PREFACE. 1X 
in the publishers’ name and his own, the editor has 
here to express to the said gentlemen his most 
hearty thanks, both for the services themselves and 
the courtesy with which they were uniformly given. 
To Mr. Cheshire’s unique volume of instructions upon 
the practice of apiculture, a special fund of obligations 
must be acknowledged, and this may perhaps be most 
emphatically conveyed by stating the indispensability of 
the ‘Practical Bee-keeping” to every one who aspires 
to become a master of manipulation. 
To Messrs. Neighbour and Sons of Regent Street 
and Mr. James Lee of Bagshot, as well as to Mr. 
S. Simmins of Crawley and the proprietary of the 
“Country”? newspaper, further indebtedness, more 
or less extensive, must be expressed for the loan 
of a number of blocks for illustrations, the absence 
of which would have entailed either a sad deficiency 
in the value of this work, or else a large addition 
to the cost of its production. Doubtless it would 
have been found that many other manufacturers 
would gladly have rendered similar aid, but it was 
felt that, with the exception of one or two speci- 
alities, 1t was better to restrict the selection to the 
two houses universally admitted to be pre-eminent. 
A mistake, however, was confessedly made at the 
outset in imagining that a certain third house stood 
almost on a level with the two; but a rebuff was 
received from the ruling authority, and one or two 
facts which have since transpired have caused a 
