WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 225 
farms are each surrounded with their compact 
acreage of blossoming sheep-feed, and there is 
nothing but empty miles of close-cropped turf 
between, these bee-roads in the air can be 
easily found and studied. Walking over the 
springy, undulating grass in the quiet of asummer’s 
morning, a faint, far-off note breaks suddenly upon 
you like the twang of a harp-string high up in 
the blue. A step or two onward and you lose 
it; retracing your path, it peals out again. You 
can see nothing, strain your eyes as you will; but 
its cause is evident, and with a little trying you 
can presently make out the main direction of the 
flight, and see down in the hollow far below, the 
huddled roofs of a farmstead with a patchwork of 
fields about it, white with clover, or rose-red with 
sainfoin in fullest bloom. 
Perhaps there is no honey in the world so fine 
as that to be obtained from these solitary Down- 
land settlements. With the ordinary consumer 
honey is merely honey, and there is an end of the 
matter. But the beeman knows that the quality 
of honey varies as greatly as that of wine. He 
will tell you at first taste the crop from which it is 
gathered, whether it has one source or many, 
whether it is all flower-essence, or has been con- 
taminated by the hateful honeydew, which is not 
honey at all. Down in the lowlands, except at 
certain rare seasons when only one crop is in 
flower, it is next to impossible to get honey abso- 
15 
