300 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[August, 
be any less so when wet, and it is much more likely that 
it had become deteriorated by long and improper keeping. 
(Basket Items continued on page 325.) 
Bee Notes for August. 
BY Ii. C. ROOT. 
As I anticipated, Basswood commenced blooming much 
earlier than usual. I first noticed bees at work on the 
flowers June 25th. At this date, July 5th, the bees are 
working very freely upon them. If the weather is favor¬ 
able, we shall undoubtedly secure a good yield, as the 
tree is blooming more freely than usual. Those who 
have followed our directions, and have had boxes or 
surplus combs properly arranged, will be amply repaid. 
Three of our best Italian colonies have been selected, 
from which we intend to extract, and I shall report the 
amount of honey we take from each during the season. 
They are in the large “New Qtiinby Hive,” and are 
furnished with 32 frames of comb each, from which the 
honey is to be thrown with the Honey Extractor. June 
85th, we took from No 1, 29 lbs.; No. 2, 32 lbs.; No. 3, 34 
lbs.; July 5th, No. 1, 26^ lbs.; No. 2, 31 lbs.; No. 3, 
3514 lbs. I propose to continue an accurate report of the 
products of these three hives, to show the readers of 
“ Notes” that it pays to give bees care, and at the same 
time to illustrate the advantage of thoroughly compre¬ 
hending whatever we undertake. 
During the present month, take care not to add too 
many boxes, or to extract too freely, in localities where 
fall forage is scarce. I would advise every bee-keeper 
to leave a few hives without extracting all of the combs. 
In fact, where boxing is practical, it is ■well to arrange a 
few hives with extra combs to be filled and capped over. 
I have frequently known seasons in which the brood 
combs were so entirely filled with brood that all the 
honey was stored in boxes. Then the yield of honey 
closing abruptly, but little or no honey was stored for 
winter. At such times, it is most desirable to have heavy 
cards of sealed honey that may be furnished to such 
stocks. In a word, we should not he so eager to secure 
a great surplus as to run the risk of starving our bees, 
which is sure to be the result of improper management. 
The following inquiry suggests thought enough for 
several articles for the beginner: “ What is the cause of 
bees buzzing about their hives on pleasant days, as if 
they were going to swarm? Mine have been doing this 
since May 1st, and have not swarmed yet About the 
middle of the day a number of them rush out of the hives 
and fly in circles with their heads towards the entrance, 
and finally enter without going off any great distance.” 
_ Answer. —The occurrences similar to those spoken of 
by our correspondent will be noticed in every good stock 
of bees during the period mentioned. During each fair 
day the young bees leave the hive for their first flight. 
Our correspondent has described their appearance and 
actions at such times very accurately, but has made a 
mistake in supposing such to beany indication of swarm¬ 
ing, only so far as frequent flights of this kind show that 
the stock is increasing in strength. The inexperienced 
are often led to suppose that bees are robbing at such 
times of busy flight. Our friend is evidently troubled 
because his bees do not swarm. Many bee-keepers watch 
the clusters of bees lying idle on the outside of their 
hives, and wonder that they get no swarms. To such, 
we would say, read up upon this subject, and see if there 
is not a much better way than to wait for swarms. If 
increase in numbers is desirable, practice has proved that 
it is much better to rear our queens in advance, use 
artificial comb-fbundation, make a half dozen better 
and far more desirable swarms early in the season, and 
not wait for from one to three natural swarms, if so 
fortunate as to get any at all. In bee-keeping, as in all 
other pursuits, it pays well to investigate and keep in¬ 
formed as to the best methods of the day. 
The “Rose Bug.” 
The present year is remarkable for the abundance of 
insects, ar.d not the least among them, is the “ Rose Bug,” 
or more accurately, the Rose Beetle ( Macrodactylus svb- 
spinosus), has been sent to us by several who found it de¬ 
structive to a variety of plants. The insect in question 
is not a large one, the body being about one-third of an 
inch in length, and covered with an ashy down. The 
slender legs are of a pale red color, and the joints 
unusually long. Though called the Rose Beetle, it is 
fond of many other plants, especially those of the rose 
family, as the apple, plum, and cherry—in some cases, 
the foliage of the latter has been badly injured, and they 
have caused much annoyance to those who have had 
cherries to pick. It is by no means confined to plants of 
the Rose Family, as it is often one of the grape-grower’s 
worst enemies. It is very fond of the flowers of the 
grape, and often destroys great quantities of clusters. 
