ir
a 4 OES
BY TICKNE
R
ee sy
oe
eae
Tf
ALBERT R. MANN
LIBRARY
NEw YorK STATE COLLEGES
OF
AGRICULTURE AND HoME ECONOMICS
AT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
EVERETT FRANKLIN PHILLIPS
BEEKEEPING LIBRARY
Gift of
Lyman C. Root
ornell University Library
viii
THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW
AN IDLER IN THE WILDS
SIDELIGHTS OF NATURE
PHE COMB-BUILDERS, WITH CHAIN OF WAX-MAKING BEES
THE LORE
OF THE HONEY-BEE
BY
TICKNER EDWARDES
AUTHOR OF
‘THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW”
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
First Published . . August 1908
Second Edition . . October 1908
TO THE
CHAIRMAN OF THE BRITISH BEE-KEEPERS’
ASSOCIATION,
THOMAS WILLIAM COWAN, F.L.S., ETC.,
TO WHOSE LABOURS AND RESEARCHES
THE WRITER, AND ALL OTHER BEE-KEEPERS,
ARE UNDER A LASTING OBLIGATION,
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: THE OLDEST CRAFT UNDER THE
SUN
CHAPTER
J.
Il.
Ill.
IV.
Vv.
vi.
VIl.
VIII.
IX.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVI.
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE :
THE ISLE OF HONEY
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
AT THE CITY GATES
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE -
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN :
THE BRIDE-WIDOW 3
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM
THE COMB-BUILDERS
““WHERE THE BEE SUCKS” -
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY
AFTER THE FEAST A
THE MODERN BEE-FARM
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE a
vii
PAGE
ix
18
28
5°
67
84
94
117
127
146
174
195
219
233
248
257
267
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE COMB-BUILDERS * i
Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
MOSES RUSDEN’S BEE-BOOK -
BUTLER’S “BEES MADRIGALL”
JOHN THORLEY IN HIS STUDY - -
INVERTED STRAW HIVE -
AN OLD SUSSEX BEE-HOUSE
COMB-FRAME FROM MODERN HIVE
WINTER IN THE BEE-GARDEN_ -
DRONE-BROOD AND WORKER-BROOD -
QUEEN-BEE LAYING - - - -
A QUEEN-CELIL - -
THE HONEY-BEE, IN FACT AND FANCY
BROOD-COMB, SHOWING ALL STAGES OF BEE-LIFE
THE BEE-NURSERY - - -
A SWARM IN MAY - - -
A MAMMOTH SWARM - : -
HIVING THE SWARM - -
THE SWARM HIVED -
HONEYCOMB CONSTRUCTION
COMB BUILT UPWARDS -
IN THE STOREHOUSE
QUEEN-BEE IN OFF-SEASON s e
BAD BEEMANSHIP - 2
A FOREST APIARY -
viii
28
34
40
50
60
72
86
94
106
110
128
140
166
174
178
182
188
206
216
230
248
264
272
INTRODUCTION
THE OLDEST CRAFT UNDER THE SUN
NE of the oldest and prettiest fables i
ancient mythology is that which deals wit
the origin of the honey-bee. It was to Meliss
and her sister Amalthea, the beautiful daughte1
of the King of Crete, that the god Jupiter wa
entrusted by his mother Ops, when Saturn, hi
father—following his custom of devouring hi
children at birth—sought to make the usual me:
of this, his latest offspring.
The story is variously rendered by ancier
writers. Some say that bees already existed i
the world, and that Amalthea was only a goa
whose milk served to nourish the baby-god, i
addition to the honey that Melissa obtained fror
the wild bees in the cave where Jupiter lay hidder
Another account has it that the bees themselve
were drawn to his place of concealment by tk
noise made by his nurses, who beat continuall
ix
x THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
on brazen pans to keep the sound of his infant
lamentations from the ears of his -raVening sire.
Thenceforward the bees took over the charge of
him, bringing him daily rations of honey until he
grew up and was able to hold his own in the
Olympian theogony. In either case Jupiter showed
his gratitude towards his preservers in true celestial,
fashion. It was a very ancient belief among the
earliest writers that, in the single instance of the
honey-bee, the ordinary male-and-female principle
was abrogated, and that the propagation of the
species took place by miraculous means. In ex-
planation of this, we are told it was a special gift
from Jupiter in acknowledgment of the unique
service rendered him. In one version of the fable,
and in the words of a famous bee-master who
wrote in 1657, “Jupiter, for so great a benefit,
bestowed on his nurses for a reward that they
should have young ones, and continue their kind,
without wasting themselves in venery.” In the
other, and probably much older form of the legend,
Melissa, the beautiful Princess of Crete, was her-
self changed by the god into a bee, with the like
immaculate propensities; and thenceforward the
work of collecting honey for the food of man—
that honey which, down to a very few centuries
from the present time, was universally believed to
INTRODUCTION xi
be a miraculous secretion from heaven—was con-
fided to her descendants.
/ Apart, however, from the old dim tales of
ancient mythology; where there is a romance to
account for all beginnings of the world and every-
thing upon it, any attempt to trace back the art
of bee-keeping to its earliest inception cannot fail
to bring us to the conclusion that it is inevitably
and literally the oldest craft under the sun.
Thousands of years before the Great Pyramid
was built, bee-keeping must have been an estab-
lished and traditional occupation of man. It must
have been common knowledge, stamped with the
authority of the ages, that a beehive, besides its
toiling multitudes, contained a single large ruling
bee, divine examplar of royalty; for how else
would the bee have been chosen to represent a
King in the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbols? But
it is not only within the limit of historical times,
however remote, that evidences of bee-culture, or
at least of man’s use of honey and wax in his daily
life, are to be found or inferred. So far back as
the Bronze Age it is certain that wax was used in
casting ornaments and weapons. A model of the
implement was first made in some material that
would perish under heat. This was imbedded in
clay, and the model burnt out, after which the
te
—
xii THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
mould thus formed was filled with the molten
metal. These models, no doubt, were in many
cases carved out of wood; but it is certain that
another and more ductile material was often used.
Bronze ornaments have been found with thumb-
marks upon them, obviously chance impressions
on the original model faithfully reproduced. And
the substance of these models could hardly have
been anything else than beeswax.
But speculation on the probable antiquity of
bee-keeping need not stop here. The best
authorities estimate that human life has existed
on the earth for perhaps a hundred thousand years.
The earliest traces of man, far back in the twilight
of palzeolithic times, reveal him as a hunting and
fighting animal, in whom the instinct to cultivate
the soil or domesticate the creatures about him
had not yet developed. Later on in the Stone
Age—but still in infinitely remote times—it is
evident that he tamed several creatures, such as
the ox, the sheep, and the goat, keeping them in
confinement, and killing them for food as he re-
quired it, instead of resorting to the old ceaseless
roaming after wild game. At this time, too, he
took to sowing corn, and even baking or charring
some sort of bread. It must be remembered that
if a hundred thousand years is to be set down as
*~
INTRODUCTION xiii
the limit of man’s life on the earth, probably the
development of other living creatures, as well as
most forms of vegetable life, took place immeasur-
ably earlier. The chances are that the world of
trees and flowering-plants, in which aboriginal
man moved, differed in no great degree from the
world of green things surrounding human life to-
day. It is certain that the apple, pear, raspberry,
blackberry, and plum were common fruits of the
country-side in the later Stone Age, for seeds of
all these have been found in conjunction with
neolithic remains. Evidence of the existence of
the beech and elm—the latter a famous pollen-
yielder—has been discovered at a very much
earlier time. All the conditions favourable to
insect-life must have been present in the world
ages before man appeared in it; and insect-life
undoubtedly existed then in a high state of de-
velopment. It would be as unreasonable, there-
fore, not to infer that the honey-bee was ready on
the earth with her stores of sweet-food for man,
as that man did not speedily discover that store,
and make it an object of his daily search, just as
he went forth daily to hunt and kill four-footed
game.
There is, of course, a great deal of difference
between a chance discovery of a wild-bee’s nest,
xiv THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
as a common and expected incident in a day’s
foraging, and the systematic preservation and
tending of beehives as a source of daily food.
While it is reasonable to assume that the first men
used honey as an article of diet, it is probable
that they were a wandering race, never halting
for long in the same locality, and therefore un-
likely to be bee-keepers in the accepted sense of
the word. They depended, no doubt, on the wild
honey-stores which they happened to find in their
entourage for the time being. But the first sign
of civilisation must have been the gradual lessen-
ing of this nomadic instinct. Tribes would come
to take permanent possession of districts rich in
the game, as well as the fruits and tubers, necessary
for their daily food. At the same time the haunts
of the wild bees would be discovered, their enemies
kept down or driven away, the places where the
swarms pitched annually noted, and thus the first
apiary would have been founded, probably long
before any attempt at cultivation of the soil or
domestication of the wild creatures for food was
made.
Biologists generally regard hunting as the oldest
human enterprise under the sun; but, adopting
their well-known method of deductive reasoning,
it seems possible to make out a rather better case
INTRODUCTION xv
for beemanship in this category. The primeval
huntsman must have found much difficulty in
bringing down his game, and still more in securing
it, when maimed, but yet capable of eluding final
capture. For this purpose some sort of retrieving
animal, fleeter of foot and more cunning than its
master, must have been even more necessary in
primzeval times than it is in the modern days of
the gun. There seems to be no evidence of man
indicating the most elementary civilisation without
sure signs also that he had trained and used some
sort of dog to help him in his daily food-forays.
But man must have existed long before civilisation
can be said to have come within age-long distance
of him. In these times, beset with enemies, he
must have built his hut nest-like in some high,
impregnable tree, out of reach of night-prowling
foes ; and it is scarcely conceivable that the dog
was his companion under these conditions. More
probably he lived, for the most part, on fruits and
honey-comb, and such of the small creatures as he
could capture with his naked hands. Thus, in
all likelihood, the first hunter was a bee-hunter. |
at
Eolithic man may have had his own rocky fastnéss
or clump of hollow trees, where the wild bees con-
gregated ; and with the coming of each summer
he may have followed his swarms through the
xvi THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
glades of primzeval forests as zealously as any
bee-keeper of the present day.
Speculation of this kind is necessarily far-fetched
and fantastic, and can be but half seriously under-
taken with so small and inconsiderable a creature
as the honey-bee. But it is interesting from one
special, and not often adopted, point of view.
There is no more fascinating study than that of
the ancient civilisations of the world. Egypt
10,000 years ago, Babylon probably still earlier,
China that seems to have stopped at finite perfec-
tion in all ways that matter little, ages before the
time of Abraham. But all these are of mushroom
growth compared with the antiquity of bee-civilisa-
tion. It is only a tale of Lilliput, of a microscopic
people living and moving on a mimic stage. Yet,
perhaps tens of thousands of years before man had
made fire, or chipped a flint into an axe-head, these
winged nations had evolved a perfect plan of life,
and solved social problems such as are only just
beginning to cloud the horizon of human existence
in the twentieth century. And they, and their
intricate communal polity, have not passed away
into dust, as the great human nations of bygone
ages have done, and as those of the present day
may be destined to do, for all we can tell.
Will a time come when we must learn from the
INTRODUCTION xvii
honey-bee or perish? We have still probably a
few thousand years wherein to think it out, and
prepare for it; but unless the world comes to an
end, or human increasing-and-multiplying comes
to an end, one earth will eventually become too
small to hold us. With this thought in mind, a
study of the honey-bee and the arrangements of
hive-life, takes on a new interest. Supposing that
the political economy of a beehive may be taken
as a foreshadowing of the ultimate human state,
there is no denying that we get a glimpse into an
eminently disquieting state of things, at least from
the masculine point of view. We see matriarchy
triumphant ; the females holding supreme control
in the State, and not only initiating all rules of
public conduct, but designing and carrying through
all public works. The male is reduced to the one
indispensable office of sex, and even a single
exercise of this is vouchsafed only to a few in a
thousand. But to create the large and permanent
army of workers necessary in a State such as this,
and to recruit it wholly from the females, it became
necessary to revise all rules of life from their
very foundation. There must have been a great
renunciation among the bees, male and female
alike, when the resolve was made to leave the
whole duty of procreation of their kind to one
é
xviii THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
pair alone of their number—one pair only out
of every thirty thousand or so—in order that the
rest could devote themselves to ceaseless, sexually
unincommoded toil.
This may be imagined as following on a great
discovery, an epoch-making discovery, changing
the whole face and future of bee-life—how, by the
nursing and feeding of the young grub of the
female bee, she could be atrophied into a mere,
sexless, over-intellectual labourer, or glorified into
a creature lacking, it is true, all initiative and
almost all mental power, but possessing a body
capable of mothering the whole nation. Here is
socialistic political economy carried to its sternest,
most logical conclusions. All is sacrificed for the
good of the State. The individual is nothing:
the race is everything. “Thorough” is the motto
of the honey-bee, and she drives every theory
home to its last notch. Men are pleased to call
themselves bee-masters; but the best of them can
do no more than study the ways of their bees,
learn in what directions it is their will to move,
and then try to smooth the way for them. The
worker-bees collectively are the whole brains in
the business, and the bee-keeper is as much the
slave. of the conditions and systems they have
inaugurated as they are themselves; while the
INTRODUCTION xix
queen-bee is the most willing, and, at certain
seasons, the most laborious slave of them all.
It is useless to deny that bee-polity, with its
stern dead-reckoning of ingenuity, its merciless
adherence to the demands of a system perfected
through countless ages, has its unpleasant and
even its revolting aspects. Nature is always
wonderful, but not always admirable ; and a close
study of the Life within the Hive brings out this
truth perhaps more clearly than with any other
form of life, humanity not excepted. Absolute
communism implies incidental cruelty: it is only
under a system of bland political compromise, of
neighbourly give and take, that justice and mercy
can ever be yoke-fellows. In the republic of bees,
nothing is allowed to persist that is harmful or
useless to the general good. Every individual in
the hive seems to acquiesce in this common
principle—either by choice or compulsion—from
the mother-bee down to the last lazy drone, born
into the brief plenty of waning summer days. In
the height of the honey-flow, the State demands a
storehouse filled to the brim ; and every bee keeps
herself to the task unceasingly until death from
overwork comes upon her, and her last load never
reaches the hive. If the queen-bee grows old, or
her powers of egg-laying prematurely fail, she is
XxX THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
ruthlessly slaughtered, and her place filled by
another specially raised by the workers to meet
this contingency during her lifetime and in her
full view. Drones are bred in plenty, plied with
the richest provender in the hive, and allowed to
wanton through their days of insatiate appetite, so
that no young queen may go forth on her nuptial
flight unchallenged. But when the last princess
is happily mated, and safely home again in the
warm, awaiting cluster, every drone is callously
done to death, or driven out of the hive to perish.
If hard times threaten, or the supply of stores is
arrested, the old and worn-out members of the
hive are exterminated, breeding is stopped, the
unborn young are torn from their cradle-cells and
destroyed, so that there may be as few mouths as
possible to fill in the lean days to come. The
signs of dawning prosperity or adversity are
watched for, and the working population of the
hive is either increased or checked, just as future |
probabilities seem to indicate.
But the most bewildering, most uncanny thing
of all about this bee-republic is the fact that, in it,
has been successfully solved the problem of the
balance%of the sexes. While all other creatures in
the universe bring forth their kind, male and female,
in what seems a haphazard, unpremeditated way,
INTRODUCTION xxi
these mysterious hive-people cause their queen-
mother to give them either sons or daughters
according to the needs of the community. They
lead her to the drone-cells, and she forthwith
deposits.eggs that hatch out infallibly as drones ;
and in the combs specially made wherein to rear
the aborted females, the workers, the queen is
caused to lay eggs that just as assuredly produce
only the worker-bee.
It is the oldest civilisation in the world, this
wonderful commonwealth of the bee-people, and
it is not unprofitable to examine it in the light
- of ideas which are at present only flickering up
_ uncertainly on the distant path, but which might
well broaden out some day into general confla-
gration. It is conceivable that a time existed
when the conditions of bee-life were very different
from those we see to-day. Bees have drawn
together into vast communities, just as men are
slowly, but surely, gathering into cities. A time
may come when individual existence outside the
city may be as impracticable for men, as life has
become for separate bee-families away from the
hive ; and then there may arise a purely masculine
dilemma. It may be that once the magnificent
drone was of real consequence in domestic affairs.
Bee-life may have consisted of numberless small
xxii THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
families, each with its deep-voiced, ponderous
father-bee, its fruitful mother, and its tribe of
youngsters growing up, and in time setting forth
to establish homes for themselves. There is no
reason why each one of the thirty or forty thousand
pinched virgins in a hive should not have become
a fully developed, prolific queen-bee, if only the
right food, in sufficient quantity, had been given
her in her larval state. But the need for the single
large community arose. The system of a single
national mother was instituted. The great re-
nunciation was made, for good or ill. And then
the trouble, from the masculine point of view, began.
It must be borne in mind that, strictly speaking,
the honey-bee does not, and never did, possess a
sting. What is commonly known as her sting is
really an ovipositor, and it is as such that it is
almost exclusively used by the modern queen-bee
in every hive to-day. But when the first hordes
of worker-bees were brought into the world, re-
duced by the science of starvation to little more
than sexless sinews and brains, they seemed to
have conceived a terrible revenge on_ their
ancestors. The useless ovipositor was turned into
a weapon of offence, against which the drone’s
magnificent panoply of sound and fury availed
him nothing. Matriarchy was established at the
INTRODUCTION xxiii
point of the living sword. A pitiless logic over-
ran everything. Intolerance of all the bright
asides of life—the wine, the dance, the merry talk,
and genial tarryings by the path, beloved of all
drones, bee or human—darkened the day. And
the result is only more honey, a vaster storehouse
filled to the brim with never-to-be-tasted sweets,
at a cost unfathomable, when the old larder would
have sufficed for every real need, and life might
still have been merry and leisurely.
It is only a fable, far-fetched, fantastic, as any
told to the Caliph in the “ Arabian Nights.” But
there, again, the woman had her way, like the bee-
woman before, and some day she and her kind
may get it on a more ambitious scale. And then
—what of the sword that was once a sewing-
needle ?
‘*Some are content with saying that they do
it by Instinct, and let it drop there; but I
believe God has given us something farther to
do, than to invent names for things, and then
let them drop.’’—A, I, Root.
THE
LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
CHAPTER I
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE
“While great Cesar hurled War's lightnings by high
Euphrates, ... even in that season I, Virgil, nurtured in
sweet Parthenope, went in the ways of lowly Quiet.”—
Fourth Book of the Georgics.
T was in Naples—the Parthenope of the
Ancients—that the “best poem by the best
poet ” was written, nearly two thousand years
ago. Essentially an apostle of the Simple Life,
the cultured and courtly Virgil chose to live a
quiet rural existence among his lemon-groves and
his bee-hives, when he might have dwelt in the
very focus of honour at the Roman capital; where
his friend and patron, Mecenas, the prime minister
ef Octavian, kept open house for all the great in
literature and art.
Modern bee-keepers, athirst for the American-
isation of everything, give little heed nowadays
to the writings of one whom Bacon has called “‘ the
I
2 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of
man is known.” And yet, if the question were
asked, What book should first be placed in the
hands of the beginner in apiculture to-day? no
wiser choice than this fourth book of the Georgics
could be made.
For Virgil goes direct to the great heart of the
matter, which is the same to-day as it was two
thousand years ago. The bee-keeper must be
first of all a bee-lover, or he will never succeed ;
and Virgil’s love for his bees shines through his
book from beginning to end. Of course, in a
writer so deeply under the spell of Grecian influ-
ences, it is to be expected that such a work would
faithfully reproduce most of the errors immortalised
by Aristotle some three hundred years before.
But these only serve to bring the real value of the
book into stronger relief. Through the rich in-
crustation of poetic fancy, and the fragrant mytho-
logical garniture, we cannot fail to see the true
bee-lover writing directly out of his own know-
ledge, gathered at first hand among his own bees.
Virgil knew, and lovingly recorded, all that eyes
and ears could tell him about bee-life; and it is
only within the last two hundred years or so that
any new fact has been added to Virgil’s store. All
the writers on apiculture, from the earliest times
down to the eighteenth century, have done little
else than pass from hand to hand the fantastic
errors of the ancient ‘‘ bee-fathers,” adding gener-
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 3
ally still more fantastic speculations of their own.
And until Schirach got together his little band of
patient investigators of hive-life about a hundred
years ago, Virgil’s fourth Georgic—considered as
a practical guide to bee-keeping—was still very
nearly as well-informed and up-to-date as any.
It is not, however, for its technical worth that
the book is to be recommended to the apiarian
tiro of to-day. All that has become hopelessly
old-fashioned with the passing of the ancient straw-
skep in the last generation. The intrinsic value
of Virgil’s writings lies in their atmosphere of
poetry and romance, which ought to be held in-
separable, now as ever, from a craft which is prob-
ably the most ancient in the world. Almost alone
among country occupations to-day, bee-keeping
can retain much of its entrancing old-world flavour,
and yet live and thrive. But if the modern tend-
ency to make the usual unlovely transatlantic
thing of British honey-farming is to be checked,
nothing will do more to that end than an early
instillation of Virgil’s beautiful philosophy.
Dipping into this fascinating poem—with its
delightful blend of carefully told fact, and rich
fancy, and quaint garnerings from records then
extant, but now lost in the ages—we can recon-
struct for ourselves a picture of Virgil’s country
retreat near ‘sweet Parthenope,’ where he
loitered, and mused, and wrought the faultless
hexameters of the Georgics with so much care
I=2
4 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
and labour, that the work took seven years to
accomplish—which is at the rate:of less than a line
a day.
Virgil’s house stood, probably, on the wooded
slope above the town of Naples, deep set in orange-
groves and lemon-plantations, and in full view, to
the north, of the snow-pinnacled Apennines, and,
southward, of the blue waters of the Bay. Vesuvius,
too, with its eternal menace of grey smoke, rose
dark against the morning sun only a few leagues
onward; and, at its foot, the doomed cities
nestled, Pompeii and Herculaneum, then with
still a hundred years of busy life to run.
Bee-hives in Virgil’s day—as we can gather from
certain ancient Roman bas-reliefs still in existence
—were of a high, peaked, dome pattern, and they
were made of stitched bark, or wattled osiers, as
he himself tells us. Many of the directions he
gives as to their situation and surroundings are
still golden rules for every bee-keeper. The bee-
garden, he says, must be sheltered from winds,
and placed where neither sheep nor butting kids
may trample down the flowers. Trees must be
near for their cool shade, and to serve as resting-
places when “the new-crowned kings lead out
their earliest swarms in the sweet spring-time.”
He tells us to place our hives near to water, or
where a light rivulet speeds through the grass;
and we are to cast into the water “large pebbles
and willow-branches laid cross-wise, that the bees,
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 5
when drinking, may have bridges to stand on, and
spread their wings to the summer sun.”
Virgil’s method of hiving a swarm is almost
identical with that followed by old-fashioned bee-
men to this day. The hive is to be scoured with
crushed balm and honeywort, and then you are to
“make a tinkling round about, and clash the
cymbals of the Mother ”—that is, of the goddess
Cybele. The bees will forthwith descend, he tells
us, and occupy the prepared nest. When the
honey-harvest is taken, you are first to sprinkle
your garments and cleanse your breath with pure
water, and then to approach the hives “ holding
forth pursuing smoke in your hand.” And the
old-time-bge-man of to- day takes his mug of small-
beer as a necessary rité, and washes himself before
handling his hives.
But perhaps the great charm of the fourth
Georgic consists, not in its nearness to truth about
bee-life, but in the continual reference to the
beautiful myths, and hardly.less attractive errors,
of immemorial times, copied so faithfully by
medizval writers, but not apt to be heard of by the
learner of to-day unless he reads the old books.
Virgil begins his poem by speaking of “ heaven-
born honey, the gift of air,” in allusion to the belief
that the nectar in flowers was not a secretion of
the plant itself, but fell like manna from the skies.
He seriously warns his readers of the disastrous
effect of echoes on the denizens of a hive, and of
6 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the hurtful nature of burnt crab-shells ; and tells
us that in windy weather bees will carry abou
little pebbles as counterpoises, “as ships take in
sand-ballast when they roll deep in the tossing
surge.”
He was a firm believer in the Divine origin of
bees. To all the ancients the honey-bee was a
perpetual miracle, as much a sign and token of an
omnipotent Will, set in the flowery meadows, as
is the rainbow, to modern pietists, set in the sky.
While all other creatures in the universe were
seen to produce their kind by coition of the sexes,
these mysterious winged people seemed to be
exempt from the common law. Virgil, copying
from much older writers, says, “they neither
rejoice in bodily union, nor waste themselves in
love’s languors, nor bring forth their young by
pain of birth; but alone from the leaves and
sweet-scented herbage they gather their children
in their mouths, thus sustaining their strength of
tiny citizens.”
Just as marvellous, however—at least to the
modern entomologist—will appear the belief, wide-
spread among the ancients, and shared by Virgil,
that swarms of bees can be spontaneously gener-
ated from the decaying carcass of an ox. Virgil
professes to derive his account of the matter from
an old Egyptian legend, and he gives careful
directions to bee-keepers of what he seems never
to doubt is an excellent method for stocking an
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 7
apiary. There is a very old translation of the
passage in the fourth book of the Georgics relat-
ing to these self-generated bees, which is worth
quoting, if only on account of its quaint medizval
savour. “First, there is found a place, small and
narrowed for the very use, shut in bya leetle tiled
roof and closed walles, through which the light
comes in askant through four windowes, facing the
four pointes of the compass. Next is found a two-
year-old bull-calf, whose crooked horns bee just
beginning to bud; the beast his nose-holes and
breathing are stopped, in spite of his much kicking;
and after he hath been thumped to death, his
entrails, bruised as they bee, melt inside his entire
, Skinne. This done, he is left in the place afore-
prepared, ol aa his sides are put bitts of
boughes, thyme, and fresh-plucked rosemarie.
And all this doethe take place at the season when
the zephyrs are first curling the waters, before the
meades bee ruddy with their spring-tide colours,
and before the swallow, that leetle chatterer,
doethe hang her nest again the beam. In time,
the warm humour beginneth to ferment inside the
soft bones of the carcase; and wonderful to tell,
there appear creatures, footless at first, but which
soon getting unto themselves winges, mingle
together and buzz about, joying more and more in
their airy life. At last, burst they forth, thick as
rain-droppes from a summer cloude, thick as
arrowes, the which leave the clanging stringes
8 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
when the nimble Parthians make their first battel
onset.”
For a study in the persistence of delusions, this
affords us some very promising material. In the
first place, the generation of bees from putrescent
matter is, and must always have been, an impossi-
bility. If there is one thing that the honey-bee
abhors more than another, it is carrion of any
description. Indeed, putrid odours will often
induce a stock of bees to forsake its hive alto-
gether; so it cannot even be supposed that bees
would venture near the scene of Virgil’s malodor-
ous experiment, and thus give rise to the belief
that they were nurtured there. But not only was
this practice a recognised and established thing in
Virgil’s time, but entire credence was placed in it
throughout the Middle Ages down, in fact, to so
late a time as the seventeenth century. It is on
record that the experiment was carried through
with complete success by a certain Mr. Carew,
of Anthony, in Cornwall, at an even later date
still.
The practice, moreover, was of infinitely greater
antiquity than even Virgil supposed. He was
probably right in giving it an Egyptian origin, and
this alone may date it back thousands of years. In
Egypt the custom had a curious variant. The ox
was placed underground, with its horns above the
surface of the soil. Then, when the process of
generation was presumed to be complete, the tips
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 9
of the horns were sawn off, and the bees are said
to have issued from them, as out of two funnels.
Nearly all the ancient writers, with the excep-
tion of Aristotle, mention the practice in some
form or other. Varro, writing half a century before
Virgil, says, “it is from rotten oxen that are born
the sweet bees, the mothers of honey.” Ovid gives
the story of the Egyptian shepherd Aristaeus as
enlarged upon by Virgil, and adds some specula-
tions of his own. He suggests that the soul of the
ox is converted into numberless bee-souls as a
punishment to the ox for his lifelong depredations
amongst the flowers and herbage, the bee being a
creature that can only do good to, and cannot
injure, vegetation.
Manifestly, where there is so general, and so
widely independent a corroboration of a story,
some explanation must exist, which will alike bear
out the truth and condone, or at least extenuate,
the error. A careful examination of the various
accounts of bee-swarms having been produced
from decaying animal matter reveals one common
omission in regard to them. All the writers are
Agreed that dense clouds of bee-like insects are
evolved ; and speak of these as escaping into the
air and flying off, presumably in the immediate
quest of honey. But no one bears testimony to
honey having been actually gathered by these
insects, nor is it recorded that they were ever
induced to take possession of a hive, as ordinary
12 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
Elder, who was born in a.p. 23. He, too, deals
with the ox-born bees; but the reader’s interest
will centre for the most part in Pliny’s grave and
careful account of the life and customs of the
honey-bee, as commonly accepted among his con-
temporaries. Very few indeed of the facts he so
picturesquely details have any real foundation in
truth. Like nearly all the classic writers, he had
little more accurate knowledge of the life within
the hive than we have of the bottom of the Pacific
Ocean. But he made up for this deficiency, as
did all others of his time, by dipping largely into
the stores of his own fancy as well as those of
other people.
His account of the origin and nature of honey
is quaintly pleasant reading. ‘‘ Honey,” he says,
‘‘is engendered from the air, mostly at the rising
of the constellations, and more especially when
Sirius is shining; never, however, before the
rising of the Vergiliz, and then just before day-
break. . . . Whether it is that this liquid is the
sweat of the heavens, or whether a saliva emanat-
ing from the stars, or a juice exuding from the
air while purifying itself—would that it had been,
when it comes to us, pure, limpid, and genuine, as
it was when first it took its downward descent.
But, as it is, falling from so vast a height, attract-
ing corruption in its passage, and tainted by the
exhalations of the earth as it meets them; sucked,
too, as it is, from off the trees and the herbage of
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 13
the fields, and accumulated in the stomachs of the
bees, for they cast it up again through the mouth;
deteriorated besides by the juices of flowers, and
then steeped within the hives and subjected to
such repeated changes :—still, in spite of all this, it
affords us by its flavour a most exquisite pleasure,
the result, no doubt, of its ethereal nature and
origin.”
Modern bee-keepers ascribe the varying quality
in honey nowadays to the prevalence of good or
bad nectar-producing crops during the time of its
gathering, or to its admixture with that bane of
the apiculturist—the detestable honey-dew. But
Pliny set this down entirely to the influence of the
stars. When certain constellations were in the
. ascendant, bad honey resulted, because their exuda-
tions were inferior. Honey collected after the
rising of Sirius—the famous honey-star of all the
ancient writers—was invariably of good quality.
But when Sirius ruled the skies in conjunction with
the rising of Venus, Jupiter, or Mercury, honey
was not honey at all, but a sort of heavenly
nostrum or medicament, which not only had the
power to cure diseases of the eyes and bowels, and
ameliorate ulcers, but actually could restore the
dead to life. Similar virtues were possessed by
honey gathered after the appearance of a rainbow,
provided—as Pliny is careful to warn us—that no
rain intervenes between the rainbow and the time
/ of the bees’ foraging.
14 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
On the life-history of the honey-bee Pliny
wrote voluminously. He tells us of a nation of
industrious creatures ruled over by a king, dis-
tinguished by a white spot on his forehead like a
diadem. These king-bees were of three sorts—
red, black, and mottled; but the red were superior
to all the rest. He appears to accept, though
guardedly, the old legend that sexual intercourse
among bees was divinely abrogated in favour of a
system of procreation originating in the flowers.
He mentions a current belief—which must have
been the boldest of heresies at the time—that the
king-bee is the only male, all the rest being
females, The existence of the drones he explains
away very ingeniously. ‘They would seem,” he
says, ‘‘to be a kind of imperfect bee, formed the
very last of all; the expiring effort, as it were, of
worn-out and exhausted old age, a late and tardy
_ offspring.”
The discipline in the hives was, according to
Pliny, a very rigid affair. Early in the morning
the whole population was awakened by one bee
sounding a clarion. The day’s work was carried
through on strict military lines, and at evening the
king’s bugler was again to be observed flying
about the hive, uttering the same shrill fanfaronade
by which the colony was roused at daybreak.
After this note was heard, all work ceased for the
day, and the hive became immediately silent.
His book abounds in curious details as to hive-
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 15
life. When foraging bees are overtaken in their
expeditions by nightfall, they place themselves on
their backs on the ground, to protect their wings
from the dew, thus lying and watching until the
first sign of dawn, when they return to the colony.
At swarming-time, the king-bee does not fly, but
is carried out by his attendants. Pliny warns in- |
tending bee-keepers not to place their hives within
sound of an echo, this being very injurious to the
bees; but, he adds, the clapping of hands and
tinkling of brass afford bees especial delight. He
ascribes to them an astonishing longevity, some |
_living as long as seven years. But the hives must
“ be placed out of the reach of frogs, who, it seems,
were fond of breathing into hives, this causing
great mortality among its occupants. When bees
need artificial food, they are to be supplied with
raisins or dried figs beaten to a pulp, carded wool
steeped in wine, hydromel, or the raw flesh of
poultry. Wax, Pliny says, is best clarified by first
boiling it in sea-water, and then drying it in the
light of the moon, for whiteness. And in taking
honey from the hives, a person must be well
washed and clean. Malefactors are cautioned
against approaching a hive of bees at any time.
Bees, he assures us, have a particular aversion to
a thief.
To the latter-day practical bee-keeper, all these
minute details given by the classic writers read
very like useless and cumbersome nonsense ; and
14 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
On the life-history of the honey-bee Pliny
wrote voluminously. He tells us of a nation of
industrious creatures ruled over by a king, dis-
tinguished by a white spot on his forehead like a
diadem. These king-bees were of three sorts—
red, black, and mottled; but the red were superior
to all the rest. He appears to accept, though
guardedly, the old legend that sexual intercourse
among bees was divinely abrogated in favour of a
system of procreation originating in the flowers.
He mentions a current belief—which must have
been the boldest of heresies at the time—that the
king-bee is the only male, all the rest being
females. The existence of the drones he explains
away very ingeniously. ‘They would seem,” he
says, ‘to be a kind of imperfect bee, formed the
very last of all; the expiring effort, as it were, of
worn-out and exhausted old age, a late and tardy
_ offspring.”
The discipline in the hives was, according to
Pliny, a very rigid affair. Early in the morning
the whole population was awakened by one bee
sounding a clarion. The day’s work was carried
through on strict military lines, and at evening the
king’s bugler was again to be observed flying
about the hive, uttering the same shrill fanfaronade
by which the colony was roused at daybreak.
After this note was heard, all work ceased for the
day, and the hive became immediately silent.
His book abounds in curious details as to hive-
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 15
life. When foraging bees are overtaken in their
expeditions by nightfall, they place themselves on
their backs on the ground, to protect their wings
from the dew, thus lying and watching until the
first sign of dawn, when they return to the colony.
At swarming-time, the king-bee does not fly, but
is carried out by his attendants. Pliny warns in-
tending bee-keepers not to place their hives within
sound of an echo, this being very injurious to the
bees; but, he adds, the clapping of hands and
tinkling of brass afford bees especial delight. He
ascribes to them an astonishing longevity, some
living as long as seven years. But the hives must
“be placed out of the reach of frogs, who, it seems,
were fond of breathing into hives, this causing
great mortality among its occupants. When bees
need artificial food, they are to be supplied with
raisins or dried figs beaten to a pulp, carded wool
steeped in wine, hydromel, or the raw flesh of
poultry. Wax, Pliny says, is best clarified by first
boiling it in sea-water, and then drying it in the
light of the moon, for whiteness. And in taking
honey from the hives, a person must be well
washed and clean. Malefactors are cautioned
against approaching a hive of bees at any time.
Bees, he assures us, have a particular aversion to
a thief.
