Robert Louis Stevenson in 'Memories and Portrai Kipling in 'The Second Jungle Book' and several poer Tolstoi in War and Peace,' Lewis Morris in his Gard of Regret,' and Francis Thompson in his magnifice sonnet, 'To my Friend,' have referred to the bee; but is impossible to quote at length.

Maeterlinck in his 'Life of the Bee' provides passag innumerable for quotation. Here is one that pictures exquisite prose the tragic nuptials:

'Prodigious nuptials these, the most fairy-like that be conceived, azure and tragic, raised high above life by impetus of desire: imperishable and terrible, unique a bewildering, solitary and infinite. An admirable ecsta wherein death, supervening in all that our sphere has most limpid and loveliest, in virginal limitless space, stan the instant of happiness on the sublime transparence of great sky, purifying in that immaculate light the someth of wretchedness that always hovers round love.'

In her 'Corrymeela,' Moira O'Neill sings:

'This livin' air is moithered wi' the hummin' o' the bee and in that line suggests a picture.

Lovers of Thomas Hardy will remember how early novel Under the Greenwood Tree' is full the scent of honey and the sounds of swarming tir Towards the end when Dick the Tranter's son is comi to wed Fancy Day he is late and there is some m giving, but only the bees have delayed him.

66

"Well, who-ever would have thought such a thing?" s Dick... ''tis a fine swarm too. I haven't seen such a f swarm these ten years."

666

'Well, bees can't be put off," said Grandfather Jam "marrying a woman is a thing you can do at any mome but a swarm o' bees won't come for the asking."

There are other references to the bee in some of poems. Mr W. B. Yeats writes of

'The leafy bower where one smells the wild bee's honey and here is a charming verse:

'I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,

volume' were sold, so there was balm in Gilead and fashion of the day favoured plain speaking. Rema the reviewer, 'the sale of such books is no test of th real popularity, as a hundred are given to where one bought by the poor.' And he goes on to complain w some asperity, 'we do not think him happy in his job nor at home in his familiarity. . . His Aristotle h taught him the use of proverbs to the vulgar, which has everywhere taken advantage of. . . . I like think of the Quarterly Reviewer and Mr Cotton in so Elysian field to which the bees of Hymettus go wh they leave this plane, settling their differences over jug of metheglin and contemplating a model of one the latest bar-frame hives. Given the surrounding agreement is quite possible; for though our review chastises Mr Cotton he has a certain regard for hi that leads to long quotations. He throws gay lig

on some of the methods by which bee-keeping w encouraged. For example, a Mr Thorley asked wh profit could be derived in fourteen years by a man wh started with a single swarm and allowed it to multiply It is interesting to learn that at the end of the term would have 8,192 hives and 4,300l. 16s. profit!

The pursuit of the bee-master has a mellowin influence. He envies no man his wealth or his leisur neither golf clubs, hunters, shotguns, rifles, nor fishing ro avail to stir the deep content with which he tends th hives; golf-links, moors, and salmon-pool must fail to lu him from the garden ways in which his hives are se In the summer he must work for his subjects while the work for him; through the winter hive and bee-maste share the golden tribute of the fields and gardens. N insect is better beloved even though love be tincture with fear. Nothing that runs or flies has attracted larger measure the attention of philosophers and poet nor do the foregoing pages tithe the tribute that has bee rendered to the hive and its workers. Yet while th lover of books and bees ponders the pleasant relation between the two, he may find difficulty in forgetting the the hive is the goal of materialism.

S. L. BENSUSAN.

By a curious irony of fate the solution in a conciliatory spirit of the thorny Fiume-Adriatic controversy and the re-establishment of friendly relations between Italy and Yugoslavia have been the work of Benito Mussolini, the Italian statesman who is generally regarded abroad as the exponent of extreme Imperialism.

To understand the problem and its effects on Italian public opinion, we must glance back at some of its antecedents. For many decades it had been the policy of Austria-Hungary to promote dissensions among her various subject races in order to rule them more easily. On the Adriatic coast the Austrian Government supported the Croats and Slovenes against the Italians, because the Italians hankered after union with Italy, whereas the Slavs had no Irredentist aspirations. Hungary, on the other hand, persecuted the Slav population, and tended to support the Italians of Fiume, the one Italian community under the Hungarian Crown. The population of Fiume, through many vicissitudes, had always been a prevalently Italian community, and in 1779 Maria Theresa erected the town into a corpus separatum under the Hungarian Crown, and although Croatia was around it, Fiume had no political or administrative connexion with that province. Hungary appointed the governor, and Fiume sent a deputy to the Hungarian Diet. As it was Hungary's only port, the Hungarian Government did everything to promote its welfare and increase its trade. Before the War, in fact, the great bulk of its trade was with Hungary, and only a small proportion-about 10 per cent.-with Croatia. Owing to Hungary's treatment of Fiume, the inhabitants, although ever attached to their Italian nationality and language, were not as keen Irredentists as were the Italians under Austria; though shortly

The total trade of Fiume in 1912 was 1,975,000 tons. The imports were chiefly from Britain and British India (coal and jute), Italy, and the United States, of which 80 per cent. went to Hungary (including CroatiaSlavonia), 15 per cent. to Austria, and 5 per cent. to other countries. Of the exports, mostly beet sugar and timber, 77 per cent. came from Hungary, 18 per cent. from Austria, and the rest from Bosnia; 25 per cent. went to Britain, 25 per cent. to Italy, and the rest to India and the U.S. A.