The female enters the ground to deposit her eggs, which 
are hatched in about three weeks; the young grubs 
feeding upon the tender roots of plants. In late autumn, 
the grubs burrow deep to avoid frost, and spend the 
winter in an inactive state. As spring opens, they come 
up near the surface, change into the pupa state, from 
which they come out as the perfect beetle in the month 
of June. The beetle is active for about a month, when 
new eggs are laid, and the same cycle is repeated. The 
only time that a remedy can be applied, is during the 
mature state, when the beetle is above ground, and this 
consists in collecting and killing them by hand. In 
early morning, while they are sluggish, they may be 
brushed into a pan, in large numbers. In removing 
them from trees, a large sheet should be spread to catch 
them, as they are jarred from the tree. No poison has 
been used with success. 
A Talk about Medicines which it will be 
Well for All to Read and Think About. 
QUACK MEDICINES — PROPRIETARY MEDICINES — “ SPE¬ 
CIFICS ”—MEDICAL ADVERTISEMENTS. 
The statisticians say that at least 50,000 Deaths are 
caused every year by intemperance in the use of spiritu¬ 
ous liquors, to say nothing of the incident poverty and 
suffering of the victims themselves—of their wives, chil¬ 
dren, friends, and the community at large, and of the 
crimes resulting; or of the absolute annual waste of 
many hundred millions of hard-earned Dollars. None of 
this will we controvert; but we may surprise some 
readers by asserting the belief— First, that if alcoholic 
beverages slay 50,000 annually, the so-called patent, pro¬ 
prietary and specific medicines shorten the lives of quite 
as many people, cause an immense amount of ill health, 
and involve the worse than waste of hundreds of millions 
of dollars every year; and Second , that a great deal of the 
intemperance in drinking is brought about by medical 
quackery.—The reasons for the above statements will 
appear further on. 
“SPECIFIC MEDICINES.” 
There is a wide spread, almost universal, popular be¬ 
lief that medicines are “specific,” that is, that there is 
or may be found a particular medicine or medicines 
which will cure particular diseases ; that one medicine, 
for example, will cure catarrh; that another will cure 
liver complaint; that another will cure consumption, 
and so on. The patent medicine makers act upon this 
popular error.* They catalogue a larger or smaller list of 
diseases, give a great variety of symptoms— a list so com¬ 
prehensive that almost any person, especially one with 
his nervous system, his stomach or his imagination 
slightly out of order, will find something that exactly hits 
his or her case, and then comes the positive announce¬ 
ment that such or such a medicine is a sure specific cure. 
In the great medical libel suit against the American 
Agriculturist , terminating in its triumphant vindication 
Feb. 21, 1872, after running in the Courts for four years, 
several of the highest and best medical authorities were 
questioned in Court as to the number of medicines there 
were in the whole range of the materia medica, which 
could be called “specifics.” None of these authorities were 
willing^) name a positive specific, with a single excep¬ 
tion: Dr. M. R. Yedder testified that he believed “ sul¬ 
phur, properly applied, would always cure the Itch, and 
may therefore be called a specific.” Even to this it 
might be objected that the “ itch ” can hardly be called a 
disease, as it is the result of the biting of minute vermin, 
not unlike human lice, lice upon poultry and other ani¬ 
mals and upon plants, the scab on sheep, etc. In the 
itch the vermin are too small to be seen with the eye un¬ 
aided by the microscope. The cure depends upon poison¬ 
ing or smothering the animals, which is effectually done 
by the application of lard mixed with sulphur, or with 
mercurial salts, etc.—the sulphur being preferable despite 
its disagreeableness, because it has no injurious or 
poisonous effect upon the individual.—Some of the 
Physicians stated that quinine was nearly a specific for 
malaria, yet with the reserve that some persons were in¬ 
juriously affected otherwise by quinine, that it some¬ 
times failed in particular cases, and that ordinary per¬ 
sons not skilled in medical science and diagnosis, could 
not be certain that their sickness was caused by malaria; 
and further, that the most skillful medical men could not 
always decide this point unqualifiedly. And just here 
is one great objection to all kinds and classes of medical 
nostrums, patent medicines, proprietary medicines, or 
good medicines sold to the general public and taken 
without the direction of skillful, educated, experienced 
medical observers. It is literally true that “what is one 
man’s meat is another’s poison’’—that what will aid in 
the cure of a particular disease in one person will be in¬ 
jurious to another person affected by the same disease, 
but in different circumstances as to constitution, physical 
condition, etc. 
EVEN PHYSICIANS SEEK ADVICE. 
It is well known that the most skillful physicians when 
seriously sick themselves, or when any one in their fami¬ 
lies is very sick, never prescribes for himself or those 
dear to him, but calls in another physician, even if he 
has to summon one whom he knows to be quite inferior 
to himself in medical knowledge. His experience has 
taught him that any person with a system sufficiently 
disordered to need the aid of medicine, is not in a condi¬ 
tion of mind and judgment to decide as to the kind of 
malady, or the proper remedies in his particular case. 
