Bee-Culture at Present 363 



dent to his infirmity but perhaps even to turn them to 

 his advantage. Deprived of his physical eyes, he focused 

 the vision of his mind upon the problems he set himself 

 to solve, and to a remarkable extent solved them. He was 

 fortunate in two particulars. 



The girl he loved did not desert him in his time of need. 

 Against the wishes of her friends and relatives she per- 

 sisted in becoming the wife of the blind man, and was his 

 sympathetic helper and consoler through a long and happy 

 union. 



Besides his wife he had a faithful servant, Francis Burnens 

 by name, who with incalculable patience and thoroughness 

 conducted the experiments and made the observations 

 necessary in the investigations of his blind master, and to 

 a great extent was responsible for his brilliant successes. 



Huber was one of the first to use successfully glass hives 

 for the purpose of observing the actions of the bees, and 

 he invented one that preserved the normal condition of 

 the swarm almost perfectly. 



As long ago as the time of Pliny attempts were made 

 to watch the bees through transparent walls, and he tells us 

 that many persons had hives made of " lapis specularis " — 

 probably a sort of talc — for this purpose, and elsewhere he 

 speaks of " a man of consular dignity near Rome, whose 

 hives were made of transparent lantern horn." 



Although many interesting discoveries about bees had 

 been made by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it 

 is interesting to note that the views of Aristotle and Pliny 

 continued to be held by the people even as late as the 

 middle of the century. The modern scientists were not 

 able to displace the theories of their brilliant predecessors 

 in the minds of the people until their work was corrobo- 

 rated by overwhelming evidence from many sources, and 

 gradually became the property of all classes. 