To the latter-day practical bee-keeper, all these
minute details given by the classic writers read
very like useless and cumbersome nonsense ; and
16 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
it seems matter for wonder that the bees contrived
to exist at all under such ingeniously complicated
mismanagement, born, as it was, of an ignorance
flawed by scarcely a single ascertained fact. But
the truth stands out pretty clearly that bee-keeping
two thousand years ago was really a very large
and important industry. Oneapiary is mentioned
by Varro as yielding five thousand pounds of honey
yearly, while the annual produce of another brought
in a sum of ten thousand sesterces. Pliny mentions
the islands of Crete and Cyprus, and the coast-
country of Africa, as producing honey in great
abundance. Sicily was famous for the good
quality of its beeswax, but Corsica seems to have
been one of the main sources of this. When the
island was subject to the Romans, it is said that a
tribute of two hundred thousand pounds’ weight of
wax was yearly exacted from it. This, however,
is such an astounding figure that it must be taken
with a certain caution.
Evidently the bees in the ancient world managed
their business in fairly good fashion, in spite of the
ignorance of their masters, or at least of the ancient
chroniclers de re rustica. But it should always be
borne in mind that the writers on husbandry and
kindred subjects were seldom practical men.
With the single exception, perhaps, of Virgil’s
“‘ Georgicon,” these old books relating to apiculture
bear unmistakable evidence of being, for the most
part, merely compilations from writings still more
THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 17
ancient, or heterogeneous gatherings together of
hearsays and current fables of the time. It is
certain that the men who were actually engaged
in the craft of bee-keeping, and who knew most
about it, wrote nothing at all. Probably they
concerned themselves very little with the myths
and fables of bee-craft, and owed their success to
hard, practical, everyday experience, which is the
surest, and perhaps the only, guide to-day.
CHAPTER II
THE ISLE OF HONEY
F we are to accept all that the old Roman
historians have put on record to the glory of
their race, we must believe that their con-
quering legions found everywhere barbarism, and
left in its place the seeds of a high civilisation—
high, at least, in the general acceptance of the word
in those lurid, moving days.
But it may well be questioned whether the
Britain that Caesar first knew was as barbaric as
it has been painted. We are accustomed to look
upon Ceesar’s account of his earliest view of Albion
—of Ejilanban, the White Island, as the Britons
themselves called it—as the first glance vouch-
safed to us into the history of our own land. But
this is very far from being the truth. British
history begins with the record of the first voyage
of the Phoenicians, who, adventuring farther than
any other of their intrepid race, chanced upon the
Scilly Isles and the neighbouring coast of Corn-
wall, and thence brought back their first cargo
of tin.
18
THE ISLE OF HONEY 19
And how long ago this is who shall say? The
whereabouts of the Phoenician Barat-Anac, the
Country of Tin, remained a secret probably for
ages, jealously guarded by these ancient mariners,
the first true seamen that the world had ever known.
They were expert navigators, venturing enormous
distances oversea, even in King Solomon’s time};
and that was a thousand years before the advent
of Cesar. In all likelihood they had been in fre-
quent communication with the Britons centuries
before the Greeks took to searching for this
wonderful tin-bearing land, and still longer before
the name Barat-Anac became corrupted into the
Britannia of the Romans. And it is hardly to be
supposed that a people of so ancient a civilisation,
and of so great a repute in the sciences and refine-
ments of life, as the Phcenicians—a people from
whom the early Greeks themselves had learned
the art and practice of letters—could remain in
touch, century after century, with a nation like the
Britons without affecting in them enormous im-
provement and development in every way that
would appeal to so high-mettled and competent a
race.
For high-mettled and capable the Britons were
even in those old, dim, far-off days. Czsar’s
account of them, read between the lines, accords
ill with the commonly accepted notion of a horde
of savages, pigging together in reed hovels, and
daubing their naked bodies blue to strike terror
2—2
20 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
into the equally savage minds of their island
adversaries. We get a glimpse of a people much
farther advanced in the arts of peace and war. In
all probability they clothed themselves at ordinary
times, picturesquely enough, in the furs of the
wild animals, with which the island abounded; and
it was only in war-time that they stripped and
painted. Old prints have familiarised us with the
sight of the sailors of Drake and Nelson stripped
much in the same way; and the blue paint of
Druidical times is not divided by so great a gulf
as the ages warrant from the scarlet cloth and
glittering brass-ware of nineteenth-century fight-
ing-men. As armourers the ancient Britons must
have been not immeasurably inferior to the
Romans, and we are told that they excelled in at
least one difficult craft, the making of all sorts of
basket-ware.
But there is other testimony, apart from Czesar’s,
in favour of the view that they were by no means
a barbarous people. Diodorus Siculus, who was
Cesar’s contemporary, speaks of them as posses-
sing an integrity of character even superior to
that commonly obtaining among the Romans ; and
Tacitus, writing about a century later, ascribes to
them great alertness of apprehension, as well as
high mental capacity. Protected as they were by
the sea, it is probable that war entered to no large
extent into their lives, and they were essentially
a pastoral people. The cultured and daring
\
THE ISLE OF HONEY 21
Phoenician traders are certain to have prospected
the coast much farther eastward than is recorded,
and thus to have materially hastened British
advance in civilisation—at least, as far as the
southern tribes were concerned.
It has been claimed—on what evidence it is diffi-
cult to determine—that the Romans, besides teach-
ing the Britons all other arts of manufacture and
husbandry, introduced the practice of bee-culture
into the conquered isles. But Pliny, giving an
account of the voyages.of Pytheas, which are sup-
posed to have been undertaken some three hundred
years before Cesar ever set foot here, mentions
the Geographer of Marseilles as landing in Britain,
and finding the people brewing a drink from
wheat and honey. There is, however, another
source of testimony on this point, of infinitely
greater antiquity than any yet enumerated. Long
before the Pheenician sailors discovered their tin-
country, there were bards in Eilenban—the White
Island—hymning the prowess of their Celtic
heroes and the traditional doings of their race.
These old wild songs were handed down from
singer to singer through the ages, and many of
them, still extant among the records of the Welsh
bards, must be of unfathomable antiquity. These
profess to describe the state of Britain from the
very earliest beginnings of the human race. And
in some of them, which are seemingly among the
oldest, Britain is called the Isle of Honey, because
22 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
of the abundance of wild bees everywhere in the
primeval woods. There would be little profit,
and no little folly, in seeking to invest these old
traditions with any more than their due signifi-
cance. But there is much in a name. And it may
be conjectured that if Britain was known among
the early Druidical bards as the Isle of Honey,
the natural conditions giving rise to the name
were still prevalent, and reflected immemorially in
the life of the people, when Cesar first saw them
crowding the white cliffs above him, a huge-limbed,
ruddy-locked, war-like race. He records that
they possessed their herds of tame cattle and their
cultivated fields; and it is reasonable to suppose
that the hives of wattled osier that Virgil wrote of
a century later had their ancient counterpart of
woven basket hives in the British villages of the
day.
No doubt the Romans, during their second and
permanent occupation, which did not take place
until a hundred years after, taught the Britons
their own methods of bee-management, and im-
proved in numberless ways on the practice of the
craft, which, among the British, was probably a
very simple and rough-and-ready affair. But it
was not until the Romans had gone, and the
Anglo-Saxon rule was fairly established in the
Island, that bee-keeping seems to have become
one of the recognised national industries. The
records bearing on the social life of the people at
THE ISLE OF HONEY 23
that time are necessarily broken and scanty; but
it is certain that honey, with its products, had
become an important article of diet among all
classes, high and low. It is difficult—here in the
present time, when cane and beet-sugar, and even
chemical sweetening agents, are in constant and
universal use—to realise that, from the remotest
times down to the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, there was practically no other sweet-food
of any description, except honey, in the world ;
and to estimate, therefore, what a prominent place
in the industries of each country bee-keeping must
then have occupied. There was nothing else but
honey for all purposes, and it is constantly men-
tioned in the old monkish chronicles and the
curious manuscript cookery-books that have sur-
vived from the Middle Ages.
It is true that the sugar-cane was known as far
back as the first century a.D. Strabo, writing just
before the commencement of the Christian Era,
relates how Nearchus, who was Admiral of the
Fleet to Alexander the Great, made an important
voyage of discovery in the Indian Ocean, and
brought back news of the wonderful ‘“honey-
bearing reed,” which he found in use among the
natives of India. There is a record that the
Spaniards brought the sugar-cane from the East,
and planted it in Madeira early in the fifteenth
century. Thence its cultivation spread to the
West Indies and South America, during that and
24 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the following century. Throughout the Middle
Ages it was in very restricted use among the
richest and noblest families in Europe, Venice
being then the centre of its distribution. But.
cane-sugar was little else than a costly luxury of
diet, or a vehicle in medicine, even among the
highest in the land, until well into the seventeenth
century, when it slowly began to oust honey from
the popular favour. The chances are, however,
that the middle and lower classes of England
possessed, and could afford, no other sweetening
agent but honey, for any purpose, down to about
three hundred years ago.
Among the Anglo-Saxons the beehives supplied
the whole nation, from the King down to the
poorest serf, not only with an important part of
their food, but with drink and light as well. We
read of mead being served at all the royal banquets,
and in common use in every monastery. Even in
those far-off days there were wayside taverns
where drink was retailed; and the chief potion
was mead, although a kind of ale was also brewed.
No priest was allowed to enter these hostelries,
but this could scarcely have been a great depriva-
tion, as the home allowance of mead was a suffi-
ciently generous one. Ethelwold’s allowance to
each half-dozen of his monks at dinner was a sex-
tarium of mead, which, in modern measure, would
be probably several gallons.
There were three kinds of liquor brewed from
THE ISLE OF HONEY 25
honey in Anglo-Saxon times. The commonest,
or mead proper, which may be taken as the usual
drink of the masses, was made by steeping
in water the crushed refuse of the combs after
the honey had been pressed from them. This
would be strained and set aside in earthen vessels
until it fermented and became mead. And the
longer it was kept, the more potent grew the
liquor. Another kind, made from honey, water,
and the juice of mulberries, was called Morat ; and
this, presumably, was the beverage of the more
well-to-do. A third concoction, known as Pigment,
was brewed from the purest honey, flavoured with
spices of different sorts, and received an additional
lacing of some kind of wine. Probably this was
the mead served at the royal table. The office of
King’s Cup-bearer could have been no sinecure in
those days, for it was the custom of Anglo-Saxon
monarchs to entertain their courtiers at four
banquets daily, and the quantities of liquor which
the old records tell us were consumed on these
occasions seem incredible, even in the annals of
such a deep-drinking race. Not the least valuable
outcome of the Norman Conquest, as far as the
national temperance was concerned, must have
been the reform instituted in these Court orgies by
William the First, who reduced their number to a
single state banquet daily.
If it may be supposed that the reign of Harold
marked the summit of popularity for our good oid
26 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
English honey-brew, it is equally certain that with
the coming of the Normans began its slow decline
in the national estimation. Following in the trail
of Duke William’s nondescript army came the
traders, with their outlandish liquors from the
grape ; and wine must soon have taken the place
of the Saxon mead, first among the foreign nobles,
and later among the native thanes. From that
day mead has steadily declined in vogue, and to-
day mead-making is practically a lost art, surviving
only among a few old-fashioned folk here and
there in remote country places.
But it is still to be obtained; and those of us
who have had the good fortune to taste good old
mead, well matured in the wood, are sure to feel
a regret that no determined effort is being made
to rehabilitate it in the national favour. Perhaps
there is no more wholesome drink in the world,
and certainly none requiring less technical skill
in the making. All the ancient books on bee-
keeping give receipts for its manufacture, differing
only in the variety of foreign ingredients added
for its improvement, or, as we prefer to believe, to
its degradation. For the finest mead can be
brewed from pure honey and water alone, and any
addition of spices or other matter serves only to
destroy its unique flavour. Some of the sixteenth
and seventeenth century bee-masters were re-
nowned in their day for their mead-brewing ; and
one of the foremost of them claims for his potion
THE ISLE OF HONEY 27
that it was absolutely indistinguishable, by the
most competent judges, from old Canary Sack. He
gives careful directions for the manufacture of his
mead ; and these can be, and have, indeed, recently
been, followed with complete success. This mead,
when kept for a number of years, froths into the
glass like champagne, but stills at once, leaving
the glass lined with sparkling air-bells. It is of a
pale golden colour, and has a bouquet something
like old cider; but its flavour is hardly to be com-
pared with any known liquor of the present time.
It is interesting, however, to have its originator’s
authority for its close resemblance to Canary Sack,
as this gives a clue to the intrinsic qualities of a
wine long since passed out of the popular ken,
CHAPTER Il
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES
TUDENTS of old books on the honey-bee
are generally struck with two very remark-
able characteristics about them—their invari-
able fine old classic and romantic flavour, and their
ingenious leavening of a great mass of quite
obvious fable by a very small modicum of enduring
fact.
It is difficult to realise, until one has delved
deep into these curious old records, how com-
pletely they are dyed through and through with
the picturesque, but mainly erroneous, ideas of the
ancient classic bee-fathers. The writers were,
almost without exception, earnest, practical men,
whose chief interest in life was the study and
pursuit of their craft. But they seem, one and all,
to have laboured under the idea that it was their
bounden duty to uphold everything written about
bees by the old Greek and Roman 4i#éeratz, and
that it would be the rankest heresy to advance any
new truth, garnered from their individual experi-
28
6L91 ‘NOOd-aaa S.NAGsAU SasSOW
» 6291 -Gyfng-pjo aur aaa
S agnae “1aypjyoog “worry Guay Sq
(BUY, seapmrayeg UL Gqp Sytem “ony
Sef fe sStapmog amp ur sweep 5,3°-2y ayayzQ sig sq OU
Ff aqmoy sigae pig} aq oa O1¥ purioyinysqi 30} pawi3g
2S SSN ° GNOT-
5 GPa ley Te EARS PA ay2 Aq: poaordde
_PaoegO Tea SALW ELS PagnaTA
~ galepysnaypoxa gous Sai
OL RU MC empoly Ue aN bye tg
ce “saUopOD sya ur Sumy sya se
© Ssoar-aseng 01 durqqax 1943 Joadaad on aN
_{se-{soag dooy,se mony [e-02) suonron quadoxd opty
> “SQAIq-AeIg Jo prayyat ‘saxogauyy |
_ ceduedt uy rag? Buidaay on mod Styise. |
% Sulswiaordwy pue ssmsunIsdeg shmary
| of tonvaryarg? *
SC Spe a dorwis0a5 |
‘aad eau SSNS: RB ERS
oS 4 Oana
» Jo-duneozy,
TO. AS
([aAOOSIG JOyIIMNYy
ey
e
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 29
ence, unless it could be supported by ample testi-
mony from the same infallible source.
They seemed to look upon the works of Aris-
totle, Virgil, Pliny, and the rest, as so many divine
revelations of the mystery of bee-craft, all-sufficing,
finitely perfect ; and they continually quoted from
them in support of their own contentions, or in
refutation of the statements of others, much as
teachers of religion refer doubters to Bible texts.
The bee-masters of the Middle Ages were, how-
ever, not alone in adopting this peculiar attitude
of mind. It seems to have been the prevailing
habit of the time with all classes. One might
almost be justified in concluding that the study of
nature in those days had no other object with these
inveterate old classicians but to support what had
already been set down by their revered oracles. It
was enough that a thing had been written in Greek
or Latin in the literary youth of the world; it was
immaculate—the first and last word on the
question; and if their personal observations seemed
at variance with any~statement of the old-world
writers, then the contradiction was only an apparent
one, and could, no doubt, be easily resolved by a
more learned exponent of these bee-scriptures of
ancient days.
It is certainly, at first glance, a matter for wonder
that men could pass their whole lives in the pursuit
of the craft, and yet manage to preserve uncor-
rupted a faith which seems so readily, and at so
30 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
many points, assailable. But it must be remem-
bered that any observation of the inner life of the
honey-bee was then an extremely difficult thing.
It was next to impossible to see anything that was
going on inside the hives in use at that day.
Pliny mentions a hive made of what he calls
mirror-stone, which was probably talc, and
through the transparent sides of which the work-
ing of the bees could be seen. But nothing of the
kind seems to have been attempted among English
bee-masters until the seventeenth century. More-
over, even if the whole hive had been made of
clear glass, the observer would have been very
little the wiser. He would have had the outer
sides of the two end combs in view, and he would
have seen much coming and going among the
bees, with an occasional glimpse of the queen.
But all the wonderful activity of the hive, so
laboriously ascertained by latter-day observers,
with the help of so many ingenious appliances,
goes on entirely in the hidden recesses of the
combs; and any attempt to study this life under
the conditions appertaining in the Middle Ages
would have been manifestly futile. It was not
until Huber’s leaf-hive was invented—when it
became to some extent possible to divide the
combs for a short time without hopelessly disturb-
ing the bees—that any real progress in bee-know-
ledge was made. The modern observation-hive,
wherein the bees are compelled to build their
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 31
combs between glass partitions, one over the
other instead of side by side, was a still greater
advance, and rendered the whole interior of the
bee-dwelling available for study. But it is open
to objection that bee-life in such a contrivance is
carried on under too artificial conditions. In a
natural bee-nest, the combs are built roughly side
by side, and the brood is reared in the centre area
of each comb, the surface covered by the breeding-
cells diminishing outwards in each direction. Thus
the brood-nest takes a globular form, with the
honey-stores above and around it; and this natural
arrangement is inevitably destroyed in a hive
where the combs are superimposed and not
collateral.
In the face, therefore, of the practical impossi-
bility of learning anything about bees when they
were housed in the usual straw-skep, the old bee-
masters confined themselves to a repetition of the
beliefs of the ancient writers, deftly interwoven
with speculations of their own, which, as no one
was in a position to refute them, were advanced
with all the more daring and assurance.
They seem to have been, in the main, agreed
on the point that the ordinary generative prin-
ciple, otherwise universal throughout creation, was
miraculously dispensed with in the single case of
the honey-bee. Moses Rusden, who was bee-
master to King Charles the Second, and who
published his ‘Further Discovery of Bees” so
32 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
late as the year 1679, believed that the worker-
bees gathered from the flowers not only the germs
of life, but the actual corporeal substance, of the
young bees. ‘
He pointed triumphantly to the little globular
lumps of many-coloured pollen which bees so
industriously fetch into the hives during the
breeding-season, and asserted that these were the
actual bodily matter from which the young bees
developed. He also maintained that every hive
was ruled over by a king, but here Rusden was
evidently trying to serve two masters. No doubt
he was a true “ Abhorrer,” and heartily detested
anything at variance with the doctrine of the
divine right of monarchs. He had faithfully copied
from Virgil as to the gathering of this generative
substance from the flowers; but he felt that, as
the King’s Bee-Master, it was incumbent on him
to put in a good word for the restored monarchy if
he could. There were still many in the realm who
were altogether opposed to the Restoration, and
probably more who were waverers between the
faiths. And Rusden, doubtless, saw that if he
could point to any parallel instance in Nature
where the system of monarchy was the divinely
ordained state, he would be furnishing his patron
with a magnificent argument in favour of his king-
ship, and one, moreover, which would especially
appeal to the ignorant and superstitious masses.
No doubt, however, in taking up this position,
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 33
Rusden was only echoing the belief immemorially
established among the beemen of the past.
The single large bee, which all knew to exist in
each hive, was generally looked upon as the abso-
lute ruler of the community. It is variously
described as a king or queen by writers in the
sixteenth and seventeenth century, but only in the
sense of a governor; and the word chosen largely
depended on the sex of the august person who
happened to occupy the English throne at the
time. Thus Rusden very wisely discarded the
notion of a queen-bee when he had to deal with
Charles the Second. Butler, perhaps the most
learned of the medizval writers on the honey-bee,
as astutely forbore to mention the word king, his
book being published in the reign of Queen Anne.
He calls it ‘‘ The Feminine Monarchie,” but seems
to have no more suspected the truth that the large
bee was really the mother of the whole colony
than any of his predecessors. Almost alone in his
day, however, he refuses to accept the flower
theory of bee-generation, and asserts that the
worker-bees and drones are the females and males
respectively. But, he says, they ‘“‘engender not
as other living creatures; onely they suffer their
Drones among them for a season, by whose Mascu-
line virtue they strangely conceive and breed for the
preservation of their sweet kinde.” He gets over
the difficulty of there being no drones in the hive
for nine months in the year, during part of which
3
34 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
time breeding goes actively forward, by asserting
that the worker-bees immaculately conceive of the
drones for the season, their summer impregnation
sufficing until the drones reappear in the May of
the following year. Thus, without guessing it, he
was very near the discovery of one of the most
astounding facts in Nature—that the queen-bee of
a hive, after a single traffic with a drone, continues
to produce fertile eggs for the rest of her life, which
may extend to as long as three, or even four, years.
Butler’s book is rich in the quaint bee-lore of his
times. He tells us the queen-bee has under her
“subordinate Gouvernours and Leaders. For
difference from the rest they beare for their crest
a tuft or tossel, in some coloured yellow, in some
murrey, in manner of a plume; whereof some
turne downward like an Ostrich-feather, others
stand upright like a Hern-top. In less than a
quarter of an hour,” he assures us, ‘‘ you may see
three or foure of them come forth of a good stall ;
but chiefly in Gemini, before their continuall
labour have worne these ornaments.” And any
warm spring or summer morning, if you watch a
hive of bees at work, you may chance upon much
the same thing. In some flowers, notably the
evening primrose, the pollen-grains have a way of
clinging together in threads; and these festoons
often catch in the antennz of the foraging bees,
giving much the same appearance of a plume, or
tassel, as Butler saw in his day.
“OoTOA pyrpatiocs YorseMy sotpey Yate sm,
Sgo1099 Jo s020N Ul azeaq J sour am VyeY “OATEHY
*Buope yoru Poa
Apueqes pedossrany sty,
Suo2y spuejnoyaswog
‘Adjo Aatp awn ay uaqea Suaip puy
¢ 2yra Hp pud [ny Aor vay []MjsusnOUT sy
f ayeg sarz0my Summ dpa 1 YyPwIy OL,
Sayrm 01 Afdar Qadjy aunay wpm aryyNOA,
9264 Ajanta styjt squs22" anesd 304M OL,
fore saqury Up apg saruszd 19g] -O YMAA ‘aikez erhqi =O ple
syeaa 09 211103; aanjeoyd Ur spood 108-sured ajay L “yey? your pure 29q0; your
Bap See EEE
ad -o-r -uy tye kor ange Jo yotg Aattatd yaraa apodar yy ae9s8 991 q1eSoy opdood srya spnemmos ano
Sade Bugrety AdYL ppOIA OF IRL ULI ga] A YAIQIW a jo r2AAOd ON (pay ur aeaIg0O}) — x3y 19xFIAw
appease pp ke ectetad
anq pus utes nog NQ = DvyWT 10 “ayed dem ary snoqsns soy “T22] -EZIq ou cmos -txry
Wy SLICIG INT YOYAA ‘Viqaono oury aazydg aryues sryi uo wey 'yI2 942 5]29x9 suezEMY snowry
ayay Liaivy M3q1 surewtreas 07 Spot yor 6. nOgry Iq :2TeIAA UOMIMOD ay) Jog UOTHMTOD UT F1OAA 94,7,
JO (QUE FUL -aq AWYIsaqorUEPy [JE JO OS ~ {yoq — sLarqruFOOW aya saaryTe JO s Vv
4825s S EEE HSE
By SSEpEEISk rete
t F
A S of all Matesthe Monarchicis bef, So of all Monarchics thae Fe. mi- nine, Of
‘They vvork in common for the common vyeale. Their labour’s rePleffe to maintains their Mate: Their
E: of i=: —-}-~~4-0- 4. 2 é -
AT EP eh = Saat =o = 43 9 F e&
ght: Sepp gE 2 ae —F=}-F y=
farcous Amazons excels the 1¢&, That on thisearthie Sphare hate euer bing VVhofe lit- tle hearts in
Hexa. genia no Be za- leell, for cuxious Artmay pafle, er imitate, Onc Sou'raign and but
ep pee
weaker fex ( fo great in field: Nopowvers of the mightre(t Males canmake to yeeld: They living ayes
ene commands this people loyall,the great Marpe(e with plenty bleft of iffue roy- all; An- ti- o- pe.
SS | SSeS SESS SS
moft fober and moftcha®, Their paine-got goods in pleafurefcotne to watt.
and Ovi. vhyja fale; VVisth o- cherPrinces hir In. fantaes are.
When fo increafed is this prudent Nation,
That their owne limits cannot them fuffice ;
Fo fecke new Cities, fur new habitation,
They fend abroad their num’rous Colonies :
-Amtiope the prime Prince gone,
Orisbya foone
Ofhir Queene-mother, making mone,
Begs the like boone:
‘That with hir eraine hir fortune the may feeke:
And this fhe fings in meafures mournbill fweere.
c
A PAGE FROM BUTLER’S ‘‘BEES MADRIGALL.” 1623
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 35
He gives some advice as to the deportment of
a good bee-master which is well worth quoting.
“Tf thou wilt have the favour of thy Bees that they
sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as
offend them: thou must not be unchaste or un-
cleanely: for impurity and sluttishnesse (them-
selves being most chaste and neat) they utterly
abhore : thou must not come among them smelling
of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused
either through eating of Leekes, Onions, Garleeke,
and the like; or by any other meanes: the noi-
somenesse whereof is corrected with a cup of
Beere: and therefore it is not good to come
among them before you have drunke: thou must
not be given to surfeiting and drunkennesse : thou
must not come puffing and blowing unto them,
neither hastily stir among them, nor violently
defend thy selfe when they seeme to threaten
thee ; but softly moving thy hand before thy face,
gently putting them by: and lastly, thou must be
no Stranger unto them. Ina word, thou must be
chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar :
so will they love thee, and know thee from all
other.” Thus, the good bee-master, according to
Butler, is necessarily a compendium of all the
virtues ; and nothing more seems to be wanted to
bring about the millennium than to induce all
mankind to become keepers of bees.
Writers on the honey-bee in medizval times
vied with each other in their testimony to the
3-7-2
36 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
extraordinary powers and intelligence of their
hive-people. But perhaps a story, gravely related
by Butler, outdoes them all. He prefaces it by
declaring that ‘‘ Bees are so wise and skilful, as
not onely to discrie a certaine little God amightie,
though he came among them in the likenesse of a
Wafer-cake; but also to build him an artificial
chappell.” He goes on to relate that ‘‘a certaine
simple woman, having some stals of Bees that
yeelded not unto hir hir desired profit, but did
consume and die of the murraine; made hir mone
to an other Woman more simple than hir selfe ;
who gave her counsell to get a consecrated Host,
and put it among them. According to whose
advice she went to the priest to receive the host :
which when she had done, she kept it in hir mouth,
and being come home againe she took it out, and
put it into one of hir hives. Whereupon the
murraine ceased, and the Honie abounded. The
Woman, therefore, lifting up the Hive at the due
time to take out the Honie, saw there (most
strange to be seene) a Chappell built by the Bees,
with an altar in it, the wals adorned by marvellous
skill of Architecture, with windowes conveniently
set in their places: also a doore and a steeple
with bells. And the Host being laid upon
the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise, flew
around it.”
This story is only paralleled by another, equally
ancient, wherein it is related that some thieves
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 37
broke into a church, and stole the silver casket in
which the holy wafers were kept. They found
one wafer in the box, and this they hid under a
hive before making off with the more intrinsically
valuable part of their booty. In the night, it
seems, the owner of the hive was awakened by
the most ravishing strains of music, coming at set
intervals from the direction of his bee-garden.
He went out with a lantern to ascertain the cause
of it, and discovered it to proceed from the interior
of one of his hives. Full of perturbation at this
miracle, he went and roused the Bishop, and
acquainted him with the extraordinary state of
affairs ; and the Bishop coming with his retinue
and lifting up the hive, they found that the bees
had taken possession of the consecrated wafer, and
placed it in the upper part of their hive, having
first made for it a box of the whitest wax, an exact
replica of the onestolen. And all around this box
there were choirs of bees singing, and keeping
watch over it, as monks do in their chapel. “ With
which story,” adds the narrator prophetically, “I
doubt not but some incredulous people will
quarrell.”
In their directions for hiving a swarm, the
medizval bee-masters were always quaintly ex-
plicit. The dressing of the skep which was to
receive the swarm was a particularly elaborate
process. When the skep was new, you were
recommended to scour it out with a handful of
38 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
sweet herbs, such as thyme, marjoram, or hyssop ;
and this was to be followed by a second dressing
of honey and water, or milk and salt. But the
preparation of an old skep must have been a rather
disgusting affair. You were to put “two or three
handfuls of mault, or pease, or other corne in the
hive, and let a Hogge eat thereof. Meanwhile,
doe you so turne the Hive, that the fome or froth,
which the Hogge maketh in eating, may goe all
about the Hive. And then wipe the Hive lightlie
with a linnen cloth, and so will the Bees like this
Hive better than the new.”
When the swarm was up, and “ busie in their
dance,” you were to “ play them a fit of mirth on
a Bason, Warming-pan, or Kettle, to make them
more speedily light.” We are assured that the
swarm would fly faster, or slower, according to the
noise made. If the fit of mirth were in rapid
measure, the bees would fly fast and high; but
with a soft leisurely music, they would go slowly,
and soon descend, This curious custom of “ring-
ing the bees” is undoubtedly of Roman origin ;
but whether it was introduced by Czsar’s followers,
or those of Claudius in the first century, or whether
the old English bee-masters themselves derived it
from their classic reading, is hard to determine.
It is still to be heard in many country districts,
and its exponents seem to retain all the faith of
their forefathers in its efficacy. Probably, in
medizval times, when bee-gardens were much
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 39
more plentiful than they are now, the custom had
at least one undeniable merit: it proclaimed to
the various hive-owners in the vicinity that a
swarm was in the air, and that its rightful owner
was on the alert. In this way, no doubt, dis-
honest claims to its possession were largely pre-
vented, or, at least, discouraged.
The question whether the noise made by ring-
ing has any real effect on the swarming bees is
still not absolutely decided. With the exception
of the old skeppists, not a few of whom still exist
in out-of-the-way rural corners, modern apicultu-
rists have long discarded the custom as a gross
superstition. But it has recently been suggested
that the din made by old-fashioned bee-keepers
when a swarm is up may have a real use after all.
It is conjectured that the cloud of bees—which at
first is nothing but a chaos of flashing wings, the
whole contingent darting and whirling about in-
discriminately over a large area together—is really
dispersing in search of the queen. The suggestion
put forward is that they follow her by ear, as she
is supposed to utter a peculiar piping sound when
flying. The din of the key and pan may, it is
said, prevent the bees hearing this note and
following her in her first erratic convolutions, and
thus the swarm is more likely to pitch on a station
near home. The theory is interesting, but hardly
tenable. Old popular observances of this kind
are seldom based on even the vaguest thread
40 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
of fact, and it is much more probable that no
effect whatever is produced on the bees by the
ringing.
With regard to the right of a bee-keeper to
follow his swarm into a neighbour's land, it is
interesting to have the assurance of one of these
ancient writers that “if they will not be stayed,
but, hasting on still, goe beyond your bounds ;
the ancient Law of Christendome permitteth you
to pursue them whithersoever, for the recovery
of your owne.” But, the writer adds, if your
swarm goes so fast and so far that you lose sight
and hearing of them, you also lose all right and
property in them. In this case you have no
legal alternative but to leave the bees to whom-
soever may first find them. In view of recent
disputes on this matter, wherein the law laid
down appears to have been both vague and
arbitrary, it is useful to be able to point to so
ancient an authority in vindication of the bee-
keeper’s rights.
There is hardly any detail in bee-government
which had not its curious observance or super-
stition in medieval times. One and all seemed
to believe in the old Virgilian notion that bees
carried about little stones to balance their flight
during windy weather, and some even thought
that flowers were carried about in the same way.
Red-coloured clothing was supposed to be par-
ticularly offensive to bees, and one is warned not
tla Vi Te Hat ii ii Me Ls.
STATA i Me AT IN Nn
= ee
al ea tin
ema
inna
Boye |
REV. JOHN THORLEY WRITING HIS ** MELISS(
)LOGIA”” WITH THE HEL? OF HIS BEES.
(From an old Bee Book)
1744
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 41
to venture near the apiary thus attired. In the
hives the old bees and the young were believed
to occupy separate quarters. In regard to this,
it is a well-attested fact that, during the height
of the honey season, the bees found in the upper
stories of a hive are principally young ones who
have not yet flown.
We are told that if any of the bees have not
returned to the hive at the end of the day, the
queen goes out to find them and show them the
way back. No one need be in any fear of over-
looking the ruler of the hive, because she can
be known by her “lofty pace and countenance
expressing Majesty, and she hath a white spot
in her forehead glistering like a Diadem.”
An old writer advises that all the hives should
have holes bored right through them to prevent
spider-webs. He was also of opinion that the
bees swarmed because of the queen’s tyranny, and
if she followed them, they put her to death. He
informs us that the drones were honey-bees which
had lost their stings and grown fat. This was a
very old idea, with which the sceptical Butler dealt
in the following fashion: ‘The general opinion
anent the Drone is that he is made of a honey-bee,
that hath lost hir sting ; which is even as likelie as
that a dwarfe, having his guts pulled out, should
become a gyant.” But the bee-masters of the
Middle Ages were ever intolerant of other people’s
mistaken ideas, while supporting with the gravest
42 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
argument and show of learning equally benighted
superstitions of their own.
A little book published in 1656, and called
“The Country Housewife’s Garden,” is interesting,
as it was probably written for cottagers by one
almost in the same humble walk of life, whereas
the bee-books generally of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries were, for the most part, the work
of men of considerably higher station.
This book, almost alone of its kind, harbours no
fine theories on bee-keeping, but keeps throughout
to rule-of-thumb methods. The writer, evidently
caring little for speculation as to the origin of
bees, but confining his remarks to practical honey-
getting, takes up the following wholesome position:
“Much discanting there is of, and about the
Master Bees, and of their degrees, order, and
Government : but the truth in this point is rather
imagined, than demonstrated. There are some
conjectures of it, viz., wee see in the combs diverse
greater houses than the rest, and we commonly
hear the night before they cast, sometimes one
Bee, sometimes two or more Bees, give a lowde
and severall sound from the rest, and sometimes
Bees of greater bodies than the common sort:
but what of all this? I leane not on conjectures,
but love to set down that I know to be true, and
leave these things to them that love to divine.”
The “greater houses” here mentioned were, no
doubt, the large cells in which the queens are bred.
é
f
¢
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 43
Just before swarming-time, as many as nine.or ten
of these are sometimes to be found in one hive.
The same writer has the inevitable ill word
against the drones. These, he says, “are, by all
probability and judgement, an idle kind of bees,
and wastefull, which have lost their stings, and so
being as it were gelded, become idle and great.
They hate the bees, and cause them cast the
sooner.”
Never did creature come by so bad a name, and
so undeservedly, as the luckless drone with these
old scribes. Another of them speaks of the drone
as ‘“‘a grosse Hive-Bee without sting, which hath
beene alwaies reputed a greedy lozell (and there-
fore hee that is quicke at meat and slow at worke
is fitted with this title): for howsoever he brave it
with his round velvet cap, his side gowne, his full
paunch, and his lowd voice; yet he is but an idle
companion, living by the sweat of others’ brows.
For he worketh not at all, either at home or
abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers:
you shall never finde 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 doe some great
act: but it is onely for his pleasure, and to get
him a stomach, and then returns he presently to
his cheere.”
But it is among the writings of the old bee-
men with a taste for the quack-doctor’s art that
44 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
some of the quaintest notions are to be found.
We are told that honey, well rubbed into the
scalp night and morning, is a sovereign remedy
for baldness, and if it was mixed with a few dead
bees and a little old comb well pounded, it was
still more efficacious. Dead bees, dried and re-
duced to a powder, form a principal ingredient in
all sorts of nostrums of the time. This powder,
mixed with water and drunk every morning, is
recommended as an unfailing cleanser to the
system. And if the heads of a large number of
bees are collected, burned, and the ashes com-
pounded with a little honey, it makes an excellent
salve for all sorts of eye disorders.
