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good farming, but not the high prices which they | confidence encourages a moderate increase of the have of late years enjoyed. Lastly, as to the paper currency, the margin, now left for a natural manufacturing classes, they must submit to the improvement, will be completely filled up. The proportioning of their prices and wages to those establishment of a "national currency" (to use of other classes, and this even without the influence Clay's conveniently general expression) will acof free competition with foreigners. For the effect celerate this process, which would, however, be of the excess of the agricultural producers, and the completed without it. But if the diffusion of this consequent glut of their products, being to drive currency is intended to raise prices above the level part of this excess to manufacturing pursuits until which I suppose to be the natural one, then we the equilibrium is restored, the increase of the have at once a renewal of the system of inflation, manufacturing class, and greater competition which is only practicable for a time, when there is among them, will reduce their wages and profits such a disposition to lend in foreign countries as to the level of the agriculturists. will allow the inflating country to go on with excessive importations without being at once pulled up--and even then must be ultimately followed by a reaction, as we have recently seen. When, therefore, the Whigs talk of a National Bank as a means of restoring the former prosperity of the country, i. e., the former scale of prices, they are flattering themselves with a fallacy, as may almost always be suspected when men rely on any legislative action as a cure for evils arising from the condition of the country.

The general decline in prices must fall either on the wages of the laborer, or the profits of the capitalist as it is between these two that the whole price of every article is divided. The effect will be felt, first, by the capitalist-because wages always adjust themselves tardily and reluctantly to a rise or a decline in prices. This will be especially the case in a country like the United States, where the laborers have been accustomed to have their own way, and where they are not forced into submission by the imperative necessity of more thickly-peopled countries. In the Lowell Mills, for instance, I am told that there is no reduction in the wages of the young ladies-though the works are in great part suspended, and the profits of the owners are pretty well annihilated--because the hands, rather than work at reduced prices, go home to their families. The managers have, therefore, the option of paying the old rates of wages, or stopping the works altogether. There has been no reduction in the wages of farm laborers-although the fall in all agricultural products has been so great. The consequence is, that in the Western States, where the fall has been greatest (owing to the expense of transport forming a great part of the whole price when brought to market, and being a fixed item, which, when the price falls low, leaves very little margin for the producer), farming with hired labor cannot be carried on at all. The old wages, with new prices, swallow up the whole price of the year's produce. But this state of things will not continue. Even agricultural wages will have to descend to the level of prices. Among other classes of operatives, navigators, miners, and workmen engaged in various manufactures, which have been suspended during the bad times, a great reduction in wages has already taken place-because the pressure of actual destitution or excessive competition for work has been applied to them. Supposing my fucts, and the conclusions I draw from them, to be correct, it follows that the present extremely low prices of every thing, which all persons here look on as something monstrous and unnatural, are not far below the natural level of prices, or the level which must be expected in future. With respect to the great staple export, cotton, this may be considered as indirectly admitted by persons acquainted with the state of the planting States, when they tell you, that even at present prices, a planter who is out of debt, and manages economically, may make a fair profit. That the reaction from the inflated currency and speculative excitement of late years has driven prices below their natural level, and that consequently there is room for a considerable improvement, may be assumed as certain. And it may also be considered certain, that as specie flows into the country and the return of VOL. I. No. III. 32

I have said nothing of the effect of a high Tariff in checking or modifying the influence of the causes which I suppose likely to keep prices low. The arguments of the Tariff men are in a great ineasure founded on an indistinct perception of the tendency of things which I suppose to exist. They express the idea by saying that American labor, if exposed to open competition with European labor, must sink to the same scale of remuneration-and their remedy is to shut out Europeau manufactures. I will not pursue the inquiry, how far this remedy would be effectual, because I think there is a prac tical answer to those who suggest it-viz., that a prohibitory Tariff is not consistent either with the extent of frontier of the Union, or with the temper of the people and form of Government, and that it will, therefore, be found impossible to make it a permanent part of their system.

