a laborer's habit of mind. However, Mr. | to conquer the strongholds of heathenism. Cotton's book, though not quite as success. However, it is never too late to do well. ful as we could wish, is very far indeed The solemn ceremonial of the consecration from partaking of the worst defects of of five bishops to the colonies, within the books of this class. Indeed, he has so near- walls of Westminster Abbey in August last, ly reached the point at which he has aimed, which produced an effect on those who that we feel continually annoyed that he witnessed it which will not soon pass away, just falls short of it. We do not think him shows that the Church is not neglectful of happy in his jokes, nor at home in his fami- her duties; though they, like the bishop liarity. From the familiar to the twad- of New Zealand, should have led the van dling is but a step, and a very short step on the foundation of the colonies instead of too. His Aristotle has taught him the use following after a lapse of years, when the of proverbs to the vulgar, which he has usurpations of schism and disorder have everywhere taken advantage of, though, more than trebled the difficulty of their with singular infelicity, he has printed them task. There are among the crew of that in a character-old English-that not one gallant vessel-and not least of that numout of a hundred of the reading poor can ber, the chief Shepherd himself, and our understand. He translates a bit of Latin author Bee-master-men of the highest (p. 309) for the benefit of his "Cottager," mental attainments, of the gentlest blood, but leaves a quotation from Pindar to be on whom our Public Schools and UniverGreek to him still! (p. 283.) It is, how-sities had showered their most honorable ever, want of clearness and method-great rewards, and to whom, had they remained faults certainly in a didactic work-of which in this country, the most splendid prospects we have chiefly to complain in his "Short opened-who have yet borne to give up and Simple Letters;" but, taking the work as it comes to us in its present form, with its exquisite wood-cuts, perfection of dress, prelude of mottoes (of which we have not scrupled to avail ourselves), list of bee-books (which, though imperfect, particularly as to foreign works, is the first of the kind)appendices-reprints-extracts, etc., we hardly know a book of the kind that has of late pleased us more. The ingenuity with which every ornament, within and without, introduces either the bee itself, or its work-polished life. God forbid that we should manship, reflects great credit on the designer, and on the engraver, Mr. J. W. Whimper, to whose labors the author pays a well-earned compliment. Professing no sort of arrangement, it is the perfection of a scrap-book for the gentleman or lady beekeeper. all these prospects and sever all the ties of blood and old affection, to cross, at the call of the Church, in the service of their Master, half a world of ocean to an island unfrequented and barbarous, and where, for at least many years to come, they must give up all idea, not of luxury and comfort, but of what they have hitherto deemed the very necessaries of existence; and, what is more to such men, the refinements of intellectual intercourse and the charities of not have a heart to sympathize in the struggles of those uneducated and enthusi astic, but often misguided men, who are sent out with the Bible in their hand by voluntary associations on a pitiable pay. ment barely greater than what they might have earned with their hands in their own The great interest, however, in Mr. Cot- parish: it is the system and the comforta ton's work lies in the conclusion. He is ble committee at home with which we one of that noble crew, mainly drafted quarrel, not with the painful missionaries from the ranks of aristocratic Eton, that themselves; but while we grieve over the have gone out in the first missionary en- martyred Williams, we have nothing in terprise that has left the shores of England, common with that sympathy which is moworthy of the Church and country that nopolized by the exertions of missionary ar sent them. The good ship Tomatin sailed tisans, enured from their cradle to a life of from Plymouth for New Zealand on the hardship, and which can feel nothing for 26th of December, 1841, St. Stephen's day, the tenfold deprivations, mental and bodily, with a "goodly fellowship" of emigrants, both in what they encounter and what they schoolmasters, deacons, and priests, with leave behind, which the rich and the edua Bishop at their head. And we, an Apostol-cated endure, who are authoritatively com. ic Church, have been these many years in learning the first lessons of Apostolic discipline and order! wasting the lives and energies of an isolated clergy-a few forlorn hopes sent out without a commander missioned to plant the standard of the Cross within the ark of Christ's Church in our distant colonies. It becomes us who sit luxuriously in our drawing-rooms at home, reading the last new volume in our easy chairs, to cast a thought from time to time on the labors of these men, of like tastes and habits with ourselves, and encourage them in their noble work, be it in New Zealand or elsewhere, not only in good wishes and easily-uttered "Godspeeds," but in denying ourselves somewhat of our many daily comforts in for warding that cause which they have "left all" to follow.