144 Wild Life in a Southern County. 
It is noticeable that those who labour on their 
own land (as at Wick) keep up the ancient customs 
much more vigorously than the tenant who knows 
that he is liable to receive a notice to quit. And 
farms, for one reason or another, change tenants much 
more frequently now than they used todo. Here at 
Wick the owner feels that every apple tree he grafts, 
every flower he plants, returns not only a money 
value, but a joy not to be measured by money. So 
the bees are carefully watched and tended, as the blue 
tomtits find to their cost if they become too venture- 
some. 
These bold little bandits will sometimes make a 
dash for the hive, alighting on the miniature platform 
before the entrance, and playing havoc with the busy 
inmates. If alarmed they take refuge in the apple 
trees, as if conscious that the owner will not shoot 
them there, since every pellet may destroy potential 
fruit by cutting and breaking those tender twigs on 
which it would presently grow. It is a pleasant sight 
in autumn to see the room devoted to the honey— 
great broad milk-tins full to the brim of the trans- 
lucent liquid, distilling slowly from pure white comb, 
from the top of whose cells the waxen covering has 
been removed. 
All the summer through fresh beauties, indeed, 
wait upon the owner’s footsteps. In the spring the 
mowing-grass rises thick, strong, and richly green, or 
hidden by the cloth-of-gold thrown over it by the 