Let us see what bearing these conclusions have on the question of the security and probable rise in value of the different classes of investments in the United States, in which English capitalists are interested. First, railroads and canals. I do not think these will be affected, as we have seen that the rates of toll have remained about the same through good and bad times (where they have been reduced, it has been from a cause quite unconnected with the depression of the times, viz., the competition of different lines between themselves),-while on the other hand the amount of traffic must continue to increase with the increase of population. Secondly, real estate in New-York and the other old States will not be much affected, if at all. The vicinity of the land in these States to the city and manufacturing population, and to the points of export, will always sustain its products at a fair price, while the thickening of the population will add continually to its value. Thirdly, Western State Stocks are touched much more nearly by these opinions. What all the defenders of these stocks, as eventually good investments, tell you is, that the States are at present unable to pay them--but that their means must be very greatly increased within a year or two by the return of fair prices for their produce, and will thenceforth continue further to increase with rapidity by the increase of their population. Now, according to the views which

I have been stating, the present prices of produce in the West approximate much nearer to the natural level than people are willing to admit-and though the increase of population will bring with it a proportionate increase in the amount of production, the money value of the exports from the West, on which its power to pay a debt to foreigners depends, will not necessarily increase in the same proportion.

4.

5.

dine's Naturalist's Library"-Entomology, Vol. VI. Edinburgh, 1840.

The Management of Bees; with a De. scription of the Ladies' Safety Hive. By Samuel Bagster, jun. London.

Huber's Natural History of the Honey-bee. London, 1841.

6. The Bee-Keeper's Guide; containing concise practical Directions for the Management of Bees upon the Depriving System. By J. H. Payne. London, 1842. Humanity to Honey-bees; a Management of Honey-bees on a New and Improved Plan. By Thomas Nutt. Wisbeach,

7.

I agree with you in the opinion that manufacturers must increase in the United States; only 1 made this addition to your proposition, namely, thal in connection with this increase, or rather preparatory to it, there must be a permanent fall in wages and general prices, so as to make the processes of mining and manufacturing as cheap here as in the other countries with which the American producers have to compete; because a manufac-8. turer cannot exist in the United States on any other condition, except under a prohibitory Tariff.

THE HONEY-BEE AND BEE-BOOKS. ¡

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

SELDOM have we perused an article with more interest than the following on the "Honey-bec." One would think it, from its title, intended only for the few who make bees their study or their care but 'tis not so. It is a right down clever article, from the perusal of which no one can rise, without feeling glad that we afforded him the opportunity. The writer has exhibited learning, rhetoric, spirit, wit; and thrown around what might be deemed a common-place topic, a charm that holds us spell-bound. Only read it, and you will derive from it both pleasure and profit. In our boyhood we remember to have spent more than one happy night in the woods, in company with the bec-hunters, who had, in day-light, marked the hollow trees, which at night they felled, and from which they filled their pails with the sweet food, which the bees had sealed up in their cells: and on the beauteous fields of the far west, we have, since, often listened to the hum and watched the arrowy motions of the busy bee, as he alighted on flower after flower of the blooming prairie, to sip

from them the nectar which he loves, and which

he so bountifully shares with us, if we do not rob him of more than is meet.-ED.

From the Quarterly Review.

1. My Bee-book. By William Charles Cotton, M. A., Student of Christ Church, Oxon. London, 1842.

9.

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How the little busy bee improves each shining hour-makes hay when the sun shines-makes honey, that is, when flowers blow, is not only a matter for the poet and the moralist, and the lover of nature, but has become an important subject of rural, and cottage, and even political economy itself. If West Indian crops fail, or Brazilian slave-drivers turn sulky, we are convinced that the poor at least may profit as much from their bee-hives as ever they will from the extracted juices of parsneps or beetroot. And in this manufacture they will at least begin the world on a fair footing. No monopoly of capitalists can drive them from a market so open as this. Their winged stock have free pasturage-commonage without stint-be the proprietor who he may, wherever the freckled cowslip springs and the wild thyme blows. Feudal manors and parked royalties, high deer-fences and forbidding boundary belts, have no exclusiveness for them; no action of trespass can lie against them, nor are they ever called upon for their certificates. But if exchange be no robbery, they are no thieves: they only take that which would be useless to all else besides, and even their hard-earned store is but a short-lived possession. The plagiarist Man revenges himself on them for the white lilies they have dusted and disturbed, and makes all their choicely-cull