* I but small. The import of wax altogether has been steadily declining: in 1839 it came to 6314 cwt.; in the last year it was but 4583. The importation, however, of honey has, in the last few years, increased in an extraordinary degree; 675 cwt. being entered in the year ending January, 1838, and 3761 cwt. in last year: the foreign West Indies, Germany, and Portugal, having furnished the greater part of this increased supply. But the connection which all this has The honies of Minorca, Narbonne, and with our present subject is, that in the Normandy are the most esteemed in the same ship with this "glorious company," markets from their whiteness. We wish Mr. Cotton has taken out with him four we could believe the decreased importastocks of bees: the different methods tion of wax arose from the more extensive of storing away may be seen in page cultivation of the bee in this country; but 357. Seizing, and, we are sure, gladly we fear that the daily-rather, nightly-diseizing, a hint thrown out in Mr. Petre's minishing show of wax-candles on our book on New Zealand, of the great honey-neighbors' tables, and the murderous sysharvest in the native flowers, with no la- tem of our honey-farmers, combined with borers to gather it, he is carrying out the the increased consumption of foreign hofirst bees which have ever visited those isl-ney-(£12,000 worth of which was imands. "I hope," he says-and who does not ported last year)-tell a different tale. It join in this hope of Bishop Selwyn's chap- would be a better sign of bee-prosperity lain?"that many a busy bee of mine will in England if the increase in the importa'Gather honey all the day tion were removed from the honey to the From every opening flower' wax; for the staple of the wax of comof Phormium tenax in New Zealand. merce is the produce of the wild beehope," he adds, "a bee will never be killed of the honey of commerce that of the doin New Zealand, for I shall start the native mesticated bee; and it is a singular fact, bee-keeper in the no-killing way; and when illustrating the history of these two species they have learned to be kind to them, they in relation to civilized and uncivilized man, will learn to be more kind one to another." that while the bushmen of the Cape look with It is probable that the produce of the bees jealousy on the inroads of cultivation, as may be made useful to the inhabitants destroying the haunts of the only live-stock themselves; but we much question whether they possess, the Indians of America conany exportation could be made of wax or sider the same insect as the harbinger of honey. It is too far to send the latter; the white man, and say, that in proportion and, in wax-gathering, the domesticated as the bee advances, the red man and the hives can never compete with the wild buffalo retire. bees' nests of Africa, which furnish much We have spoken of the possibility of the largest amount for our markets. Sier- bee-pasturage being over-stocked, and such ra Leone, Morocco, and other parts of may be the case in certain localities in EngAfrica, produce four times as much wax for land; but we are very confident that this our home consumption as all the rest of the is not the general state of the country. world together. The only other country We are assured that hives might be multifrom which our supply has been gradually plied in England tenfold, and yet there increasing is the United States, and that is would be room: certainly, more than five * Great credit is due to the New Zealand com- times the quantity of honey might be taken. pany, who have consulted their interest as well as But then it will require an improved systheir duty in the liberality of their Episcopal en-tem of management, more constant attendowment. There can be no doubt that the estab- tion paid to the hive, more liberal feeding lishment there of a regular clergy will be a great inducement to the best class of settlers to fix on in spring and autumn, and more active such a spot for the port of their destination. A measures against their chief enemies. In large, though inadequate sum having been already all these matters we must look to the highcollected for the general purposes of founding Coer classes to take the lead. We know lonial Bishoprics, we would now suggest to our ecclesiastical rulers that separate committees many, both rich and poor, who do not should be forthwith formed of persons interested in keep bees, on account of the murder they the several colonies, for increasing to something think themselves forced to commit: let like a proper sum Episcopal endowments for fur- such be assured that this slaughter is not thering the cause of the Church in each particular only unnecessary, but unprofitable too. see. they sting thee not, thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly thou must not come among them having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of Leeks, Onions, Garlic, or by any other means; the noisomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of beer: thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness," &c. &c. But, on the other hand, let no one fancy that all he has to do is to procure a swarm and a hive, and set it down in the garden, and that streams of honey and money will forthwith flow. Bees, like every thing else that is worth possessing, require attention and care. แ They need," said a poor friend of ours," a deal of shepherding ;" and thus, He makes a very proper distinction, which to the cottager who can afford to give them our Temperance Societies would do well his time, they may be made a source of to observe, between a "cup of beer," and great profit, as well as pleasure. Our own "drunkenness ;" and indeed there seems sentiments cannot be given better than in Mr. Cotton's words: "I would most earnestly beg the aid of the clergy and resident gentry-but, above all, their good wives; in a word, of all who wish to help the poor who dwell round about them in a far humbler way, yet perhaps not less happily; would beg them, one and all, to aid me as a united body in teaching their poor neighbors the best way of keeping bees... A row of bees keeps a man at home; all his spare moments may be well filled by tending them, by watching their wondrous ways, and by loving them. In winter he may work in his own chimney-corner at making hives both for himself and to sell. This he will find almost as profitable as his bees, for well-made hives always meet