PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



HE present issue of our handbook may be fairly 

 said' to be really a new work. Not that the 

 greater portion of it has been consecutively re- 

 ^ written, nor yet that the larger half of the former matter 

 ^^ has wholly disappeared ; but the additions of entirely new 

 ^- 'sections and half-sections, the transpositions with a view 

 ^ to facilitatmg reference, the erasures of what is either out 

 of date or only repetition — in short, the thorough over- 

 "> hauling of the text from beginning to end — are such as 

 ^ to render the form in which it is now presented a new 

 U . book rather than an ordinary fresh edition. 



First as to our own department, the practical appliances. 



*ol: The descriptions of several'hives and apparatus that have 



gone out of use have been removed to make room for the 



'''^ much larger number of new and improved inventions. 



5~~Of the eighteen hives now described, no less than a half 



* are new introductions, and the same is the case in greater 