There was a famous preparation called Oxymel,
which was in great vogue in medizval times. It
seems to have been nothing more than a mixture
of honey, water, and vinegar; but it was accre-
dited with extraordinary virtues. It was an in-
fallible cure for sciatica, gout, and kindred ail-
ments; and one writer also tells us that it was
‘‘good to gargarize with in a Squinancy.”
But honey and dead bees were not the only
products of the hives which were pressed into
medical service. Wax also was believed to have
exceptional curative powers in all sorts of human
ills. It had the faculty of curing ulcers, and “ if
the quantity of a Pease in Wax be swallowed
down of Nurces, it doth dissolve the Milke curdled
in the paps.” It was also used as an embrocation
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 45
for stiff joints and aching muscles. The supposed
curative value of beeswax in its natural state,
however, was as nothing compared to its capa-
bilities when distilled. This preparation, known as
Oil of Wax, and famous at the time all the world
over, seems to have come nearer the ideal of a
panacea—a cure-all—than anything else before or
since. The making of Oil of Wax seems to have
been a very complicated affair. First the wax
had to be melted, poured into sweet wine, and
wrung out in the hands. This was done seven
times, using fresh wine at each operation. Then
the wax was placed in a retort with a quantity of
red-brick powder, and carefully distilled. A yellow
oil came over into the receiver, and this was dis-
tilled a second time, when the “ Coelestiall or
Divine medicine” was ready. Miraculous portents
seem to have accompanied its preparation, for we
are told that ‘‘in the coming forth of this Oile there
appeareth in the Receiver the foure Elements, the
Fire, the Aire, the Water, and the Earth, right
marvellous to see.”
The power to stop immediately the falling out
of the hair, heal the most serious wounds in a few
days, and cure toothache and pains in the back,
can be reckoned only among its minor virtues.
Much greater properties were claimed for Oil of
Wax, for it not only “killeth worms and cureth
palsy and distempered spleens, but it bringeth
forth the dead or living child.”
46 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
One last extract must be given from the same
old writer. It relates to the generation of bees,
and brings us out, perhaps, on the highest pin-
nacle of the marvellous. Aftera learned disserta-
tion on the method of breeding bees from a dead
ox—assuring us, however, that if we can procure
a dead lion for the purpose, it will be much better,
as then the bees will have a lion-like courage—
the writer goes on to explain how bees may be
produced in another way. We are to save all
dead bees, burn them, sprinkle the ashes with wine,
and then leave them exposed to the sun in a warm
place. In a little while, we are told, all the bees
so treated will come to life again, and we shall
then have a new stock ready for hiving.
Dipping into these time-worn records of the
Middle Ages, with their embrowned, scarce legible
type and their antiquated phraseology, one comes
at last to realise how very little the old bee-masters
actually understood of the true ways of the honey-
bee, or, indeed, of any real essential in bee-craft.
And yet the production of honey and wax must
have been an industry very largely developed in
those days. Somehow or other, in spite of archaic
theories and useless interference in the work of
their hives, these people must have contrived to
supply a market of whose magnitude we can now-
adays form little conception. The trade in wax
alone must have been a very large one, for, except
in the poorest tenements, this formed the only
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 47
available source of artificial light. And honey was
in much more universal demand than it is now,
because cane-sugar could hardly have developed
into a serious rival as a sweetening agent among
the masses at a time when it stood, perhaps, at
two shillings a pound.
But in speculations of this kind, it must be
borne in mind that, although the men who wrote
about bees displayed so picturesque an ignorance
in all matters appertaining to their charges, these
formed a very small minority among the bee-
keepers as a whole. Probably the bulk of the
supply in honey and wax came from bee-gardens,
whose owners neither knew nor cared anything
about books, and were concerned only in the
practical side of the work, where their knowledge,
hereditary for the most part, amply sufficed for
the part they played in it.
Moreover, it is only in latter-day, scientific
apiculture that the work of the bee-master counts
to any greatextent. Nowadays, under the light of
twentieth-century knowledge, this is competent to
bring about the doubling, and even trebling, of the
honey-harvest possible under the ancient methods.
But the old skeppists did, and could do, little more
than look on at the work of their bees, and here
and there put a scarce availing hand to it. Nearly
all the credit for the results achieved in those days
must be given to the bees themselves, who, untold
ages before, had brought to finite perfection
48 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
their remarkable systems and policies. In all
likelihood the bee-masters, the practical men who
owned the hives, had much the same shrewd
faculty of leaving things alone in far-off times as
we observe among the skeppists of the last genera-
tion. In many ways, what they did at last come
to do they did ill, notably in the apparently
insane practice of destroying the bees to obtain
the honey. But even this was not so foolish a
procedure as it appears to-day. It was a plain
matter of business, according to the lights of the
time. Their process was to condemn to the sulphur-
pit all the lightest and the heaviest of their stocks.
Experience taught them that the weak colonies
stood little chance of getting through the winter
unless they were artificially fed; while if the bees
of the large colonies were preserved, after being
robbed of their stores, they would need the same
provision. Itwasamatterofarithmetic. Artificial
feeding was then a much more costly affair than
it is to-day, and the reckoning came out well on
the side of slaughter. The worst part of the
business, so far as modern scientific bee-breeders
are concerned, is that the old system of destruc-
tion tended to preserve only those strains of
bees who were inveterate swarmers; while the
steady, industrious stay-at-homes, who accumu-
lated the largest stores of honey, were invari-
ably exterminated. This is a fateful legacy to
have passed on, when we consider that one of
BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 49
the chief aims of modern bee-science is to abolish
swarming altogether. The swarming habit is one
of the greatest obstacles in the way of a large
honey yield, and until a race of non-swarming
bees has been evolved by modern breeders there
will always be this element of uncertainty in the
honey harvest.
Latter-day beemen, therefore, join the chorus of
disapproval of this old, senseless custom of bee-
burning, rather because it has given them the task
of undoing the work of ages before any progress
is possible, than from the generally accepted
humanitarian reasons.
CHAPTER IV
AT THE CITY GATES
N a village in Southern Sussex, close under the
green brink of the Downs, there live two bee-
keepers who represent, in their widely diver-
gent methods and outlook, the extremes of bee-
manship as still extant in modern times.
The one dwells in a little ancient thatched
cottage, set in the heart of an old-fashioned English
garden, where dome-shaped hives of straw are
dotted about at random amidst a wild growth of the
old-fashioned English flowers. The other has
built himself a trim villa on a hillside, topped
with a sheltering crest of pine-wood ; and here he
has established a great modern honey-farm, replete
with every device and system of management
known to apiarian scientists throughout the two
worlds.
One might suppose, on leaving the village
street on a fine May morning and coming upon
these two settlements in the open country beyond,
that all the romance and old-world flavour of
bee-keeping were inevitably to be found in the
50
=
oe
Ss
ANGEMENT OF COMB:
NATURAL ARR
INVERTED STRAW SKEP-HIVE, SHOWING
AT THE CITY GATES ‘ 51
ancient bee-garden, where the droning music of
the hives seems to originate in the thicket of
blossoming lilac, and red-may, and veronica, the
hives themselves being the last things one noticed
in such a tangle of bright-hued flowers. To ex-
pect sentiment in the other quarter—a great
cindered tract of country, with its long parallel
rows of modern hives, all painted in various colours,
its dwelling-house that might have been trans-
planted bodily from a well-to-do London suburb,
and its line of outbuildings, with their bustle of
business, and coughing oil-engine, and reverbera-
tion of hammer and saw—was to expect something
evidently out-of-date and impossible. As well look
for art in a Ghetto as to seek reverence for ancient
bee-customs in a twentieth-century trading con-
cern such as this, established to supply the market
for honey just as a Manchester ‘factory turns out
calico and corduroy.
Many lovers of country life, peripatetic artists
and chance pedestrians for the most part, came to
the village with this notion firmly impressed upon
them, and, visiting the old bee-garden and finding
the old beautiful things there in abundance, went
no farther, and became no wiser. They wandered
round the crooked, red-tiled paths of the garden
with its ancient proprietor ; stooped under bowers
of living gold and purple ; waded through seas of
scarlet poppy and blue forget-me-not and tawny
mignonette ; came upon old beehives in all sorts
4—2
52 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
of shady, unpremeditated corners; and steeped
themselves in medizvalism up to the eyes. The
very song of the bees seemed to belong entirely
to past days. None, surely, but a hopeless Vandal
could put a colony of bees in one of the ugly
square hives, and expect them to-go honey-seeking
in the old harmonious, happy way, sanctified of
the ages. And so they never ventured up the hill
to the great bee-farm, but kept to the garden
below, and listened by the hour together to the
quaint talk of its white-headed, smock-frocked
owner, or stood valiantly at the foot of the ladder
when he climbed up to dislodge a swarm from the
moss-grown apple-boughs, or helped him to scour
the new straw skeps with handfuls of mint and
lavender, or beat out weird, unskilful music with
the door-key on the old brass-pan when a swarm
was high in the air.
Much could be learnt, it is true, from quiet
days spent in the old bee-garden, especially in
May, before the earliest swarms were ready to
forsake the hives.
The first faculty to be acquired was that of
wandering among the bees, or standing between
their straw houses, undismayed at their incessant
and often terrifying approaches, Whatever con-
fidence one may place in bee-keepers’ assertions
that their bees never sting, it is a bold man who
can preserve entire equanimity when bees are
settling continuously on his hands, his face, his
AT THE CITY GATES 53
clothing, and a whole flying squadron of them
are shrilling vindictively about his ears. Nothing
will come of it, he knows, if only he can keep
still, But the tendency to turn and flee, or at
least to beat off these minatory atoms with wildly.
waving arms, is all but irresistible for the novice.
It is only their way, he is assured, of expressing
_or of satisfying their curiosity; and, this being
done, they fly off harmlessly enough to give a
good report of him to the ruling powers within
the hive. But he knows that this report is
sometimes anything but good. At least, there
are a few luckless individuals in the world who
dare not venture within a dozen yards of a bee-
hive without being set upon unmercifully, and
chased by an angry squad of these tart virgins
for the space of a quarter-mile. Moreover, in
certain states of the weather—when thunder is
about, and the air is tense and still—bees will
often sheath their barbed daggers in any human
skin, even that of their owner, who has gone
among them daily all the season unmolested.
There is, therefore, a fateful element of chance
in all near watching of beehives, a sensation of
being under fire—fine discipline enough, but, for
the timorous, hardly to be reckoned among the
easy joys of existence.
These first deterrents, however, being happily
overcome, the watcher is sure to be caught up,
sooner or later, in the sheer fascination of the
54 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
thing, and to find himself recklessly, almost
breathlessly, looking on at what is nothing else
than a great informing pageant of life.
He stands, as it were, a stranger at the gates
of a city, inhabited by the most interesting, and
in some respects the most advanced, people in
the world. Of the inner life of the city, apart
from the deep busy murmur that surges out to
him, he learns nothing, and will learn nothing
until he puts sentimental pride in his pocket, and
makes pilgrimage to the great bee-farm on the
hill, But here, in the meanwhile, is food enough
to satisfy the keenest appetite for the marvellous.
In and out through the yawning entrance-gate
of the city, under the hot May sunshine, there
are thousands of busy people coming and going.
The broad threshold of the hive is completely
hidden under opposing streams, the one setting
out towards the fragrant fields and hedgerows,
the other tumbling and seething in, almost every
bee dragging after her some kind of mysterious
treasure.
The outgoing bees start on their journey in
two different fashions. Some emerge from the
hive and rise at once on the wing, lancing straight
off into the sunshine ; and these are foragers, who
have already made several journeys afield since
the sun broke, hot and rosy, over the eastward
hill. But others, essaying their first excursion
for the day, creep out of the murmurous darkness
AT THE CITY GATES 55
of the hive, and come with a little impetuous
rush to the edge of the alighting-board. Here
they pause a moment to flutter their wings and
rub their great eyes free of the hive-twilight.
And then they lift into the air, hover an instant
with their heads towards their dwelling, taking
careful stock of it, sweep up into the blue, and
volley away with the rest towards the distant
hill-side, white with its bridal wreath of clover-
bloom.
The homing bees move much more sedately..
They come sailing in like bronze argosies laden
to the water's edge. Those bearing full sacs of
clover-juice for the honey-making seldom carry
an outside load of pollen as well. They have all
to do in bringing their distended bodies to a safe
anchorage on the entrance-board, and charge
headlong into the hive, possessed of only one
idea—to hand their garnered sweets over to the
‘first house-bee they chance upon, and then to
hurry out in search of another load. The pollen-
bearers are impelled by the same white-hot
energy; but their cargoes are infinitely more
cumbersome, and demand a more leisurely pace.
Some with panniers, heaped up with a deep
orange-coloured material, must rest awhile on the
threshold before gathering energy enough to drag
their glowing burdens through the city gate.
Others just fail to make the harbour, and. sink
down on to the grass below, to wait for the same
56 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
freshet of strength that is finally to bring them
into the security of the populous haven. Scores
of them do not try for harbour at} first tack, but,
coming safely into the calm waters of the garden,
rest awhile on the nearest leaf or blossom, panting
and tremulous, until they are able to wear sail for
the last reach home.
There is infinite diversity in the loads of these
pollen-carrying bees. Hardly a colour, or shade
of colour, in the rainbow fails to pass during every
moment across the thronging way. Every bee
carries a half-globe of this substance, beautifully
rounded and shaped, on each of her two hind-legs.
It is possible, by marking the colour of her
burden, to tell with certainty what flower she has
been plundering on each of her trips. This bright
orange, which makes always the largest and
heaviest bales in the stream of merchandise, is
from the dandelions. From the gorse-flowers
come loads of deep rich brown almost as weighty.
The charlock, that mingles its useless, wanton
beauty with every farm-crop, yields the bee
interminable gold. White clover, red clover,
sainfoin, all load up the little hive coolies with
different shades of russet. From the apple-
orchards come bursting panniers of pale yellow;
the blackberry-blossom yields pollen of a delicate
greenish-white. When summer comes, and the
poppies make scarlet undertones amidst the wheat
and barley, these winged merchant-women stream
AT THE CITY GATES 57
homeward with their pollen-baskets laden with
funereal black.
But, if you watch a hive at work on any bright
spring or summer morning, you will see single bees
occasionally pass with loads whose source has
never yet been fathomed. The lean, glistening,
rufous stuff that is continually borne through the
hustling crowd is resin gathered from poplar or
pine, and used to glue the straw hive down to its
base-board, or to stop up draughty crevices and use-
less corners, or, diluted into varnish, to paint the
honeycombs with an acid-proof, preservative film.
But now and then comes a bee with a load whose
colour shines up like a danger-signal in darkness.
Brilliant scarlet, or soft rose-crimson, or pale
lavender, or gleaming white—who shall say in
what far, forgotten nook of the country-side she
has been adventuring, or what rare blossom she
has chanced upon in the wilderness, and, despoil-
ing it of its maiden treasure greedily, has quickened
into duplication the beauty that was its reason
for life?
Yet the greatest wonder about all this pollen-
gathering is that each separate load has been
taken entirely from one species of flower. The
little half-spheres are packed into the pollen-cells
indiscriminately, orange on brown, pale yellow
mingled with green, or buff, or grey. But each
pair of panniers, representing a single journey,
contains the pollén-dust of one kind of blossom
58 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
alone. Going out into an English lane or meadow
to watch the bees at work, the first conviction
borne in upon an observer is that the bees are
darting about from flower to flower without other
thought than to load up from any and every
capable blossom that stands in their way. But
closer scrutiny reveals a curious plan and order in
this, as in everything else that the honey-bee
undertakes. Tracing an individual bee in her
progress along the flowery verge of the lane,
you will soon see that she visits only one species
of blossom. If she starts on hawthorn, it will be
hawthorn all the way. If her load of willowherb-
nectar or pollen is not yet a full one, she will
overpass a score of tansy-knots or waving jungles
of meadow-sweet, just as inviting and resourceful,
apparently, to reach the one scanty patch of purple
at the end of the lane.
Why she should be at such pains to keep the
pollen separate as she gathers it, only to get it in-
extricably mingled with every other kind in the
storehouse at home, is a problem that none but a
bee can solve. But all the honey-bee’s reasons
and motives in life are made up of a curious blend
of cold-drawn sense and sentiment ; and it may be
inferred that need and fancy have an equal influ-
ence in guiding her in this, as in everything else
she does, from her cradle-cell to her grave. Not
altogether without seriousness, it may be hazarded
that quite as probable a reason for her way of
AT THE CITY GATES 59
pollen-gathering is that she deems a certain shade
of colour makes a more becoming flying-robe,
as that she keeps each load of pollen pure, un-
blended, because of some imperious, economic
need of the hive. The factor of sex, in all obser-
vation of the ways of the honey-bee, is no more to
be considered a negligible one than it is in the
critical contemplation of the human species of hive.
All this incessant coming and going of the busy
foragers is alluring enough to the looker-on, but
there is evidence of many other activities equally
interesting. The work of collecting nectar and
pollen is obviously only a part of the duties of this
self-immolated spinster-race. Here and there in
the seething, hurrying crowd there are bees who
do not move with the rest, but, anchored securely
in the full force of the living current, with heads
lowered and turned towards the hive, are engaged
in fanning their wings, and this so swiftly that
nothing of the wing but a little grey mist can be
seen. Looking more carefully, you will make out
that these bees are arranged in nearly regular
rows, one behind the other, in open order, so that
the conflicting tides of foragers can pass uninter-
ruptedly between. If the watcher is bold enough
to bring his ear down to the level of the hive, he
will make out a steady hissing noise that rings
clear above all the din and turmoil made by the
incessant travellers to and fro. These rows of
fanners are seen to stretch from the hive-door
60 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
right to the edge of the footplate, but principally
on one side; and still closer observation will
reveal the fact that there is a regular system of
relief among them. Though the general volume
of sound never abates one jot, every few minutes
one or another of these stationary bees moves
away, her place being immediately taken by
another, who settles down to the common task in
line with the rest. The reason forall this is plain
enough: the fanners are ‘engaged in ventilating
the hive, drawing a current of vitiated air through
the entrance on one side, which flanks, but does
not oppose, a corresponding current of pure air
sucked in on the other.
All through the warm days of spring and
summer this fanning squadron is constantly at
work ; nor does it cease with the darkness. Chill
nights find the ranks weakened and reduced to
perhaps only a few bees, or even to none at all
when a cold snap of weather intervenes. But in
the dog-days, or, as the ancients used to say, when
Sirius, the honey-star, is shining, the deep sibilant
note of these fanners rises, in a populous apiary,
almost to the voice-strength of a gale of wind. To
come out then under the stars of a summer night,
and stand listening in the tense, fragrant darkness
to this mighty note, is to get an impression of bee-
life unattainable at any other season. In the day-
time the sound is intermingled, overwhelmed, by
the chorus of the flying bees. But now all are
BEE-HOUSE
SUSSEX
AN OLD
_ AT THE CITY GATES 61
safely at home. Each hive is packed from floor
to roof with tens of thousands of breathing, heat-
producing creatures: the necessity for ventilation
is quadrupled, and, far and wide in the bee- .
garden, the fanning armies are setting to their
work with a will.
The. freshman at this fascinating branch of
nature-study, brought out into the quiet night to
hear such gargantuan music, is always strangely
affected by it, some natures incredibly so. In all
the great placid void of darkened hill and dale
around him, in the whole blue arch overhead, alive
with the flinching silver of the stars, there is no
sound but a chance trill of a nightingale, the bark
of a shepherd’s dog on the distant upland, or, now
and then, the droning song of a beetle passing
invisibly by. All the world seems at rest, save
these mysterious people in the hives; and with
them the sound of labour is only redoubled.
Bending down to the nearest hive in the darkness,
the note comes up to one like the angry roar of
the sea. A light brought cautiously to bear upon
it, discloses the alighting-board covered with rows
of bees, working, as it were, for their lives; while
other bees continually wander in and out of the
entrance—the sentries that guard it night and day,
just as soldiers guarded the gates of human cities
in olden times. The novice at bee-craft, even
the most staid and matter-of-fact, is invariably
plunged into marvelling silence at the sight. But
62 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
if the night be exceptionally hot and oppressive,
and the fanning army unusually large, the bee-
master with an eye for dramatic effect generally
finishes the tiro’s wonderment by showing him an
old trick. He lowers the candle until the flame
is just behind the squadron of ventilating bees,
and at once all is darkness: the current of air
drawn out of the hive has proved strong enough
to extinguish the light.
It has been said that there are guard-bees who
watch the hive-door day and night. To the un-
skilled human eye one bee looks very like another,
and it is difficult to understand how, in the many
thousands that pass, the guards manage to detect
an intruder so unerringly, and to eject her with
such unceremonious promptitude as is always
shown. Probably it is not by sight alone that
these occasional interlopers are singled out. The
sense of smell in the honey-bee is extraordinarily
acute, and this, no doubt, assists the guards in
their difficult work. It is well known that a queen-
bee must possess a very distinct odour, as her
mere presence abroad, even when shut up in a box,
will attract the drones from all quarters. In all
likelihood the peculiar aroma from each queen-bee
impregnates the whole colony, and thus the guard-
bees are able at once to distinguish their own kin
from that of alien stocks.
Still watching the outside life of the hive in the
old bee-garden, many other interesting things
AT THE CITY GATES 63
come to light. In such an establishment, even if
it be only an old-fashioned straw skep, perhaps
more than twenty thousand individuals are located;
and obviously some regular system of cleaning and
scavenging is indispensable. This work can be
seen now, going on uninterruptedly in the midst
of all the other busy enterprises. Every moment
bees come labouring out, bearing particles of refuse,
which they throw over the edge of the foot-board,
and at once shoulder their way back for another
load. Other bees appear, carrying the bodies of
comrades who have died in the hive; and every
now and then one comes struggling through the
crowd, bearing high above her a strange and
ghastly thing, perfect replica of herself, but white
throughout, save for its black beady eyes. This
is the unborn bee, dead in its cradle-cell. Infant
mortality is an evil not yet overcome even by the
doughty honey-bee, and many are carried out
thus, especially in early spring. Watching these
undertakers of the hive in their gruesome but
necessary work, a singular fact can be noted.
While all other debris is merely cast over the
brink of the entrance-board, where it accumulates
day by day on the grass below, these dead larvee
are never disposed of thus. They are carried right
away, their bearers taking wing and flying straight
off over the hedgerow, to drop them at harmless
distance from the neighbourhood of the hive.
There is still another kind of work going briskly
64 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
forward round the gates of the bee-city. Certain
among these stay-at-home bees seem to exercise
a sort of common overseership. They help those
weighed down with too heavy a cargo to reach
the city gates. If a lump of pollen is dropped in
the general scuffle, these bees seize it and take it
into the hive. Sometimes a bee comes eddying
downward, smothered from head to foot with
pollen, like a golden miller, and she is immedi-
ately pounced upon by these superintendents, and
combed free of her incommodious treasure. Others
see to the grooming of the young bees, about to
essay their first flight. The youngster sits up,
protruding her tongue to its fullest extent, while
half a dozen bees gather round her, licking and
stroking her on every side. At last her toilette is
done, and she is liberated, when, with a little flutter
of her wings, she lifts high into the blue air and sun-
shine and makes off with the rest tothe clover-fields,
glittering afar off in the joyous midday light.
Forinsensibly the hours have worn on—itis noon
—and the tense thronging life, the deep rich labour-
song, of the bee-garden seem to have reached their
height. But suddenly a greater noise than ever
arises on all sides : a steady stream of bees, larger
and bulkier than the rest, is pouring out of every
hive. The drones, the lazy brothers of these labo-
rious vestals, have roused at last from their sleep,
and are coming abroad for their daily flight. In
twos and threes, in whole battalions, they hustle out,
AT THE CITY GATES 65
and begin their noontide gambols about the hive,
filling the air with a gay, roistering song. Ina
little while they will be all gone to their revels,
and the bee-garden will seem, by comparison,
strangely quiet. But now the sudden accession
of energy is unmistakable. With the awakening
of the drones there seems to be a new spirit
abroad. The air is no longer filled to overflow-
ing with busy foragers. Many of these have
joined the dance round the hives, so that each
bee-dwelling is the centre of a singing, gambolling
crowd, moved rather by a spirit of play, almost of
idleness. But this brief moment of relaxation
soon passes. The drones betake themselves
to their marital pleasuring in the fields. The
noisy midday symphony dies down to the old
steady monotone of work. And the watcher at
the gates of the bee-city turns to retrace his steps
down the flower-garlanded way of the old pleas-
ance, satiated with wonders, yet not satisfied, his
curiosity only quickened a thousandfold for that
which has been inexorably held from him, a
glimpse of what is happening behind those baffling
walls of straw.
Wending slowly homeward, and pondering, he
asks himself many questions. What is the reason,
the final outcome, of all this earnest, well-directed
labour? What is done with the pollen that has
been carried in all the morning long? Where
there is obviously so much system, and unanimity,
5
66 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
and ingenious division of endeavour, there cannot
fail to be a supreme and governing intelligence to
allot the part that each must play. This story of
a queen—of a single bee, larger than all the rest,
to whom all pay allegiance, and who spends her
whole life in the dim labyrinth of the hive, like the
Pope in the Vatican—is it a truth, or only a fig-
ment of the ignorant, bucolic brain? If this queen
exist, if every hive have indeed its absolute
monarch, who directs the whole complex life and
policy of the bee-city, where in the scale of reason-
ing creatures must she be placed ?
And then, if he be wise, the student will learn at
last to give the picturesque old bee-garden its true
appraisement. Ancient things conserve their
beauty, and win the love of the right kind of
lovers, more and more with every century that
glides by. Only their usefulness, their import in
the tide of human knowledge and progress, has
gone with the years. It isso with the bee-garden
under its Maytide robe of green leaves and rain-
bow blossoms. It is beautiful in its glad appear-
ances, its echo of old voices, its odour of the sanc-
. tity in ancient ways and days. But it can tell us
nothing of all we want to know. It can only ask
us riddles to which we have no answers. For
these we must set aside old fanciful scruples ; turn
our backs, once for all, on its enchantment and its
sweetness ; bend our steps unswervingly towards
the great modern bee-farm on the hill.
CHAPTER V
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE
DOCTOR DRYASDUST will manage to
impart to the truths he meddles with a dis-
astrous air of dulness and stagnation ; but
to walk in a fools’ paradise of beautiful, artistic
error is to lay oneself open to an infinitely worse
fate. There never was a truth in Nature that was
dull or uninteresting, except in its human present-
ment. There never was a pretty worthless fiction
that did not show its dross and tinsel when brought
out into the searching light of day. Romance,
the spirit of poetry, have largely changed their
venue of recent years. The unconscionable delver
among old things, old thoughts, old conventions,
on the strand of Time, has tarried so long in his
one little florid corner that he is in some danger
of being caught by the tide. He must soon either
mend his pace or swim for it. Human regard is
turning more and more towards those who deal in
living verities—the men who search the stars, who
win new powers out of the common air, who find
at last the authentic teachings in the old worn
52 67
68 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
texts of the stones and brooks. These are the
true poets, romancists, tellers of wondrous tales ;
and these will hold the crowd—which is never far
astray in its intuitions—when all the singers of
sick fancies and the harpers on frayed golden
strings have gone off in melancholy dudgeon to
their own place.
The old story—which has held such a long and
honoured position in school text-books, and in the
writings of those who tell of Nature’s wonders
from the commanding watch-tower of the study
fire—the old story of the queen-bee ruling her thirty
or forty thousand dutiful subjects, and guiding
them unerringly in all their marvellous exploits and
enterprises, must go now with the rest. For the
truth, as modern observers have unquestionably
established it, is that the queen-bee is no ruler in
the hive, but even a more obedient subject than
any. The real instigators and contrivers of every-
thing that takes place within the hive are the
worker-bees themselves. The queen has neither
part nor lot in the direction of the common polity ;
nor has she any power, mental or physical, to
help in the carrying out of public works. Her
sole duty is that of motherhood, and even in this
she derives all initiative from the sovereign worker-
bees. She is little more than an ingenious piece
of mechanism, and carefully guarded and cherished
accordingly. She has certain propensities, and
certain elemental passions, which she can always
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 69
be counted on to exercise in certain well-defined
and limited ways. But as an intelligent, origin-
ating force she counts for nothing. The mind in
the hive is the collective mind of the whole colony,
apart from the queen and drones—an hereditary,
communal intellect evolved through the ages,
the sum and total of all bee experience since the
world of bees began.
If, however, modern science compels us to
divest the mother-bee of all her regal state and
quality, and thus destroy one of the prettiest delu-
sions of ancient times, it is only to take up a story
of real life more alluring and romantic still, In
the light of new understanding the old facts take
on a mystery and excite a wonderment greater
than ever before. If we found the life of the
hive an enthralling study when we supposed it to
originate from one winged atom endowed with
acute and commanding abilities, how much more
fascinating must it prove when we come to see
that all this complex system of government is
instituted and kept together by the harmonious
working of tens of thousands of reasoning beings ?
Reasoning—it is a big word, a double-edged
thing that requires careful handling. We have
been so long accustomed to use it only in regard
to our own magnificent mental processes that it
savours almost of the ridiculous to bring it to bear
upon such a tiny et-cetera in the brute creation as
the honey-bee. And yet, the deeper we go in the
70 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
study of the bee and all her works, the more diffi-
cult it becomes to find a word that shall more
fittingly meet the case. Instinct will not do.
Instinct implies a dead perfection of motive, born
of omniscience, working through unthinking, un-
varying organisms to an equally perfect end.
But in neither project nor performance can the
honey-bee be said invariably to achieve, or even
to aim at, perfection. It will be seen hereafter
that her motives, her methods, the results she
brings about, all show frequent, undeniable error
or deviation. She attempts to carry through a
sound enterprise, but abandons it on finding un-
foreseen difficulties in the way. She will persevere
blindly in an obviously foolish piece of business,
and fail to see her mistake until both energy and
resources are at an end. Sudden emergencies
may find her ready with the saving stroke of last
ingenuity, or merely plunge her into listless despair.
Courage, industry, economy, wise forethought, or
still wiser afterthought, are all common traits in
her nature. But she may develop idleness, un-
thrift, slovenliness, or even downright dishonesty,
if chance or circumstance indicate the way.
And what are all these but the defects or
attributes of reason? If bees and men, each
admittedly rooted in divinity, be prone to the like
failings and inconse quences, who shall discriminate
between them, dividing arbitrarily natural cause
and effect ?
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 71
Watching bees at work for the first time through
the glass panels of an observation hive, or in the
almost equally informing modern hive with movable
combs, this question continually arises, and there
seems only one answer for it. There is something
curiously human-like in their movements over the
crowded combs, and the old comparison of a bee-
hive to a city of men is never out of mind. There
are the incessant hurryings to and fro; chance
meetings of friends at odd street-corners ; alterca-
tions where we can almost hear the surly complaint
and tart reply; busy masons and tilers and
warehouse-hands at work everywhere: a hundred
different enterprises going forward in every throng-
ing thoroughfare or narrow side-lane, from the
great main entrance to the remotest drone-haunted
corner of the hive.
You will see the huge, full-bodied queen labour-
ing over the combs from cell to cell, with a
circle of attendants ever about her. In the
highest stories of the hive the honey-makers are
at work, pouring the new-garnered sweets into
the vats, or sealing over with impervious wax the
mature honey. Where the nurseries are estab-
lished, in the central and warmest region of the
hive, the nurse-bees are hurrying incessantly over
the combs, looking into each cell to mark the
progress of the larve; giving each its due ration
of bee-milk ; or, when the time arrives, walling up
the cell with a covering that shall insure its privacy,
72 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
but freely admit the air. Here and there the
young bees have awakened from their transform-
ing slumber, and are clamouring at the stoppings
of their prenatal tombs, gnawing their way out _
vigorously, or thrusting forth red, glistening,
ravenous tongues, eager to end their long fast.
Where these raw youngsters have at last won
their way into existence, they can be seen
assiduously grooming themselves, or searching
the neighbouring comb for honey, while the
nurse-bees are busy cleaning out the cells, just
vacated, to make them ready for the queen when
she comes by on her next egg-laying round.
And all these operations are going forward
simultaneously on an incredibly large scale.
Certain amazing scraps of information are given
to the wondering on-looker, which he hears, but
can, at this stage in his progress, seldom rightly
estimate. He is told that the queen is the only
mother-bee in the colony, large as it is; that, in
the prime of her maternity, she will lay as many
as 3,000 eggs a day; and that she has the power
to produce either male or female eggs, or none at
all, at will. He is told that, except when she leads
forth the swarm, she goes out of the hive only
once in her life, and this is her wedding-trip. On
this one occasion she has traffic with the drone
somewhere incredibly high up in the blue air and
sunshine of the summer's day; and that immediate
death is her suitor’s invariable portion; that she
returns at once to the hive, and thereafter for the
NaqaAO HLIM ‘AAI
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 73
rest of her life, which may endure for years, she
passes her time in immaculate widowhood, yet
retaining her fertility to the end.
She is pointed out to the gaping novice as she
travels her unceasing round of the brood-combs, and
her various attributes are explained to him. He is
shown how much larger she is than the worker-
bee ; how her bodily structure differs in a dozen
important ways; how her instincts and habits re-
semble those of the common worker hardly in a
single particular. Finally he is told something at
which the most polite credulity may well demur.
Although the mother-bee is to all appearances of a
totally different race, the egg from which she was
raised was identical with that which produces the
little worker. Her bodily size, the change in the
number and shape of her organs, her mental dif-
ferences, are all due to treatment and diet alone.
There is no reason why she should not have been an
ordinary neuter working-bee, nor why any one of the
thirty or forty thousand little workersinahive should
not have become a great queen-bee, the sole mother
of an entire colony, save for the edict of the communal
mind. More wonderful still, the drones, the male
bees—the brothers, never the fathers, of theix own
hive, as has been so often stated—owe the fact of
their sex entirely to the will or whim of the hive
authorities, working through the docile agency of
the queen. Until the moment before the egg is
laid, the question of the sex of the resulting bee
74 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
is held in abeyance. This big lusty drone, with
exuberant masculinity obvious in every posture
and act; his totally different organism; his in-
capacity for anything else than the fulfilment of the
one office required of him, for he cannot even “©
entirely feed himself; his. habit of spending his
life either in a comfortable lethargy of repletion
at home, or in amorous knight-errantry abroad—
this drone might have been a little plodding
worker-bee, with shrunken yet elaborated body
and curiously developed brain, whose one idea in
life is to get through the largest amount of work
before death claims her, and who is armed with
a formidable poisoned sting, while the drone has
none.
It is useless at this stage to tell the learner that
all these vital differences—miracles, indeed, in the
ordinary meaning of the word—are brought about
by the leading powers of the hive in certain simple,
easily explainable ways. He has lost, for the
moment, all sight of and interest in the details,
however extraordinary, in the perception that has
dawned on him of the vastness of the entire plan.
Here is a community that, to all appearances, has
solved every problem relating to the well-being
and progress of a crowded, highly organised
society. Questions that are now vexing socialistic
philosophers in the human world, or are looming
dark intheimmediate future—problemsof numerical
increase in relation to food-supply, the balance of
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 75
the sexes, communal or individual ownership in
property, due qualification for parenthood, the
hegemony of might or right—all seem to have
been happily settled long ago in this remarkable
bee-commonwealth. In itself a prosperous, well-
conducted hive appears to offer a living example,
a perfect object-lesson of what Socialism, carried
out to its last and sternest eonclusions, must mean
to human and apiarian communities alike. Here is
a number of individuals—counting anything from
ten thousand to fifty or sixty thousand, according
to their condition and the time of year—living
heathily and comfortably in the space of a few
cubic feet. The principle, all for the greatest
good of the greatest number, is elevated into a
prime maxim, to which every one must bow. The
fiction of royalty is maintained in harmony with
the perfect republican spirit. The females are
supreme in everything, the males in nothing.
