THE HONEY-BEE. 
225 
which will affect the produce of both, in honey and 
bees, but to which both are liable. 
We are now to compare the suffocating system 
with that by which, even though we defer the honey 
harvest to the usual late period of September, we may 
obtain the same quantity of produce, and at the same 
time save the lives of the bees. “ W ere we to kill 
the hen for her egg,” says Wildman indignantly, 
“ the cow for her milk, or the sheep for the fleece it 
bears, every one would instantly see bow much we 
should act contrary to our interest ; and yet this is 
practised every year in our inhuman and impolitic 
slaughter of the bees.” It is mortifying to find writers 
of some celebrity in this branch of rural economy, 
defending the practice of suffocation, and using such 
arguments as the following : “ If he who dines every 
day on a good dish of animal food, does not find fault 
with the farmer who sold his cattle to the butcher, 
or who carried them to the market after he had him- 
self cut their throats, — why does he exclaim against 
the Bee-cultivator who suffocates insects destined by 
nature to die in the following year ?”* Independent 
of the consideration that the carcase of the bee is 
not, like that of the sheep or ox, of use after its 
death, and that advantage may be derived from it 
while in life, the cold calculating spirit which could 
approve and recommend such uncalled-for barbarity, 
seems very inconsistent with the enthusiastic admira- 
tion of the insect generally felt by apiarians, and be- 
trays more of the selfishness of the honey-merchant, 
* Feburier, Traitd des Abeilles. 
i* 