And yet many millions of people with no proper under¬ 
standing of the human system, are constantly dosing 
themselves with the advertised and be-puffed medical 
nostrums that load down the shelves of all sorts of estab¬ 
lishments and sales shops, and now, indeed, of nine out 
of ten of the regular drug stores of the whole land—and 
the advertisements of which fill the columns and furnish 
the support of the great mass of newspapers throughout 
this country and some others. 
CURING BY IMAGINATION. 
It has been said that “ the best physicians give medi¬ 
cines in many cases to amuse the patient while nature 
is working out the cure.” That such is sometimes the 
case we have no doubt; indeed, we know an excellent 
physician who was for twenty years called from once a 
month to once a week to see a lady in good circumstances- 
and of more than ordinary intelligence, though at the 
same time of a nervous temperament. The lady always 
asked for a “ prescription,” but the physician preferred, 
in her case, to prepare the medicine himself, which he 
sent to her in the form of small pills. These pills were 
merely cracker crumbs made up with gum arabic and 
rolled in powdered rhubarb or whatever would give them 
the odor of “ the shop.” As simple and inert as they 
were, the pills invariably cured.-The one redeeming 
feature in this whole patent medicine business is the 
fact that some—would that we could say all—oi the so- 
called remedies are actually as inert as the above men¬ 
tioned pills—producing no other effect than to amuse 
those who are actually ill, while nature is curing them, 
and have a soothing influence on those whose disorders 
are of the imagination only. 
MEDICINES PRODUCING INTEMPERANCE. 
But there is a darker side to the picture; many, indeed 
most, of the medicines are not thus harmless. Most of 
the liquid medicines consist largely of whiskey or other 
cheap form of alcohol, qualified with some stuff to give 
a medicinal taste. Even the so-called “ Temperance 
Bitters,” and others claimed to be non-alcoholic, are open 
to this chai'ge. We once collected twelve varieties of 
these compounds, all said to be practically non-alcoholic, 
and on subjecting them to simple distillation, no one of 
them failed to yield less than nine per cent of pure alco¬ 
hol, and one labelled “ Temperance,” gave 28Ff per cent 
of alcohol: common whiskey contains only 40 to 60 
per cent of pure alcohol. If one takes a dose of a 
medicine of this kind, the alcohol acts as a temporary 
stimulant, and if the stuff contain Gentian or a similar 
drug that has a transient tonic effect, the patient “ feels 
better ” at once, even though he may not be, and usually 
is not, really ill. He at once is convinced; “That’s the 
medicine,” is his implicit belief, and he not only con¬ 
tinues to take it, but commends it to friends and neigh¬ 
bors, who go through a similar experience of “ feeling 
better,” and the medicine has a “ run ”; certificates as 
to its excellence are given, and the stuff has a large sale. 
But what is the result? Those who take it once, re¬ 
peat the dose on every occasion of real or imaginary 
change of feelings from the slightest cause. Over-work, 
over-eating of poorly digestible food, loss of sleep, busi¬ 
ness troubles, or whatever causes one to feel “out of 
sorts,” induces a resort to the “Bitters”—or whatever 
the stuff may be called. What should be, and what would 
be good health, but for the dosing, is destroyed. In fact, 
the person is, unconsciously no doubt, actually indulg¬ 
ing in a moderate “ spree.” Indeed, a taste for alcoholic 
stimulants is thus formed, which often in the end leads to- 
intemperance. When through this dosing the system 
becomes habituated to its use, and enlarged doses cease 
to have their former effect, the patient looks over the 
long medical advertisements, and finds some “symptoms” 
there described which seem to hit his or her present 
case, and a new medicine is tried. This new stuff may 
be either more strongly alcoholic or more positively tonic 
than the other, and for a while appears to be the needed 
remedy; but the system soon becomes habituated to this, 
and possibly another and another of these nostrums is 
tried, until the end is confirmed illness, and thus the 
grave is often reached long before it need have been. 
The same general effects follow 
PROMISCUOUS DOSING 
with any other form of medicine. The popular pills, for 
example, are of two kinds. They may be nearly or quite 
inert, and serve to amuse the one who takes them while 
nature and rest work a' cure, or they are the simplest 
possible cathartic, and act upon the fact that in the be¬ 
ginning of many forms of illness a smnrt movement of 
the bowels is just the one thing needed. The harm done 
by these is, that special virtues are ascribed to, and a high 