Growth of population is accelerated or retarded,
according to estimations of the immediate or
future supply of food. The proportion of the
sexes is varied at will. The rule, that those who
cannot work must not live, is applied with relent-
less consistency. All the garnered wealth of the
State is held in common for the common good.
When the settlement becomes too populous, and
the boundaries cannot be extended, a large part
of its inhabitants are forced to emigrate, taking
with them only so much of the state property as
76 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
they can carry in their haversacks, and relinquish-
ing all claim to the rest. The governing females
have apparently agreed among themselves that
only one of their number shall exercise the privi-
lege of motherhood; and when her fertility declines,
she is deposed, and a new mother-bee, specially
raised for the purpose, installed in her place.
All these, and a host of other facts as to bee-
life, are crowded into the bewildered brain of the
tiro until its capacity is exhausted, and he can
take no more. He begins to see, at length, that
he is approaching a great matter too fast, and
from the wrong direction. Like a scholar who,
resolving on a new and difficult branch of study,
commences at the end of his treatise instead of
at the beginning, he finds himself in the midst
of terms and equations of which he knows nothing.
All this desultory peering into hive-windows, and
listening to scraps of astounding information, is
nothing but opening the book of bee-life here and
there at odd disjointed pages, getting a swift
impression of certain lurid, kaleidoscopic details,
but no grounding in the consecutive science of the
facts. There is nothing for it—if he be resolved to
know the life of the honey-bee truly—but to turn
back to the first page of the volume, and steadily
work his way through to the end—f end there be.
Allknow the English honey-bee—the Black Bee,
as ‘she is called, partly to distinguish her from her
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 77
foreign rivals, and partly, it would seem, because
she is not black at all, but a rich brown—but all
do not know her origin. Probably she came to
us from the tropics by easy stages, swarm out-
flying swarm, until the most adventurous crossed
the English Channel in remote ages, when it was
only a narrow race of water, or even before
Great Britain was detached from the mainland.
It was the black bee, and not the motley-
coloured Italian or other varieties, who came to
us thus, for the same reason, probably, that the
Celts came—because they were a hardy race, loving,
and being more fitted for the bracing northern
atmosphere than the heat and languor of the
south. Modern bee-breeders who are trying so
hard to acclimatise in Britain the golden-girdled
or silver-fringed bee-races of other lands, might
well ponder this fact. No keener controversy
rages to-day among English bee-masters than this
one of the relative merits of native and foreign
stocks. But assuredly Nature has not erred in this
respect. South Down sheep can be reared in any
county, but nowhere so fine as on the Sussex
Downs. The like principle holds good with the
English bee. The ages have evolved her from
her tropic beginnings to make her what she is—a
doughty, essentially British creature, thriving
against all odds of fickle climate, when her more
tender sisters from the south are hard put to it
for a living. She has held her own against them,
78 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
and more than her own. In bumper seasons,
such as we get all too rarely, when, in sober truth,
the land is flowing with honey, there is little to
choose between the rival honey-makers. But
through good and bad, early and late, for steady,
dogged industry, invincible hardihood, tangible
results, the English black bee has out-distanced all
competitors. ‘Thousands of years have gone to
her making, and thousands more may conceivably
fit the yellow-skirted Ligurian for British work.
But labour for so remote a posterity were altruism
meeter for angels than for men.
In her old primeval fastnesses the honey-bee is
little likely to have troubled herself with hive-
making, but to have hung her combs to some
convenient branch in the forest, much as the bees
in India do to-day. The habit of seeking some
hollow tree or cleft in the rock grew upon her
probably as she advanced northward, and some
nightly or seasonal shelter became more and more
an imperious need. The present-day customs of
wild creatures give some inkling of their ancestral
ways, but it is in their occasional aberrations from
these customs that we get the truest indications
of what their original state must have been.
Lost swarms of bees, if they fail to pitch upon
some better site, will often build in the open,
either suspending their waxen houses from some
horizontal branch, or making them in the heart
of a thick bush.
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 79
The ways of the honey-bee are full of such
deviations, due, perhaps, to the working of old
ancestral memory rousing dimly in the midst of
modern needs. The issue of a swarm may be
nothing else than the survival of an old process,
vital enough in its day, but, under the present
civilised conditions of bee-life, lacking the whet of
entire necessity. For, in all respects, the life of
the bee, ancient as it is, is an evolved civilisation,
and not a surviving, aboriginal state. It is con-
ceivable that the foxes have their holes, and the
birds their nests, much after the same fashion as
in the days when Adam invented love-making.
But the twentieth-century honey-bee is not of
this kind. The communal habit itself may even
have been a comparatively late introduction in
her progress. It is possible to get some idea of
the path she won for herself through the ages by
studying the ways of creatures now living, but
immeasurably less advanced than the bee. There
are distant connections of hers—lonely little wood-
wasps and others—which never associate with
their kind, but get through the short summer
hours in solitude, and die with the waning season,
leaving the perpetuation of their species to the
children they never see. The common wasp is
nearer the honey-bee in development, but still
infinitely far behind. The fecundated queen-wasp
comes out of her winter hiding-place, fashions a
cell or two in some hole in the ground, and
80 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
deposits her first eggs, thus laying the foundation
of a colony which, populous enough in the season,
must nevertheless perish with the next winter
chills.
In the primeval tropics the honey-bees may
have lived in separate families, each with its
teeming mother, its indolent, lie-abed father—the
Turveydrop of creation—and its bevy of youngsters,
every one going out, when grown, to establish a
home for itself. The modern bee-city, with its
complicated systems and laws, and its innumerable
multitudes, may have originated only when change
of habitat and climate brought about the necessity
for a new order of things. Living in perpetual
warmth, in a land where blossom followed blossom
in unending succession, there would be no need
for such co-operation. The one little family,
snugging close in its moss-roofed corner, could
sustain its own temperature; and where there was
unceasing array of nectar-producing flowers, fore-
sight would have been folly: the winter larder
would have been left to take care of itself.
But as the young bees, leaving their homes, and
flying ever northward, came first into temperate
zones, and then into the fringe of Arctic influences,
the conditions gradually changed. The perpetual
sipping-garden was left behind; and a season came
in each year—short at first, but inevitably lengthen-
ing—when there were no flowers. Hard necessity
must have taught the bee, then, first to gather
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 81
together with her kind for warmth during the
cold season; and then, as this got longer and
longer, to make some food-provision for winter
days that would eke out endurance until the spring
sun again wooed the earth into flower-giving.
Thus the first communal bee-nests must have been
evolved from the universal need of the race: the
first common storehouses instituted : a host of un-
foreseen difficulties and side-issues encountered,
and means for dealing with them contrived. The
spirit of invention must have been busy then with
the race, and taxed to the limit, of her resources.
For?never did Pandora open celestial casket upon
earth with more redoubtable consequences, than
when the Great Artificer set up the honey-bee as
an examplar of city-building to the nomadic world
of men.
From the crowding together of the separate
bee-families for mutual protection against the ele-
ments, to a complete and permanent fusion of life
and interests, must have been only a step, as
Nature works. But then there must have been
stirring times—social upheavals, educative dis-
asters, a cataclysmic war of sex. Bee-life must
have been shaken to its very foundations. When
and how the woman-bee first got the upper hand
in the direction of affairs, it is unimportant to
determine. But it is certain that she got it, and
has kept it ever since. The population problem
must have been the great, overwhelming one.
6
82 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
With hundreds of prolific mothers in the hive,
each having enough to do at home in rearing her
own children, and a crowd of lazy, irresponsible
drones who could do nothing but dance in the
sunshine or go a-wooing, how were the daily needs
of the hive to be satisfied, leaving out of account
the provision that must be made for coming winter
days? It was clearly a case of reform or annihila-
tion ; and it may be conceived that the woman-
bees, in default of masculine initiative, took the
reins into their own hands.
It is a prophetic story. First they discovered
their latent powers. The harmless ovipositor
revealed itself as a prime weapon of offence.
Thus the army was with the revolutionaries, and
the rest was easy. A great, far-reaching scheme
was set afoot. Motherhood was to be a privilege
of the few and the fittest; work the compulsory
lot of the mass. Hard times had already bred a
lean, unfertile gang among them, and it was dis-
covered that famine rations in the nursery rneant
a wholesale increase in these natural spinsters of
the race. Henceforth the little sex-atrophied
worker-bee was multiplied in the hive, while the
fully nurtured mothers were gradually reduced to
a few—at last to one alone. It was a triumph
of collective self-sacrifice for the well-being and
high persistence of the race.
All this may be imagined as having taken place
in infinitely remote times, long before man suc-
THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 83
ceeded in distinguishing himself from the apes.
In the honey-bee of to-day, and her life in the
modern hive, we get a sort of quintessence of the
ages ; a creature developed in mind and body by
her unique conditions, these conditions again
imposing upon her unique systems of life. Like
Ruskin’s Venetian, she must live nobly or perish.
Much more is required of her than the réle of
domestic and political economist. To make
the modern beehive a possibility there must be
architects, mathematicians, and chemists within its
walls. Sanitary science must have its skilled ex-
ponents, or the hive would change into a death-
trap within a few hours. There must be land-
surveyors ready to explore the country, just before
the issue of the swarms, to determine for them
their new location. There must be overseers,
gang-forewomen, everywhere to superintend every
work in progress throughout the hive. Above
all, there must be a supreme central power, a far-
seeing intelligence, to divine the imminent com-
mon need, and to set the forces of the State to
work, in right time and order, to provide for it.
If all these cannot be proved to exist in a hive of
bees to-day, at least the necessity for them is
undeniable; and as undeniable, the achieved
results.
CHAPTER VI
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY
HE “turn of the days,” when the winter
sun has passed its nadir of feebleness and
just made its earliest wan recovery in the
skies, marks the true beginning of the honey-bee’s
year. Then the first few eggs are laid in the
heart of the brood-nest; the drowsy cluster begins
to show an interest in life; the water-carriers
bestir themselves, watching for a bright warm
morning that they may sally forth to ply their
trade.
Dangerous work it is at this season, yet most
necessary. Without water the rearing of the
young bees is impossible on any but the smallest
scale. Water is needed at every stage of their
development, and, lacking it, the progress of the
colony must be fatally checked. Even the mature
bees will starve and die in the midst of plenty, if
their honey-stores are candied, and no water is
available to dissolve the inassimilable sweets.
The hive that shows honey crystals thrown down
on the floor, and littering the entrance, is sure to
84
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY 85
be in desperate case. The bees are tearing open
every store-cell, casting away the solidified honey
as refuse, to get at the moister portion below.. It
the cold spell does not break, or the bee-master is
unready with his artificial supplies, the colony
must perish. So the water-bearers watch for the
sunshine, and its first warm glance brings them out
to rifle the nearest dewdrops, or track down by its
bubbling music the hidden woodland stream.
Many die at this work in the early months of the
year, chilled by their load on the homeward
journey, or snapped up by hungry birds. But at
every cost the future life of the colony must be
assured, though, of all the hive-people, none but
the queen-mother will be alive to see it in its
summer fulness.
We are accustomed to think of a hive of bees
as a permanent institution, Death playing his old,
unceasing, busy part, but young Life more than
outplaying him, just as the way is in a city-hive
of men. The analogy holds good, but in bee-
life the changes are infinitely more rapid. The
life of the .worker-bee extends, at most, to six
months or so; and in the busy season she may
die, worn out by labour, in as many weeks. The
reapers of last year’s honey-harvest were dead by
the autumn. The late-born bees, that went into
winter quarters with polished thorax and ragged
wings, survived only long enough to nurture their
immediate successors; and these, again, will live
86 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
but to bring to maturity the young spring-broods.
Not a bee among them will ever again go honey-
gathering. Except for the long-lived queen-
mother, and the old hive and its furniture, each
colony with every year becomes a totally new
thing.
Hibernation, in the true sense of the word, has
no part in bee-life. The queen-wasp and count-
less other creatures hibernate, passing the cold
months in a torpor of sleep until the enduring
warmth of another year lures them back to active
existence. But the honey-bees have a better way :
they gather together in a dense, all but motion-
less cluster in the heart of the hive, with their
precious queen in their midst and their food-stores
above them. At this time honey is their only
necessary food, and very little of this suffices to
keep up the needful temperature of the colony.
When they are out and about at their work, or
busy within the hive, the nitrogenous pollen must
be added to their daily ration of nectar to build up
wasted tissues; but now honey, the nectar con-
centrated, the heat-producer, is all. they want.
The bees of the cluster nearest to the combs
broach the full cells beneath them, and the honey
is passed through the crowd, each bee getting
its scanty dole.
Economy is now reduced to a fine art. None
knows when a fresh supply may be available,
although no chance will be lost to replenish the
THE BEE-GARDEN
WINTER IN
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY 87
larder at the first sign of returning warmth. But
now the barest minimum of food is taken, and as
the nearest cells become emptied of their contents,
the cluster moves a step upward. Thus there isa
system of slow browsing over the combs, until the
dense flock of bees has reached the highest limit of
the hive, when new grazing-ground must be taken.
But the movement of the cluster is exceedingly
slow, perhaps the slowest thing in the animate
world. All recognise that existence depends on
the stores being eked out to their uttermost. It is
a scientific damping-down of the fires of life—a
carefully thought-out and perfected plan for pre-
serving the greatest possible number of worker-
bees alive on the smallest practicable amount of
food, so that the largest possible army of nurse-
bees and foragers may be at hand in the spring-
time to raise the young bees that are to represent
the future colony.
But there is no hibernation. It is doubtful even
if bees ever sleep, either in their season of greatest
activity or in the coldest depths of winter. At
all times a slight rap on the hive will awaken
an immediate timorous outcry within. Sturdy
knocking will soon bring the guard-bees to the
entrance to find out the cause of the disturbance,
and many bees lose their lives from this vigilant
habit alone. On frosty days the tits may often
be seen perched on the entrance-board of a hive,
beating out a noisy tattoo, and snapping up every
88 THELORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
bee that emerges; and many other small birds
have discovered the same never-failing source of a
meal.
The fact that, with a healthy stock of bees, the
interior of a hive always preserves its clean con-
dition, is usually a great puzzle to the novice. In
the summer, when the bees are passing continually
in and out, this is not so vast a matter for wonder.
But in winter-time, when the colony is confined
to the hive often for weeks together, it is remark-
able that neither the combs nor floor of the hive
are ever soiled by excreta. This is a difficulty
that the sanitary department in the hive has
successfully coped with long ago. It must have
been one of the earliest problems that presented
itself when the honey-bee first evolved the com-
munal habit. The Ancients believed that all the
excreta of the hive were deposited by the bees in
certain privy-cells, and thence removed at intervals
by the scavenging authorities. There is nothing
in this notion, absurd as it is, outside the scope of
bee-ingenuity ; on the contrary, such a crude device
would be little likely to commend itself to the hive-
people, as it would be ridiculously inadequate to
the case. How great must be the problem of the
preservation of cleanliness in a hive can only be
understood when the whole conditions are con-
sidered together, and that from a human stand-
point. Putting the figures unwarrantably low,
what measure of success could the greatest genius
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY 89
that ever lived among sanitary scientists ever hope
to achieve, if he were given the task of keeping in
cleanly condition, perfect ventilation, and even
temperature, a building where 10,000 individuals
were crowded together storey above storey—a
building hermetically sealed throughout except
for one small opening at the lowest level, which
must serve for all purposes of entrance and exit
to its denizens, as well as sole conduit for the
removal of the foul air and introduction of the
pure? The task would be gigantic enough in
the summer-time, when a large proportion of the
inhabitants were away at work during a greater
part of the day; but in winter, when all were
continuously at home for weeks together, what
conceivable device, or combination of devices,
could prevent the building soon developing into
first a quagmire and then a charnel-house, to which
the Black Hole of Calcutta would be a model
Sanitary retreat ?
Yet the difference between such a building and
a beehive is only one of degree. The same con-
ditions are involved, and the same evils must be
combated. Relatively, the problem is the same
in each. In the case of the beehive, the necessity
for this close system of life has been very gradually
imposed on its inhabitants ; and age-long custom,
working on the individual, has at length produced
a race marvellously adapted to its special needs.
Probably the habit of retention of faeces while in
go THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the hive was at first a voluntary one. This, carried
on from generation to generation, would react on
the physical organism until use became second
nature, and finally the present condition was
reached, It is a fact that the bee is now incapable
of voiding its excreta within the hive, or when
at rest. The muscles involved can come into
action only during, or immediately after, vigorous
flight. In the winter, when long spells of cold
occur, not a bee leaves the hive perhaps for weeks
together; but an hour’s warm sunshine will in-
fallibly bring the whole company out in a little
eddying crowd about the hive, and then the
necessary action of nature can readily be seen.
These cleansing flights occur on all practicable
occasions, and fulfil a double purpose; for when
the cluster forms again, it will be between combs
where the stores are unexploited, and the old, steady,
upward feeding-march begins again in a new
place. In extraordinary seasons, when the cold
weather is much prolonged, the population of a
hive may die of starvation within reach of plenty,
no opportunity for these flights having presented
itself, and the cluster therefore not having left its
original station. And here the bee is plainly the
victim of her own advanced acumen. Instinct
would never have led her into such a foolish
plight ; but reason, being liable to err, errs here
egregiously.
The comparison of a modern beehive with a
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY gi
building similar in construction, and as densely
crowded with human beings, brings the whole
problem to a sharp definition. In such a building,
unless a through-current of air could be estab-
lished, the preservation of life must soon become
impossible. Yet the bees have triumphantly over-
come all difficulties. Whether in winter or summer,
the air within the hive is almost as pure as that in
the open, while the temperature can be regulated
at will. For the ordinary purposes of the hive—
honey-brewing, and the hatching of the young
brood—it is kept uniformly at 80° to 85°. When
the wax-makers are at work, it rises suddenly to
95° or so, while at the time of the swarming-
fever it is often allowed to go even higher. In
the hottest days of summer, however, unless the
emigration-furore possesses the colony, the interior
of a well-made hive seldom shows a temperature
of more than 80°. And all this is brought about
in a very simple fashion.
The sanitary expert, of merely human stock,
could attack the problem in only one way. He
must have a through-current of air, impelled either
mechanically or automatically ; and he must have
heating-apparatus acting within the building itself,
or warming the incoming draught of air. But the
bees work on totally different principles. They
will have nothing to do with the through-current
system of ventilation. If the ingenious bee-master
pierce air-holes in the walls of a hive, the bees
92 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
will spend the night in carefully stopping them up
again. In the old bee-garden we saw the fanning-
army drawing out the impure air. These bees
had their heads pointing towards the entrance ;
but, inside the hive, there was another army of
fanners, facing the opposite way, and thus helping
to drive the same sidelong current. Throughout
nearly the whole interior of the hive on hot days
fanning-bees can be seen, all helping to keep up
this movement. The result is that the pure air,
being sucked in at one side of the entrance, flows
round the hive and travels out at the other side,
much as a rope goes over a pulley-block. The
swiftest current of air keeps to the walls and roof
of the hive, the air in the centre being changed
more slowly. Thus the honeycombs, which are
always in the upper stories, lie in the full stream,
and the moisture, which the maturing honey is
continually giving off, is carried rapidly away ;
while the brood-combs, lying in the lower, central
part, are ventilated more slowly, the air being
thoroughly warmed before it reaches them. The
larger the fanning-army is, the more swiftly flows
the air, and the faster the heat of the hive is
carried off. In this way the bees can regulate
the hive-temperature to the requirements of the
moment, putting more numerous gangs to work
in the hottest season, or stopping the fanners alto-
gether in mid-winter, when the natural, buoyant
heat-exhalation from the cluster is sufficient to
EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY 93
keep up the gentle circulation which then is alone
needed.
Sometimes, when the colony is unusually large,
the fanning-party will be divided into two detach-
ments, one at each side of the entrance, leaving
the centre for the inflow of air. In this case a
double-loop system of ventilation appears to be
formed.
CHAPTER VII
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN
T has been said that the ways of the honey-
bee are nearly all subject to variation—that in
bee-life there are few hard-and-fast, undeviating
laws. The rule, of one queen-mother only to each
hive, appears to be more absolute than any other,
yet it is not without its exceptions. Well authen-
ticated instances are on record where two queens
have existed amicably in the same hive, each
laying her daily quota of eggs unmolested by the
other, and, apparently, with the full approval of
the hive-authorities.
It is now also certain that a skilful bee-master
can accustom his bees to the presence of more
than one queen. Recent experiments in America
on this head, although convincing enough as far
as they go, need the test of time before their
practical value to apiculture can be rightly esti-
mated. To multiply its domestic deities may
prove anything but a blessing to the harmony
and welfare of a hive. But the fact has been well
established that the old rule, of one queen at a
94
aa , ‘ -_ >
a ce
iSG@aa.”
—
a
ae!
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 95
time, may be upset—whether permanently, and for
the ultimate advantage of honey-making, time
alone can tell.
A single queen, when young and vigorous and
of good blood, is able to keep an entire hive filled
with brood throughout the short honey-gathering
season. The brood-nest of a modern frame-bar
hive has a comb-surface of over 2,000 square
inches, giving about 50,000 cells available for the
breeding of young worker-bees. This represents,
at times of greatest prosperity, an enormous
floating population; but if several queens can
be permanently established in one hive, and the
hives enlarged to permit each her fullest scope,
the figures will soon begin to stretch out into
infinity. Two facts are well known to experienced
bee-keepers—that a large stock gathers more
honey than two small stocks containing between
them the same number of individuals; and that,
when the honey-crop is in full yield, there are
seldom enough bees to harvest it. The whole art
of latter-day bee-keeping consists in bringing up
the numerical strength of each colony to its fullest
in time for the great main nectar-flow. Yet, ina
good district and in a good season, when huge
areas of clover or sainfoin come into full blossom
at the same time, and the nectar must be gathered
or lost within the space of a fortnight or so, the
most populous apiary is seldom equal to the task.
Probably, in exceptional seasons, half the English
96 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
honey-crop is lost for want of bees to gather it.
If, therefore, the new system of plurality of queens
both justifies and establishes itself, the near future
may see a revolution in all ideas relating to bee-
manship. All that can be said for certain at
present is that as many as five queens have been
induced to occupy the same hive in peace and
quiet together; but whether this portentous state
of affairs can remain a lasting one is still to be
proved.
A curious and, to the expert, a startling outcome
of these efforts to break down an old and almost
universal custom in bee-life, is that the successful
establishment of several mother-bees in a single
hive appears to lessen the swarming impulse.
Hives so treated do not send out a swarm so far
as is known. One of the most disappointing
experiences in bee-craft is to see prosperous stocks
breaking themselves up into several hopelessly
weak detachments just before the great honey-
flow, when strength of numbers is the one vital
thing; and if plurality of queens will prevent
this vexatious evil, the old time-honoured custom
is sure to go.
The student of bee-life, watching the year’s
work in the hive from its earliest beginnings, and
marking its steady, cautious development, will
readily see how the ancient idea of the mother-
bee’s absolute monarchy gained its vogue. The
deception of appearances is all but complete.
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 97
Right in the heart of the winter-cluster he sees
the queen bestirring herself to lay the first eggs,
and the bees around her slowly awakening to the
duty before them. With the passing of the weeks,
he sees the brood-area steadily enlarging ; the
hitherto close-packed throng of workers gradually
extending itself over a larger space of comb; the
water-fetchers increasingly busy; the pollen-
gathering bees already at work in the crocus-
borders of the garden, where the year’s first gold
and white and purple is gaily flaunting in the sun.
He notes that the progress of the colony within
the warm hive does not go by the calendar, but
. . Checks with each return of cold, and forges ahead
only when the spring seems to be coming in right
good earnest. He sees, even now, when February
is waning and the hazel-catkins fill the bare wood-
land with a shimmer of emerald, that the colony
still husbands its stores, eking them out with a
long-sighted parsimony that shall be more than
justified when the inevitable cold break comes in
the flowery midst of the English May. It is
impossible to overlook the evidence of a wise,
directing mind through it all; and where should
this be seated but in the brain of the single large
bee, courted and fed and groomed unceasingly by
the attendant host around her—she who is the
teeming mother of past tens of thousands, and who
carries in her body the seed of all the generations
to come?
7
98 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
Yet the truth is that the queen-bee is the very
reverse of a monarch, both by nature and inclina-
tion. She possesses only the merest rudiments
of intelligence. She has a magnificent body, great
docility, certain almost unrestrainable impulses
and passions, a yielding, womanish love of the
yoke; but she is incapable of action other than
that arising from her bodily promptings. Her
brain is much smaller than that of the worker.
In a dozen different ways she is inferior to the
common worker-bees, who rule her absolutely,
mapping out her entire daily life and using her
for the good of the colony, just as a delicate, costly
piece of mechanism is used by human craftsmen
to produce some necessary article of trade.
In a word, the queen is the sole surviving
representative of the aboriginal female honey-bee.
The aborted females, the workers, are almost as
much a product of civilisation as the human race
itself.
Every step of the way now, in a study of the
life of the bee, is hedged about with wonders. It
is seen that the common worker-bee is raised in a
cell allowing her only the barest minimum of space
for development, while the queen has an apartment
twice as long as she can possibly need. The
worker-cells are so designed that as many as
possible may be contained in a given area, and
their construction involve the least possible amount
of material. Therefore these cells are made in the
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 99
form of a hexagon, this being the only shape
approaching the cylindrical—the ideal form—of
which a number will fit together over a plane
surface without leaving useless spaces in between.
Moreover, the cells needing to be closed at the
bottom, half the material required for this purpose
is saved by the device of placing the sheets of
combined hexagons back to back, so that one base
will serve for two cells. But it is not only in the
construction of the cradles of the worker-bees that
rigid economy is practised. From the moment
that the egg hatches until the young grub changes
into the chrysalis state, it is given only the smallest
quantity of food that will support life and allow
necessary development.
In the case of the young queen-larva, however,
avery different policy is instituted from the begin-
ning. Not only is she given nursery-quarters
allowing every facility for growth, but she is loaded
with a specially rich kind of food night and day,
until she actually swims in it. The nurse-bees are
constantly pouring this glistening white substance
into the cell for the whole five days of her larval
existence, and the effect of this generous diet is
obvious from the first in her more rapid growth,
as compared with the worker-bee. A further
advantage still is that the young queen has
perfectly free access to the air at all stages of
her development. The worker-cell is but sparsely
ventilated, and that only through the narrow top,
7—2
100 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
all its six sidesand base being absolutely impervious.
But the cradle-cell of the queen is not only made
of a porous material throughout, but it is commonly
placed at the edge of the comb, where it stands
out in the full current of ventilation, the air per-
colating the whole substance of its walls in addi-
tion to entering freely at the large cell-mouth.
Thus the main cause of the extraordinary difference
in the development of the queen-bee and the
worker is that of treatment; the one being given
unlimited rich food and oxygen and room to grow
in, the other receiving only meagre workhouse
diet, restricted quarters, and little air to breathe.
Yet, making every allowance for the stimulating
or retarding effect of these agencies on the young
female grub, we are still hardly any nearer to a
solution of the mystery. We are compelled to
believe that the egg which produces the worker
is identical in its nature with that from which is
evolved the queen-bee, because a simple experi-
ment will at once dispel all doubt on the matter.
If the egg deposited in the queen-cell be removed,
and an egg taken from any one of the thousands
of worker-cells in a hive be put in its place, the
worker-egg will always produce a fully developed
and accoutred queen-bee. On the other hand, if
an egg be taken from a queen-cell and placed in
a worker-cell, it will as infallibly hatch out into a
common undersized worker. It would be sufficient
tax on the credibility if the differences of queen
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 101
and worker were only those of degree. If the
queen were nothing but a large-sized worker-bee,
in whom certain organs—which were atrophied in
the worker—had received their full development,
it would be a fact within comprehension ; but the
queen differs from the worker not only in size and
the capability of her organism, but also on several
important points of structure. And how can mere
food and air and circumstance produce structural
change? The worker has many bodily appliances,
special members ingeniously adapted to her daily
tasks, of which the queen is wholly destitute ;
while the physical organism of the queen varies
from that of the worker in several important
degrees.
Some of these must be enumerated. The ab-
domen of the worker is comparatively short and
rounded : that of the queen is larger and longer,
and comes to a fairly sharp point. The jaws of
the queen are notched on their inner cutting edge:
the worker's jaws are smooth like the edge of a
knife. The tongue of the worker has a spatula
at its extremity, and is furnished with sensitive
hairs: the tongue of the queen is shorter, the
spatula is smaller, while the hairs show greater
length. The worker-bee has a complicated system
of wax-secreting discs under the horny plates of
her abdomen: in the queen these are absent, nor
can the most elementary trace of them be dis-
covered, In their nerve-systems the two show
102 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
difference, the queen possessing only four abdominal
ganglia, while the worker has five. The queen’s
sting is curved, and longer than the worker’s: the
sting of the worker-bee is perfectly straight. On
their hind-legs the workers have a curious con-
trivance which bee-keepers have named the pollen-
basket. It is a hollowing of the thigh, the cavity
being surrounded with stiff hairs; and within this
the pollen is packed and carried home to the hive.
In the queen both the cavity and the hairs are
absent. Her colour also is generally different
from that of the worker-bee, her legs, in particular,
being a much redder brown.
Here is a problem for our great biologists—a
problem, however, at which the plain, every-day
man may well flinch. For we seem to have come
face to face with new principles of organic life,
facts incompatible with the accepted ideas of the
inevitable relation between cause and effect. The
irresistible tendency at this stage is to hark back ;
to repeat the experiment of the transposed eggs,
and see whether no vital, initial circumstance has
been overlooked. But the result is always the
same. Nor can the most careful microscopical
dissection of the eggs themselves reveal any differ-
ences. In this mystery of the structural variance
between queen and worker, it would seem that we
are forced to accept one of three alternatives.
Either the egg contains two distinct germs of life,
one developing only under the stress of hard times,
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 103
the other only to the call of luxury. Or we must
go back to medizval notions, and believe that the
worker-bees give or withhold some vital principle
of their own during nurturing operations. Or we
must give up the problem, and decide that creation
works on lines very different from those on which
we have hitherto grounded our faith.
The difficulty is further complicated by the fact
that this change of nature does not take place until
relatively late in the life of the bee. The egg is
three days in hatching. But the young larva is at
least three more days old before nature has made
the irrevocable step along either of the divergent
ways. For the experiment of transposition can be
made with exactly the same result if undertaken
with female bee-larve not more than three days
old, instead of the unhatched eggs. Indeed, this
is an operation that the nurse-bees themselves
perform, on occasion. If a hive loses its queen,
and it happens that all the eggs in the worker-cells
are hatched out, the bees will breed another queen
from any one of the worker-larve available. This
is generally successful when the young grub has
not passed the three days’ limit. But, even when
all the larve of the hive are older than this, the
bees will still attempt the task, knowing well that,
without a queen, the colony must perish. In this
case, however, the resulting queen will be defective
in various ways. Probably she will never be
capable of fertilisation, and therefore the breed of
104 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
worker-bees will be cut off at its source. Unless
the bee-master supplies the colony with a new
queen, properly fecundated, the hive will gradually
fill up with drones, the old worker-bees will die off,
and the stock must ultimately become extinct.
When once the study of the inner life of the
honey-bee has been undertaken, the watcher will
soon realise that he has embarked on a stranger
voyage than he ever contemplated, even in his
most daring moments. In the old bee-garden
there was a serenity, a quiet enduring bliss of
ignorance, that chimed in well with his slothful,
holiday mood. The sunshine, the flowers, the song
of the wind in the tree-tops, and the drowsy song
of the hives; the voice of the old white-headed
cottager weaving in his listener’s ear the old, com-
fortable arabesque of error; the sudden, jubilant
uproar of a swarm, filling the blue sky with music
and the flash of unnumbered wings; the night-
quiet, with its deep underground bee-murmur, its
dim half-moon peering over the hill-top, the
shadowy bent figure of the old beeman listening at
hive-doors for the battle-cry of rival queens, that
should mean trouble on the morrow—it all comes
back to the watcher now as a haven he has left in-
considerately, for a voyage over unknown, stormy
seas. For now, with the inner life of the hive
going on unmasked before his very eyes, wonder
succeeds wonder almost without a break; and each
new fact that reveals itself is more perturbing,
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 105
because more destructive of old, hallowed conven-
tion, than any that has gone before.
The hive that has lost its mother-bee, and failed
to provide her with a fully developed, fertile suc-
cessor, is seen to be rapidly declining in its worker-
population, while the horde of drones is increasing
at a greater rate than ever. But where do these
drones come from, if the very fount of bee-life has
been dried up at its source by the loss of a ferti-
lised queen? The question brings the student to
what is perhaps the most remarkable fact in the
whole great book of natural history.
We are not concerned, for the moment, with
theological matters; nor will the thread of the
story of the honey-bee be laid down, however
briefly, for an excursion into the pulpit. Yet here
is something that may well give wherewithal for
thought. For nearly two thousand years the
Doctrine of the Virgin Birth has been the centre of
a bitter human controversy. Its liegemen uphold it
as a main article of faith, eternally exalted from the
odious need of proof; its temperate opposers sadly
and quietly set it aside as a natural impossibility. On
one side the charge is want of faith; on the other
of blind credulity. And yet noone seems to have
thought of looking into paths of creation other than
human, to see if no parallel exists that may help
both sides, and send the swords to sheath before a
common mystery. The honey-bee is small among
the fowls, but here she looms large in the world, a
~
106 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
portentous symbol. It is a fact, now incontestably
proved, that the virgin queen-bee is capable of re-
producing her kind, yet only the male of the
species. If she is born late in the year, when no
drones exist, and her fertilisation is therefore im-
possible, or if some imperfection of wing prevents
her going out for her mating-flight, she will still
set busily to work at her one function of egg-
laying; and these eggs will all hatch out into male
bees. The same thing occurs in the case of the
queenless hive, which, having neither worker-egg
nor worker-grub, whose age is under the three
days’ limit, yet tries to raise a new queen from a
larva perhaps four or even five days old. The
queen thus created is queen only in name. She
may have her ovaries completely developed, but
otherwise she will be congenitally destitute. She
will have neither the will nor power to receive the
drone ; and the eggs that she lays so industriously
only add to the crowd of useless males that will
soon be the sole representatives of the doomed
household.
Following the progress of a bee-colony through
the mounting days of spring, we see, with every
week that passes, a larger area of comb occupied
by the young worker-brood ; while about the
middle of April the queen pays her first visit
to the drone-combs, laying a single egg in each
cell, as with the rest. It is commonly supposed
that the queen is always surrounded by an adu-
AaM
SSE NaNO AHL ‘NOSVAS-ONIGHaNd NI Aaa-NaANO
(INW SACIN9 AO AIDNID MAH HALIM SONIAWT AO LD
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 107
latory retinue, each attendant bee keeping her
head respectfully towards her sovereign, and back-
ing before her as she progresses over the combs.
Something of this sort is constantly seen during
breeding-time, but at other seasons the queen
ordinarily receives little attention, passing to and
fro in the hive with no more ceremony than is
bestowed on any other of the bees. The medizval
writers were aware that the queen had these
attendants, and believed them always to be twelve
in number, representing the twelve Apostles. A
little observation, however, will soon make it clear
that the bees which surround the queen on her
egg-laying journeys are neither devotees nor cour-
tiers. They are actually her guides, her keepers.
The queen’s movements are all prompted by the
incessant strokings and pushings and gentle
touches of the antenne that she receives from
these. Thus they allow her free passage over
the combs, but stop her at each vacant cell,
gathering close about her, evidently with the most
absorbing anxiety and interest in the operation.
First, she peers into the cell, examining it carefully.
Then she rears ; the bees give way before her ; she
takes a step or two onward until the end of her
body is over the cell. And then she thrusts her
abdomen deep into it, pauses a moment, mounts
again upon the comb, and the attendant bees at
once resume charge of her, and manceuvre her
towards the next empty cell. This process never
108 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
seems hurried, and yet in the height of the breed-
ing season it must go on at an extraordinary pace.
It is well attested that a good queen will thus
furnish as many as two thousand to three thousand
cells in a day, which gives an average of two eggs
a minute, even supposing her to keep at the work
without pause for the whole twenty-four hours.