2. The Honey-Bee, its Natural History, Phy-ed sweets his own. But though he never siology, and Management. By Edward tasted a drop of their honey, the bees would Bevan, M. D. London, 1838. still accomplish the work that Providence 3. Bees; comprehending the Uses and Eco- has allotted them in fructifying our flowers nomical Management of the Honey-bee of and fruit-blossoms, which man can at the Britain and other Countries; together with best but clumsily imitate, and in originating Descriptions of the known Wild Species. new varieties which probably far surpass in Illustrated with 36 colored plates. "Jar-number and beauty all that has been done

by the gardening experimentalist. Florists the father of Acteon, the "peeping Tom" are apt to complain of the mischief the bee of mythological scandal. Aristaus himself does in disturbing their experiments and was a patron of bees and arch bee-master; crossing species which they wish to keep but no ridicule thrown upon such a jumble separate; but they forget how many of their of names must make us forget the real choicest kinds, which are commonly spoken services achieved in this, as in every other of as the work of chance, have in reality branch of knowledge, by the Encyclopædibeen bee-made, and that, where man fructi-ast of Aristotle-the pupil of him who is fies one blossom, the bee has worked upon ten thousand.

distinguished as the "Attic Bee;" or the life of Aristomachus devoted to this pursuit; or the enthusiasm of Hyginus, who, more than 1800 years before Mr. Cotton, collected all the bee-passages which could be found scattered over the pages of an earlier antiquity. (Col. ix. 11.)

It is certain, however, that the great interest taken in bees from the earliest times, and which, judging from the number of books lately published, is reviving among us with no common force, has arisen chiefly from the marked resemblance which their Varro, Columella, Celsus, and Pliny have modes of life seem to bear to those of man. each given in their contributions to the Remove every fanciful theory and enthusi- subject, and some notion may be formed of astic reverie, and there still remains an an- the minuteness with which they entered upon alogy far too curious to be satisfied with a their researches from a passage in Colupassing glance. On the principle of "nihil mella, who, speaking of the origin of bees, humani à me alienum," this approximation says, that Euhemerus maintained that they to human nature has ever made them favor- were first produced in the island of Cos, ites with their masters. And theirs is no Euthronius in Mount Hymettus, and Nihideous mimicry of man's follies and weak-cander in Crete. And considering the obnesses, such as we see in the monkey tribe, scurity of the subject and the discordant which to us has always appeared too much theories of modern times, there is perhaps of a satire to afford unalloyed amusement: no branch of natural history in which the their life is rather a serious matter-of-fact ancients arrived at so much truth. If since business, a likeness to the best and most the invention of printing authors can graverational of our manners and government,ly relate stories of an old woman, who havset about with motives so apparently iden- ing placed a portion of the consecrated eletical with our own, that man's pride has ments at the entrance of a bee-hive, preonly been able to escape from the ignominy sently saw the inmates busy in creating a of allowing them a portion of his monopo- shrine and altar of wax, with steeple and lized Reason, by assigning them a separate bells to boot, and heard, if we remember quality under the name of Instinct. The rightly, something like the commencement philosophers of old were not so jealous of of an anthem*-we really think that they man's distinctive quality; and considering should be charitably inclined to the older how little at the best we know of what reason is, and how vain have been the attempts to distinguish it from instinct, there may be, after all, notwithstanding the complacent smile of modern sciolists, as much truth, as certainly there is poetry and charity in Vir-refuses. gil, who could refer the complicated and wonderful economy of bees to nothing less than the direct inspiration of the Divine Mind.

Bees indeed seem to have claimed generally a greater interest from the ancients than they have acquired in modern times. De Montford, who drew "the portrait of the honey-fly" in 1646, enumerates the authors on the subject, up to his time, as between five and six hundred! There are, to be sure, some apocryphal names in the list -Aristæus, for instance- whose works were wholly unknown to Mr. Huish; a fact which will not surprise our readers when we introduce him as the son of Apollo, and

