 less corners, or, diluted into varnish, to paint the 

 honeycombs with an acid-proof, preservative film. 

 But now and then comes a bee with a load whose 

 colour shines up like a danger-signal in darkness. 

 Brilliant scarlet, or soft rose-crimson, or pale 

 lavender, or gleaming white — who shall say in 

 what far, forgotten nook of the country-side she 

 has been adventuring, or what rare blossom she 

 has chanced upon in the wilderness, and, despoil- 

 ing it of its maiden treasure greedily, has quickened 

 into duplication the beauty that was its reason 

 for life ? 



Yet the greatest wonder about all this pollen- 

 gathering is that each separate load has been 

 taken entirely from one species of flower. The 

 little half-spheres are packed into the pollen-cells 

 indiscriminately, orange on brown, pale yellow 

 mingled with green, or buff, or grey. But each 

 pair of panniers, representing a single journey, 

 contains the pollen-dust of one kind of blossom 