The cells designed to contain the worker-brood
measure one-fifth of an inch across the mouth ;
drone cells are larger, having a diameter of a
quarter-inch, as well as greater depth. The queen
may pass from one species of comb to the other,
but she seldom makes a mistake. The egg depo-
sited in the worker-cell hatches out a female; that
which is laid in the larger cell becomes a drone, or
male bee. Obviously the deposition of the diffe-
rent kinds of eggs is well under the control of the
queen. It will be also seen that not only does the
mother bee lay either male or female eggs at will,
but their number also is subject to her dis-
crimination. From the time when she begins
ovipositing, until she reaches her period of
greatest activity in early summer, the increase of
the colony is not regular, but goes by fits and
starts according to the weather, or the amount of
incoming food. If the new honey is steadily
mounting up in the storehouse, and pollen is plenti-
ful, the work of brood-raising will go freely ahead;
but if unseasonable cold stops the work of the
foragers, this will immediately affect the output of
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 109
the queen, and under exceptionally adverse condi-
tions egg-laying may be entirely arrested. This
may also take place in the height of the season,
and in full favour of sunshine and plenty, if the
hive is a small one, and the limit of its capacity
has been reached. The combs will then be full of
either honey or brood, and the queen must wait
until laying space can be cleared for her. That
she is able to do this—that her powers can be
augmented or restrained, according to the needs
of the colony, and that the proportion of the sexes
in the hive can be varied at will to suit like con-
tingencies—-can only be understood when the
details of her life-history have been passed under
review.
In the normal, prosperous colony, which we are
now studying, the queen will be in her prime, and
under natural conditions will remain at the head
of affairs until she goes out with the first swarm
in May or June. A queen-bee is at the zenith of
her fecundity in the second year of her life. After
that, her egg-laying powers steadily decline,
although she may live to be four, or even five,
years old. But the authorities in a hive rarely
allow a mother-bee to retain her position after she
has shown signs of waning energy. Preparations
are at once set on foot for the raising of another
queen.
A very old queen will have lost her power to
lay worker-eggs, and will have become nothing
IIo THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
but a drone-breeder. But the bees are seldom
caught napping in this way. Long beforg this
happens the building of the royal cells will have
commenced in the hive. A queen-cell has been
likened, by various writers, to an acorn, and when
half completed it bears a very close resemblance,
both in size and shape, to an inverted acorn-cup.
This is commonly hung mouth downwards at the
side or base of one of the central brood-combs,
but it may be placed right in the middle of the
comb, in which case the cells around it are cut
away to give it air and space. Whether the old
queen herself deposits the egg in the royal cell—
thus unwittingly supplying the means for her own
future dethronement—or whether the worker-bees
transfer to it an egg or grub from a common cell,
is not yet finally ascertained. As, however, the
mere sight of a royal cell usually excites the queen
to fury, thé chances are that she is never allowed
to approach it at any time, and the egg would then
be placed there by the worker-bees. But, in the
great majority of cases, it is probable that new
queens are raised by enlarging an already existing
worker-cell, in which an egg has been previously
deposited. As far as is known, this is always the
case when a young grub is used for the purpose
instead of an egg. It is possible, also, that the
queen is physically incapable of laying in a royal
cell an egg that will produce a female bee; but this
curious point will be touched upon at a later stage.
A QUEEN-CELL
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN III
The old trite saying among beemen, that bees
never do anything invariably, receives constant
illustration in any near study of the ways of the
honey-bee. It has been seen that a colony de-
prived of its queen, and having no worker-egg or
grub less than three days old wherewith to make
good its deficiency, is commonly doomed to early
extinction. But, on rare occasions, colonies sup-
posed to be in this plight will make an unexpected
and inexplicable recovery. After a period of the
doldrums, extending for three weeks or more, a
sudden renewed activity and exhilaration is observ-
able in the hive. The pollen-bearers, who have
been hitherto almost idle, resume their busy work;
and, on the hive being opened, all the evidences of
the presence of a fertile, laying queen-mother are
again to be seen. In many instances in which a
new lease of life has thus been vouchsafed to a
colony under what seems an inexorable ban, no
doubt appearances have been deceptive. The
bees may have discovered in their midst a worker-
larva not yet too far advanced for promotion to
queenship, and thus have achieved their salvation
at the eleventh hour. But, in at least one case,
the testimony against the possibility of this seems
complete. A nucleus stock, containing only three or
four small combs and only about five hundred bees,
was deprived of its queen. Ten days later every
queen-cell that had been formed in the interval
was destroyed, leaving in the hive not a single egg
112 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
or bee in the larval state. Nevertheless, on the
hive being opened after a further period of eighteen
days, one new queen-cell containing an egg was
discovered. And this egg duly hatched out into
a fine, well-developed queen-bee. Assuming the
facts to be true, and they seem to be incontro-
vertible, there is only one inference to be drawn
from this: some enterprising bee of the colony
must have gone to another hive and either begged,
borrowed, or stolen a worker-egg. Apiarian
scientists very rightly hesitate to ascribe to the
honey-bee surpassing ingenuity of this kind on
the testimony of a single case, however well
authenticated. But other instances are on record
nearly as indubitable, and as it is an unquestioned
fact that worker-bees will carry eggs about from
comb to comb within the space of their own hive,
it does not seem wholly incredible that they may
visit other hives in the immediate neighbourhood,
especially when impelled to extra resourcefulness
by so vital a need. The whole question is inter-
esting in more ways than one, as it seems to bear
very trenchantly on the problem of ‘ Reason
versus Instinct,” now busy in the thoughts of
most modern naturalists.
In whatever way the egg for the queen-cell
may be furnished by the stock intending to raise
a new mother-bee, the first sign of life is always
the same—a tiny, white, elongated speck, glued
on end to the base, or what must rather be called
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 113
the roof, of the inverted cell-cup. In this state it
remains about three days, when the larva hatches
out, and at once the special treatment accorded to
the young queen begins. She is loaded with rich
provender from the first moment of her existence,
living literally up to the eyes in the white, shining,
jelly-like substance that the nurse-bees are con-
tinually regurgitating and pouring into the cells.
This superfeeding process is continued for about
five days, when the larva has reached its full
growth and the cell its greatest dimensions. The
larva then stops feeding to spin itself a silken
shroud before changing into the pupa state, and
the bees seal up the door of the cell. In its
completed state the cell loses its resemblance to
an acorn, and is rather to be likened to a fir-cone.
In the case of the common workers and drones,
the cells are made of pure wax, only the capping
being of mingled wax and pollen; but the queen
cell is constructed throughout of this porous
material.
The fully grown queen-bee is ready, and more
than anxious to leave her cradle-cell in about
fifteen or sixteen days after the laying of the egg.
The bees, however, generally give her a first
lesson in obedience even at this early point in her
career. It is a critical time in the history of the
hive, and much thought and care have been
bestowed on the complicated business in hand.
In the first place, it would never have done to
8
114 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
allow the whole future welfare of the colony
to depend on a single life alone. Therefore not
one queen has been raised, but several. As
many as five or six queens may be ready to hatch
out in different parts of the brood-nest, and none
of them will be permitted to break from her cell
until the appointed time arrives. For each the
cradle now becomes a prison. A small hole is
bored in the cell-wall, through which the impatient
captive is fed, pending the day when she is to be
allowed her liberty; and close guard and watch
is kept over each cell to save it from the violence
of the old queen, who is becoming hourly more
restless and suspicious.
The complete subjection of the mother-bee to
the ruling worker-class in the hive receives here
a striking confirmation. She is a true exemplar
of a prevailing kind of femininity—comely of
person, untutored in mind, an inveterate stay-at-
home, a prolific mother; and now there awakens
in her the sounding chord of jealousy. Left free
to act on her own impulses, she would soon bring
about a speedy end to all the careful, long-sighted
preparations within the hive. She would tear
open each royal cell, and with one thrust of the
curved, cruel scimitar that queen-bees use only on
their equals in rank, its occupant would be ruth-
lessly despatched, and her own supremacy rein-
stated. But an impassable barrier stops the way—
the collective will of the hive, The violent delight
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 115
of killing has once been hers; she will never know
it again. Now her own fate is in the balance.
It may be death, or a new life in a new home:
all depends on the deliberate decree of those who
have made her, and who now use or discard her,
for their own purposes. If it be late spring, and
the condition of the stock warrant it, this govern-
ing spirit may decide for colonisation, and the old
queen may be disposed of by sending her off with
aswarm. But other counsels may prevail. The
times may be unripe, or the weather inopportune.
And then Fate, in the shape of a merciless appli-
cation of principles, will descend upon her, and
her own wise children will ruthlessly put her to
death.
This State-execution of the queen, at the first
sign of waning fertility, is a peculiarly pathetic as
well as a tragic phase of bee-life. The stern,
soured amazons of the hive must have their
systems and conventions in everything they under-
take; and they cannot even bring about the
-supersession of the old queen without due circum-
stance and ceremonial. Given that it would be
against the best interests of the common weal that
she should retain her life after the loss of her
queenhood, one swift stroke would immediately
determine the matter, and the law—that there
shall be no useless members in the bee-republic—
would have its due fulfilment. But old tradition
rules that the queen shall suffer no violence from
8—z
116 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the weapons of the common herd. She is to die,
but her death must be brought about in another
way. And so the fawning executioners gather
round her, locking her in an embrace that tightens
with every moment, until the breath is literally
hugged out of her body. All her life has been
spent in the midst of caresses, and now she is to
die of them, close held to the last in that silent,
terrible grip.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BRIDE-WIDOW
N the heat and glow of the fine June morning
you may see her, the young virgin queen,
making ready for her nuptial flight.
At first she is all hesitancy; wandering to and
fro amidst the crowd on the _hive-threshold;
coquetting with the sunshine; loath to return to
the dim, pent, murmurous twilight she has for-
saken, yet hardly daring to launch herself on
wings that are still untried.
For three long days and nights since her release
from the prison-cell she has been a curiously soli-
tary figure in the busy throng within the hive.
Instead of the enthusiastic, welcoming world she
expected, she finds none but unregarding strangers
about her. Not a drone glances her way, and the
worker-bees go upon their business in seeming
unconcern at her presence. They do not even
trouble themselves to feed her, and she is left to
forage for herself as best she may. A con-
spiracy of indifference is on the clan—all part of
a deep design for her education, if she only
117
118 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
knew it, but singularly damping to the ardours,
and great ideas of destiny, that gather within
her day by day. At length the call comes for
which all are secretly waiting, and obeying irre-
sistibly, she presses out into the light.
As she stands hesitating, the hot June sun falls
upon her, laving her in molten gold. The blue
sky beckons her upward. All the world of colour —
and incense and life calls her to her wooing, and
she must needs obey. With a little glad flutter of
the wings, she breaks at last from the scrambling
company about her, and soars up into the light.
Warily now she hovers, taking careful stock of
her home and its surroundings. Then round and
round, in ever widening and lifting circles, each
sweep upward giving her a broader view of the
world that lies beyond. And then away into the
blue sky so swiftly that no human eye can follow ;
yet only for a short flight. She is back again
now, almost before you have missed her, and
hurrying, frightened at her own audacity, into the
old safe gloom of the hive.
- Thus she dallies, to and fro between the sun-
shine and the darkness, each time adventuring
a little farther into the blue playground of the
upper air, until at length the inevitable comes to
pass. A great drone—one of the roistering crowd
that fills the bee-garden with its hoarse noontide
music—spies her, and gives instant chase. At
sight of him she wheels, and darts away into the
THE BRIDE-WIDOW 119
sunshine at lightning speed. Yet the first drone
has hardly stretched a wing before another is after
him, and still another. Thick and fast from all
points they gather for the race, until the fleeing
queen has drawn a whole bevy of them, streaming
like a little grey cloud behind her. This much you
can see as you strain your eyes in their track; but in
a moment quarry and huntsmen have vanished
together, volleying, as it seemed, straight up into
the farthermost skies.
From her birth to the day when that terrible,
living cordon closes about her, almost the whole
life of the queen-bee can be followed step by step.
Only this one moment of her bridal stands un-
revealed, and perhaps for ever unrevealable, to
human eyes. You can picture to yourself the wild
chevy-chase through the clear June air and sun-
shine ; you can give, in fancy, the prize to the
strongest and the fleetest ; but all you will know
for certain is that in a little while the queen returns
to the hive, sobered and solitary, trailing behind
her infallible evidence of her impregnation and the
death of the victorious drone. She has been the
bride of a moment; now she is to be the widow
of a lifetime. Henceforward her days are to be
spent in the twilight cloisters of the hive, flying
abroad so rarely that many an old experienced bee-
man will say she comes forth only once a year
when she leads a swarm. But in her body now
she carries the seed from which will spring up a
120 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
whole nation. Before her marriage-flight she was
the least considered of all the colony ; now she is
welcomed home with public ovation ; lauded, fed,
and fondled ; set up in the high place, a living
symbol of the tens of thousands unborn. As in
olden, savage times, the royal festivals had their
human sacrifices, so this paramount day in the
perfected communism of the bee-people must vent
its rejoicing in slaughter. But it is not tribute of
common slaves that is now to redden the State-
shambles, nor will the work fall to the common
executioner’s knife. There are captive queens in
the citadel—a royal sacrifice ready to hand, and a
royal blade hungering for the task. Once the
queen has proved her intrinsic motherhood, and
the first few worker-eggs have been laid in the
comb, the guards will stand away from the royal
prison-cells and let her wreak her will upon them.
It is all very ghastly in a miniature way, yet very
queenly, as old traditions of human queenhood go.
She gives over her nursery-work gladly enough
for a moment, and flies to the slaughter, tearing
down the prison-doors, and putting each clamorous
captive fiercely to the sword.
Apart from this tragic element of sororicide,
quickly over and soon forgotten in the general
rejoicing, there is true romance in the early life-
story of the Queen of the Bees—bridehood, wife-
hood, widowhood, following hard upon each other,
all in the space of a single hour. But in the
THE BRIDE-WIDOW 121
details of her~common everyday life that succeed
this tense period, above all in the wonderful
structure of her body and its functions, there is
greater romance still. That she has but a single
commerce with the drone, and thereafter is exalted
to perpetual fecundity ; that, through her, sons
and daughters can be given to the hive in just the
proportion needed for the good of the State, or
that increase of population can be wholly arrested
at will, are facts to be accredited only after sure
knowledge. And to understand how these results
are brought about, it is necessary to learn some-
thing of the anatomy, as well as the manner of
fecundation, of the mother-bee.
In the first place, as fertilisation of the one sex
by the other is usually regarded, the queen-bee is
not fertilised at all. The vital essence of the
drone does not penetrate the ovaries of the queen,
but passes immediately after coition into a re-
ceptacle specially provided for it, where it is stored,
and its effectiveness preserved, during nearly the
whole lifetime of the queen. It has been shown
that the virgin queen is able to lay eggs from
which only drones, or male bees, originate. The
fecundated queen, however, can lay both male and
female eggs, and she has the power of depositing
either kind when and wherever she wills. The
whole thing, amazing as it is, and far-reaching in
its results, has, like many other extraordinary
devices in nature, a simple explanation. The
122 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
gland wherein is stored the male life-essence can
be opened or closed at the will of the mother-bee,
or rather, as will be shown, according to circum-
stances that for the moment involuntarily but
inexorably guide her. When she is brought to
the large drone-cell, this gland remains shut, and
the egg escapes without contact with its contents.
But at the narrow worker-cells the gland in the
oviduct is opened, and the egg, in passing, absorbs
some of its containing germs. Thus only the
female bee is born of the union of the two
parents; the male bee is the offspring of mother
alone.
Of this primal incident, the parthenogenesis, or
birth of the fully equipped male from the virgin
female, little more can be said than that it is a
well-ascertained fact of nature, exemplified in
several other insects beside the honey-bee. But
while we are witnessing the part played in the
hive by the fecundated queen, with her elaborate
organism, much is to be noted; and here we really
get the master-key to a right understanding of the
whole system of bee-government. It would be an
anomaly if the highest, most important functions
of the State had been entrusted solely to the queen,
whose feeble intelligence renders her, of all others,
least likely to execute them properly ; and we find,
in fact, that no such reliance is placed on her.
The worker-bees, who take her in charge on her
return from her mating-flight, henceforth originate
THE BRIDE-WIDOW 123
her every act and impulse. It has already been
seen how she is led from cell to cell over the
combs; how she is caused to lay, in earliest
spring, only a few eggs a day, while in the summer
she may produce several thousand ; and how her
output may be checked or augmented at any point
between. Now we are to realise how it is all
brought about; or, at least, bring conjecture as
near to certainty as may be with so difficult a
theme.
During the first two days of her life as a perfect
insect, we saw the young virgin queen mingling
with the throng in the hive almost unnoticed, and
left to seek her own food from the common store
like the rest. But now that her fecundation has
been achieved, she has a whole suite of chamber-
women, whose principal duty is to attend to her
nourishment. From their mouths they feed her,
giving her, in all probability, the same rich sub-
stahce that was administered to her when but a
larva in the cell. This bee-milk consists mainly
of honey and pollen pre-digested, but it has been
proved that its composition can be altered at will
by the ministering bees. Additions to it are made,
either separately, or combined in varying propor-
tions, from three or four distinct glands, each of
which exudes a liquid differing in nature from that
of the rest. The particular kind of nourishment
given to a queen who is to be urged on in the
work of egg-laying, has the effect of stimulating
124 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
her ovaries. The more food of this kind she re-
ceives, the greater will be her prolificacy. On the
other hand, a diminishing allowance will mean a
corresponding decrease in her egg-laying powers ;
while, if this rich diet be withheld altogether, and
she is forced to help herself from the honey-cells,
the development of these eggs may cease entirely,
as it actually does in the coldest time of the year.
Thus the bees play upon her, producing just the
music needed for their purposes. As the days
lengthen, and the spring sun gets higher and
warmer, they gradually waken her docile nature to
its one paramount task. In the flaming weeks of
summer she sits at an unending banquet. And
when autumn comes, with its chilly nights and
steadily failing sun-glow, the generous fare is
slowly withdrawn; her retinue thins and disperses;
at length she becomes a solitary, unmarked
wanderer again, sipping, with the commonest
worker, at the plain household sweets.
How the proportion of the sexes is so unerringly
regulated by the hive-authorities through their
influence on the mother-bee, is not so readily ex-
plained ; nor can it be at present more than shrewd
conjecture, a backward reckoning from effect to
cause. Probably the opening or closing of the
fertilising gland, which decides the sex of the egg,
is automatic, the attitude of the mother-bee during
Oviposition determining its action. When she
enters the narrow worker-cells, her body is neces-
THE BRIDE-WIDOW 125
sarily straightened, and this may produce pressure
on the fecundating gland, resulting in the im-
pregnation of the egg. But in the wider drone-
cell no such constricted posture is needful, and the
egg may therefore pass untouched by the fructify-
ing germ. If this version of the matter be ac-
cepted, the natural inference is that either the
mother-bee is incapable of laying female eggs in
the cells specially constructed for raising queens—
these being the largest of all,—or that there is
something in the peculiar curve of the cell-cup
which compels her to straighten her body in the
act, and so brings about the same posture as with
the narrow worker-cells.
This theory, although at present the most plau-
sible, has received, it is true, little confirmation in
fact. No one, apparently, has ever seen the
mother-bee lay in a queen-cell, nor has the trans-
portation thither of a worker-egg by the bees
actually been witnessed. To cling to the old idea
of the supremacy of the queen-bee, giving her the
power and ability of a despotic, all-wise sovereign,
would, of course, set this and many other vexed
questions at rest. Nothing, however marvellous,
would be too much to expect of her. But the
farther the student of bee-life goes in his absorbing
subject, the more.impossible the old notion seems.
Proof comes to him with every hour that the
mother-bee is virtually a servant, and never a ruler
in the hive ; and just as assured testimony reaches
126 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
him of the universal potency of the worker-bees.
All else that takes place within the hive is brought
about by their collective will and agency ; and it
would be strange indeed if this vital matter of
progeneration were not subject to the same con-
trolling force.
CHAPTER IX
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE
ATCHING the inner life of the hive in
the season of its full activity, it is not the
untiring spirit of industry pervading the
whole bee-commonwealth that most excites the
student’s wonder, but rather the fact that this
ceaseless diligence finds so many outlets—that so
many different kinds of necessary work are going
forward at one and the same time.
Between the brood-combs the nurses are feeding
the young larve, or clearing out the empty cells,
or sealing over the full-grown nymphs for their
pre-natal slumber. Hard by, the sowers are at
their vital work, driving their living seed-barrow,
the queen, over the combs. Elsewhere the wax-
makers hang in a silent, densely packed cluster.
Overhead, the new honey-combs are growing ;
the masons building up the cell-walls, while the
engineers devise means and ends, calculate strains,
put in a strut here, a stay there, or flying buttress
from one comb to another, or cut new passage-
127
128 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
ways where the traffic seems too congested for the
old thoroughfares of the hive.
On all sides the scavenging bees go to and fro,
picking up every particle of refuse, and carrying
it safely away. Winged undertakers drive their
trade in the midst of the throng, bearing the
corpses of their comrades, old and young, towards
the entrance, and flying away with them into the
sunlight of the young spring day. There is the
ventilating army outside the city gates, skilfully
organised in relays, so that, day and night, a con-
stant circulation of air is maintained. There are
the guard-bees close by, watching all in-comers
and out-goers. There is a sort of General Pur-
poses Committee ready outside the threshold with
a helping hand for all : succouring the overladen,
grooming down any in need of such assistance,
gathering up fallen treasure, or, as it would seem,
taking careful note of the weather for their next
official report. And all through the hours of sun-
shine, in unnumbered thousands, the foragers are
charging to and fro, some bringing nectar, some
staggering in under mighty loads of pollen, others
with full water-sacs, still more dragging behind
them lumps of the curious cement called by the
ancients Propolis, and used for so many different
purposes in the daily work of the hive. —
And it all goes on with the regularity of a well-
ordered human settlement. There is complexity,
yet no confusion ; there is soeed without hurry.
MAH GALIIdad NAWSLHDAVNC LNAIDNVY AHL 3O ANOS S¥ GN¥ : 4411 WONd (CADAWINA) AAW-AANOH AHL
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 129
Each busy gang of labourers has apparently a
distinct and definite task allotted to it by the
central hive-authority ; co-operation and progress
are, to all appearances, deified cause and effect in
all the affairs of the hive.
It is easy—nay, inevitable—in any close study
of bee-life with the help of the modern observation-
hive, to overset the ancient idea of absolute bee-
monarchy under a single king or queen. But it is
not so easy to determine how the general govern-
ment of the colony is actually carried on. Innu-
merable small consultations on minor matters are
seen to take place on every side during each
moment of the busy day ; but nothing like general
communication is ever visible. And yet, how are
the great national movements, such as the despatch
of a swarm or the supersedure of an old queen,
brought about ; how are the various common crises
of the State met, and provided for? The only
rational inference seems to be that each worker is
in herself the perfect evolved presentment of re-
publicanism, in whom all imaginable difficulties in
collective life have their best solution, tried and
proved through the ages, and resorted to un-
erringly as a matter of course. Thus a common
need is felt, and met instantaneously by a common,
recognised expedient. The judgment of one is
necessarily the judgment of all. Every problem
of daily life, however intricate, is solved by the one
device, brought to the fine point of perfection
9
130 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
through the experience of countless generations,
and applied by each individual to the common
want, just as hunger impels all mankind to eat.
Such a condition of affairs, even in a community
of human beings, would imply a very high state of
mental, if not of moral, development in the indi-
vidual. It would mean entire negation of self in
the interest of the common good. Even with all
the forces of heredity at work, it would need stern
ascetic training for the young, and for the trans-
gressing adult a swift and merciless retribution, if
the last dream of communism—the abolition of all
law and penalty, and the establishment of a natural
autondmy of well-doing—were ever to be realised
in fact. And yet some such state of things appears
to exist in the bee-commonwealth : the individual
worker-bee seems to be the product of some such
system carried on through an indefinite space of
time. Order is preserved, public works go dili-
gently forward, the clock of the national progress
keeps time to the second, not because there is a
central wisdom-force to plan, to govern, to awe
recalcitrants, but because every worker-bee is her-
self the State in miniature, all propensities alien to
the pure collective spirit having been long ago
bred out of her by the sheer necessities of her case.
The worker-bee, as we see her in the hive to-
day, although evolution must have been busy
through the ages determining her present mind-
power and bodily conformation, is nevertheless as
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 131
much a product of direct artifice as she is of original
nature. We have seen how the egg containing
the feminine germ, if given full scope and oppor-
tunity, develops into what may be taken as the
complete aboriginal type of female bee, differing
from the worker in a dozen essential ways. The
queen also is probably, in one respect at least—her
amazing fecundity—a deliberate creation of the
hive-people, as her over-production is brought
about by over-stimulation to meet an artificial state
of affairs. Left to herself, under pristine condi-
tions, she would certainly lay on a much more
moderate scale. But the worker-bee owes her
unique structure and mental constitution almost
entirely to the intervention of her nurses from the
moment of the hatching of the egg. Careful ex-
periment has proved that the queen-larva and the
worker-larva are identical up to the third day of
their life in the cell, except that the queen has
made more rapid growth owing to more generous
and more ample fare. After the third day, the
genital system of each larva will begin to develop,
if this rich nitrogenous diet is maintained. In the
case of the queen, this pre-digested food, well
called bee-milk, is lavished on the favoured grub
up to the last moment of its larval existence, no
other food being given. But in the case of the
worker-grub, not only has its supply of bee-milk
been restricted in both quantity and quality from
the day of its birth, but now—just before the
9—2
132 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
development of the ovaries might be expected—an
important change ismade. The allowance of bee-
milk is greatly reduced, while plain honey is given
in addition, but on the same parsimonious scale, to
the end of its five days’ larval life.
What other influences, if any, are brought to
bear on the young worker-bee at this portentous
stage of her career, it is impossible to say. But
at least the change in the food is well ascertained,
and the results—whether of this alone, or in com-
bination with other treatment—are more than
astounding. Not only is the development of the
sex-organs so completely arrested that hardly a
trace of them can be discovered in the adult
worker-bee, but, from that moment, the larva
seems to become an essentially different creature,
reflecting more and more the attributes of her
nurses, and showing wider and wider departure
from those of the mother-bee. As soon as the
worker changes into the pupa state, organs appear
of which the queen has not the faintest rudiments.
She receives her special equipment for field-work
in a pair of baskets for carrying pollen. Her
tongue is lengthened, so that it may reach the
nectar hidden deep down in the clover-bells. She
is to become a builder, and therefore is provided
with half a dozen crucibles wherein to prepare the
wax. Her useless ovipositor is changed into a
weapon : it is straightened, shortened; the barbs
upon it are multiplied and strengthened ; a gland,
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 133
with which it is furnished, and which, in the queen,
contains an all but harmless fluid, is now filled with
an active poison. Above all, she develops a brain-
power far in excess of that of the normal female
bee, her mother; and she acquires a whole new
set of impulses and aspirations from beginning to
end.
While the queen-bee’s natural element is the
obscurity of the hive, and she would seem both to
hate and fear the sunshine, the worker is essenti-
ally an outdoor creature, revelling in the light and
air. While the queen, though obedient to the
destiny that has made her over-fruitful, displays
nevertheless not the slightest joy of motherhood
nor interest in her children, the worker, doomed
to eternal spinsterhood, yet constitutes herself
the true mother and nurse and instructress of all
the young in the hive. And the price exacted for
the authority and power which she usurps, or was
usurped for her by those remote ancestors of hers
who first invented the sexless honey-bee, must
be paid in the hardest coin—that of life itself.
Instead of the years that nature allotted to her
kind in the beginning, she is to endure hardly as
many months. Destiny, and her own vaulting
ambitions, have given her too arduous a part to
play. Her stunted, yet over-elaborated body and
over-developed brain, cannot long hold out against
the wear and tear of the life she is born to. At
best a few months see her dead at her work, or
134 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
using the last pulsations of her worn-out, ragged
wings to carry her away to the traditional burial-
place of the hive; or her end may be to fall under
the stroke of the State executioners. For the
old-age problem has long ago discovered its
effective solution in the bee-republic. Justice
that is capable of being tempered with mercy
carries its own mark of imperfection indelibly
upon it. When the principle of all for the common
good has been driven to its last resort in logic,
mercy to the individual can only be another name
for robbing Peter to pay Paul. In bee-communism
the sole title to life is utility, and so the old worn-
out, useless workers must go.
The development of the worker-egg through
its various stages of growth, until the perfectly
formed insect emerges from the cell, makes a
curious study. The egg itself is remarkable, for
it is covered with an hexagonal pattern. The
large compound eyes of the fully grown bee also
show this form. Each eye consists of about four
thousand separate lenses, and each lens is a regular
hexagon. Wonder has often been expressed at
the ingenuity of the comb-builders in making the
cells six-sided, and thus crowding into a given
space more compartments than could be secured
by the same amount of material wrought into any
other shape. The ancient writers explained this
choice of the hexagonal cell by the supposed fact
that the six legs of the bee were simultaneously
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 135
employed in comb-building, each leg constructing
its own portion of the cell. A more modern idea
is that the particular shape of the cell is accidental,
or rather the outcome of compelling circumstance,
mutual pressure causing the cells to assume the
hexagonal form.
Now, it is quite true that soaked peas in a bottle
will take this shape in swelling, but the analogy
will not hold good in respect of comb-building.
In the work of the bees there is no pressure or
constriction of any kind. Each cell is made
separately, being joined on to those above it ; and
the comb expands steadily downward and side-
ways through an empty space until the desired
limit is reached. A much more probable explana-
tion of the hexagonal form of the cell is that it
was arrived at by experience. The first combs
may have been built with round cells, the inter-
stices being filled in with wax. But the bee, who
is an expert in the science of economy, would
quickly see the disadvantage of this plan. And
with the hexagonal principle, an old familiar thing
in the hive—witness the pattern on the egg-
surfaces, and the compound eye-construction—it
would not be long before she hit upon the better,
more scientific way.
There is, however, another reason, and almost
as potent a one, for the adoption of the six-sided
cell both for brood-raising and the storing of
honey. It must be remembered that the present
136 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
system of vertical walls parallel and close together,
made up of numberless small horizontal chambers
placed back to back, is not an ideal arrangement
either for the raising of the young or the storing
of food. Yet it is the best possible contrivance
under the circumstances, which are forced upon
the bee by the necessity of leading a close,
crowded, communal life. Air is a prime need for
all operations in the hive, but for none more than
the development of the young bees. When a
queen is to be raised, a full supply of fresh air
is given her, but only at the expense of valuable
space. With the common kind, of which perhaps
ten or fifteen thousand may be maturing in the
brood-nest at one and the same time, it is obviously
impossible to make any such concession. The
young worker- or drone-larva must secure what
air it can through the narrow cell-top. Now, the
bee breathes at all stages of its career not through
the mouth, but by means of air-holes or spiracles
in the sides of its body. If the cell were round,
the larva, when fairly grown, would fill the space,
and the air would reach the spiracles only with
difficulty. But, no matter what the size of the
young grub may be, the angles of the hexagon
cell are never quite filled. They form half a dozen
by-passes for the air, arranged on all sides, ‘and
extending right to the base of the cell; and thus
the larva has the full benefit of the available air-
supply, even though it be necessarily scanty.
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 137
With the store-combs the six angles of the cell
fulfil an equally important office. The ideal honey-
cell would be one with its mouth opening upwards,
so that it could be filled in an ordinary rational
way. But under the strict economical principles
ruling in the hive such an arrangement would be
impracticable. The honey-vats must be stacked
one over the other in a horizontal position, and
therefore must be chargeable from the end. All
cells in the comb have a slight upward tilt, but
not enough to retain the fluid contents if the cell
were a round one. The effect of the angles in
the hexagon is to increase the retentive property
of the cell, and experience has taught the bees
how to supplement this natural holding power of
the angles by just that slight cant of the cell which
is necessary to prevent the nectar running out.
The worker-bee, during her period of larval life,
at first lies coiled up at the bottom of the cell, but
as her size increases she takes up a position
lengthways, with her head towards the cell-mouth.
This, however, is not a constant attitude, for she
seems at intervals to make a series of slow gyra-
tions or somersaults, probably to facilitate the
casting of her skin, which she accomplishes several
times during her five days’ life as a grub. At the
end of this time the nurse-bees stop the feeding
process and seal up the cell. Now the larva sets
to work, first to spin herself a silken shroud before
entering on her long sleep as a chrysalis, and then
138 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
to change her skin for the last time. In the case
of the worker these fine-wrought sleeping-clothes
envelop her whole body, forming a continuous
cocoon, But the queen-larva weaves herself only
a scanty sort of cloak, covering her head and
thorax, but leaving her nether portions bare. The
theory usually advanced in explanation of this is,
that when the surplus queens are slaughtered in
their cells by the accepted mother-bee after her
fertilisation, the fell work is rendered easier by
the absence of the tough material of the cocoon
over the parts generally attacked. It seems to
be well substantiated that in a battle of queens
the stings are not used haphazard, as with the
workers, but each queen tries to thrust her weapon
into one of her enemy’s spiracles or breathing-
holes, of which she possesses fourteen, seven on
each side. And a stroke dealt in this way appears
to be always fatal.
But, in all likelihood, the true reason why the
queen sleeps in a short gown made of tough, coarse
fibre must be looked for somewhere back in the
old ancestral history of the honey-bee. It is
probably safe to consider the complete worker
cocoon as a comparatively recent introduction,
evolved to meet some necessity arising since the
bee-people became a civilised race. But what its
true origin was appears to be out of the reach of
all conjecture. A curious fact is that these cocoons
are never removed from the cell. They remain
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 139
fixed to its sides throughout, and though the cell
is otherwise carefully cleaned after the young bee
has vacated it, the cocoon is never interfered with,
but continues as a permanent lining to the cell.
The same thing occurs with all successive genera-
tions, each bee leaving her swaddling-clothes
behind her, until so great an accumulation occurs
that the cell becomes too small for breeding any
but a puny, undersized race. With wild bees,
where the nest has been constructed in a tree-
hollow, and there is usually plenty of surplus room,
the old brood-combs may be eventually abandoned
and fresh ones built farther on. Thus the stock
generally shifts its station from year to year.
These natural bee-nests, or bee-bikes, as country
people call them, often reach a great age. Some-
times a swarm will get under the rafters in a
house-roof, and may be left undisturbed for
generations. In one case bees were traditionally
supposed to have inhabited a blind loft in a farm-
house continuously for forty or fifty years. A
legend rife in the village credited them with
having stored many tons of honey, but when the
stock was sulphured little more than a vast
accumulation of comb was discovered. This comb
was of all ages, from a few weeks old to an
unconjecturable number of years. Much of it was
perfectly black, and the cells choked up with
pupa cocoons.
The fact that egg-laying is continued in these
140 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
combs where others are not available, even though
the capacity of the cells has been greatly reduced,
seems to cast an added doubt on the theory that
the size of the cell is responsible for the fertilisa-
tion or non-fertilisation of the egg as it is de-
posited by the queen. Very old drone-comb is
sometimes found in use for breeding purposes
where the cells have become no larger than those
used for normal worker-brood. And yet the
queen continues to lay in them unimpregnated
eggs. The whole question is still hedged round
with difficulties.
The young worker-bee, at the end of about
three weeks from its first inception, breaks from
its chrysalis-skin, and begins to gnaw its way
through the cell-cover. The pollen, which is
combined with the wax to form this capping,
discharges a double office. It makes the wax
porous for the admittance of air, and it renders
the cell-cover edible, thus causing the young bee
to effect its own release through the promptings
of its appetite. The new-born worker, although
fully grown, is a weak, greyish-hued, flaccid
creature for some time after it leaves its cradle.
Its earliest impulse seems to be to groom itself,
and then to wander about on a tour of inspection
of its as yet narrow world of gloom and noise and
bustle. For the first day or two-it does little else
than crawl about unnoticed in the busy throng,
gradually gaining strength and rigidity of limb.