with a ready sale. Again, his bee-hives are close to his cottage. door; he will learn to like their sweet music better than the dry squeaking of a pot-house fiddle, and he may listen to it in the free air, with his wife and children about him." to be a kind of bee-charm in a moderate We hold to the opinion already expressed of presence of mind being the best beedress, notwithstanding the anecdote told of M. De Hofer, Conseiller d'Etat du Grand Duc de Baden, who, having been a great bee-keeper, and almost a rival of Wildman in the power he possessed over his bees, found, after an attack of violent fever, that he could no more approach them without exciting their anger-in fact, "when he came back again, they tore him where he stood." "Here, then, it is pretty evident," says the doctor who tells the story, "that some change had taken place in the Counsellor's secretions, in consequence of the fever, which, though not noticeable by his friends, was offensive to the olfactory nerves of the bees." Might not achange have taken place in the Counsellor's nerves? The latter part of this has, we fear, a little too much of the green tint of Arcadia. It is seldom, indeed, that you can get a husbandman to see the peculiar excellences and beauties of his own little world; though it is only fair to add, where you find the exception, the bee-master is for the most The great matter is to get part that man. the man who does love "the dry squeaking of the pot-house fiddle," and the wet potaAs Critics as well as Counsellors may be tions that succeed thereon, to keep bees: stung, we have, for our own good and that and this can only, and not easily then, be of the pubic, examined all the proposed redone by showing him the profit. Fair and medies, and the result is as follows:-Exgood housewives-if ye be readers of the tract at once the sting, which is almost inQuarterly don't bore him with long lec-variably left behind: if a watch-key is at tures; don't heap upon him many little hand, press it exactly over the wound, so books; but give him a hive of the best that much of the venom may be squeezed struction-show him the management-out; and in any case apply, the sooner of and then buy his honey; buy all he brings, course the better, laudanum, or the least even though you should have to give the drop of the spirit of ammonia. Oil and surplus to some poor gardenless widow. honey, which are also recommended, probaBut only buy such as comes from an im-bly only act in keeping off the air from the proved hive and you can't easily be de- wound. The cure varies very much with ceived in this-which preserves the bees the constitutions of individuals; but the and betters the honey. poison being acid, any alkali will probably be serviceable. con Then when you pay him, you may read to him, if you will, the wise rules of old Butler-exempli gratiá :— But, with reference to the cottager, we must consider the profit as well as the sting; and that it will be far better to un"If thou wilt have the favor of thy bees that derrate than exaggerate. Tell a poor man that his bees, with the most ordinary care, | that two and two make four. Yet, for all this, will pay his rent, and he will find that your the figures of the arithmeticians have proword is good, and that he has something to duced more fallacies than all the other spare for his trouble; he may then be led to figures of the Schools. We shall enter, pay the same respect to his little lodgers as therefore, into an exact calculation of prothe Irish do to the less cleanly animal that acts fit and loss, which is, after all, almost enthe same kind part of rent-payer by them. But tirely dependent on the seasons and the dewhen the marvellous statistics of bee-books gree of care bestowed. Statistics, such as are laid before a laborer, their only effect Mr. Thorley's, might just be as well applican be to rouse an unwonted spirit of coveted to the stock of graziers without any conousness, which is more than punished by the still greater disappointment that ensues. Here follows one of those quiet statements, put forth with a modest complacency that out-Cobbetts Cobbett : sideration of the number of acres they held; for he gives us no receipt how to find pasturage for 8,000 bee-hives. Dr. Warden, a physician of Croydon, who wrote in the year 1712 a book called "The True Amazons, or the Monarchy of Bees," -and of whom we can discover nothing more than that the front of his bee-house was "painted with lions and other creatures not at all agreeable"-found the neighboring furze of Coombe and Purley not "unprofit ably gay," if we may believe his assertion that his bees brought him in £40 a-year: he might have passed rich at that time in such a locality, if his physician's fees brought him in an equal sum. That the ancients did not neglect the profit to be derived from their hives, we learn from Virgil's old gardener-to whom we cannot too frequently recur-and from two veteran brothers mentioned by Varro-the type perhaps of the Corycian of the Georgicswho turned the little villa and croft left by their father into a bee-house and bee-garden -realizing, on an average, 10,000 sesterces a year. They seem to have been thrifty old bachelors, and took care to bide a good market. Among the plunder of Verres were 400 amphora of honey. Mr. Thorley, from whose book the above We will now suppose that, having made statement is taken, had better have carried up our mind on the matter of profit, and it on for three years further, which would being sting-proof, we have got an old-fashhave given him within a few pounds of ioned straw hive, which we purchased in £35,000-a very pretty fortune for a cot- autumn for a guinea, safely placed under tager's daughter; the only difficulty would our heath-thached bee-house; that we have be to find a man who had heart to get rid also got one of the improved Grecian strawof a capital that doubled itself every year. hives ready