REACTIVE LOCOMOTION. 
39 
bees ? We may look at them as long as we like, they 
won’t quit work beeaufe it is “ half-holiday.” Bees are 
workers in the ftriCtefl: fenfe, and all their “ combinations ” 
are againft idlenefs, not againft work, not againft fociety. 
Men can’t do better than ftudy them, efpecially <c tradef- 
union ” gentlemen. Bees don’t combine to turn out poor 
work, and difcourage the production of good. 
But never mind human workers, here are better ones; 
let us look at them: watch this little fellow in yellow 
plufh breeches, and fee how daintily he lets himfelf down 
from the air upon the clover-head that hardly bends 
beneath his weight. He can’t run over it quick enough, 
and it don’t take him the millionth part of a fecond to 
find out juft where the fweet is, and efpecially where it is 
not, and then he is up and off*. Did you fee him jump ? 
You couldn’t, for he didn’t jump at all. The fparrow 
jumps, and the pigeon jumps, and the butterfly jumps; 1 
but the bee floats itfelf from the clover-tops as foftly as 
the mift-wreaths of the dewy morning float away from the 
hill-fide. No foap-bubble, brilliant with fwimming colours 
flolen from the rainbow, ever floated o£F from the bowl 
of a pipe with more charming gentlenefs and grace. And 
in thefe foft murmurs of the bufy bee, as you watch him 
fettling, and riling, and floating, and fettling again—in 
1 I was very much aftoniflied one day while holding a butterfly on my 
finger to diftindly feel the preflure of its tiny little feet as it jumped off into 
the air. Pettigrew fays he could never deted it, but I did unmiftakably. 