BROOD-COMB, SHOWING EGGS, LARVA: IN DIFFERENT STAGES OF GROWTH, SEALED CELLS, AND YOUNG BEES
CUTTING THEIR WAY OUT
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 141
On the second day it may be seen dipping into
the open honey-vats and pollen-bins, of which a
few are always scattered here and there among the
brood-cells. After this it seems to waken in earnest
to its duties and responsibilities, and takes its place
among the nurse-bees, setting to work with the rest
in the stupendous task of feeding the larve.
In the ordinary course, the young worker-bee
will not leave the hive for about a fortnight after
its emergence from the cell. In the interval, how-
ever, it has a whole policy of life to study, and
several trades to learn, All the indoor work of
the hive appears to be done by the young bees
during these first weeks of their existence. On
them the whole care and sustenance of the young
brood depend. They produce the wax, and build
the combs; they look after the order and cleanli-
ness of the hive; they are the brewers of the
honey, and the keepers of the stores; they feed
the queen-bee on her ceaseless rounds, and also
give the drones their daily rations of bee-milk, for
it is certain that the male bees depend very largely
on the workers in this way, drawing only a part of
their diet from the common stores. The old bees
are the foragers; but it is probable they are met
by the younger ones soon after their return to the
hive, and their burden of nectar, being regurgi-
tated, is transferred to the pouches of the young
bees, by whom it is carried to the store-combs in
the upper regions of the hive. At least, if the
142 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
storage-chamber of a hive be opened during the
busy part of the day, hardly any old bees will be
seen among the crowd, which is industriously
filling the cells with the new-gathered sweets.
It is not until the beginning of the second week
of their life that the young bees make their first
essay in the open air, and then it is only for a few
minutes during the hottest part of the day. This
sudden midday uproar is a familiar experience to
the bee-keeper during the late spring and summer ;
and although the drones at first contribute largely
to the chorus, they soon fly away, while the singing
cloud of bees which remains enveloping every hive
at this time, is entirely composed of the young
house-bees taking their daily brief allowance of
exercise and air.
It is found that the glands necessary for the pro-
duction of the brood-food, as also the wax-genera-
ting organs, are largely developed in bees only a
few weeks old, while, after their first month of life
is over, these organs are greatly reduced. The
bee generally begins outdoor work as a forager
soon after she has reached the age of fourteen
days. It is, however, probably a week or two
longer before she attempts the more serious busi-
ness of nectar-gathering. Nearly all the pollen-
bearers are bees in their first young strength and
vigour, and therefore peculiarly adapted to the
carrying of heavy burdens. But as soon as the
worker-bee has settled down to the great para-
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 143
mount task of honey-getting, she seems to leave
the pollen alone. Thus, in a normal colony, the
life of the honey-bee, short as it is, is carefully
planned out from beginning to end, each period
having its special task for which the age of the
bee is peculiarly fitted. Yet this rule is no more
absolute than any other of the ways of the hive.
Where the community is short-handed, and there
are not enough mature workers to gather stores,
the young bees will be turned out to forage at
a much earlier date in their career. In the same
way, if a hive has been without a queen for some
time, and therefore few young bees are available
to care for the brood when the new mother-bee
has at last established herself, many of the old
workers will stay at home and busy themselves
with the nursery-work, which in the ordinary
course they would have long since relinquished.
There are many such instances of ingenious
makeshift, or special adaptation, in the ways of
the honey-bee. She is a creature full of resource
on emergencies, but it is in the provision of
desperate remedies for really desperate ills that
she shines at her brightest. The prime disaster
in bee-life is the loss of a queen at a time when it
is impossible to appoint a successor. The standard
of intelligence, as well as that of character, varies
among bees almost as much as it does among
men. Some colonies will work harder and for
longer hours than the rest. Others will ease off
144 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
when they have put by what they consider a
sufficiency of stores, and an idle spirit spreads
visibly among them. In a few cases there is a
distinct moral twist in the national character, and
the bees take to robbing their neighbours’ larders
instead of working to furnish their own.
Permanent queenlessness is a calamity which
affects different colonies in different ways. With
some it means complete despair, a cessation of all
enterprise or interest in life. Work is stopped;
the guards are withdrawn from the gate; the
community seems to give up in a body, and to
await extinction with no more hope than a batch
of criminals in the condemned cell. But with
others the common disaster is but a signal for
a universal quickening of wits, a furbishing-up of
all possible and impossible resources. To bees of
this temper we should look for such episodes as
the egg-purloining to supply a queen-cell, which
has been already dealt with. But for supreme in-
genuity, even though it be the forlornest of forlorn
hopes, perhaps there is nothing to equal a device
sometimes resorted to in this last emergency.
Looking through a hive which is not only with-
out a queen, but which is without any means of
raising one, certain mysterious eggs are unex-
pectedly discovered. These eggs are obviously
quite newly laid, but not in the orthodox way.
A normal queen works consistently from cell to
cell, over a fairly regular patch of comb, and
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE 145
deposits only one egg in each cell; but these eggs
in the queenless hive have been laid in a curiously
haphazard way. The eggs are straggled over the
comb. Two or three cells have been furnished at
one spot and a few more at another, without the
slightest attempt at the usual order and system.
Moreover, some cells contain single eggs, but
others two, or even three, apiece. It looks as if
some demented mother-bee from another hive had
caught her keepers napping, and had made sur-
reptitious excursion into the queenless stock. But
the most careful search through the hive will reveal
no queen, nor is one to be found. The explanation
of the vagary is that one of the workers has, in
some extraordinary way, succeeded in rousing her
atrophied nature, and has become capable of laying
eggs. Yet the doom of the colony is not delayed
by this, but rather hastened; for these eggs will
produce only drones, and thus still more useless
mouths to feed. In one well-authenticated case,
the bees of a queenless colony built a queen-cell,
and actually transplanted to it one of these eggs
laid by a fertile worker, a dead drone being after-
wards found in the cell.
How the laying worker is produced under the
spur of the national crisis can only be a matter
for speculation, but probably the youngest bee
of the colony is plied with the special food usually
given to queens, and thus her generative faculties
are, to a certain extent, developed.
Io
CHAPTER X
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY
HE modern commercial bee-keeper—the man
who keeps his bees in hives of the most
approved construction, all alike in colour
and shape, and all in straight rows—is too prone
to look only on the practical side of his work, and
to regard with a certain ill-concealed contempt
anything that does not directly promote what is,
in his view, the one and only object of apiculture,
that of honey-getting.
But with the bee-keeper who is also a bee-lover,
the tendency is all the other way. To live in the
very spirit of wonder, as he must who has once
dipped down below the surface of hive-life, is to
saddle but a slow, ambling jade for the race in
material prosperity. In a bee-garden the habit of
rumination comes on one like creeping paralysis,
gradually but irresistibly. It is one thing, on a
fine June morning, to start away from the house,
pipe in mouth and busily trundling the honey-
barrow, intent on a long day’s work among the
hives; it is quite another thing to keep indus-
146
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 147
triously to the task hour after hour, when the sun
has fixed his slothful golden grip upon you, and
the drowsy song of the bees has worked its will on
heart and mind.
Good resolutions have a way of petering out,
reasonably enough, under these inviting circum
stances. The honey-barrow makes the most com-
fortable seat in the world, and can be pulled up
just where the shade of the linden-trees is thickest.
Moreover, the blue smoke of tobacco, drifting
lazily up through the sunshine, adds just that touch
of deliberation needed in a scene where all is
unmitigated, almost desperate toil; while what
difference can it make if one alone be idle in the
hundred thousand? And so, as often as not, the
creaking wheel comes permanently to rest under
the lindens; the honey is left to the honey-makers;
the thoughts follow the bees into their hives, or
may-be wend away over seas to the great planta-
tions, where the dry weed filling the pipe-bowl
was once a green leaf in an ocean of green, flecked
over with blossom, and sung over by bees, whose
ancestors might have come from this very nook in
old England, where it is now all ending in smoke
and quiet thought.
But, especially on rainy days, when there is
much to do indoors—preparing the section-racks,
discharging the honey from the full combs that,
empty, they may be returned to the hives for re-
filling on the morrow, and what not—the tendency
Io——2
148 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
to set aside obvious, humdrum duties in beeman-
ship has a still more capable ally.
The beeman with a microscope has given the
seven-leagued boots to his conscience; he will
never catch up with it again in a whole life’s
march. If the daily work in the hive, as seen
with the naked eye, is a fascinating, duty-dispers-
ing study, a microscopic acquaintance with the
hive-worker herself, and the details of her extra
ordinary equipment, lets one into a whole new
world of fact and thought.
It is only under a strong glass that the true
place of the honey-bee in the scale of creation can
be entirely estimated. Her work is evident to the
most casual eye, but of the worker herself we get
only a vague idea of a dim-hued, crystal-winged
atom running a perpetual race with the wind and
sunshine, or forming an all but undistinguishable
speck in the seething, heaving multitudes within
the hive.
But here, on the stage of the microscope, the
honey-bee is revealed as a totally new creature ;
and, by little and little, a story unfolds itself about
her which, in its way, is a perfect epic of life.
No one can study the perplexities of hive-life for
long without a conviction that a creature executing
such varied and elaborate works must, of necessity,
be herself highly developed in body and mind.
But it seldom happens, even with the veriest tiro,
that the expectation comes anywhere near the
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 149
reality in such an examination of the common
worker-bee. The unaided eye sees a creature,
fashioned simply enough to all appearances—a
brown, attenuated body, two pairs of wings, the
usual six legs common to all insects, and a couple
of bent horns, like threshels, that continuously
waver to and fro. But under the glass this sim-
plicity at once vanishes. From the tip of her
antennz to the barbed end of her sting, there is
nothing about the honey-bee that is not made on
the most bewilderingly, complicated plan.
Watching a hive at work on a busy day in
summer, the attention is first drawn to the pollen-
gatherers, labouring in by the thousand with the
big, oval, brightly-coloured masses fixed to their
hindmost legs; and it is first to the pollen-
carrying organism that the glass is now naturally
directed, The six legs, which looked all very much
alike to the naked eye, are seen to be in three
pairs, and the construction of each pair differs very
markedly from that of its fellows. So far from
their being simple legs, each has no fewer than
nine jointed parts, and nearly every part carries a
special piece of mechanism necessary and vital in
the daily work of the bee. Whole treatises might
be written on the functions of the human hand, yet
the hand is a very simple contrivance compared
with the legs of the honey-bee. The pollen-
carrying device is on the thigh of the hind leg.
The thigh is broadened out and hollowed, and
150 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
round this oblong cavity is a fringe of incurving
bristles which look as if they would hold anything.
But before the pollen can be packed in these
baskets it must be collected and kneaded together.
Practically the whole body of the bee is used in
pollen-gathering. Under the low power of the
microscope it is seen that hardly any part of the
trunk or limb is without its dense covering of
hairs; but with the high objective these hairs
cease to be hairs, and are changed into actual
feathers, delicate herring-bone implements, which
sweep up the pollen as the bee dives into the
flower-cup for the nectar that lies below.
Nearly every joint of each leg is furnished with
a comb of bristles, with which this pollen-dust is
scraped off and transferred to the carrying-basket
after being moistened by the tongue; while the
hind-legs have each a complete, perfectly-fashioned
curry-comb. Here the leg is widened and fiat-
tened, and covered on one side with nine or ten
rows of short, strong spines, with which the bee
scrapes her body just as a groom curry-combs a
horse. At ordinary times she will carefully pack
her load of pollen into its proper receptacles before
returning to the hive, so that it shall be all ready
for transference to the cells. At the cell-mouth
she pushes each lump off by means of her other
legs, leaving it to be rammed down into the cell
by the store-keepers. No distinction is made
here, every kind and colour of pollen being indis-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 151
criminately stored in the same cell ; and when the
cell is full, a thin layer of honey is smeared over
all, to preserve it from the air. When, however,
time presses, the bee will not stop to knead up the
load, but will carry it home as it is, arriving in the
hive smothered completely from head to foot as
with gold-dust. Then the house-bees gather
round her, soon scraping her free of her encum-
brance, and she starts off again for another load.
The fact that insects can walk on both upper and
under surfaces apparently with equal ease, is none
the less remarkable because we see it going on
every day of our lives. Yet the fly, crawling up the
window-glass, or running about on the ceiling,
owes his power of topsy-turvy perambulation to a
very ingenious device. This is well illustrated in
the foot of a bee. She has a pair of short, strong
double claws, which will take her securely over all
but the smoothest and shiniest surfaces ; and it is
with these claws that bees form themselves into
dense clusters and knots and cables within the
hive, holding hand-to-hand, as it were, in all direc-
tions. But when there is nothing for the claw to
hold by, another part of the foot comes into play.
This is a soft, flexible pad, which is always covered
by a thick, oily exudation. In walking, the bee
puts her feet down three at a time, the pads ad-
hering instantly they come into contact with the
smooth surface. At the next step the other three
pads come into play, while the first three are
152 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
stripped off. But each foot is capable of attaching
and detaching itself independently of its fellows.
In this case the stripping is accomplished by down-
ward pressure of the claws of the same foot.
On each of her fore-legs the bee has an ap-
pliance which fulfils a very important office. It
is a semicircular notch with a fringe of strong
hairs, and when the leg is bent up, this notch
engages with a curious projection on the next
upper joint, forming an eyelet roughly circular in
shape. With this exact and special tool she cleans
her antennez, and this is done at short intervals
throughout the whole active time of her life, much
as, in the operation of winking, the human eye is
kept cleansed. The tongue also is freed from
adhering grains of pollen by this device.
The question, How does a bee gather the
flower-juices to make her honey? is met by certain
popular naturalists with the assurance that she
sucks them through a tube. This is so easy a
generalisation that it amounts very nearly to posi-
tive error. The tongue of the bee is not a tube,
as the word is usually understood. And she laps
up the nectar as often as she sucks it. It depends
entirely on the quantity to be dealt with; and a
little careful dissection of the mouth-parts of the
bee, by means of the microscope and a pair of long
needles, will soon make the whole matter clear.
She is no beauty—the honey-bee, seen at such
close quarters; unending toil, and a perverted,
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 153
baffled nature, do not tend to loveliness in any of
her sex. But her positive and almost terrifying
ugliness, when looked at so disadvantageously, is
soon forgotten as. one comes to realise her
abounding possession of that other kind of beauty
—the beauty of utility.
To the naked eye her tongue is a bright brown,
shining piece, protruding from her mouth, and
hanging down with much the same appearance as
an elephant’s trunk. Under the microscope it is
soon seen that this is not a tongue in the proper
sense, but a continuation of the under-lip. It
consists of six or seven different parts capable of
being fitted together lengthways. There is a
central part, longer than the rest, with a hairy
spatula at its end, and when the other parts are
closed about this, the whole virtually forms a tube
within a tube. The spatula does the lapping
when only minute quantities of fluid have to be
taken up, and these pass into the mouth more by
capillary attraction than by actual sucking; but
when there is a brimming cup of nectar to be
emptied, the whole mechanism of the tongue is
brought into play. The longitudinal strips are
placed together edge to edge, and the liquid is
drawn out of the flower-cup by the action of the
tongue-muscles in much the same way as water is
lifted by a pump.
Now that we have the head of the bee under
observation, many curious things about it can be
154 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
ascertained. The strong, curved jaws, working
sideways, are doubly interesting as the main
implements used in the preparation of the wax,
and largely in the comb-building. But the eyes
and the long, flail-like antenne rivet attention
first. Whether the bee was made for her life, or
the life—imposed on her by inexorable conditions
—made the bee what she is to-day, the extra-
ordinary adaptation of her physique to her en-
vironment is beyond all question. The great
compound eyes, with their thousands of facets
each pointing in a slightly different direction, are
obviously made for wide and distant outlooks.
It is with these eyes that the bee finds her way
out and home over miles of country. In the
worker the compound eyes occupy the whole
sides of the head, but in the drone they are much
larger, and meet entirely at the top. Thus,
dallying in the sunshine, he is able the while to
keep the whole arc of the sky under scrutiny,
ready at an instant’s notice to take up the love-
challenge of the young queens.
But these large multiple eyes of the bee are of
little use to her at close quarters, or in the deep
twilight of the hive. For indoor use, and for near
vision, she has three other eyes, containing a
single lens each, and set in her forehead just
above her antennz. The popular belief, that the
honey-bee carries on her busy life, and elaborate
enterprises in complete darkness, is mainly a
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 155
fallacy. Probably there is always some light, even
in the remotest recesses of the hive—enough, at
least, for the eyes of the bee, if not for our own
vision.
The bee, however, would seem to depend very
little on sight alone in the prosecution of her
various tasks. There is little doubt that she
possesses all the other four senses in a marked
degree. Both the tongue and the lips have
certain highly developed structures upon them
which can be nothing else than organs of taste;
while the most superficial acquaintance with the
life of the hive must convince anyone that the bee
possesses the senses of smell and hearing, and
that very acutely. Where the seat of these two
faculties lies is at present doubtful, and the exact
functions of the antennz are still a matter of
conjecture. But it is at least certain that these
latter perform vital office in every act or enterprise
of the bee. It is obvious that the antenne are
very delicate organs of touch, but it is equally
obvious that they are much more than this. It
has been ascertained that they carry no less than
six totally different kinds of instruments, each of
which must have its distinct use.
Observation of the ways of the honey-bee has
been carried on for thousands of years. More books
have been written about the bee than perhaps of all
other creatures put together. And yet our know-
ledge of her powers and organisation must still
156 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
be reckoned in its infancy. The microscopists
have dissected her antenne and isolated all their
various parts, but of the particular functions of
these little or nothing is known at present. There
are certain hairs, evenly distributed over the whole
surface, which are presumably instruments of
touch. But there are other hairs, or fine cones,
which are hollow, enclosing a delicate nerve-fibre;
hairs set loosely in a cavity; hairs curved and
ringed, and of different lengths. Then there are
mysterious pits and depressions, either open or
covered with incredibly thin membranes, enshrin-
ing nerve-ends only just visible with the highest
objectives. And the whole is linked up in an
intricate nervous system that baffles every art and
patience of research; while, when all has been
investigated and described, no one is really any
the wiser.
The antennz are certainly touch-organs, and, in
all likelihood, it is by their means that the bee
hears and smells. Yet this only exhausts a few
of their manifest possibilities. It is quite clear
that we must admit the honey-bee to possess other
senses than the five we know of ; and—for-a guess
—some of these mysterious implements on her
antennz may be thought-transmitters and -re-
ceivers on the wireless plan. The wonderful
unanimity of action among bees may be due to
the fact that they can exchange ideas through the
air, as men have now at last come to do. The
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 157
faculty of speech, hitherto held up as man’s insignia
of lordship over the rest of creation, may be
indeed a crude, archaic thing, compared with the
mind-language of the honey-bees.
There is another conceivable function which the
antenne of bees may perform—that of unerring
and instant estimation of short distances. They
may be delicate measuring instruments, not
mechanically applied in the way of a foot-rule or
metric scale, but registering dimensions inherently,
as our ears record intensity of sound. This would
go far to explain how honeycomb is built, how
the cells are made all of the same shape and size,
although hundreds of the mason-bees are at
work on the structure, not only at the same
moment, but in succession, each bee coming and
going in the murmurous gloom of the hive, and
beginning instantly and unhesitatingly at the point
where her predecessor broke off. As the central
division of the comb grew, expanding in all direc-
tions downward, and the cells were built out
horizontally at the same time, the bee would know
by her sense of dimension when the limit of each
side in the hexagonal cell-base was reached, and
would know the proper angle to turn off at in the
laying of the next foundation-line.
Anyone who has watched the flight of the bee
must have been struck by its sheer facility and
freedom no less than by its speed. It is quite
evident that the bee is not only an accomplished
158 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
aérial navigator, but that she sustains and propels
herself through the air with very little effort.
Obviously her equipment for flight must be a
thoroughly efficient one, and yet at first glance
it is not quite clear how she manages so well.
The student of the flight-problem, taking his ideas
and conception of first principles from the flight
of birds, is accustomed to believe that there are
at least two vital indispensable elements in the
process—a pair of wings or combination of aéro-
plane and propellers that will sustain as well as
drive, and some sort of steering-apparatus like the
bird’s tail. Yet, as far as a first general inspection
carries us, the bee appears to have no rudder-
mechanism at all, but to depend on her four wings
for every purpose. The wings of the bird have
a variable action. They can be used together or
separately, and are as capable of eccentric adjust-
ment, both in themselves and in relation to one
another, as a pair of human arms. But the bee’s
wings have none of this adaptability. They have
but the one motion, up and down; and they work
symmetrically, each wing keeping time with its
fellow. Yet the bee steers herself perfectly well
in a hundred different evolutions, accomplishing
all that the bird attains with his more complicated
apparatus for flight.
The whole problem is bound up with another
problem ; and the two, difficult of solution apart,
easily resolve one another when taken in con-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 159
junction. Insects are so called because their
bodies are in two parts, entirely divided except
for an extremely slender connecting-joint. We
are so accustomed to accept this arrangement as
a common fact in nature that we seldom stop to
consider its real significance. It is not easy to see
how such a construction can be anything else than
a drawback to any living creature. But in the
hive-bee the whole arrangement seems to amount
to what must be called an ideal inconvenience,,
seeing that her honey-sac and complicated organs
for producing the larval food are in her abdomen,
with no way to them but through this fine joint.
Clearly there is some weighty reason for it, out~
balancing all other considerations, or it would not
%xist ; and when we come to study it in connection
with the honey-bee’s peculiar system of flight, we
soon arrive at the true solution.
It has been said that the wings of the bee have
a perfectly symmetrical action, and that they have
a single fixed direction, moving up and down,
always at right-angles with the line of the thorax.
Under the microscope each of the four wings
is seen as a transparent, impervious membrane,
intersected with fine ribs. The front wing, how-
ever, has a much stronger and stiffer rib running
the entire length of its upper edge, and it is on this
main rib that almost the entire force of the flight-
muscles is concentrated. If you look farther, you
will see that the under wing has a row of fine
160 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
hooks along its top edge, while the lower edge of
the upper wing is flanged or folded back. In
flight the hooks on one wing engage with the
flange on the other, and thus the wings on each
side are automatically locked together, forming one
continuous air-resisting surface. This combined
wing is very flexible throughout, except at its
upper edge, where it is stiffened by the main rib.
In action, therefore,—the force being applied
practically to the edge alone, which resists the air
while the rest of the wing bends to it—the result
is that the whole wing becomes an oscillating,
inclined plane, whose inclination, forward on the
down-stroke, is still forward on the up-stroke,
because the plane-inclination reverses itself auto-
matically.
From this it will be understood how the flexible
wings of the bee are used in straightforward
flight; but, seeing that the wings themselves are
incapable of independent or irregular action, it is
not yet clear how the bee contrives to steer herself,
rising or descending, or turning sideways, just as
the mood seizes her. It is here that the reason
for the peculiar construction of her body becomes
plain. The fine link which unites her abdomen
to her thorax is really an universal joint, actuated
by a series of powerful cross-muscles, and the bee
steers herself through the air by using the weight
of the lower half of her body as a counterpoise.
By swinging her heavy abdomen forward or back-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 161
ward, or from side to side, she changes her centre
of gravity, and the line of force of her aéroplanes,
at one and the same time. Actually her body
keeps its vertical position, being her heaviest
part, and it is the lighter wing-supporting thorax
which is deflected. But the result is the same,
and every variety and direction of flight is accom-
plished by the bee on what seems a far more simple
plan than that evidenced in the flight of birds.
One of the most difficult things to account for
in the life of the honey-bee is the fact that the
temperature of the hive can be varied at the will
of its occupants. The system of mechanical
ventilation will, of course, explain how the hive is
kept cool in the greatest heats of summer, but it
does not explain the sudden accessions of heat to
which it is liable from time to time. These occur
principally when the wax: is being generated.
Under the bronze armour-plates of her body the
worker-bee has six shallow, but broad depressions,
beneath which the wax-glands are placed. Perfect
rest and a high temperature seem to be necessary
for the stimulation of these glands, and the wax-
makers consume a large quantity of sweet-food
during the process. It is generally stated that
bees fill themselves from the stores of mature
honey before uniting in the cluster ; but it is more
probable that the food consumed during wax-
making is principally the nectar, almost as gathered
from the flowers. This view is confirmed by cer-
II
162 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
tain experiments which were undertaken to decide
the amount of food assimilated during the produc-
tion of a given weight of wax. When the bees
had access only to honey, it was found that five or
six pounds were needed during the time that one
pound of wax was produced. But if the bees
were fed on a plain syrup of cane-sugar, more wax
‘was generated. The chemical composition of
fresh nectar is almost identical with that of sugar
from the sugar-cane, but mature honey contains
practically no cane-sugar at all. It is very doubt-
ful, therefore, if the economic bee would deplete
her hard-won stores of honey for a purpose that
could be better accomplished in another and
cheaper way. And it should also be borne in mind
that the natural time for comb-building coincides
with the season when nectar is in greatest plenty.
These sudden, variations in temperature appear
to be brought about by a wholesale increase in
the rate of respiration among the bees; and there
is nothing that excites the wonder of the student
of hive-life more than the breathing-apparatus of
the bee, as seen under the microscope. Practically
her whole physical system is directly supplied
with air, drawn in through her many spiracles.
As far as scientists have been able to determine,
there is not a fibre or nerve in her entire body that
is not reached by the minute ramifications of the air-
ducts, in direct communication with the great main
breathing-vessels in the bee’s abdomen. Respira-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 163
tion appears to be largely voluntary with the
honey-bee. She breathes only when the necessity
for it arises, and will sometimes arrest the action
entirely for three or four minutes together. But
when the wax-making is going forward, or swarm-
ing-time is near at hand, the quick, vibratory
movement of respiration is visible everywhere in
the throng of bees, and the temperature of the
hive climbs up often to a dozen degrees above its
normal point.
The breathing system of the honey-bee is
closely connected with her sound-organs. Any-
one asked to describe the note made by a bee
would probably say that she hums or buzzes, and
there would be an end to most ideas on the matter.
But to the beeman this is a pitifully inadequate
statement of the truth. The bee comprises in
herself not one, but a whole choir of voices, and
she has a compass of at least an octave and a half.
Every one of her fourteen spiracles, and each of
her wings, is capable of producing sound; and
these sounds can be endlessly varied in quality,
intensity, and pitch. It is no exaggeration to say
that the honey-bee is as accomplished a musician
as any bird; but as each individual voice is for
the most part lost in the general symphony of the
hive, it is difficult to get a complete idea of her
capabilities as a soloist.
The voice-apparatus in the spiracles is one of
the most intricate things in the whole anatomy of
1I——2
164 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the bee. It has a multiplicity of parts, and is
obviously designed to convey a great variety of
sounds. The wings also produce tones that run
up or down in the scale, according to their rate of
oscillation; and from them comes the sibilant
note usually called buzzing. Listening to the hive-
music at any season of the year, it is impossible to
resist the thought that bees not only hold indi-
vidual communication by means of these infinitely
varied sounds, but that the general note given out
by the multitude unerringly expresses the state of
affairs within the hive for the time being. A
prosperous stock voices its busy contentment in a
way impossible to misunderstand. It is a deep,
blithe, resonant sound, like the steady running of
well-oiled machinery, each wheel adding its own
whirring melody to the general theme. Weak or
famishing colonies give out a wavering, intermittent
note, the very voice of complaint and fear for the
future. When a hive has lost its queen, a capable
bee-master should have no difficulty in divining
the trouble by listening at the hive-entrance. A
queenless stock is all clamour and the hubbub of
divided counsels, The ordinary rich reverbera-
tion of labour stops, and a sound of panic goes to
and fro in the hive unceasingly. If a hive be
quietly opened, and its queen removed with little
disturbance, it may be some time before the bees
discover their loss. Some colonies experimented
with in this way realise their deprivation im-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 165
mediately, and the hue-and-cry begins at once,
But one of the most curious facts in bee-life is the
variation in intelligence, and alertness of percep-
tion, between the different hives. A steady-going,
dull race may be a considerable time before it
perceives the absence of its queen. The com-
mon note of work goes on unchanged until the fact
dawns on it. And then the peculiar shrill out-
cry commences, overpowering all other sounds
until reason again asserts itself in the colony, and
the bees set about the work of raising another
queen.
The voice of the drone is deeper and hoarser
than that of the worker-bee, by reason of his larger
body ; and his noisier buzzing is explained by his
greater length and breadth of wing. The queen
also has a deeper, more husky voice during flight ;
but she has, in addition, a peculiar cry of her own,
an old familiar sound to bee-keepers all the world
over. It is heard principally just before the
swarming of the hive. Certain old skeppists pro-
fess to be able to foretell the date on which a
swarm will issue by studying the cry of the queen.
On quiet nights, just before the swarming-season
commences, it may frequently be heard above the
general murmur of the hive by bending the ear
down to the entrance. It is a shrill piping sound,
repeated over and over again, and often answered
by other and fainter notes. How it is produced
is not certainly known, but probably it is caused
166 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
by the wings or legs being sharply rubbed together,
much as a cricket or grasshopper utters its cry.
The louder note is made by the old queen, and
there is no doubt of its import. Jealousy and the
lust of battle are on her, and she is trying to get
at the young princesses in their cells. The cry is
one of baffled fury as she strives with the guards
about the cells, and the answering notes come
from the imprisoned queens who are just as eager
for the fray. The old skeppists are never far out
in their reckoning. When this state of affairs has
begun, the crisis is imminent; and the morrow is
sure to see the emigrating party setting off for
its new home, carrying the old queen irresistibly
with it.
It has been said that the nurse-bees, who have
the entire charge and care of the young brood,
feed the larve from their mouths with a thick
white fluid, which is aptly called bee-milk. A\ll the
time the nurses are engaged on this work, they are
themselves hearty eaters of both honey and pollen;
so that at first sight it appears as if the bee had
the power of instantaneous digestion, feeding her-
self at one moment, and, at the next, regurgitating
this food, changed into a totally different substance,
to feed the young grubs. Moreover, there is
another wonderful thing regarding this bee-milk.
It has been proved by careful analysis that its
composition varies considerably. The male, female,
and queen-larve are all fed with it, but its con-
d0Ou%d ONNOA AHL ONIGNAL : ANASUON-Fad AHL
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 167
stitution differs, not only with each kind of larva,
but according to the age the larva has reached.
The bee must therefore have her whole system of
digestion under full voluntary control. How she
manages this critical part of her work can only be
understood by the aid of a good microscope.
Perhaps there is nothing more wonderful, in the
whole wonderful anatomy of the bee, than her
digestive organism and its contributory system of
glands, each of which has its special and important
use. When she draws up the nectar from the
flowers, it passes at once into the first of her two
stomachs, which is simply and solely a reservoir.
Here it can remain indefinitely at the will of the
bee; or it can be thrown up and poured into the
comb-cells, to be brewed into honey; or it can be
allowed to pass through a valve at the base of the
reservoir into the bee’s second and lower stomach,
where digestion takes place and the honey and
pollen are formed into chyle. But, by one of the
most ingenious devices in nature, this second
stomach is also capable of returning its contents
to the mouth, and the chyle is there changed into
bee-milk for the nourishment of the larve.
The worker-bee has, in all, four distinct glands,
each secreting a fluid with properties different from
the other three. These glands are all situated in
the mouth. Two of them have a common opening
in the upper side of the root of the tongue; and
as the bee sucks, their combined secretions mingle
168 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
with the flower-juices automatically, and the first
step in the change of the nectar into honey takes
place. The third gland is in the roof of the mouth,
and it is the secretion from this gland which acts
on the regurgitated chyle, and changes it into
brood-food. The fourth gland is double. These
twin-glands have their openings at the base of the
jaws, and the action of chewing is necessary to
excite their secretion.
The valve between the upper, or honey-stomach,
and the lower, or chyle-stomach, has an extensible
neck, and the bee can, at will, raise this telescopic
piece through the interior of the honey-sac until
the valve is pressed against the opening into the
gullet. Thus the contents of the lower stomach
can be driven into the mouth without coming into
contact with the stored sweets in the reservoir,
and this pre-digested matter is always ready at an
instant’s notice for the use of the larve, or for the
nourishment of drones or queen.
It has been said that the nursery-work of the
hive is undertaken exclusively by the young bees
during the first fortnight or so of their lives. After
this time they make their first foraging expedition,
beginning with pollen-gathering, and relinquishing
this in turn for the collection of nectar when they
have arrived at full maturity. The mature workers
take no part in the feeding of the larve, except on
very rare emergencies. In relation to this, it is a
curious fact that the gland in the roof of the mouth,
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 169
which acts on the chyle, forming it into brood-food,
is in full development only during the first weeks
of the worker-bee’s career. After that its activity
swiftly declines, until, in old workers, it becomes
largely atrophied.
The digestive gland-system of the honey-bee,
although it has been fairly well explored by the
scientific naturalists, is still much of a mystery,
and this especially with regard to the glands
attached to the jaws. The secretion from these
glands—obviously a very powerful acid—is mainly
used to convert the raw wax from its hard, brittle
character into the soft, ductile material of which
the combs are made. It is probably used to some
extent, also, in the preparation of the brood-food,
in conjunction with the gland in the roof of the
mouth. It mingles with the pollen when this is
masticated, and no doubt it has various other uses;
but no one seems as yet to have discovered
why these two glands should be so enormously
developed in the queen, who takes no part in
the nursery-work or comb-building. The whole
question will naturally have little more than a
passing interest for the general reader; but, to
the bee-keeper with a microscope, it takes a
prominent place among the debatable things in
hive-life. If the difference between the queen-
bee and the worker-bee—a difference of organic
structure as well as mere development—is really
brought about by variation in the quality and
170 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
quantity of the food supplied to the larve, then
the action of these glands cannot be over-estimated
in importance, and cannot be studied too deeply :
they form the very spring and fount of life. Yet
is it certain that the influence brought to bear on
the young grubs by the nurse-bees is wholly re-
stricted to the matter of food? The worker-bee
has several curious organs and gland-systems in
various parts of her body, in addition to those
already enumerated, to which no rational use has
yet been assigned. The more we study her extra-
ordinary equipment, the less justification there
appears to be for dogmatising about her, limiting
or particularising the function of any one gland or
implement in the whole unending array. The old
adage, that there is nothing invariable about the
honey-bee, is like to be as true with regard to her
physiology as it is with her habits of life; and, for
all we can tell, to-morrow’s knowledge may render
obsolete much of the carefully garnered knowledge
of to-day.
If the story of the honey-bee’s anatomy has
everywhere some of the elements of romance about
it—in its unexpected incidents, its adventurous
colour, its shadow of a great design—this spirit
suffers no abatement when we come, in a last view
of it, to consider her as one carrying arms, one
bearing such a weapon of offence as never came
into human mind to fashion. The long curved
scimitar of the queen, which she cherishes so care-
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 171
fully that nothing will induce her to strike with it
except when it is to be turned against a royal foe,
is otherwise little else than a harmless piece of
domestic furniture. But the sting of the valorous
worker-bee, seen under a microscope, is a positively
terrifying engine of destruction. Popular science
generally describes it as a sheath containing a
barbed and poisonous dart; and the trite com-
parison is always made of the bee’s sting with the
finest sewing-needle, the latter being likened to a
rough bar of iron. The idea of a sheath is pure
fiction, as a little painstaking examination will soon
reveal.
The bee’s sting is made up of three separate
lances, each with a barbed edge, and each
capable of being thrust forward independently of
the others. The central and broader lance has a
hollow face, furnished at each side with a rail, or
beading, which runs its whole length. On the
back of each of the other two lances there is a
longitudinal groove, and into these grooves fit the
raised beadings of the central lancet. Thus the
sting is like a sword with three blades—united,
but sliding upon one another—the barbed points
of which continue to advance alternately into the
wound, going ever deeper and deeper of their own
malice aforethought after the initial thrust is made.
