Insects. 25 



" I would most earnestly beg the aid of the clergy and resident gentry, but, above 

 all, their good wives; in a word, of all who wish to help the poor who dwell round 

 about them in a far humbler way, yet perhaps not less happily ; I would beg them, one 

 and all, to aid me as an united body, in teaching their poor neighbours the best way 

 of keeping Bees. Many people think the poor may be helped most by giving them small 

 allotments of land. I think this may do much ; and I will, whenever I am able, help 

 on this plan. But much difficulty is often found in getting land ; and I do not think 

 it is so certain or so safe a way of doing good, as by giving a poor man a stock of Bees, 

 and then showing him how to take care of them, and to profit by them ; for digging is 

 thirsty work, and the beer-shop often stands hard by the allotment : so, although the 

 labourer after his daily toil may go by himself to his plot of ground, yet he is very 

 likely to find one or two gardeners, thirsty like himself, to walk home with him, but 

 before they get there to drop into the beer-shop ; and when once there, snugly seated 

 in the chimney corner, neither I, nor, what is worse, their poor wives, can tell when 

 they will get out of it. But a row of Bees keeps a man at home : all his spare mo- 

 ments may be well filled by tending them, by watching their wondrous ways, and by 

 loving them. In winter he may work in his own chimney corner, at making Hives 

 both for himself and to sell. This he will find almost as profitable as his Bees, for 

 well-made Hives always meet a ready sale. Again, his Bee-hives are close to his cot- 

 tage door ; he will learn to like their sweet music better than the dry squeaking of a 

 pot-house fiddle, and he may listen to it in the free open air, with his wife and chil- 

 dren about him. They will be to him a countless family. He will be sure to love 

 them if he cares for them, and they will love him too, and repay all his pains. Many 

 a lesson a man and his wife may teach their children at the mouth of their Hives ; for 

 a Bee-garden is only second to a Sunday-school." — Preface, xliii. 



Although our author has made, and apparently without effort, a 

 most amusing book, his objects, observable in every page, seem the 

 benefit of the cottager and the welfare of the bee, rather than the 

 amusement of the reader. He insists most strenuously on the worse 

 that inutility of killing the bees ; maintaining at great length, and with 

 sound reasoning too, that it is not merely more humane but more pro- 

 fitable to save their lives. The substitute for killing is intoxicating 

 the bees : this is accomplished by filling the hive with the smoke of 

 an ignited puff-ball. " You may find in the damp meadows a fungus 

 which children call frogs' cheese and puff balls. When quite ripe if 

 you pinch them a dirty powder like smoke will come out. Pick them 

 when half ripe. The largest are the best, and they often grow to the 

 size of a man's head. Put them in a bag, and when you have 

 squeezed them to half the size, dry them in an oven after the bread is 

 drawn, or before the fire." When dried, this fungus will burn like 

 tinder : it is to be put by, and when required for use " you should get 

 a little tin box fitted to the nose of your bellows, having a sort of spout 

 coming from it which fits the door of your beehive. Take a piece of 

 fungus twice the size of a hen's egg, light it, and when it bums freely 



