CHAPTER X 



A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 



THE modern commercial bee-keeper — the man 

 who keeps his bees in hives of the most 

 approved construction, all alike in colour 

 and shape, and all in straight rows — is too prone 

 to look only on the practical side of his work, and 

 to regard with a certain ill-concealed contempt 

 anything that does not directly promote what is, 

 in his view, the one and only object of apiculture, 

 that of honey-getting. 



But with the bee-keeper who is also a bee-lover, 

 the tendency is all the other way. To live in the 

 very spirit of wonder, as he must who has once 

 dipped down below the surface of hive-life, is to 

 saddle but a slow, ambling jade for the race in 

 material prosperity. In a bee-garden the habit of 

 rumination comes on one like creeping paralysis, 

 gradually but irresistibly. It is one thing, on a 

 fine June morning, to start away from the house, 

 pipe in mouth and busily trundling the honey- 

 barrow, intent on a long day's work among the 

 hives; it is quite another thing to keep indus- 



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