We saw lately published in a weekly newsand two Princesses (of the hive) are the performers, paper the notes of a trio, in which the old Queen the young ladies earnestly begging to be allowed to take an airing, while the old duenna as determinedly This apiarian "Pray, goody, please to faster and moderate" grows louder and thicker,

faster," till at last the young folks, as might be expected, carry the day; and what I can nearest liken it to," says the writer, "is a man in a rather high note endeavoring to repeat, in quaver or crotchet time, the letter M, with his lips constantly closed.' This is a tolerably easy music-lesson: let our readers try. The fact, however, is that all this music is originally derived from a curious old book-"The Feminine Monarchy, or the History of Bees," by Charles Butler, of Magdalen (Oxford, 1634): at p. 78 of which work this "Bees' Madrigal" may be found with notes and words. Old Butler has been sadly rifled, He has written upon that exhaustive system adopted without much thanks, by all succeeding bee-writers. by learned men of that time, so that nothing that was then known on the subject is omitted. Butler introduced eight new letters-aspirates-into the English phy; so that, altogether, his volume has a most outlanguage, besides other eccentricities of orthogralandish look.

"with honey'd thigh,

That at her flowery work doth sing,'

bee-authors, who believed that they gathered their young from flowers, and ballasted themselves with pebbles aganist the high too well to require a lengthened description of her; how she flits from flower to flower

wind.*

We shall have occasion to show as we with capricious fancy, not exhausting the proceed how correct in the main the classi-sweets of any one spot, but on the princical writers are on the subject of bees, com- ple of "live and let live," taking something pared with other parts of natural history; for herself, and yet leaving as much or but the book of all others to which the scho- more for the next comer, passing by the lar will turn again and again with increased just-opening and faded flowers, and deigndelight, is the fourth Georgic. This, the ing to notice not even one out of five that most beautiful portion of the most finished are full-blown, combining the philosophy poem of Roman antiquity, is wholly devoted of the Epicurean and Eclectic;-or still to our present subject; and such is the de- more like some fastidious noble, on the lightful manner in which it is treated, and grand tour, with all the world before him, so exquisite the little episodes introduced, hurrying on in restless haste from place to that it would amply repay (and this is saying place, skimming over the surface or tast a good deal) the most forgetful country gen- ing the sweets of society, carrying off some tleman to rub up his schoolboy Latin for the memento from every spot he has lit upon, sole pleasure he would derive from the pe- and yet leaving plenty to be gleaned by the rusal. We need hardly say that no bee-next traveller, dawdling in one place he fancier will content himself with any thing less than the original: he will there find the beauties of the poet far outbalancing the errors of the naturalist; and as even these may be useful to the learner-for there is no readier way of imparting truth than by the correction of error-we shall follow the subject in some degree under the heads which Virgil has adopted, first introducing our little friends in the more correct character which modern science has marked out for them.

knows not why, whisking by another which would have amply repaid his stay, and still pressing onwards as if in search of something, he knows not what-though he too often fails to carry home the same proportion of happiness that his compeer does of honey.

"Abee among the flowers in spring," says Paley, "is one of the cheerfullest objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment: so busy and so pleased."

The "masses" of every hive consist of two kinds of bees, the workers and the drones. The first are undeveloped females, the second are the males. Over these presides the mother of the hive, the queen-bee. The number of workers in a strong hive is above 15,000, and of drones about one to ten of these. This proportion, though seldom exact, is never very much exceeded or fallen short of. A single family, where swarming is prevented, will sometimes amount, ac-in gluttony and idleness. cording to Dr. Bevan, to 50,000 or 60,000. In their wild state, if we may credit the quantity of honey said to be found, they must sometimes greatly exeeed this num

The Drone may be known by the noise he makes. Hence his name. He has been the butt of all who have ever written about bees, and is indeed a bye-word all the world over. No one can fail to hit off his character. He is the "lazy yawning drone" of Shak speare. The

ber.

"Sweet is the hum of bees," says Lord Byron; and those who have listened to this music in its full luxury, stretched upon some sunny bed of heather, where the perfume of the crushed thyme struggled with the faint smell of the bracken, can scarcely have failed to watch the little busy mu

sician

The latter mistake arose probably from the mason-bee, which carries sand wherewith to construct its nest. For an account of the 145 varieties of English bees consult Kirby's "Monographia Apum Anglia."

