334 MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. [Ch. vi. 



sweet, sober, quiet, familiar ; so they will love thee and know thee 

 from all others.' " 



These "wise rules of old Butler'' are, ho^/ever, in the 

 main taken froin Columella. 



Allusion having been made to the profit that may be 

 gained by the judicious management of bees, we will 

 illustrate that point by relating an anecdote of a certain 

 French cure.* It is one which may be suggestive to 

 some of the rural clergy in this country, who might 

 almost as easily keep an apiary as they do a garden or 

 an orchard. 



A good French bishop, in paying his annual visit to 

 his clergy, was very much afflicted by the representations 

 they made to him of their extreme poverty, which, indeed, 

 the appearance of their houses and families corroborated. 

 Deploring the sad state of things which had reduced thera 

 to such a condition, he arrived at the house of a curate, 

 who, living amongst a poorer set of parishioners than 

 any he had yet visited, would, he feared, be in a still 

 more woful plight than the rest. Contrary, however, to 

 his expectations, he found the appearance of this remote 

 parsonage to be superior to those he had already visited. 



*' This story, in a disguised form, or, as the writer would say, an 

 improved form, was quoted in the Cornhill Magazine some time ago. 

 In transfoi-ming the bee-keeping curl into an English clergj-man the 

 effect was cleverly enhanced, especially as to the dismay of the 

 decorous English prelate in hearing that his poor brother in the 

 Church had turned " manufacturer ; " but then the vraisemblance of 

 the story, as we have it, was destroyed. 