to house the first swarm in. It is like Cobbett's vine, that on a certain Some fine warm morning in May or June, system of management was to produce so a cluster of bees having hung out from the many upright stems, and from each of these hive some days before, the whole atmos. so many lateral branches, and on each lat-phere in the neighborhood of the bee-house eral so many shoots, and on each shoot so many buds, and every bud so many bunches and pounds of grapes-so that you might count the quantity of wine you were to make on the day that you planted the tree. There is nothing like an array of figures if you wish to mislead. All seems so fair, and clear, and demonstrative-no appeals to the passions, no room for a quibble-that to deny the conclusion is to deny seems alive with thousands of the little creatures, whirling and buzzing, passing and repassing, wheeling about in rapid circles like a group of maddened Bacchanals. This is the time for the bee-master to be on the alert. Out runs the good housewife with the frying-pan and key-the orthodox instruments for ringing and never ceases her rough music till the bees have safely settled in some neighboring bough. This dense custom, as old as the birth of Jupiter, is which may serve as a rallying point for the emione of the most pleasing and exciting of the grants. To this they repair by degrees, and, procountryman's life; Hogarth, we think, in-vided their queen has alighted there, all, or at troduces it in the background of his "Coun- least the greater part, crowd around, and form a try Noises," and there is an old colored times clustered like a bunch of grapes, according group, sometimes rounded like a ball, someprint of bee-ringing still occasionally met to the nature of the resting-place they have fixed with on the walls of a country inn that has on." p. 138. charms for us, and makes us think of bright sunny weather in the dreariest November day We quite feel with Mr. Jesse that we should regret to find this good old custom fall into disrepute. Whether, as Aristotle says, it affects them through pleasure, or fear, or whether indeed they hear at all, is still as uncertain as that philosopher left it, but we can wish no better luck to every beemaster that neglects it than that he may lose every swarm for which he omits to raise this time-honored concert.* The whole matter of swarming is so important, that we should be doing wrong to pass it over without giving the following graphic account from the "Naturalist's Library :" This first settlement is, without doubt, merely a rendezvous before their final emigration. If not hived, they will soon be off, and in a direct line, for some convenient spot which has been marked by them before. We have known them make straight for an old hollow pollard, the only one to be found within a mile or two of the hive. The old queen always accompanies the first swarm; and for this a fine day is reckoned more necessary than for the after-swarms, as it is the old lady, says Mr. Golding, that shows the greatest dislike to leave home in bad weather. If this swarm again sends forth a colony the same year, it is the same queen again who puts herself at the head of her nomade subjects. Indeed, notwithstand little of the old woman about her. 66 "The laying of drones' eggs having terminated, the queen, previously large and unwieldy, becomes slender in her figure and more able to fly, and being Mr. Golding's remark, there is very gins to exhibit signs of agitation. She traverses the hive impatiently, abandoning the slow and state- There seems to be no unerring method ly step which was her wont, and in the course of by which the exact time when the first her impetuous progress over the combs she com- swarm will leave the hive can be determinmunicates her agitation to the workers, who crowded-their hanging from the entrance being around her, mounting on her back, striking her briskly with their antennæ, and evidently sharing very fallacious-except by watching the in her impatience. A loud confused noise is heard general state of things within. With the throughout the hive, and hardly any of the workers after-swarms, however, there is a most are observed going abroad to forage; numbers curious and certain signs in the "piping " are whirling about in an unsettled manner in front or trumpeting" of the queen and the prin. of the hive; and the moment is come, to a con- cesses, to which we have before referred. siderable portion of the family, for bidding adieu About the ninth day from the issue of the to their ancient abode. All at once the noise of first swarm, if another colony is about to the interior ceases, and the whole of the bees about leave the hive, this singular duet, in most the doors re-enter; while those returning loaded from the fields, instead of hurrying in as usual, regular intonation, between the emerged hover on the wing, as if in eager expectation. In queen and the princess still a prisoner in a second or two, some workers present themselves her cell, is heard; and, extravagant as the again at the door, turn round, re-enter, and return account may seem, and confused and eminstantaneously in additional numbers, smartly bellished as it has been from the times of vibrating their wings, as if sounding the march; Aristotle and Virgil till recent days, it is and at this signal the whole swarm rushes to the entrance in an overwhelming crowd, streaming now the practical sign by which every atforth with astonishing rapidity, and filling the air tentive bee-keeper judges of the time of in an instant, like a dark cloud overhanging their emigration of the after-swarms. late habitation. There they hover for a moment, reeling backwards and forwards, while some of the body search in the vicinity for a tree or bush The second swarm is called a "cast," the third a "smart," the fourth a "squib." A swarm from a swarm is called a maiden or virgin swarm," and the honey is reckon |