23<3 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
June 30. 
Vive l’Empereur! 
Vive l’Empress ! 
Vive the Imperial family. 
After this speech, and while the farmers who had been 
the most industrious were being crowned on the altar of 
the country, the imperial artillery discharged a salvo of 
twenty-one guns. The troops of the line and the imperial 
guard then went to take up their positions on the church 
square, and the imperial artillery occupied the esplanade 
of the Intendance. The cortege left the Place Petion for 
the church in the following order :— 
The agriculturists, carrying cane stalks and branches of 
the coffee-tree. 
A picket of horse grenadiers of his Majesty’s guard. 
Band of the infantry of the guard. 
Pupils of the government schools, accompanied 
by their directors and professors. 
Members of Commerce. 
The ministerial officers of the imperial court, and of the 
court of Cassation. 
Staff officers, and those unattached. 
Officers of the imperial navy, and of the port. 
Health officers. 
Justice of Peace and his deputies. 
Employes of the different public administrations, and their 
heads of bureaux. 
Employes of the ministers. 
The Council of Notables. 
The Council of the District. 
The Central Commissioner of Public Instruction. 
The principal officers of finance, and of the other branches 
of the public administration; the editor of the Moniteur, 
and of the acts of government; the General 
Secretaries of the Ministers, and the 
Secretary of the Council of Ministers. 
The members of the Imperial Court, and the officers 
of the bar. 
The Court of Accounts. 
The Treasurer General. 
The Court of Cassation, the Procureur-General and 
his deputy. 
The brigadiers of the army. 
The Field Marshals. 
The Lieutenant Generals. 
The princes and the marshals. 
The Representatives and the Senators. 
The consuls of foreign powers. 
The Grand Marshal of the Palace, and the Grand 
Master of the Ceremonies. 
The Imperial Princes. 
The Ministers. 
The Grand Pantler. 
The High Groom. 
His Majesty’s Staff Major. 
A picket of light chasseurs of the guard closed the march. 
When the cortege reached the church, the masters of the 
ceremonies pointed out their places to each. The resident 
agriculturists occupied the right aisle of the church. The 
religious ceremony was celebrated with great pomp by the i 
Grand Chaplain of the Emperor and Vicar General. At i 
the consecration, and at the Tc JDeum, a salvo of twenty-one j 
guns was discharged by the imperial artillery. After mass, 
a grand banquet, prepared in the hall of the Council of 
Notables, reunited all the agriculturists. In the evening 
the city was illuminated. 
The opinion we have maintained that first-rate SJumg- 
hae Fowls still maintain the high value they have 
attained, is fully supported hy the results of the salo at 
Mr. Stevens’s on the 21st instant. Lot 22, Captain 
Snell, of Norwood’s, huff cockerel, hatched February 4, 
1853, “winner of the first prizes at Cheltenham and 
Plymouth,” sold for .£15. Lots 23 and 24, huff'pullets, 
of same age, and winners of the same prizes, sold re¬ 
spectively for £22 Is. and £14 14s. Nine other lots, all 
chickens, sold for sums varying between £2 and £9 9s.; 
some of those hatched as late as March the 1st realising 
the highest prices. These were all actual sales. Mr. 
Gilbert’s lots were knocked down at prices varying be¬ 
tween £2 and £12 12s., but some of them were bought 
in. Altogether there were 100 lots, some of them very 
bad, and the total sum of the sales was £430. 
GLEANINGS. 
The Prize Essay, for 1852, of the Entomological 
Society, is On the Duration of Life in the Queen, Drone, 
and Worker, of the Honey Bee. The author is J. G. 
Desborough, Esq., and he has been a keeper and student 
of this domesticated insect for thirteen years. We, 
therefore, opened the pages of his essay with an ex¬ 
pectation that he had determined the unsettled ques. 
tion—What is the life-time of a bee? and we confess 
our disappointment to find that he has left it still 
without an answer. Thus, on the duration of life in 
the Queen Bee, he says at p. 14, “ although it may be 
deemed too presumptuous to assert that her age is in 
reality three or four years, yet the facts adduced from 
personal observation, and the deductions and conclu¬ 
sions drawn therefrom, will he deemed a sufficient 
apology hy the writer in thus stating his belief that his 
opinion is correct.” Of the Drone, he observes (p. 17), 
“we shall not be assuming too much in concluding that 
the natural duration of life in the drone is the same as 
in the worker beeand in a succeeding portion of the 
work (p. 21), he says, “we have demonstrated that the 
life of the Worker Bee does not exceed eight months, 
yet wo have not shown that it reaches that period.” 
We have read and re-read Mr. Degborougli’s statements, 
i but we confess our inability to discern the demonstra¬ 
tion. There are ingenious calculations and deductions- 
but if the conclusions are admitted to be probabilities, 
they have applied to them the highest authoritative 
epithet to which they are entitled. 
As it is so easy to catch the queen bee, we see no 
great difficulty in having her marked with a streak of 
white paint across her wings ; and it would be no very 
toilsome job to an apiarian to serve a hundred bees 
similarly. If some twenty apiarians would do the same; 
and if the results of their observations as to the times 
when the marked bees ceased to appear coincided, then 
we should say that the results might be accepted as 
demonstrations. 
Though we consider that Mr. Desborough has not 
determined the age to which any of the three ranks of 
bees attain, yet his pamphlet is most candidly written, 
and we are enabled to hesitate from agreeing with him, 
because he has fairly stated the grounds on which his 
deductions are based. Nor is the usefulness of the 
Essay circumscribed by being confined exclusively to a 
consideration of the bee’s age. There is much that is 
amusiug, much that is instructive, and much that is 
suggestive in its pages. Among the latter is all that 
he says relative to returning Swarms, instead of hiving 
them. We have had our attention specially drawn to 
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