S Affords Mental Discipline. 



would have coveted; furnishes the rarest food for the 

 observing faculties, and best of all, by keeping its votaries 

 face to face with the matchless creations of the All Father, 

 must dravv^ them toward Him " who went about doing 

 good," and " in whom there was no guile." 



YIELDS DELICIOUS FOOD. 



A last inducement of apiculture, certainly not unworthy 

 of mention, is the offering it brings to our tables. Health, 

 yea our very lives, demand J;hal we eat sweets. It is 

 a truth that our sugars, and especially our commercial 

 syrups, are so adulterated as to be often poisonous. The 

 ajjiary in lieu of these, gives us one of the most delicious 

 and wholesome of sweets, which has received merited 

 praise, as food fit for the gods, from the irost ancient time 

 to the pi'esent day. To ever have within reach the beau- 

 tiful, immaculate comb, oi- the equally grateful nectar, 

 right from the extractor, is certainly a blessing of no mean 

 order. VVe may thus supply our families and.fiiends with 

 a food element, and this with no cloud of fear from vile, 

 poisonous adulterations. Wc now know that if we eat 

 cane sugar — the common sugar of our tables -it is con- 

 verted by the digestive fluids into a glucose like sugar, 

 whic'i is probably nearly or quite identical with honey 

 suga ■- The bees do the same with the nectar, which is 

 dilute cane sugar, of flowers. Thus we mav reason that 

 honey is our most wholesome sugar, for here the bees have 

 in part digested our food for us. 



ADDS TO THE NATION'S WEALTH. 



An excellent authority places the number of colonies of 

 bees in the United States, in 1881, at 3,000,000, and the 

 honey production for that year at more than 20,000,000 

 pounds. The production for that year was not up to the 

 average, and yet the cash value of the year's honey crop 

 exceeded $30,000,000. We may safely add as much more 

 as the value of the increase of colonies, and we have a 

 grand total of $60,000,000, nearly enough to pay the inter- 

 est on the national debt, were the bonds all refunded. And 



