PASTURAGK. 
297 
esteem. Its drooping Llossoms protect the honey from 
moisture, and they can work upon it when the w'eather is 
so wet that tliey can obtain nothing from the upright 
blossoms of tlie clover. As it furnishes a succession of 
flowers for some weeks, it yields a supply almost as lasting 
as the w’hite clover. The precipitous and rocky lands, 
where it most abounds, might be made almost as valuable 
as some of the vine-clad terraces of the mountain districts 
of Europe. 
“ Dr. Bevan suggests the use of lemon-thyme as an edging for 
garden walks and flower beds. No material good, however, can be 
done to a large colony by the few plants that can be sown around a 
bee-house. The bee is too much of a roamer to take pleasure in trim 
gardens.* It is the wild tracts of heath and furze, the broad acres 
of beau-fields and buckwheat, the lime avenues, the hedge-row 
flower.s, and the clover meadows, that furnish her haunts and fill 
her cells. To those who wish to watch their habits, a plot of bee- 
flowers is important, and we know not the bee that could refuse 
the following beautiful invitation of Professor Smythe: 
“ ‘ Thou cheerful Bee I come, freely come, 
And travel round my woodbine bower; 
Delight me with thy wandering hum. 
And rouse me from my musing hour: 
Oh! try no more those tedious fields ; 
Come, taste the sweets my garden yields: 
The treasures of each blooming mine. 
The buds, the blossoms—all are thine I 
And, careless of this noontide heat, 
I’ll folio V as thy ramble guides, 
To watch thee pause and chafe thy feet, 
And sweep them o’er thy downy sides; 
Then in a flower’s bell nestling lie, 
And all thy envied ardor ply 1 
Then o’er the stem, though fair it grow. 
With touch rejecting, glance and go. 
* I should almost os soon expect, from a small grass-plot, to furnish (hod for 
herd tf cattle, as to provision bees from garden plants. 
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