"Immunisque sedens aliena ad pabula fucus" of Virgil. "The drone," says Butler, "is a gross, stingless bee, that spendeth his time For howsoever he brave it with his round velvet cap, his side gown, his full paunch, and his loud voice, yet he is but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others' brows. He worketh not at all either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two laborers: you shall never find his maw without a good drop of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft, and about, and that with no small noise, as though he would do some great act; but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, and

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then returns he presently to his cheer." This is no bad portrait of the burly husband of the hive. He is a proper Sir John Falstaff, a gross fat animal, cowardly, and given to deep potations. He cannot fail to be recognised by his broad body and blunt tail and head, and the "bagpipe i' the nose." He is never seen settling on flowers, except at the beginning of August, when he may sometimes be met upon a late-blown rose, or some double flower that the workers rarely frequent, in a melancholy, musing state, as if prescient of the miserable fate that so soon awaits him. The occasion for so large a proportion of

One author fan.

"These lazy fathers of the industrious hive" is yet an unsolved riddle. cied them the water-carriers of the commonwealth. Some have supposed that the drones sit, like hens, upon the eggs;* in which case the hair on their tails would seem to serve the same purpose as the feather-breeches which Catherine of Russia had made for her ministers when she caused them as a punishment to hatch eggs in a large nest in the antechamber. But this is mere fancy, the earwig being the only insect, according to Kirby and Spence, that broods over its eggs. Dr. Bevan denies that they are useful, or at least necessary, in keeping up the heat of the hive in breeding time, which is the commonly received reason for their great numbers. Huber thought so large a quantity were required, that when the queen takes her hymeneal flight she may be sure to meet with some in the upper regions of the air. Her embrace is said to be fatal.

Last in our description, but

"First of the throng, and foremost of the whole, One stands confest the sovereign and the soul." This is the queen-bee. Her power was acknowledged before her sex was known, for Greeks, Latins, and Arabs always style her "the king" and it may be thought an ar gument in favor of monarchical government, that the tyrant-quelling" Athenians, and republican Romans who almost banished the name with the blood of their kings, were forced to admit it to describe "the first magistrate" of this natural commonwealth. "The queen," says our old author, "is a fair and stately bee, differing from the vulgar both in shape and color." And it is amus

"By this time your bees sit."-Evelyn's Calend. for March." When it has deposited the eggs, it sits upon them, and cherishes them in the same manner as a bird."-Arabic Dictionary quoted by Collon." Progeniem nidosque fovent.' - Georg, iv. 56.

+ So also Shakspeare: "They have a king," &c.Henry V., Act I., s. 2.

ing that the most sober writers cannot speak of her without assigning her some of those stately attributes which we always connect with human sovereignty. Bevan remarks that "she is distinguishable from the rest of the society by a more measured movement;" her body is more taper than that of the working-bee; her wings shorter, for she has little occasion for flight; her legs-what would Queen Elizabeth, who would not hear even of royal stockings, think of our profaneness?-her legs unfurnished with grooves, for she gathers no pollen; her proboscis short, for the honey comes to her, not she to the honey; her sting short and curved-for sting she has, though she seldom uses it.

In addition to these, Huber and others have thought that they discern certain black bees in many hives, but it is now generally allowed that these, if they exist at all, are not a different species, but superannuated workers.

of bees, the next question is, where shall Having "caught our hare," got our stock we place them? and there is little to be The bee-house should face the south, with added to Virgil's suggestions on this head. a turn perhaps to the east, be protected too far from the dwelling, lest they become from the north and prevailing winds; not shy of man, nor too near, lest they be interrupted by him. No paths should cross its entrance, no high trees or bushes interin the centre of a treeless lawn, they would cept their homeward flight. Yet, if placed be apt in swarming to fly away altogether, so that Virgil rightly recommends the palm. or some evergreen tree to overhang the hive. Another of his injunctions, which no modern writer seems to notice, is to sprinkle some neighboring branch, where you wish them to hang, with honey and sweet herbs bruised. Those who have been so often troubled by the inconvenient places on which swarms have settled might do well to try the recommendation of the old Mantuan bee-master. A quiet nook in low grounds is better than an elevated situation; they have then their uphill flight when their bodies are unburdened, and an inclined plane to skim down when they come home loaded with their hard-earned treasure. Rogers, at whose

cot beside the hill

A bee-hive's hum should soothe the ear,"

has supposed the bee to be guided back to its hive by the recollection of the sweets it passed in its outward flight—a beautiful instance of "the pleasures of Memory."

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