J NORTH AMERICAN BEE-HUNT. \-jj 



would carry through the similitude of their habits with 

 those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld numbers 

 from rival hives arriving on eager wings to enrich them- 

 selves with the ruin of their neighbours. These busied 

 themselves as eagerly and cheerily as so many wreckers on 

 an Indiaman which has been driven on shore — plunsino- 

 into the cells of the broken combs, banqueting greedily on 

 the spoil, and then winging their way full-freighted tO' 

 their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they 

 seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to tasts- 

 the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled back- 

 wards and forwards in vacant desolation, as I have seen a 

 poor fellow, with his hands in his breeches pockets,, 

 whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his- 

 house which had been burnt. 



It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and con- 

 fusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive, who had been 

 absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived 

 from time to time with full cargoes from abroad. At first 

 they wheeled about the air, in the place where the fallen 

 tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding all a 

 vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their disaster, 

 they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neigh- 

 bouring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate 

 ths prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations 

 over the downfall of their republic. It was a scene in 

 which the " melancholy Jacques " might have moralised by 

 the hour. We now abandoned the place, leaving much 

 honey in the hollow of the tree. " It will be all cleared 

 off by varmint," said one of the rangers. " What ver- 

 min ? " said I. " Oh ! bears and skunks, and possums, 

 and racoons. The bears is the knowing'st varmint for 

 finding out a bee-tree in the world. They'll gnaw for 

 days together at the trunk, till they make a hole I ig- 

 enough to get in their paws, and then they'll hole out 

 honey, bees, and all." 



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