INTRODUCTORY NOTICES. 3 
literature, the unprofitable disputations too often 
prevailing among modern bee-annalists, nor the 
endless catalogue of hives, possible and impossible, of 
every period, by which the novice is bewildered. Our 
present purpose is restricted to a utilitarian view of 
the subject of apiarian knowledge, where science, 
invention, and the most competent testimony, have 
combined to place it in our own day. 
The following facts in connection with the literature 
of the subject ought however to be known to every 
bee-keeper. From the seventeenth century down- 
wards, this insect has found able observers in the 
persons especially of Swammerdam of Holland, 
Maraldi of Italy, Réaumur of France, Schirach of 
Saxony, Dr. Hunter of England, and Bonnet and 
Huber of Switzerland. The last-mentioned of these 
is at the same time the most famous and the most 
extraordinary, for though totally blind, he succeeded, 
by the help principally of his assistant Burnens, in 
bringing to light such marvellous facts that the entire 
theory of bee-life underwent a revolution. In our own 
day the science has again made gigantic strides, and 
this time as the result of German research. A 
second revolution, in the same direction as the first, 
has in fact resulted from the observations of Dr. 
Dzierzon, a Roman Catholic priest of Prussian Silesia; 
while to three or four other Germans, especially the 
late Baron von Berlepsch, we are also indebted for 
discoveries of the highest value. The name of the 
Rey. L. L. Langstroth of Ohio must be added as that 
of the most esteemed of living writers whom our own 
tongue can number among its apiarian authorities. 