It is a device of war, compared to which the
explosive bullet is but a clumsy brutality. Yet
this is not all. To make its death-dealing powers
172 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
doubly sure, this thorough-minded amazon must
fill the haft of her triple blade with a subtle poison,
and so contrive its sliding mechanism that the
same impulse, which drives the points successively
forward, drenches the whole weapon with a fatal
juice.
The tendency to be unduly scientific, to meet
these things with exact and unimaginative interest,
receives its final quietus here. For he who
realises the whole deadly efficacy of the honey-
bee’s sting cannot logically pass it by as a mere
remarkable provision of nature, praising God for
it complacently, but must concede it a much wider
significance. This complicated weapon of the
stunted, sex-perverted worker-bee owes its exist-
ence as much to deliberate art as to nature, or
those who watch the Omnipotent in hive-life are
strangely and perversely led astray. In the queen-
mother, whose physical organism may be said to
be comparatively unchanged from its aboriginal
type, we see the part corresponding to the worker’s
sting, essentially another creation. The queen’s
ovipositor is longer ; it is curved; the barbs upon
it are small and insignificant; the fluid in the
secreting-gland is no poison at all, but a thick
opaque substance, whose true use is probably to
glue the eggs safely to the bottoms of the cells.
She is also provided with a pair of blunt instru-
ments covered with sensitive hairs, which serve,
with the ovipositor, to guide the egg securely to
A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 173
its destination. The worker-bee has these feelers
on either side of her sting, but she has perverted
them to a very different office, that of seeking out
the vulnerable parts of her enemy. And what a
drastic change her will, or that of her foster-
mothers, has wrought in the whole contrivance!
She has bartered the privilege of motherhood and
years of life for a few short months and a share
in the communal sovereignty. She must be ready
to further the well-being of the hive by the art of
war as well as by the arts of peace. Therefore
she has deliberately helped in fashioning the
ploughshares into cannon. A little change in her
food as a nursling, an infinitesimal leaking from
a gland that takes the full power of the strongest
glass to see,—and, with all the other multitudinous
changes of form and character, this last miracle
comes quietly into being. The egg-depositing
shaft grows short and straight; its moderate in-
dentations become cruel jagged barbs designed to
hold as well as to kill ; the harmless, egg-fastening
gluten is quickened into a virulent poison; and
the death-dealing thing is ready and ripe for
service against all honey-lovers, the hereditary
foes of the hive.
CHAPTER XI
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM
HE old “swarm in May,” beloved of ancient
beemen, is rapidly becoming a thing of the
past. Modern hives and modern methods,
although they have not as yet achieved their main
intent of abolishing natural swarming altogether,
yet tend to bring this extraordinary ebullition of
hive-life to its fulfilment later and later in each
year. Far from being a virtue, as of old, an
early swarm, or indeed any swarm at all, is now
accounted a misfortune, even a downright dis-
grace, in scientific beemanship. And yet the bees,
though easy to discourage, are hard to teach. In
spite of roomy hives and a watchful bee-master
ready to give them an unbroken succession of
young and fertile queens, and a whole houseful
of new furniture at a moment’s notice, still the
bees go on playing this mad game of wholesale
truantry, and still the bee-keeper must stand look-
ing hopelessly on from the midst of his elaborate
appliances, while his property sings about his ears,
174
A SWARM IN MAY
/
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 175
or wings away into the upper skies, irrevocable
as last year’s mill-water.
Beemen call it the swarming fever; and fever it
is in very truth. The reasons for it have long
ago been crystallised into exact and accepted
phrases. An overcrowded condition of the hive;
the desire of the bees to get rid of a failing
queen ; the excitement of the queen herself at the
menace of coming rivals; the natural instinct of
colonies to increase and multiply—anything but
the one all-sufficient and obvious reason, that
bees swarm because they suddenly and intensely
desire it.
The story of the Sioux Indian,—won for civili-
sation from boyhood, over-educated and over-
refined, decorated with a high college-degree and
adorning a great pulpit, and then casting it all to
the four winds, stripping and painting himself, and
raging away with his kind on the war-trail,—has
a near parallel in the behaviour of bees at
swarming-time. Instinct could never be a party
to such an inconsequent, outrageous, brilliantly
reckless, joyous proceeding. But it is ever in the
way of reason to be splendidly unreasonable at
times, and here the honey-bee shows herself the
true child of her origins. From a stern, self-
elected destiny-maker, callously pressing to the
forefront of life over all obstacles of heart and
hearth, she changes back, for the nonce, into the
aboriginal bee-woman, thoughtless, pleasure-loving,
176 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
improvident, spending the garnered treasure of
laborious days in the one mad moment's frolic.
For it is impossible to regard the incident of
the swarm as only one more link in the chain of
sober, calculating bee-wisdom. It is obviously a
lapse, a general falling away from the all-wise,
public polity. For a single hour in her drudging,
joyless, perfect life, the worker-bee battens down
all the virtues, and rages forth like the Sioux
Indian to swill at the stream of forbidden love
and laughter, unmindful of the cost. Just when
the common self-abnegation is yielding its rich
first-fruits of prosperity, and the hive is over-
flowing with its wealth of citizens and possessions,
this fever comes among them, and spreads like a
prairie fire. By all laws of prudence it is now, of
all times, that every child of the Mother-State
should stand by her mightily, to uphold her in the
high place won for her by unending toil and
innumerable lives. But old ancestral memory
wakens, calling irresistibly. Nature, in the be-
ginning of time, made the honey-bee to inhabit
a tropic land, where there was no need for pent,
cold-withstanding houses, nor any use in laying
up provender for days of dearth, because the land
flowed with perpetual honey. Bee-life in those
far-off ages was all dancing in the sunshine, and
the bee-woman had little to do but to fly to the
nearest brimming flower-cup when her nurslings
wanted food. But a cooling world, the ever
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 1977
northward trend of her race, and then the folly of
her own wisdom—intellect turning upon itself—
all combined to lose for her the old slothful
paradise of plenty. The drone, reasoning in-
versely by the wisdom of his folly, made a better
compromise with fate. He held to his life of ease
and his gratuitous pleasures at all cost, and let his
mate go her way undeterred, blinding his eyes to
the new necessities. Work and responsibility
gradually soured and sharpened and hardened the
one, while dependence on his womenkind as in-
sidiously changed the other into a creature of
idleness and the senses. And when he came at
last to realise the outcome of it all, it was too late.
The matriarchal commonwealth was established,
hedged round securely with a myriad poisoned
blades. To live a drone had been his heart’s
desire, and now dronehood, mere seminality, was
allotted to him as a retribution. The things for
which man lifts his unregarded prayer all his life
through, might very well prove his fittest punish-
ment, granted to him in the Hereafter: so little
can man or drone distinguish between the enduring
things of life and death.
But of all intolerable fates, that must be least
bearable, to have wisely willed and beautifully
fashioned our own eternity ; and then, being only
human, or at least reasonable, to find its goodness
really smooth-going, colour-fast, impregnable at
all points, with never a bright break or flaw to
12
178 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
vary the monotony of well-doing. No wonder
the honey-bee swarms, breaks helter-skelter out
of her prison-bounds of order, commendable toil,
chill, maidenly propriety ; and goes rioting away
for one short hour of joyousness and madcap
frolic, such as her primzeval sisters looked to as
the common day’s lot, when there were no hives,
and motherhood was not the sole prerogative of
one in thirty thousand, and when the sun burned
high and cheerily in heaven from end to end of
the tropic year. It is easy to be wise, and tem-
perately scientific, in accounting for this feverish
impulse of the worker-bees, allotting it a sound
and circumspect part in the furtherance of the
general polity. But is it not, in the main, Nature—
the atrophied sexual spirit—awakening, or at least
stirring a little in her age-long sleep? In the
sultry August evenings the young queens of the
ant-hills pour out in unnumbered thousands to
meet the males, and people the ruddy sunshine
with the glint of their wings. This is swarming
in its truest sense. The wingless, workful, under-
ground existence follows, but the love-flight of the
ants, while it lasts, is none the less a real, intensely
joyous thing. And surely the swarming-fever
that so strangely and inopportunely seizes upon
hive-life, is at one with it in nature and spirit,
although its original purpose and value have been
long ago lost in the ages.
The one in the whole multitude who alone has
IWN¥MS
NIN VIN W
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 179
the full inheritance of her sex, the queen-bee,
seems often at the fountain-head of the revolution.
Sometimes, undoubtedly, it is she who first de-
velops this longing, feverish unrest, and by little
and little communicates it to the whole colony.
Here the variability of bee-nature comes sharply
into evidence. Some hives will show this restless
spirit for many days before the swarm issues,
while with others the great upheaval seems, as
far as the mass of bees is concerned, to be a
sudden unpremeditated thing occurring in the
midst of the universal content and industry.
The preparations for raising new queens are
always taken in hand betimes, but probably this is
the work of the far-seeing, sober old bees of the
hive, with whom communism has become a settled
and accepted calamity. The bees who will ulti-
mately constitute the swarm may be supposed to
nourish their secret desires from the first moment
the queen shows signs of mutability; to neglect
all their old tasks, first in heart and then in reality ;
and finally—when the queen’s mood has reached
its culminating point, and her work in the hive is
in virtual abeyance—to throw down plummet and
trowel and hod, and rush forth in a wild, hilarious
company, urged by a longing that they are as
powerless to resist as to understand.
In the study of bee-life one comes upon many
questions, but seldom answers to fit all. If the
queen’s fecundation takes place only once in her
12-2
180 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
life, and nature intends this to suffice for her
whole fruitful period, it is not easy to see why she
should go out with the swarm at all. That she is
not the inveterate recluse as generally believed,
and that she does occasionally make short flights
in the open during her laying career, is well
proved. The desire, therefore, to see the light
again after a long incarceration cannot be urged
as her reason for going off with the swarm. A
much more plausible notion is that the sexual spirit
is again roused in the queen, just as it seems to be
roused for the first time in the worker-bee; and
that, with all, the journey is undertaken as a
mating-flight, a faint re-echo of a racial custom
long extinct, bearing the closest analogy to the
marriage-swarm from the ant-hill. It must be
borne in mind that, although the queen-bee is
undoubtedly rendered capable of producing her
kind of both sexes during several years, as the
result of a single fertilisation, it cannot be incon-
testably held that she never again meets the drone
under any circumstances. There is nothing in
her physical organism to prevent a second coition,
although with the drone this is impossible, for
more reasons than the all-sufficient one—that he
dies in his marriage-hour.
In the old bee-gardens, where the “swarm in
May ” is still a living, present thing, it is pleasant
to sit with the proprietor under the rosy shade of
apple-boughs waiting for the swarms to issue, and
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 181
“talking bees,” which is the most nerve-soothing,
soul-refreshing occupation in the world. There
never was a bee-keeper, new style or old style, too
busy to talk, provided that you met him with
understanding, and were as impatient as he of
digressions from the all-important theme. One
soon gets tired of imparting information as to the
wonders of hive-life to the ignorant and plainly
apprehensive stranger, and none sooner than he
of the old school. In the quietest apiary of pure-
bred English bees there are always a few indi-
viduals of crotchety nature, who will search you
out in the shady orchard seat, and, as like as not,
knife you on the least provocation. If you area
beeman, you treat these vindictive approaches
with unconcern. You go on listening to the old
man’s talk, while the bee shrills away at your
eyelids, or creeps into your ear and out again. If
you keep quiet, she will soon relinquish the dull
sport, and wing harmlessly away ; and the thread
of the master’s discourse is not interrupted. But
the uninformed stranger is a nuisance at these soli-
tudes for two. He flinches and shudders; makes
little irritating retreats; beats about wildly with
his hands; or, if he is made of the sternest metal, he
sits rigidly upright when he should be reclining at
his ease, and turns such a painfully polite, though
distracted, ear to his informant, that the stream of
talk is sure to dry up incontinently, and he feels as
little welcome as ghostly Banquo at the feast.
182 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
When you have once lived among hives it is a
sore thing to be without their music. On warm
days, winter and summer alike, there is always
this drowsy, dreamy song in the air; and dancing
without the fiddlers is no more depressing an
occupation than, to a beeman, is loitering in a
garden of mere silent vegetables and flowers.
Sitting now under the bower of apple-blossoms
and watching for the swarms, the full sweet note
from the hives comes over to you like the very
voice of serene content. It pervades the sun-
shine. It gently qualifies the slow wind in the
tree-tops. It lifts and falls like the lilt of a far-off
summer sea. This is the labour-song: the song
of the swarm is very different. To the trained
ear the casura that presently comes in the midst
of the music is as clear as a pistol-shot, though
you may detect no change. The old bee-keeper
stops short in his wandering tale about famous
honey-years of half a lifetime back, seizes key and
pan, and hurries across the garden. It is the old
green hive again, he tells you, as you press hard
upon his heels—it is always the old green hive
that has swarmed the earliest every May for years
back. And forthwith the key and pan begin their
clattering ding-dong melody.
Old-fashioned bee-keeping is not always a
matter of straw. Box-hives, without, of course, the
modern inside furniture, have been in use nearly
as long as the straw skep; and the hives in the
THE SWARM
YING
HIV
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 183
garden are of this ancient pattern. The old green
hive is keeping well up to its reputation. Already
it is the centre of a swirling crowd of bees, and, as
you look, a dense black stream of them is pouring
out of the entrance so fast and furiously that it is
almost impossible to distinguish what they are.
And the old wild trek-song is growing louder and
deeper with every moment, a rich vibrant tenor
note unlike any other sound in nature, There is
no doubt at all of its import, as you stand in the
wing-darkened sunshine, caught up in the excite-
ment of it all, and feeling much as if you were
facing a tearing sou’-west gale. Every bee of the
twenty or thirty thousand volleying madly to and
fro overhead, is singing her bravest and loudest.
There is only one meaning to the whole gargan-
tuan chorus. It is sheer jubilation melodised : a
wild, glad song of freedom, as though not a bee
amongst them had ever before set eyes on the
sunshine and the wealth of an English May.
The great door-key, a ponderous, antiquated
piece of metal, beats out its clanging note, and the
swarm lifts higher and higher into the blue.
Gradually the sombre mist of bees draws closer
together, looking now like a little dark cloud
strayed from a forgotten summer storm. Now it
sails slowly northward, and lightens, as the sun-
light is caught by the beating wings as in a net of
silver ; and now it veers away into the very eye of
the sun, and changes into black, revolving tracery
184 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
again ; whirring wheels within wheels of insect-
life, spinning-wheels making thread to weave the
garments of a whole nation, and humming as
never spinning-wheels hummed before.
But the beginning of the end is nigh ; the time
of singing is nearly over. The old beeman stops
his weird tom-tomming, throws down key and
pan, and points to the topmost branch of a young
apple-sapling. You see a little black knot of bees
clinging to it no larger than a pigeon’s egg. A
moment later, and it has grown to the size of a
double fist, and another moment sees it twice this
size again, as the flying bees stream towards it
from all directions. Now it is as big as a quart
measure, and the branch is slowly bending down
under its weight. In an incredibly short space of
time the whole swarm has joined the cluster ; they
hang together in a long, brown, glistening, cigar-
shaped mass, well-nigh touching the ground, and
the wild, merry music is over for good.
Gently swaying in the sunlight, lifeless and
inert but for a few restless bees that hum about it,
the sight of a settled swarm has an almost uncanny
effect on most observers. A little before, the
whole garden was filled with its deafening, joyous
hubbub ; now a strange silence has fallen, and it
is impossible to dissociate from its present state
the idea of an abject depression and disillusion-
ment, as though the whole thing had been but a
mad escapade, of which the bees were now heartily
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 185
ashamed. If we may conceive the issue of a
swarm to be a freak of ancestral memory, the
sudden irresistible impulse to follow an old racial
habit, long obsolete, it is not difficult to account for
the obvious change of mind that has now come
over the absconding host. Packed within the hive
in a feverish, surging multitude, disabilities were
not self-evident as they are now, tried in the light
of day.
é “Violent delights have violent ends,
And, in their triumph, die.”
And now there is the morrow to be thought of:
life to be rendered possible in all odds of weather;
a home to be made; the queen-mother to be
sheltered—she, the one remaining possession of
the crowd, beggared now, but so rich a moment
before. There is hard work ahead, enough to
sober the giddiest among them. The madness
has gone as quickly as it came, and now the
honey-bee is to show herself a reasoning creature,
if never before.
It is believed by most bee-keepers that a swarm
selects the site of its future dwelling some time
before the expedition starts, in many cases several
days earlier. An old trick among cottagers is to
place out empty hives in their gardens, and these
not uncommonly attract errant swarms. A few
bees are seen cruising about, and subjecting the
hives to a close scrutiny. These pioneer bees
186 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
disappear, and after a variable time, from a few
minutes to a few hours, or even days, a whole
army of bees suddenly descends from the sky and
takes possession of the new home. When the
interval between the appearance of the scouts and
the arrival of the main body, is only a short one,
the reconnoitring bees have been manifestly sent
out by the clustered swarm; but in the case of
long periods elapsing, the scouts must have been
sent in search of the new location before the
swarm issued. Probably, although the bulk of
the party is imbued with this reckless spirit alone,
thinking and caring for nothing else but the escape
and the frolic, many of the older and wiser bees
undertake the matter in a temperate, businesslike
way, as they would go about any other important
hive-operation. In one sense, therefore, the old
notion of there being ‘subordinate lieutenants,
captains, and governours” in a hive may not be so
very far from the truth. That these scouts are
actually sent out to find a suitable site for the new
colony, either before the swarm leaves or while
it is clustered in the open, is a well-established
fact, so that some of the bees at least must keep
their wits about them throughout the general chaos.
And with these wiser virgins must be reckoned
the queen, in spite of the fact that she joins in the
public excitement and restlessness. For some
days before the great emigration her work of egg-
laying is largely arrested, and this retentive action
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 187
renders her so heavy and bulky that often she can
scarcely get on the wing. The object of this is
that she may be all the more ready for laying
when the new home is established. It is also
well ascertained that all swarming bees have their
honey-sacs well filled, and this loading up for the
journey takes place just before the signal for
departure is given. There is great variation in
the behaviour of the different stocks in a bee-
garden during the swarming season, and many
close observers are unable to detect any sure signs
that a particular hive is going to swarm. But it
appears fairly well established that, when a swarm
is imminent, nearly all the bees of that stock
remain at home, even when all other hives in the
garden are in full foraging activity. Such a hive
gives out a peculiar throbbing note, which suggests
the noise made by a powerful locomotive brought
to a standstill, but with full steam up, and impatient
to be gone. Just before the issue of the swarm
there is often a curious lull in this pent-up, forceful
sound, and probably this is the moment when the
travellers are lading themselves up for the march.
Immediately after—and here it is difficult not to
believe that a definite, authoritative signal for the
movement is given—a sudden stir and tumult
begins in the centre of the crowded hive, much
like that caused by a heavy stone cast into water.
This radiates swiftly in all directions until it
reaches the bees near the entrance, and then the
188 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
general rush for the daylight starts. Where a
hive is much overcrowded there will already be
a cluster of bees numbering many thousands
packed tightly together on the alighting-board,
and sometimes covering the whole face of the
hive. But this mass melts away directly the
swarming begins, the waiting bees taking wing all
but simultaneously with the others.
It was anciently believed that the queen led the
swarm, but this view is not borne out by modern
observation. As often as not half the bees are on
the wing before she makes her appearance, and
sometimes she is among the very latest to leave,
or she may decide at the last moment not to go
at all. In this case the bees do not cluster, but
after a few minutes’ wild tarantelle in the sunshine
they all troop back to the hive.
When once the swarming-party has gone off,
the old hive seems to settle down to its ordinary
occupations as though nothing out of the way had
happened. The congested state of affairs no
longer exists, but otherwise the work of the hive
is proceeding in the usual way. The bees left
behind are mainly young workers who have not
yet commenced foraging, but there is always a
fair sprinkling of old workers and drones. Gener-
ally the hive is queenless for the time being, the
new queen not having yet broken from her cell.
There may be four or five queen-cells in various
stages of development, or rarely as many as a
RM HIVED
THE SWA
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 189
dozen. Sometimes, however, the first of the
queens will be already hatched and wandering
over the combs, meeting, as usual at this stage
of her career, perfect indifference from all she
encounters. But hives have been known to send
off a swarm when the preparations for raising a
new queen have been scarcely begun. So variable
is the honey-bee in all her ways.
If the objects of swarming were merely to
relieve the congestion in the hive, and to change
the mother-bee, the whole thing should now be
at an end. But the swarming impulse is rooted
in far deeper soil than mere expediency. With
some strains of bees the fever seems to die out
after the one attack, and the stock settles down
quietly to work for the rest of the season. But
more often than not this first taste of adventure
serves only to whet the national appetite for more.
About nine days after the first swarm leaves
another swarm often follows, and this may be
succeeded by a third or even a fourth at a few
days’ interval, resulting in some cases in the almost
complete extinction of the stock. The old skep-
pists called the second swarm a “cast,” the third
was a “colt,” and the fourth a “filly.” It is
difficult to understand how, in a community where
individual interest is so ruthlessly sacrificed to the
general good, this self-destructive policy should be
permitted. But taking the view that swarming
is in the main a vague and incomptete resurrection
190 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
of a long obsolete habit in bee-life, a workable
theory at once suggests itself. Under primeval
conditions the continued life of the mother-colony
may have been unnecessary. Its purpose may
have been fully served when a number of young
queens and drones had been raised, and the whole
had swarmed out together, each to form a new
settlement. It must be remembered that the
bee-hive, persisting indefinitely from year to year,
is really quite a modern creation, and became
practicable only with the invention of the movable
comb-frame, which allowed the bee-master to effect
the renewal of combs. It has been seen that the
brood-combs get gradually choked up with the
pupa-cocoons, which each bee leaves behind it.
These webs are so incredibly thin that a dozen of
them make little appreciable difference to the
capacity of the cell, and combs have been known
to remain in use for brood-raising as long as
twenty years. But eventually they must become
useless; and then, as bees do not, or cannot,
remove old combs to make way for new, the com-
munity must leave for a new home, or gradually
die out. Thus the age of the old hives was
definitely limited.
Modern beemanship has wrought many other
changes in the life of the honey-bee in addition to
creating the permanent hive-city. The number
of bees in a single strong stock, housed in a modern
frame hive, is probably three times as great as that
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 1g!
of a wild colony. The work of the bee-master
affects almost every aspect of bee-life, enlarging
the scale and the scope of all that the bees attempt.
The result of this is seen not only in an increased
population and more extensive works, but in a
change in the very systems of life. Plans that
work very well on a small scale do not always
succeed on a large. The sanitary problems of a
city are necessarily very different from those of
a village, in principle as well as in degree. And
probably much of the ingenuity of system and
device observable in modern hive-life is directly
due to human agency, the new conditions intro-
duced by the bee-master serving to educate the
bees to greater effort and resource.
The behaviour of these after-swarms offers a
curious contrast to that of the first one. If it were
possible to point to one fixed and invariable law
in bee-life, it would be to the fact that a prime
swarm will leave the hive only on a fine, warm
day, and generally about noon. But casts and
colts and fillies seem to take no count of time or
weather, issuing just as the mood besets them,
early or late, and caring nothing, apparently, for
the conditions abroad. It is even on record that
once a second swarm came off at midnight, when
the moon was at the full and the weather very
clear and warm. .
There seems altogether much more method in
the madness that seizes on a colony swarming for
192 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE’
the first time, and if thereafter the hive settles
down to its old courses, the national character for
sobriety and industry soon rehabilitates itself. But
it is just the strength of this public inclination
towards order and labour which varies so greatly
in different hives. How matters are likely to go
can be readily ascertained by setting careful watch
on the hive from the day the first swarm leaves.
There are sure to be several queen-cells, some
capped over and almost ready to hatch out, and
others in various stages of development. All these
cells are constantly and assiduously guarded by
the worker-bees, because directly one of the queens
is hatched, her first thought is to make a speedy
end to all future rivalry by murdering her sisters.
She comes from her cell evidently spoiling for a
fight, and imbued to the core with that inveterate
hatred of her kind which is the ruling passion of
her existence.
That worker-bees and queen-bees should have
an identical origin, and yet that the nature of the
one is to live in perfect harmony, while the nature
of the other is to be at perpetual war, is one of
those mysterious things in bee-life which probably
will never be explained. If the queen-bee of
to-day can be really taken as an approximate type
of the aboriginal female of her race, it is not
difficult to understand that after her generation in
force the communal life of the mother-stock would
become an impossibility, and that with the mating-
THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 193
swarm its natural existence was brought toa close,
much as we see it happen in wasp-life.
It is during the quiet nights, after the issue of a
swarm, that the peculiar shrill voice of the queen
is most frequently heard. As she strives with the
guards that surround the cells of the other young
queens as yet unliberated, she continually utters
this quick piping cry, and is immediately answered
by the smothered cries of the imprisoned ones,
who are just as anxious as she for the fray. If
the swarming-fever is not yet allayed in the hive,
this war-cry is bandied to and fro unceasingly ;
and the general ferment deepens, until, the con-
dition of things having seemingly grown intoler-
able, the young queen rushes out, followed by the
greater number of the bees. In the case of after-
swarms, the concensus of evidence is in favour of
the belief that the queen is really the leader of the
party, although here again no positive rule is
observed.
It may happen, however, that the stock is sick
of all the turbulence and unrest that have so long
beset it, and that the general desire is to restore
the status guo. Under these conditions the sounds
from the hive may have a very different quality
and meaning. The queen still sends forth her
shrill challenge, but now her cry is immediately
followed by a curious hissing sound from the bees.
It is exactly as if they were shouting her down,
compelling her to silence by their own uproar ;
13
194. THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
and when the war-cry of the first liberated queen
is thus met by a chorus of disapprobation, it seldom
happens that the stock swarms again. Ina few
days the queen goes forth alone on her honey-
mooning adventures; and on her return she is
allowed to indulge her penchant for sororicide to
her heart’s content.
CHAPTER XII
THE COMB-BUILDERS
N the foregoing chapters an attempt has been
made to show that the honey-bee lives and
moves and has her being in a world which
must be actuated by something better than mere
instinct, in the common usage of the term. To
the modern biologist—the earnest out-of-door
student of life under all its manifestations—this
may appear as a rather obvious and unnecessary
gilding of gold, and the only question yet un-
decided may seem to be where in the scale of
reason the honey-bee is to find her equitable place.
All bee-lovers must plead guilty to an inveterate
partizanship, the writer frankly among their number.
There is no laodiceanism in bee-craft; and, all the
world over, it may be said that, where a few bee-
hives have been got together, there is always to
be found a red-hot enthusiast not far off. The
word ‘“freemasonry,” in the English tongue, has
grown to be a synonym for the truest fraternity ;
but just as real, and almost as far-reaching, is the
brotherhood among keepers of bees. No doubt,
13—2 195
196 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
among themselves the tendency is rather to
magnify the virtues and achievements of their
charges: to be over-lavish of inference from too
scanty or too isolated facts. And the proved
impossibility of having anything to do with the
honey-bee without being carried away sooner or
later on a high wave of enthusiasm, makes any
attempt at holding the balances truly between the
zealous bee-lover and the interested but temperate-
minded reader, a difficult and delicate task. Any
writer on the honey-bee nowadays must be
reckoned an ultra-specialist in an age of specialism ;
and here it is not easy to preserve the sense of
proportion undimmed, especially for one admittedly
speaking out of the ranks of beemanship, where all
are aiders and abettors in ardour, impatient of any
estimation falling short of high-water mark.
The story of the Comb-Builders, however, sets
none of the usual pitfalls in the way of the over-
enthusiastic penman. In its soberest incident and
least important detail it is so wonderful, that
exuberance of language is as powerless to exag-
gerate, as a niggardly tongue to minimise, its true
and due effect. If the ordering of the bee-common-
wealth—the intricate systems of sanitation, division
of labour, treatment of the queen and worker-larve,
and the like—is subject for marvel, and seems
infallibly to denote the possession of high facul-
ties, a much greater degree of acumen must be
conceded to the worker-bee, when we come to
THE COMB-BUILDERS 197
consider her as the designer and builder of honey-
comb.
It is here that she shines in her most signifi-
cant light. The complicated structures with
which she fills the bee-city do not call for
unwearying toil alone: they could never have
been fashioned unless the combined arts of
engineer, architect, and mathematician had been
brought to bear on them. Nor are they merely
simple constructive and mathematical problems
which the honey-bee is called upon to face;
nor, though difficult, unvarying, and so amenable
to instinctive solution. In almost every comb
built we see special and necessarily unforeseen
difficulties met and triumphantly overcome. In
the construction of the six-sided cell, with its base
composed of three rhombs or diamonds, the bee
has adopted a form which our greatest arithme-
ticians admit to be the best possible for her re-
quirements, and she endeavours to keep to this
form wherever practicable. But it constantly
happens, in her work of comb-building, that local
conditions interfere with her plans; and then she
will make five-sided cells, or square cells, or tri-
angular, or any other form, just as the need impels
her. It is a facile, comfortably finite thing to put
all this down to a mysterious essence called
instinct, with which the organism of the bee has
been divinely dosed, as men serve electricity to a
leyden-jar. But it was not instinct that made
198 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
Wren put the steel cable round the dome of
St. Paul’s, nor instinct that lifted the crown-
stones to the top of the Great Pyramids. These
are works of a creature more highly equipped and
instigated ; yet their supremacy is all of a piece
with the honey-comb, which is made of a material
fragile, light as air, but which, by the art of the
bee, becomes capable not only of supporting, but
of suspending a weight thirty times as great as its
own.
That the bee does not collect her building
materials, but derives them from her own body,
is a fact that has come to light only within the last
hundred and fifty years or so, although several
shrewd guesses at the truth are to be found in the
works of the medizval bee-masters. The wasp,
who has much of the ingenuity of the honey-bee,
but is doomed to exercise it in a far more humble
direction, makes a six-sided cell; but her matter is
collected from outside, and can only be put to com-
paratively simple uses, as it is incapable of bearing
tensile strain. Beeswax alone, of all constructive
materials in the world, seems to meet every re-
quirement. It can be worked into plates as thin
as the y$gth part of an inch, which is the normal
thickness of the cell-wall. It is indestructible to
all the elements save heat. It can be rendered
soft and easily workable, or allowed to harden, while
still retaining its suppleness and life. It is a bad
conductor of heat, and therefore conserves the heat
‘THE COMB-BUILDERS 199
of the hive. Vermin do not prey upon it: so far
as is known there is only one creature that will eat
it—a peculiar kind of moth-larva, against which,
however, a strong stock can always hold its own.
And then, as the raw materials for its production
are secretions of the bee’s own body, the work of
preparing it can be carried on when darkness or
stress of weather have put an end, for the time
being, to work out of doors.
The first labour undertaken by a swarm, directly
it has gained possession of its new quarters, is the
building of combs. The apparent revulsion of
feeling which succeeds the excitement of swarm-
ing soon passes off, and the energies of the whole
party are at once concentrated on furnishing and
victualling the new hive. The older bees com-
mence foraging, each bee as she goes forth hover-
ing a moment with her head towards the hive, to |
fix its location and appearance inher memory. By
far the greater portion, however, remain at home
and unite in a dense cluster for wax-making. Time
is everything in these first operations of the new
colony. The queen, with whom egg-laying has
probably been suspended for a day past, or ever
longer, is overburdened with fecundity, and mus’
be supplied with thousands of brood-cells without
delay. The foragers will be coming home laden
with nectar and pollen, and will need instant
storage-room. Wax must be made with all possible
expedition, and the young bees crowd together in
200 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the roof of the hive, with their queen snug and
warm in their midst.
No doubt one of the chief reasons why swarming
bees unite themselves in the solid pendant mass of
the cluster so soon after leaving the parent-hive,
is to hasten this process of wax-formation. It has
been proved that wax is most easily generated
under the influence of great heat, and this is well
secured in the heart of the cluster. By the time
the scouts have decided on the new home, and
the swarm must rise again on the wing, a great
number of the bees will have their wax-pockets
filled, and will be ready for the work of comb-
making. When a swarm is hived, even if it be
only a short time after its issue, the little white
wax-scales can be seen protruding from the
armour-joints of many of the bees, and these are
often dropped and lost in the general confusion.
One of the most difficult things to observe in
bee-life is the actual process of comb-building.
The crush is so great, and the movement of the
bees so incessant, that at first the comb seems to
grow of itself rather than be made by the busy
multitude, for ever obscuring it from the watcher’s
eyes, or giving him but the rarest glimpse now
and then of its white, delicate frailty of pattern.
These early efforts of the comb-builders, produced
as they are under forced circumstances, are occa-
sionally faulty of design, as though hastily knocked
together. Sometimes the first groups of cells made
THE COMB-BUILDERS 201
by a swarm will have a yellow, moist, spongy
appearance, with thick, irregular walls, and are
obviously little more than temporary vats to hold
the incoming nectar until the proper honey-cells
can be constructed. This emergency-comb is
specially interesting, as affording one more instance
of the worker-bee’s ever-ready resource in the
presence of difficulties. In the ordinary way the
mason-bee hangs quietly in the cluster until her
wax-secreting organs have done their work, and
the six little oblong scales of brittle material are
ready for manipulation. These protrude from,
under the hard plates of her abdomen, three on
each side, looking much like half-posted letters.
At one of the knee-joints of her hind-leg she has
a peculiar implement, of which there is not the
slightest trace in the queen-bee. This is like a
pair of nippers, but instead of two converging
points, it is furnished on one side with a row of
sharp, stiff bristles, and on the other with a shallow
spoon. With this special tool the worker-bee grips
the wax-scale, and draws it out of its pocket. It
is then transferred to her jaws, and she hurries off
with it to the comb-building. Arrived at an un-
finished cell, she sets to work to chew up the raw
wax into a paste, incorporating it with her saliva,
and materially increasing its bulk. The resulting
soft, ductile matter is then applied to the work, and
moulded into its needed shape. In this way, with
hundreds of workers going and coming, the delicate
202 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
white fabric of brood and honey-comb is built up
with extraordinary rapidity.
How the coarse, spongy comb, which swarms
will sometimes manufacture, is produced cannot
be definitely stated. It has all the appearance of
having been made from raw wax, hurriedly masti-
cated and kneaded up with honey, and probably
this is its actual composition. The secretion from
the salivary gland, is necessarily slow, and with time
pressing and a horde of impatient foragers dinning
about her ears, eager to unload and be off again to
the clover, the ingenious mason-bee appears to have
hit on the idea of using the contents of her honey-
sac as a substitute. Nothing, however, but a
mechanical admixture can take place between
honey and the raw wax. This dissolves only
under the influence of the bee’s saliva, which has
intensely acid properties.
To understand all that the bees have accom-
plished when a new empty hive has been filled
throughout with waxen comb, it is necessary to
follow the operations of the swarm pretty closely
during the first few weeks of its separate life. It
is a big undertaking, the building of an entire, new
bee-city,and the problems that confront the builders
are many and complicated. In the first place,
whether she ever attains it or not, the worker-bee
will aim at nothing short of perfection. Hereditary
experience tells her exactly what are the home-
requirements of the colony, and she now sets
THE COMB-BUILDERS 203
to work to fulfil them in the best imaginable
way.
A city is to be built which is to accommodate
twenty or thirty thousand individuals. Vast
nursery-quarters must be constructed, as there may
be as many as ten or twelve thousand youngsters
to cradle at one and the same time. For at least six
months of the year no food will be obtainable from
outside, so that the city must contain large store-
houses capable of holding more than a six months’
supply. As the temperature in winter can be kept
up only by the bodily warmth of the inhabitants,
life in the city must be concentrated into the
smallest possible space; and the materials of which
the city is built must be heat-conserving, while its
construction must allow of perfect ventilation at all
times, and in summer it must permit a free circula-
tion of air, that the surplus heat can be readily
carried off. The city must be a fortress as well as
a home, and be closed in on every side as a pro-
tection against its many enemies, as well as the
weather.
