September 30. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER, 
419 
Bantams, Silver-lured—2 entries—Cock and 2 Hens, Mr, J, Dutton, 
Bury St. Edmunds. 
Bantams, Black—6 entries—Cock and 2 Hens. Mr. G. Francis, Gor- 
leston, Suffolk. 
Geese, af uiuj breed— 10 entries—Gander and 2 Geese. Mr. J. Taylor, 
Shepherd’s Bush, Hammersmith. Mrs. Fowler, Acle. Mr. George 
Beck, Caister. 
Bucks, Aylesbury —4 entries—Drake and 2 Ducks. 1st. Messrs. Youell 
and Co., Yarmouth. 2nd. Mr. R. Steward, Yarmouth. 
Bucks, Rouen.— 1st. F. L. Astley, Esq. 2nd. C. Punchard, Esq. 
i Ducks, any breed. —Mr. W. Wright, Yarmouth. Messrs. Youell and Co. 
Turkeys, Black Norfolk—4 entries—Cock and 2 Hens. Mr. W. 
; Matchett, Kertley, Lowestoft. 
I Turkeys, any colour.— 1st. G. A. Marsham, Esq. 2nd. Mr. S. Balls, 
Yarmouth. 
| Turkey Poults. —John Fairlie, Esq. Extra prizes were awarded to Mr. 
John Taylor, for a pen of Andalusian Fowls, and to \V. C. Reynolds, 
Esq., for the best Silk Bantams. 
Pigeons. —Prizes were awarded to Mr. Bcazor, Yarmouth, for the best 
pair of Almond Tumblers, and to G. C. Adkin, Esq., Birmingham, for 
the best pairs of several other varieties. 
THE APIARIAN’S CALENDAR.— October. 
By J. H. Payne, Esq., Author of “ The Bee-Keeper’s Guide." 
Stocks. —Many of tlie stocks, upon examination, as I had 
already anticipated, are found to he very light, and more 
especially so those that have swarmed, so that without feed¬ 
ing they cannot survive the winter. When they are found 
to contain only seven or eight pounds of honey, it will be 
better to unite the bees to other stocks, and to take their 
honey, for the trouble and expense of feeding such stocks 
will he more than they are worth, eveu if they are kept alive 
through the winter. Should they, however, be in a favourite 
description of hive, and a desire exist on the part of the 
proprietor to keep it tenanted, it may be done, and the best 
and safest method of insuring it that I can recommend, will 
be to give them, during the present month, a sufficient 
quantity of honey, or sugar and water, with honey, as re¬ 
commended in The Cottage Gardener, till the stocks 
weigh from twenty to twenty-four pounds each. Having 
j done this, and taken effectual means of keeping the hive 
| free from damp, very litte fear need be entertained of their 
i being carried safely through the winter without any further 
attention, beyond that of occasionally cleaning the floor- 
I hoards, and shutting up the hive whilst snow lies upon the 
' ground. 
j The Season.— It appears that the quantity of honey 
j collected this year has been unusually small, and not of a 
j first-rate quality; in some very favourable localities, perhaps, 
there may have been a few glasses obtained, bur in this 
\ neighbourhood (Bury St. Edmunds) I have neither seen 
nor heard of a good glass having been taken ; such a con¬ 
tinued succession of bad seasons as we have latelj ex¬ 
perienced, cannot fail to have been very discouraging to 
young apiarians, but I would have them take courage, aud 
hope for better ones. 
Straw Hives —I have lately had a specimen hive brought 
me by the maker, of very superior quality. I wish that 1 
had seen it in time for the exhibition, and it should certainly 
have appeared there, for 1 saw nothing amongst those ex¬ 
hibited to equal it. It is my intention to keep the man 
employed, during the coming winter months, in making 
them, that I may have a good supply for the accommodation 
of all my friends and correspondents who may wish to 
possess them. They will be made of my last improved 
i shape, broad and shallow, for it is now proved, beyond a 
doubt, that bees do better in a broad, shallow hive (of 
whatever material it may be composed), than in a narrow, 
deep one. The price of this hive must, consequently, be a 
j few pence more than those I have usually had made, but 
I believe only a few pence ; for by having a quantity made, 
and in the winter months, they will be charged as low as 
possible. . . . 
Pre*ration of Wax. —In reply to many enquiries on 
this subject, I beg to refer to paye 28-), yol. 2, of The 
Cottage Gardener, where full directions will be found. 
