The Physician in the Hive. 



you may therefore want to go into the hair-restoring busi- 

 ness some day. Well, here is a recipe for you. It is 

 nothing but honey and water, in equal parts, but it is 

 highly recommended by all the ancient writers on beeman- 

 ship. Have I tried it? Well, no; at least, not intentionally. 

 But in extracting honey it gets into most places, the hair 

 not excepted. At any rate, honey as a hair-restorer was 

 one of the most famous nostrums of the Middle Ages, and 

 may return to popular favour even now. However, here is 

 something there can be no question about." 



He went to a cupboard, and brought out a jar full of a 

 viscid yellow substance. 



"This," he said, "is an embrocation, and it is the 

 finest thing I know for sprains and bruises. It is made of 

 the wax from old combs, dissolved in turpentine, and if 

 we got nothing else from the hives bee-keeping would yet 

 be justified as a humanitarian calling. Its virtues may 

 be in the wax, or they may be due to the turpentine, but 

 probably they lie in another direction altogether. Bees 

 collect a peculiar resinous matter from pine trees and else- 

 where, with which they varnish the whole surface of their 

 combs, and this may be the real curative element in the 

 stuff." 



Now, with a glance at the clock, the bee-master went 

 to the open door and hailed his foreman in from his work 

 about the garden. Between them they lifted away the 

 heavy caldron from the fire, and tilted its steaming contents 

 into a barrel close at hand. The whole building filled at 

 once with a sweet penetrating odour, which might well 

 have been the concentrated fragrance of every summer 

 flower on the countryside. 



' ' But of all the good things given us by the wise physi- 

 cian of the hive, ' ' quoth the old bee-keeper, enthusiastically, 

 " there is nothing so good as well-brewed metheglin. This 

 is just as I have made it for forty years, and as my father 

 made it long before that. Between us we have been brew- 

 ing mead for more than a century. It is almost a lost art 

 now; but here in Sussex there are still a few antiquated folk 

 who make it, and some, even, who remember the old 

 methers — the ancient cups it used to be quaffed from. As an 

 everyday drink for working-men, wholesome, nourishing, 

 cheering, there is nothing like it in or out of the Empire. 



59 



