276 
apiary, especially if a great deal is to be accomplished. We have 
often had arguments presented to us to show that it is not so 
necessary to be protected absolutely by a good veil and by gloves. 
While all this advice may work very nicely with a few colonies of 
very gentle bees, we have not been able for many years to work 
our own apiaries in that manner. While we did not believe in 
wearing even a veil during the first eight years of our bee-keeping 
career, bearing many a painful sting unnecessarily, we do not 
work in the apiary without gloves. The veils we have adopted 
are much m.ore substantial than the flimsy makeshifts with which 
we were satisfied at first. These are now made of wire cloth, very 
much like the Alexander veil, but so that they can be worn with a 
hat — a thing that we must do here in the South. With such a veil, 
gloves on our hands, and every thing else bee-tight, we have stood 
our ground when "the other fellow" was retreating from a sud- 
den onslaught. Of course, we realize that our bees are much 
more vicious than ordinarily. This is generally the case where 
they are handled in a hurried fashion. In this respect we believe 
they are very much like the Coggshall kind of which we used to 
read so much ; and we venture the assertion that, where bees are 
handled by lightning operators to any extent, they are not the 
gentle kind that can be handled without veils and gloves. 
It has been argued that slower manipulations should be prac- 
ticed in preference to the rapid lightning methods of some of our 
most extensive bee-keepers ; but we have found, after trying this, 
that, unless we got a more lightning-like move on us, we were not 
able to accomplish as much. And in our mind this is the only real 
business way of vv^holesale bee-keeping — a system whereby the 
maximum amount of work can be done in the shortest length of 
time, by which every cut-and-dried short-cut and labor-saving 
method can be put into play with good results. 
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FARM WOODLOT. 
By Professor J. A. Ferguson. 
(From the Penn State Farmer.) 
We often fail to realize the value of farmers' woodlots. To the 
country at large their importance will increase as the supply of 
saw-timber becomes gradually less. There is today more land 
covered by farm woodlots than is owned by the National and State 
Governments combined. Of the eight hundred and fifty million 
acres of forests which formerly covered our country but two hun- 
dred million acres remain to be cut. Since we are cutting our tim- 
ber three times as fast as it grows, the time is not far distant 
when trees suitable for sawing into lumber will be difficult to find. 
We are told that in fifteen years the greater part of the hardwood 
forests in the East will have been cut, and that we will then face a 
timber famine in saw logs. When that time comes the timber con- 
