CHAPTER. &% 
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 
HE 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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