THE PASTURAGE OF BEES. 67 



CHAPTEE XVI. 



THE PASTURAGE OF BEES. 



What a mint of money, what a mine of wealth, rise 

 up hefore the mind of a thinking man as he approaches 

 the consideration of this subject ! Bee-pasture ? A mint 

 of money 1 A mine of wealth ? Why, sir, you once said 

 that, " At the rate of £2 profit per hive, it took fifty bees 

 a whole season to earn one farthing's worth of honey and 

 keep themselves." Why, then, talk about a mint of 

 money in connection with this subject? Stop a little, 

 and think a bit ! How many hives wUl find ample pas-, 

 ture in a parish four miles square, containing 10,000 acres 

 of land ? How many parishes, some larger, and some less, 

 in every county? If a twenty-acre field of grass, well 

 sprinkled with the flowers of white clover, yield to the 

 suck of bees 100 lb. at least per day, value £5, and 

 strongly scent the air as well — and twenty acres of good 

 heather yield probably 200 lb. of honey per day, value 

 £20, — who wUl venture to calculate, and give the sum 

 total of honey-value of all the counties of Great Britain 

 and Ireland ? We remember being startled at the state- 

 ment of a citizen of Manchester, in a paper which he 

 read before the British Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, while that Association met, two or three years 

 ago, in this city. I forget the title of the paper, but the 

 subject was the poisonous exhalations of the city. The 



