and song birds have been cultivated for 
feather, shape, note, or other desirable qual- 
ity. I have two colonies of Italian bees that 
will let you open their hive and take it all 
apart, do any thing except pinch or jar them, 
without offering to resent your intrusion 
upon their home— though I admit that even 
the gentle Italian may try to use her sting 
if she is squeezed, and takes it ill if you 
knock her hive or drop with a thug the 
frame she is on. 
During the years of my theological educa- 
tion at Princeton, a young man on the floor 
above the one where I had my room was 
possessed of two colonies of bees, one in each 
window of his apartment. That was a ' ' new 
one " for me. I had never thought of such 
a thing, but quickly worked up to the deter- 
mination of having one in my own room. 
The sills of those windows were very com- 
modious. He had carefully sawed out a 
piece from the lower sash, placed the hive on 
the wide sill where it safely sat, pushed the 
hive entrance up against the kerf in the 
sash, and the process was complete. The 
bees flew back and forth without getting 
into the room at all. We both were ardent 
in the small work, and had great pleasure in 
operating one or two colonies. We talked 
about them, their singular habits, skillful 
performances, and of what, under given con- 
ditions, we could make them do. We open- 
ed the hives, raised the windows to let the 
flying bees out, killed the queen of one col- 
ony, sent down to Georgia for a fine Italian 
queen by mail from a bee-loving physician 
there who raised queens for bee-keepers, 
sprinkled her and the bees of the queenless 
colony with sweetened peppermint water, 
and dropped her in among them. They 
balled her at once. We took our penknives 
and divided the angry host, put on more 
scented water, worked and watched until 