I —--- 
THE LAKE AND ITS TENANTS. 
The Lake— delightful word! The mere name refreshes ; 
the ideas it raises, tranquillize. Let us glide, then, in 
imagination, or better in real fact, over the smooth clear 
waters, with a warm air around us, a bright sun overhead, 
and every worldly fuss and bother left on the bank behind 
those rustling reeds. If Black Care mounts and sits 
behind the horseman, he shall find no vacant corner to 
occupy on the stern of our happy boat. For, pure water 
isolates us from witchcraft, from malignant wishes, and 
from evil eyes. Here we are bathing in an anodyne for 
past sorrows and threatening anxieties. What a blessing 
this escape, though only for a little while, from the machi¬ 
nations of living men! To devour the most stirring 
romance, to dream over the most ideal poem, does not 
separate us more widely from vulgar working-day troubles, 
than does this gentle passage from shore to shore, each 
made lovely by the veil of distance. Pray let us move as 
slowly as we can, consistently with actual motion, lest the 
voyage come to an end before we have thoroughly had our 
fill of it. 
Where is your lake ? Our lake shall spread its surface 
in various pleasant places. It shall be natural or artificial, 
deep or shallow, tenantless (though that can hardly be) or 
crowded with life, as best may suit our pleasure. It shall 
be deep sheltered by woods in the most lovely park, or it 
shall lie exposed, in an unfrequented tract of marsh land, to 
the furious north and eastern gales. Nay, if even the 
small pond in the pleasure-ground, or the river, flowing 
through rich meads, is compelled to contribute to its mass, 
the plural pronoun will be but the more apt to express 
what is seen, and done, and revelled in there. Glide we, 
then, steadily forward, by the pressure of a soft breeze into 
a spreading sail. Gaze upwards and watch the wheeling 
flocks of plovers, or look downwards and wonder at. the 
streaming water-weeds and swift-darting fishes over which 
we are suspended;—only enjoy! 
A tranquillizing spell is cast over every thing around us. 
Nature breathes softly, like a child in a deep sleep. She is 
taking her repose between the storms which agitated, and 
which will agitate her again. It is a day of rest to gather 
power for future efforts. That splash ! we have disturbed a 
pike in his sunny dose. And there stands a heron, com¬ 
placently digesting his fish dinner, chin on breast, poising 
himself in nice balance on one leg. You and I should not 
think that a “ stand at ease ” arrangement of the lower 
limbs. Mere prejudice, my friend, and want of practice. A 
frequent posture of the natives of Australia is to stand on 
one leg, with the foot of the other planted against the knee ; 
and this appears to be a posture of rest.* We should not 
get on much better at first, in taking a seat Turkish fashion. 
But we have disturbed the Hanser’s quietude. He marks 
that we are observing him, and flaps leisurely away, alighting 
soon with a dancing kind of step. The meeting of these 
birds in a marsh puts me in mind of another Australian 
custom ; they often make, or renew acquaintance, by dancing 
a corrohery with the fresh-met companion. 
What a marvellous form is water for matter to assume !— 
matter, the hard, rough material, once chaotic, of which the 
universe is made. Here it is yielding, disunited, infinitely 
separable, divisible by the slightest touch, and yet has 
power enough to bear us up over the surface of the earth, 
as if we were flying in this coarsely-patched vessel; and it 
could, under the impulse of the winds, dash us and it to 
destruction. Transparent too ! We see that we are buoyed 
up above the point which we might fall to, by a repulsion 
which is as mysterious as the unseen influence of gravity, 
or the energies of the loadstone. It is not foolish to call 
water a very strange and queer thing. At a word,—only 
command the thermometer to fall half a degree, and the 
non-coherent assemblage of atoms becomes a solid rock. 
At another word, while it is still water—command the ther¬ 
mometer to rise half a degree, and it becomes a cloud, 
visible or invisible as it may be. If it perplex the strongest 
brains, to ask them “ what is matter ? ” the puzzle becomes 
even more confounding, when we suggest what a miraculous 
kind of matter water must be. 
Fire-worship is so familiarised to us during the course of 
our readings, that we come to regard it as the natural out¬ 
break of an imaginative mind unaided by Revelation. On 
reflection, the worship of water, not for its common uses, 
but for its mighty power and illimitable vastness, would be 
quite as obvious to men dwelling on the sea-shore, or the 
* Jukes’s Voyage of the Fly. Yol. i., p. 6l. 
