Garden Furnishings 
393 
great skepes with an indescribably free and noble 
gesture. He was a classic, a relic of Homer’s age, 
no longer a farmer, but a husbandman. Bees and 
honey were of much value in ancient days. Honey 
was the chief ingredient in many wholesome and 
pleasing drinks — mead, metheglin, bragget (or bra- 
ket), morat, erboule — all very delightful in their 
ingredients, redolent of meadows and hedge-rows ; 
thus Cowslip mead was made of Cowslip “ pips,” 
honey, Lemon juice, and “ a handful of Sweet- 
brier.” “ Athol porridge,” demure of name, was as 
potent as pleasing — potent as good honey, good 
cream, and good whiskey could make it. 
Rows of typical Southern beehives are shown in 
the two succeeding illustrations. From their home 
by the side of a White Rose and under an old 
Sweet Apple tree these Waterford bees did not wish 
to swarm out in a hurry to find a new home. These 
beehives are not very ancient in shape, but when 
I see a row of them set thus under the trees, 
or in a hive-shelter, they seem to tell of olden 
days. The very bees flying in an out seem steady- 
going, respectable old fellows. Such hives have a 
cosy look, with rows of Hollyhocks behind them, 
and hundreds of spires of Larkspur for these old 
bees to bury their heads in. 
The sadly picturesque old superstition of “ telling 
the bees ” of a death in a family and hanging a bit 
of black cloth on the hives as a mourning-weed still 
is observed in some country communities. Whit- 
tier’s poem on the subject is wonderfully “ countri- 
fied ” in atmosphere, using the word chore-girl, so 
