104 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
May 13. 
man in liis character, and gave himself up at once. His 
horror was at the wretchedness of his poor afflicted wife, and 
haling to leave her and his little children. It is a strange 
and remarkable thing, that a man who loves his wife and 
little ones so dearly should dare to be guilty of such a 
crime. One would think for their sakes, if not on better 
grounds, a husband and father would forbear to do what 
must make them all very miserable, and ruin them besides, 
as well as himself. A man without feeling for others might 
not be wondered at, but Charles Smith was a tenderly 
attached husband and father, and never gave his wife one 
moment’s pain, except in the matter of dishonesty. 
Betsey Smith was left among her poor little children, 
weeping and miserable. She had long dreaded such an 
event, but it came at last like a clap of thunder, as afflictions 
always do. She had many friends, and they all helped her 
as well as they could; but they could not remove her trial, 
or make her forget it. 
The miller was a very kind-hearted man, and would have 
been very glad to get poor Smith off when he was fairly 
committed for trial; but he was strongly advised to let him 
be punished, as one human means of doing him good. He 
did so—and six months’ hard labour was the result. 
Betsey is still alone with her children, supporting them 
by her needle. Her friends employ her, and do all they 
can for her; but although submissive and resigned to her 
trial, her countenance is one of the deepest sadness. She 
feels it in the right way—as an offence against the Law of 
God, rather than that of man. “ Against Thee, Thee only, 
have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight," should be 
the confession of every heart; for the offence against man 
is as nothing compared with that against a holy and just 
God. 
Let the experience of Charles Smith convince us that our 
sin is sure to find us out; that is to say, the Lord will, 
sooner or later, bring it to light. He will guide the foot, 
the hand, the eye, to our most secret haunts, and make that 
visible to man which we are not ashamed to do before His 
sight, “ who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” Let 
us remember, too, that although there are different kinds 
and degrees of guilt among man, it is not so with God. In 
His sight who searcheth the heart, there is no respect of 
person, or act, or sin ; it is nothing to us what a man feels, 
it is only what he does, that our country’s law can meddle 
with. But the Lord looks upon, and “is a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the heartand it is the intent , and 
not the deed only, that He abhors. There is no little sin. 
Let us daily and hourly breathe this prayer from the ground 
of our hearts : “ Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our 
hearts to keep Thy law.” 
DRONES APPEARING IN AUTUMN. 
The following dialogue occurred to-day with a cottager 
who keeps a great many bees. It may possibly serve to 
throw some light upon the why or wherefore. 
“ Do you find your bees desert their hives this spring? ”— 
“ No." 
“ It is a feature this season they are prone to do so !” “ I 
can tell you the reason.”—“ Why ? ” 
“ Because they have no honey; they are starved out! ”— 
“No, that is not py case; to the instances which I refer, 
plenty of honey remains in the hives.” 
“Well, I can still give you a reason. Whenever drones 
make their appearance at Michaelmas , do away with those 
stocks immediately; they will never come to any more good. 
By this sign you may depend upon a desertion from the 
hives in the manner you speak of.” 
Upwards and Onwards. 
(If drones did exist last autumn in the deserted hive of 
“ Verax,” it would prove (in accordance with the reasonable 
opinion expressed in the above observations) the correctness 
of my surmise as to the cause of such quasi-desertion ( vide 
last number), viz., that the queen died last autumn, though 
she had sought them to provide for her approaching decease 
in a manner which, had the time been spring instead of 
autumn, would have probably saved the stock, but which 
occurred too late in the year to enable her—granted she was 
in a condition to be a mother—to supply a new progeny in 
sufficient numbers to meet the approaching winter. I 
observed in the case of one of my stocks, which lost its 
queen early last April, that almost the last eggs which she 
laid before her death were drone eggs ; as if she foresaw her 
end, and, in obedience to a law of nature, provided for the 
future wants of the hive. One of the first lessons I learnt 
in bee-keeping was, that it was a very bad sign when drones, 
in any considerable numbers, were seen in any hive after 
August—a sign that something was the matter with the 
queen—either she had met with some accident, or she was 
approaching the usual period of her decease.—A Country 
Curate.) 
THE BOHEMIAN PHEASANT. 
My attention was first called to this curious bird by Mr. 
John Baily, of 113, Mount Street, Grosvenor Square ; and I 
have the greater pleasure in acknowledging the obligation, 
because that gentleman, unlike so many of his brethren, 
makes no mystery of the natural historical facts which 
continually fall in his way in the course of his trade, but, to 
his credit, is ever ready to throw light, instead of accumu¬ 
lating doubt and darkness, upon some of the greatest diffi¬ 
culties which the zoologist has to encounter, namely, the 
obtaining of true data whereon to speculate respecting our 
domestic and our home-bred birds. 
To many practised sportsmen, if such are on our list of 
readers, the name of “Bohemian pheasant” will be new, 
and the thing itself unknown. Nothing that applies to the 
Bohemian pheasant is to be found in Buffon, or in Tem- 
minck’s elaborate and, as far as he could possibly make it, 
complete Pigeons et Gallinacees. All I am able to do is to 
collect a certain amount of information, leaving its origin 
and native place quite imperfectly indicated. Bohemia is 
an extensive country, abounding with a great variety of 
game, both winged and quadruped, but its just claim to give 
a name to the bird under notice is not yet established. 
Should any well-wisher to this series of papers be cognizant 
of further particulars besides those now mentioned, he will 
confer a favour by communicating them. 
The first time Mr. Baily mentioned to me a kind of 
pheasant thus called, I was induced to suspect that the term 
might be merely a cant or trade name, for the purpose of 
mystification, for some of the well-known varieties, such as 
the White, or the Pied birds. To this he replied— 
“ There is, I think, misconception on your part when you 
consider the Bohemian a trade name for the pheasant so 
called. I believe it to be a distinct breed; the only birds 
of the kind that I heard of for many years were at Combe 
Abbey, the residence of the Earl of Craven, who gave me a 
pair. I was asked by a gentleman, a customer of mine, in 
London, two or three years since, to go and see a strange 
bird which he had stuffed, and which he considered to be a 
cross between the Silver and the Common pheasant; as 
soon as I saw it I found it to be a Bohemian. It has the 
same shape, carriage, size, voice, and plumage as the com¬ 
mon bird, but in both cock and hen the plumage has the 
same colour as if it had been washed over with cream. I 
believe, it to be a distinct bird because it is never found in 
the woods with other birds, and were it a vagary of nature, 
or the result of interbreeding, it would of course occur in j 
coverts where they are carefully preserved and highly fed. ! 
I think any account of pheasants will be incomplete without \ 
a notice of this bird, which is the more interesting because ; 
it has as yet escaped familiar description. I fancy when 
you see it, and reflect that there are not perhaps one 
hundred of them in England, while you will say in beauty 
it is inferior to the common pheasant, you will admit it is a 
distinct breed, and consequently entitled to consideration.” 
It was hoped that the true state of the case might be 
learned at Iinowsley if anywhere. A communication kindly 
written by the late Earl of Derby, March 27, 1850, states as 
follows:— 
“As to the Bohemians, I do not pretend to decide whether 
they are a distinct species or not, as I know nothing of their 
real origin, and never heard of any place where they have 
been seen in an actually wild state. I can add very little to 
what Baily has written to you about them. I have known 
them, and admired them, for many years before I possessed 
any; and I then certainly considered that they were an 
accidental variety, though I am now more inclined to think 