There is another, and just as vital a condition
governing its construction—the necessity for strict
economy in material. If there were any natural
substance having the qualities of tenacity, light-
ness, ductility, and strength which the bees could
obtain out of doors instead of wax, no doubt they
would use it for comb-building, and they would not
spend hours of precious time and consume large
204 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
quantities of hard-won stores in the manufacture of
their own material. But it seems there is nothing
in nature possessing the needful properties. Bees
collect a resinous substance, notably from the buds
of the poplar, which they use for stopping up
crevices. They dilute this also into a varnish,
with which they paint the finished combs, and
sometimes even combine it with wax to form a
rough filling ; but it appears to be useless in cell-
construction. The whole city must needs be made
of wax, and wax alone; and the bees are as careful
of this precious substance as a miser of his gold.
Starting with these conditions—efficient house-
accommodation for the colony secured at the least
cost in time, labour, and material—the bee tackles
the problem before her with an ingenuity that is
little short of astounding. She appears to begin
with the central dominant unit of the difficulty,
and to work outward, vanquishing subsidiary
problems as she goes. Her line of reasoning
seems to run somewhat in this way. To raise the
young, and store the honey, there is needed some
kind of cell or receptacle. The young larve
being cylindrical in form, a cylindrical cell is indi-
cated; and this shape will serve also for the
honey-barrels. Not a few, however, but many
thousands of these vessels will be required: they
must therefore be placed close together, as well
for economy of space as for natural warmth. The
cells could be grouped together mouth upwards in
THE COMB-BUILDERS ‘ 205
horizontal planes, storey above storey ; but such a
method of construction would be economically
unsound. To prevent sagging in the heat of the
hive, and under the weight. they will be called
to bear, the cell-bases would have to be thickened
collectively into a substantial floor, which would
need shoring-up at intervals—after the manner of
the wasps. But in this, much valuable material
would be diverted from its proper use. Obviously,
a better plan would be to lay all the cells on their
sides, and pile them up into a vertical wall. And,
just as obviously, if two walls of these super-
imposed cells were placed back to back, so that
one central vertical sheet of wax would serve to
stop the ends of all the cells, right and left, a
saving of half the material used for the cell-bottoms
would at once be effected.
But, so far, the design is still only in its crude,
initial stage. The upright comb, consisting of a
double pile of round cells, back to back, with one
flat base between, although a great advance on the
single sheet of horizontal cells, is yet mechanically
and economically deficient. The round cells leave
useless interstices, which take much wax in the
filling; while the flat bottoms do not coincide with
the form of the larve, and thus still more space is
wasted. Clearly, improvement can only come by
altering the shape of the cell; and now the bee
seems to have asked herself—and triumphantly
answered—an extremely complex question.
206 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
She knew how much internal cell-space each
larva required for growth. The problem, therefore,
was this: of what shape, nearly approaching the
cylindrical, ought such a cell to be made, which
would ensure the right dimensions, but which
would occupy the least possible room, have the
greatest possible strength, consume the least pos-
sible material in its manufacture, and possess the
property that a number of similar cells could be
built up in a double vertical plane, leaving no
interstices either between the cells or between the
planes?
There is only one solution to this problem ; and
the honey-bee found it—who shall say how many
ages ago?—in the hexagon cell, with its base
composed of three rhombs.
The whole astounding ingenuity of the thing
can only be realised when a piece of nearly per-
fect, new-made, virgin-comb has been closely
examined. It will be at once seen that the hexa-
gon cells combine together over the surface of the
comb in absolute geometrical union, and that the
six-sided form is round enough for all practical
purposes. Looking into the cells on one side of
the comb, it will be noted that their bases take the
form of depressed pyramids, each made up of three
diamond-shaped planes. Turning the comb over,
we see that the cells on this side also have
pyramidal bottoms. If the depth of a cell on one
side of the comb be taken, and added to the depth
THE COMB-BUILDERS 207
of a cell on the other side, and then the width of
the whole comb be measured, it will be found that
the combined depth of the two cells perceptibly
exceeds the width of the whole comb. At first
glance this seems like a case of the less including
the greater, which is a manifest impossibility.
But, holding the comb up to the light, a further
discovery is made, and the seeming paradox is
eliminated. The bottoms of the cells are so thin
as to be almost transparent, and it is at once seen
that the cells are not built end to end, in line, but
that each cell-base on one side of the comb covers
part of three cell-bases on the other. If the three
diamonds, composing between them the triangular
base of a single cell, be perforated with a needle,
and the comb turned over, it will be found that
the three perforations come each in a separate
cell. Thus the saving in the total width of the
comb is effected by allowing the pyramidal bases
on each side to engage alternately like the teeth
of a trap; instead of meeting point-blank, they
overlap each other, and the faces of the pyramids
are so contrived that each of them helps to close
two cells.
There is another advantage in this arrangement
which will be immediately obvious. The apex
and three ribs of each pyramidal cell-base form
foundation-lines for the cell-walls on the other side
of the comb. This means that not only do all
cell-walls abut on an arch, but that every cell-base
208 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
is strengthened throughout by a triple girdering.
The result is that the amount of wax required in
the construction of the comb can be everywhere
reduced to an absolute minimum. It becomes
merely a question of what thickness of wax will
retain the honey; and this experience proves to
be no more than yt, part of an inch. The whole
thing, indeed, might very well be taken as an
ideal exemplar of the triumph of mind over
matter.
The geometric principles brought into play in
the construction of honey-comb have been a
favourite study with mathematicians of all ages,
and especially this rhombiform method adopted
by the bee in flooring her cells. The rhomb is
best described as a plane-figure whose four sides
are equal, like those of a square, but whose angles
are not right angles. In such a figure there are
necessarily two greater angles and two smaller,
facing each other in pairs. The three rhombs
composing the base of the honey-cell lean together,
as has been seen, in the form of a blunt pyramid ;
and—treating all angles as negligible factors—the
bluntness of this pyramid is found to coincide very
aptly with the shape of the full-grown larve. But
this is not the only reason for the particular
inclination given by the bee to the rhombs forming
the base of each cell. Economy rules here, as in
everything else she undertakes; and the truth that
she has chosen the one and only form of cell-base
THE COMB-BUILDERS 209
which takes the least possible material to construct
has received very striking confirmation.
The story is an old and famous one, but it will
bear repeating. A great naturalist once put him-
self to an infinity of trouble in measuring the
angles formed by the rhombs in a vast number of
comb-cell bases, and he found that these showed
remarkable uniformity. It will be clear that the
hollow pyramid of the cell-bottom will be either
deep or shailow, according to the shape of the
three rhombs composing it. The apex of the
pyramid is formed by the meeting of three equal
angles, one from each rhomb ; and it is plain that
this apex will be sharp or blunt, according to
whether the meeting angles are wide or narrow.
It was, of course, impossible to ascertain the
dimensions of these angles with absolutely micro-
scopical nicety ; but, dealing only with the most
perfect comb, the naturalist found that the two
greater angles in the rhombs measured very
nearly 110°, and the two lesser angles 70°. He
also found that the angles formed by the conjunc-
tion of the cell-sides with the bases had the same
dimensions as those of the rhombs. Assuming
therefore that, mathematically, the angles of the
rhombs and cell-sides should be equal, he was
able to calculate exactly the angles for which the
bees were evidently striving in the construction
of the rhombs—109° 28’ and 70° 32’.
Another bee-lover scientist, ruminating over
14
210 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
these figures, was much impressed by them, and de-
termined to find out the reason why the bee made
such constant choice of this particular shape of
rhomb. He therefore conceived the idea of submitt-
ing the bee’s judgment on this cell-base question
to an independent authority. Without disclosing
his object, he propounded the following problem
to one of the greatest mathematicians of the day.
“Supposing,” said he, in effect, “you were
required to close the end of an hexagonal vessel
by three rhombs or diamond-shaped plates, what
angles must be given to these rhombs so that the
greatest amount of space would be enclosed by
the least amount of material ?”
It was a difficult problem, but the mathematician
worked it out at last, and his answer was “TOg® 26’
and 70° 34’.”
Now, the difference between the calculation of
the man and the calculation of the bee was an
exceedingly small one. No one thought of calling
into question the work of the ‘man, who was pre-
eminent in his world of figures. It was therefore
accepted as a fact that the bee had made a trifling
mistake—so trifling, however, that, in the matter
of comb-building, it was of no importance. Her
reputation was unimpaired : to all intents and pur-
poses the honey-cell was still a perfect example of
utmost capacity secured by least material.
But another mathematician—a Scotsman this
time—went over the whole business again, and he
THE COMB-BUILDERS ati
proved conclusively that the bee was right, while
the first mathematician was wrong, He showed
that the true answer to the problem of the angles
was 109° 28’ and 70° 32’—identically the figures
obtained by estimation of the honey-comb.
In the foregoing pages the principles involved
in the construction of honey-comb have been gone
into rather minutely, because it is here that the
lines of thought between the old and the new
naturalists seem to make a typical divergence.
Both schools are, in the main, agreed on the point
that all forms of life emanate from the one omni-
potent source ; and it matters little whether we
speak of the vast periods of time, during which the
creation of all things was effected, as ages, or under
the old Biblical metaphor of days. But whereas
the old school appears to insist on different qualities
of life—immortal soul in man, and a mystic, sub-
conscious, perishable thing called instinct in the
brute creation—the new school is unable to see any
distinction between the intellectual equipment of
man and brute, but that of degree. Between the
honey-bee and her masters there is indeed a great
gulf fixed, but it is conceivably not unbridgable.
And unless we are determined at all cost of logical
violence to force a favourite set of square opinions
into the round holes of observed fact, it is difficult
to see how the old position is long to remain tenable.
With regard to this particular question of comb-
14—2
212 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
building, an attempt is still being made to show
that it is entirely due to the working of certain
natural laws, and is independent of any intelligence
or volition which the bees are supposed to exercise.
We are told that the cells are always begun ina
circular form, but that they afterwards assume the
hexagon shape quite automatically, in obedience
to the laws of mutual interference and pressure.
Asa proof of this, it is pointed out that the outside
cells of the comb, not being subject to these laws,
are usually more or less rounded.
The pressure-theory is hardly worth serious con-
sideration, as it is obvious that the growth of a
honey-comb is perfectly free and untrammelled in
every way. If the bee makes her comb-cells with
six sides and a pyramidal base unthinkingly, and
under the yoke of imperious obligation, it is cer-
tainly not because the cells force this shape upon
one another, like Buffon’s peas in a bottle.
And if we believe that the bee works blindly
under the law of mutual interference, any close
examination of the results of her work must bring
us to the conviction that we are only putting aside
one marvel for something more wonderful still.
For then we see a natural law taking on a very
unnatural quality—that of intelligent adaptation to
circumstances. The comb, intended for use in the
hive-nursery, is made in two sizes. That used for
cradling theworker-brood has cells measuring }inch
across, and a fraction less than 4 inch deep, while
THE COMB-BUILDERS 213
that designed for raising the drone-larvz is built
up of cells having a diameter of } inch, and a
depth of about 8 inch. These different-sized
cells are not mingled indiscriminately over the
comb, but are grouped together in large blocks.
Some of the combs will be entirely composed of
worker-cells, which are always in the vast majority;
other combs will be made up of both kinds.
The bees begin a comb by attaching a small
block of wax to the roof of the hive. On either
side of this they hollow out depressions, which
become the bases of the first cells.) The work is
then extended downwards and sideways, the cell-
bases being multiplied in all directions as fast as
possible, so that there are a great number of un-
finished cells in progress long before the walls of
the first cells have been completed. There is a
very reasonable motive for this procedure. When
a house is being built, as much of the foundations
as possible are laid in at the commencement, to
allow a large body of bricklayers to get to work
on the walls at the same time; and the bee extends
her comb-foundations on the same principle.
When about half the comb has been finished for
worker-brood, it may be decided to commence
building drone-cells. As the bases of the drone-
cells are larger than those of the worker-cells, it
follows that a change must be effected in the
ground-plan of the comb. The bees prepare for
this transition very cleverly, evidently studying how
214 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the regularity of the comb may be least interrupted.
Sometimes the change is contrived without any
appreciable loss of space, but more often several
misshapen cells have to be made before the sym-
metrical progress of the comb is resumed. This
depends largely on the inherited skill of the bees,
which varies according to their strain, as all ex
perienced bee-keepers know.
Now, if the work of comb-building is carried
through by the bees under blind compulsion of the
natural laws of mutual interference and pressure,
what other law, it may be asked, interferes with
these in turn when the transition from one size of
cell to another must be made? [If it is all a sort
of crystallisation going on independently of the
bees’ will or wish, it appears more than curious
that the mill should grind large or small, just as
the needs of the hive demand it.
But the whole position is really little else than
a flagrant example of the evils of argument from
a simile. Soaked peas in a bottle will swell to
hexagons, or rather, dodecahedrons, by the law of
mutual interference. Soap-bubbles will do the same
with no more constriction than their own weight.
But peas and bubbles are things self-contained and
separately existing, before being brought together.
If the bees made a vast number of separate, round
cells, and then combined them simultaneously, no
doubt all but ‘the outside cells would assume the
hexagon form. But the essence of the whole art
THE COMB-BUILDERS 215
and ingenuity of comb-building lies in the fact.
that there is no such thing as a separate cell, Each
single compartment in the comb shares its parts
with no less than nine other compartments. And
to talk of mutual interference when there is no
separate existence is ploughing the sands indeed.
There are other circumstances connected with
the work of the comb-builders which go far to
confirm the position that bees do exercise reason,
and that of a high order. It has been said that
the interior of a hive in day-time is not altogether
deprived of light. Probably, during the hours of
greatest activity, the bees have always enough
light to see their way about by means of their
wonderful indoor-eyes, which, under the micro-
scope, have all the solemn wisdom of an owl’s.
It is a fact, however, that comb-building is usually
carried on at night-time, when other employments
are in temporary abeyance. Possibly the—to our
eyes—profoundest darkness may be no darkness
at all to the bees; but, to all appearances, as we
can judge of them, honey-comb is virtually made
in the dark.
But combs are built side by side, often simul-
taneously. They grow downwards together, yet
always preserve their right distance apart; so
that, when finished, there will be an intervening
gangway between the sealed surfaces of about a
quarter of an inch, which ‘is just enough to allow
the two streams of bees to pass each other, back
216 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
to back. How are these distances preserved, see-
ing that the bees at work on the bottom edge of
each comb are separated by a space of, perhaps,
an inch and a half of empty darkness ?
A simple experiment will at once give a clue to
this. Ifa hive, in which a swarm has constructed
about half its depth of comb, be canted a little
sideways, so as to throw the combs out of the per-
pendicular, and the hive be then left for several
days, it will be found on examination that all
building, from the moment of disturbance, has
followed on the new line of verticality. The combs
will all be slightly bent to one side. This means
either that the bees have a natural sense of the
perpendicular, or that they work by the plumb-
line, as humanity is constrained to do. The fact
seems to be that the hanging cluster of wax-
making bees performs the office of a living
plummet, and really guides the comb in its down-
ward progress.
Yet, do bees always suspend their combs? Do
they never construct a waxen storehouse, raising
it tier above tier from the floor of the hive, after
the system of the more intelligent creature, Man ?
The first commentary on this is, that such a
departure from their common methods would be
no improvement, but a retrograde step. These
long comb-walls of the bees have a close analogy
to the modern transatlantic sky-scraper building.
The trouble with all such buildings is to provide
COMB BUILT UPWARDS
THE COMB-BUILDERS 217
them with sufficient base for their height. If
American engineers had at their disposal a material
of adequate tensile strength, and there were any-
thing in nature to hang them from, it would be,
scientifically, a better plan to suspend these build-
ings than to erect them, because the house would
then naturally tend to keep its verticality, and the
base-problem would cease to exist. On the same
principle the bees, having at hand a material of
almost ideal tensility, and a suitable hanging-beam,
wisely suspend their heavily weighted combs from
the roof, instead of erecting them, like certain
kinds of ant-structures.
But it is undoubtedly long racial experience,
and not inability to follow the humanly approved
method, that guides them here. Rarely—so rarely
that the writer, in the course of many years spent
among bees, has seen only a single example of it
—bees will build comb xfwards, if circumstances
will allow no other way. And this would seem
not only to drive the last coffin-nail for the poor
instinct-theory, but to carve its epitaph as well.
In the instance referred to, a glass-bottomed box
had been inverted over the feed-hole of a common
hive, and had there remained forgotten. As the
season progressed, the hive grew great with bees
and honey, and it became imperative to build
additional store-comb in the box overhead. But
its slippery glass roof would give no foothold to
the builders. Time and again they must have
218 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
tried to get upon it, with their wax-hods filled and
ready, and each time failed : the ordinary way of
comb-building was clearly impossible. Then the
engineers of the hive, inspired by the difficulty,
got to work in another way. On the wooden sur-
face below they laid out the plan of a garner-
house, not after their usual method of parallel
combs, but a regular, oblong house, with cellular
storerooms, and communicating passages in be-
tween. Upon this they raised storey above storey
of horizontal cells, until the glass roof was nearly
reached. At this stage, apparently, the honey-
flow came to an end in the fields, for the cells
in the store-house were never sealed, though all
were nearly full of honey ; and later in the season
it was found and carried away by the bee-master,
who still preservesit as acuriosity. He bears awell-
known name,* and his testimony as to the making of
this unique little honey-house is beyond question ;
but, indeed, it carries in itself infallible evidence of
its authenticity. All honey-cells made by bees
have a slight upward inclination, which helps, as
has been already explained, to retain their con-
tents until they can be capped over. And every
cell in the storehouse clearly showed this upward
slant.
* Dr. Herbert MacDonald Phillpotts, of Kingswear,
Devon.
CHAPTER XIII
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS
T is characteristic of those unlettered in bee-
craft that they are often afraid when there is
no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity
that is born of ignorance where old experienced
bee-keepers fear to tread.
Temper in bees is one of the most variable
qualities in a creature made up of variabilities.
There are times, when a summer storm is threaten-
ing and the air is charged with electricity, when
to go among the bees is to court certain disaster ;
and there are other times, such as the full height
of the honey-flow, when almost any liberties can
be taken with bees, without fear of reprisals. And
yet this is not always the rule. Much depends on
their lineage and the purity of the strain, and,
again, on the systems of the bee-master. Bees
respond as readily as any other form of domestic
stock to wise and considerate treatment. Handled
in a firm, quiet, deliberate way, the most vicious
colony can often be dealt with in perfect safety ;
while the mildest-natured bees will commonly
219
220 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
meet fumbling indexterity with a prompt challenge
to war.
Since the Italian bee was brought to England,
some half-century ago, there is no doubt that the
original English strain has been greatly modified.
Some authorities, indeed, question whether there
are any absolutely pure British bees left at all.
The golden girdles of the Italian crop up in the
most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems
to have got into the race in all but the remotest
parts of the country. One must regret, although
itisa vain regret now, that these undesirable aliens
were ever allowed to set foot on the soil, What-
ever naturally survives and thrives in a particular
country, must be the most suitable thing for that
country; and these southern races of the honey-bee
seem to have brought back, to the detriment of
our own stock, idiosyncrasies long ago bred out of
the native race. Much of the nervous irritability
and proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee
of to-day is more or less directly traceable to the
introduction of foreign blood; and the grand
special advantage of the Italian bee—its much
vaunted and widely advertised possession of a
long tongue—has proved an entire myth. Num-
berless measurements undertaken by our leading
scientific apiarians have proved that the Italian
bee has a tongue no longer than any other,
although most are willing to concede her the
possession of a very long and ready sting indeed.
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 221
But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred
Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered
as any other of her species. It is the first crosses
with the native bee which display so much vin-
dictive aggressiveness, and have given to the
whole race its general bad name.
In the time of the great honey-flow—which in
southern England begins in May, early or late,
according to the season, and may endure for six
weeks—it is a common thing in the country to
see people turn back from the footpaths, running
through the white-clover or sainfoin fields, because
of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the
foraging bees. When there is a large acreage
under these crops, and the day is a fair one, this
note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a
sound of work and peace. It is much more like
the din of a great bee-war, and it is small wonder
that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the
hives, should fear to go through what is very like
a scene of battle and carnage.
And yet there is no time of year when the
honey-bee is so little inclined to molest her human
fellow-creatures as this. So long as the honey-
weather holds—the warm nights when the nectar
is secreted, and the rainless days when it can be
gathered—she can hardly be induced to attack,
even if her home is being turned inside out, and
the sudden sunlight riddling its darkness through
and through.
222 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
Until within comparatively recent years it was
universally believed that honey was a pure, un-
touched secretion from the flowers; and that beyond
gathering and storing it the bee had no part in
its production. This idea, however, is a wholly
mistaken one. Honey is a manufactured article,
and differs in almost every way from the raw
juices obtained from the various flower-crops.
The nectar of flowers, before collection by the bee,
seems to have hardly any of the constituents of
ripe honey. Three-quarters of its bulk consists
of plain water, in which about 20 per cent. of
cane-sugar is dissolved, the rest being made up
of essential oils and gums, which give it its dis-
tinctive flavour. But mature honey contains very
little water, certainly never more than a sixth part
of its bulk. Its sugar is almost entirely grape-
sugar. It is decidedly acid, while the nectar is
always neutral. And the oils and aromatic prin-
ciples of the flower-juices are matured and deve-
loped into the well-known honey flavour, which is
like nothing else in the world.
It is certain that the process of manufacture
begins directly the bee draws the nectar from the
flower-cup. As the liquid passes into the honey-
sac it is mingled with the acid secretion from the
gland at the base of the tongue. When the bee
reaches the hive she does not pour her burden
direct into the cells, but passes it on to one of the
house-bees, who conveys it to the honey-vats. It
is even probable that the nectar is transferred a
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 223
second time before it reaches the cell, although
this point is still undecided. The effect of such
transference is to add more acid properties to the
original juice.
The honey seems to undergo a regular brewing
process within the hive. It is kept at a tempera-
ture of about 80° or 85°, and it is then that the
surplus water passes off into vapour. In this way
the raw nectar loses at least two-thirds of its
natural bulk before it is finally converted into
honey. It is said that at the last moment, just
before each cell is stopped with an impervious
covering of wax, the bee turns herself about, and
injects into the honey a drop of the poison from
her sting ; but there seems to be not the slightest
evidence in support of this. The contents of the
poison-sac are, it is true, mainly formic acid, which
is a strong preservative; and undoubtedly traces
of formic acid are to be found in all honeys. It
has been, however, conclusively proved that this
acid finds its way into the honey from the glandular
system of the bee, and not through its sting.
The industry of the bee in nectar-gathering has
always been a stock subject for wonder, and it is
commonly supposed that she is born with full
instinctive capabilities for her task. A little obser-
vation, however, soon tends to upset this theory.
The work of foraging has to be learnt step by
step, like every other species of skilled work in
hive-life. The young bee, setting out on her first
flight, has all the will to do well, and her imitative
224 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
faculty is strongly developed; but she seems to
have very little else. Her first experiences are a
succession of blunders. She appears not to know
for certain where to look for the coveted sweets,
and can be seen industriously searching the most
unlikely places—crevices in walls, tufts of grass,
or the leaves of a plant instead of its flowers.
The fact that the nectar is hidden deep down in
the cup of the flower, beyond its pollen-bearing
mechanism, seems to dawn upon her only after
much thought and many fruitless essays.
It has been proved that bees will go as far as
two or even three miles in their foraging journeys.
The distance seems to vary according to the nature
of the country. Bees in hilly districts appear to
venture only short distances from home, while in
flat country the foraging flights are more extended,
A bee-line has become proverbial for a straight
course, but it is doubtful whether the bee ever
makes a perfectly direct flight from point to point.
The truth seems to be that there are well-defined
air-paths out from and home to every bee-garden,
and that these are continually thronged with bees
going and returning throughout the working hours
of the day. These aérial thoroughfares lie high
above all but the tallest obstacles, so high indeed
that the keenest sight will reveal nothing. Only
the busy song of the travellers can be heard, like
a river of music, far overhead.
In the South Downcountry, where the isolated
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 225
farms are each surrounded with their compact
acreage of blossoming sheep-feed, and there is
nothing but empty miles of close-cropped turf
between, these bee-roads in the air can be
easily found and studied. Walking over the
springy, undulating grass in the quiet of a summer’s
morning, a faint, far-off note breaks suddenly upon
you like the twang of a harp-string high up in
the blue. A step or two onward and you lose
it; retracing your path, it peals out again. You
can see nothing, strain your eyes as you will; but
its cause is evident, and with a little trying you
can presently make out the main direction of the
flight, and see down in the hollow far below, the
huddled roofs of a farmstead with a patchwork of
fields about it, white with clover, or rose-red with
sainfoin in fullest bloom.
Perhaps there is no honey in the world so fine
as that to be obtained from these solitary Down-
land settlements. With the ordinary consumer
honey is merely honey, and there is an end of the
matter. But the beeman knows that the quality
of honey varies as greatly as that of wine. He
will tell you at first taste the crop from which it is
gathered, whether it has one source or many,
whether it is all flower-essence, or has been con-
taminated by the hateful honeydew, which is not
honey at all. Down in the lowlands, except at
certain rare seasons when only one crop is in
flower, it is next to impossible to get honey abso-
15
226 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
lutely from a single source. But here on the hills
the bees are not tempted by glowing gardens with
their feeble, washy sweets ; nor are they led aside
by the coarse-natured privet, or horse-chestnut,
or sunflower. There is only one trencher to their
banquet, but this is a vast, illimitable one. They
have nothing to do but to wend out and home all
day long between their hives and a single field.
It is difficult to guage with anything like
approximate truth the amount of honey that one
flowering crop will yield. But probably, when all
conditions are most favourable, every acre of
Dutch clover will produce about five pounds of
pure honey for each day it is left standing in full
bloom. The nectar is obviously secreted by the
flower as an attraction to the bee, who, blundering
into it with her pollen-smothered body, uncon-
sciously effects its fertilisation. Directly this
object is gained, the flow of nectar in each particular
floret appears to cease, and the bee passes it by.
The student of old books on apiculture is often
surprised to read so much in praise of honeydew,
while in the modern bee-garden he hears of it
nothing but hearty condemnation. He is told
that directly the bees begin to gather honeydew
the store-racks must be removed from the hives,
or the good honey will be ruined both in colour
and flavour. He is shown some dark, ill-looking,
watery stuff carefully sealed up by the bees, and
is informed that it is nearly all honeydew. But,
~
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 229
he asks himself, can this be the same thing about
which the old masters were led into such ardent
eulogy? The truth is that when ancient and
medizval writers spoke of honeydew, they used the
word asageneral term for all that the bees gathered.
Honey was all a dew, divinely rained down from
the skies ; and it is entirely of a piece with the all
but universal lack of bee-knowledge down almost
to the beginning of the nineteenth century, that so
few should have guessed that the flowers them-
selves had anything to do with the matter. Virgil
and the rest of the classics held absolute sway over
all minds pretending to the least culture, and even
the naturalists seem to have studied the wild life
around them with no other object than to force
facts into line with ancient poetic fantasies. The
old writers explained the varying qualities of honey
as being due to the influence of whatever stars
happened to be in the ascendant at the time of
its gathering, and the honey was good or bad
according to whether this was favourable or un-
favourable.
The quality and consistency of honey varies
extraordinarily as between the different sources
of true nectar; but there is no doubt that honey-
dew well merits the evil name it has gained with
modern bee-keepers. There are, perhaps, three
hundred distinct kinds of aphides known to Eng-
lish naturalists, and all these eject the sweet liquid
which, under certain conditions, bees are tempted
15—2
ewer
228 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
to gather. This honeydew varies in flavour
according to the species of tree from whose sap
it is derived. Probably much of it is only a sweet,
slightly mawkish liquor, which, in its pure state,
combines with the genuine honey without causing
noticeable deterioration, at least to the unexpert
taste and eye. But, unfortunately for bee-keepers,
the oak is a great favourite with these parasites,
no fewer than six varieties preying on this one
tree alone. And oak-honeydew is a pestilent
thing indeed.
It is commonly supposed that the first cold
nights, that mark the beginning of the end of the
honey season, stimulate the production of honey-
dew; for it is after a chilly night that bees are
usually seen at work on the trees where the aphides
abound. A much more likely theory, however,
is that the cold does not accelerate the secretion
of the honeydew, but cuts off the more legitimate
resources of the hive just when they are in fullest
activity; and so the huge armies of foragers are
momentarily thrown out of work, and must seek.
new outlets for their energy. The secretion of
true nectar takes place mainly at night, and re-
quires a temperature of about 70°. Anything
much lower than this means dearth on the morrow,
no matter how fine and warm the weather may
then prove.
The dark colour of aphis-syrup—a very little of
which will ruin for market the finest honey—seems
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 229
to be due as much to foreign matter as to its
natural evil character. There is a peculiar growth
on the bark of many trees where aphides congre-
gate, which is known as soot-fungus. This and
the honeydew get mingled together in a cimmerian
slime, and, no doubt, the merest trace of it would
serve to darken and spoil the purest honey. There
seems to be no way for bee-keepers but to watch
for the first chilly nights, as the honey-season
draws towards its close; and then to be up early
and get the surplus honey-chambers off the hives,
before the bees have had a chance to spoil them.
But the bee is no desperately early riser, for all
her lofty place in the moral-maxim books. She
generally waits until the morning sun has drunk
up the night dews, and warmed the flower-calyces,
before getting down to her work in earnest. The
very early bees that may sometimes be seen wing-
ing out into the first light of a summer’s morning,
are probably only water-carriers. The water-
supply is the day’s first and ‘last care with each
hive in the breeding season. Every bee-garden
seems to have its regular watering-place, gener-
ally on the oozy margin of some neighbouring
pond; and here, in the early morning, and again
towards late afternoon, the bees may be seen
drinking in whole battalions, while the meridian
hours of the day will find it all but deserted.
Curiously, these water-fetching times coincide with
the times when the nectar is least get-atable, or
230 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
when the supply is exhausted for the day ; which
is another sidelight on honey-bee economics.
To followthe beesthrough their honey-harvesting
season is to review nearly the whole year’s natural
growth and life. In southern England the earliest
nectar is drawn from the willows, which come into
flower with late March, but hold back their sweets
until the first spate of fine hot weather comes flood-
ing in the track of the chilly northern gales. Of
willow-honey there may be much or little, accord-
ing to the night-temperatures. Generally it goes
by fits and starts. For a day or two here and
there the trees may be crowded with bees, or they
may be deserted for weeks together. Whenever
the sun shines, indeed, the trees that stand up like
torches of gold in the misty purple of budding
woods, are always full of the singing multi-
tude; but these are only the pollen-gatherers.
The nectar-bearing willows are far less showy.
Their catkins are small, tight-girt tassels of green,
and when a warm night has brought them into
profit, they attract all the noisy minstrels for miles
round. Bee-keepers generally seem to leave the
willows out of their calculations as a source of
honey, but in riverside districts, and in favourable
seasons, they are not to be overlooked. It some-
times happens that April comes in with a succes-
sion of mild sunny days and warm nights, and then
the hives may suddenly overflow with willow-
honey. When the yellow catkins fade out of sight,
the willows are apt to fade out of memory; and it
SEALING UP THE NEW HONEY
IN THE STORE-HOUSE:
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS 231
does not seem to be commonly known that the
female catkins continue to secrete abundant nectar
often up to the end of May.
Good honey-years are scarce under the changing
English skies; yet Nature’s design for the hive-
people is obviously to give an unbroken succes-
sion of honey-yielding plants throughout the whole
spring and summer, and pollen whenever a bright
break of sunshine may lure them out of doors.
The white-clover is seldom ready until the first
week in June; but, from the earliest willows in
March until the last of the flowering seed-crops
is down in late July, there is abundance of pro-
vender, if only the fickle sun will do its part in the
matter. The clover, as farming goes nowadays,
is the great main source of honey, in southern
England at least; but the connoisseurs are at vari-
ance as to what yields the absolute perfection of
honey. Scotsmen are all of one mind, for a rare
chance, in this; and will hear of nothing but the
heather, carefully discriminating between the bell-
heather, which is good, and the ling-heather, which
is immeasurably better. Yet there is a honey, or
rather a honey-blend, which far outstrips them all,
though it is as rare and almost as priceless as the
once famous Comet vintages. It is to be had only
when the apple-blossom and the hawthorn come
into full flower together, and this is only when a
chill April has delayed the one and a summer-like
May has forced on the other. Then, to the mellow
refinement of the apple- nectar, is added the delicate
232 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
almond flavour of the hawthorn, and the resulting
honey is easily the finest sweetmeat in the world.
Wonder is often expressed that one of the most
generally cultivated crops, the red-clover, is seldom
visited by the honey-bee, although the bumble-
bees fill it with their deep trombone-music at all
times of the day. It is true that the tongue of the
hive-bee cannot reach to the bottom of the long
red-clover calyx, but this would not deter her if
the nectar were worth the gathering. She would
cut through the petal at its base, as she does with
many other flowers, and so steal an effective march
on her better caparisoned rival. But red-clover
nectar is poor in consistency and coarse of flavour.
When the main crop is in flower, it would yield a
practically unlimited amount of honey, but this is
just the time when the bee can employ herself
more profitably elsewhere. After the red-clover
has been cut, a second growth springs up, bearing
flower-tubes less developed, and therefore shorter
than those of the first crop. But now other and
better sources of supply are rapidly failing. The
bee—for whom, in prosperous times, nothing but
the best is good enough—must revise her tastes
to meet her necessities. At this time she is as
busy as the rest in the red-clover fields. And when
her clearer, sweeter note is heard there, mingling
its contralto with the hoarser music of the bumble-
bee, it is a token that the heyday of the year is
past : the honey-chambers must be taken off the
hives without delay.
CHAPTER XIV
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY
T is true that all bee-keepers are enthusiasts,
and true that long years spent in the com-
panionship of the hives invariably create a fearless
fellowship, a prime understanding between the
bee-master and his legions. But it is equally true
that the longer you study the nature of the honey-
bee, the less enamoured you become of certain of
her ways.
In the minds of old beemen there grows up,
as the years glide, a sort of awe of her. She is so
manifestly a power, supreme in her little world.
She is so courageous, resourceful, brainy. All
the weaknesses and compromises, and most of the
pleasures, have long ago been driven out of her
life, seemingly by her own act and will; yet, in
doing this, she has but refined the science of citizen-
ship to its pure elements. Her entire unsel-
fishness, her readiness to sacrifice her individual
good for the good of the State, are as unquestion-
able as they are changeless. The hive-polity,
taken as a whole, is so admirable, and compares so
233
234 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
advantageously with certain human efforts in the
same way, that you are apt to exalt all her quali-
ties into virtues ; and to conclude that a far-seeing,
wise benevolence must have gone to the making
of the perfect Bee-State, instead of the cold, un-
deviating logic that alone has fashioned it.
This remorseless smelting-down of life into the
set moulds of principle, without. mercy and with-
out reproach, has a cumulative effect on the mind
of the observer ; and sooner or later, though he
will early lose his fear of her sting, he will develop
a very real, but vague, awe of the honey-bee in
another way.
Just as Moses Rusden, the King’s bee-master,
held up the life of the hive as Nature’s evidence
of the Divine will in earthly monarchy, so the
latter-day student is often constrained to ask him-
self whether the bee-commonwealth does not point
an authoritative moral in another way. Here is a
State—only a mimic one, but still not a negligible
example—where several of the most fiercely -
debated questions of modern human life are seen
in long adopted and perfected working-order, and
seen in their fullness of result. Any attempt at a
serious comparison between men and women, and
the drone and worker-bee, would justly lay the
writer open to the charge of grotesque trifling ; but
there is more than a fanciful analogy between the
principles on which all civilisations must be based,
whether they are insect or human. It cannot be
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 235
denied that the communal life of the honey-bee is
a high civilisation ; that it has grown to be what
it is to-day through ages of necessity ; that the one
sex has the other under a complete and terrible
subjection, for which, and for the privilege of all
power, the dominant sex has paid a terrible price.
The worker-bee to-day is an over-intellectual,
neurotic, morbidly dutiful creature, while the drone
is admittedly nothing but a stupid, happy, sensual
lout. If the extreme difference between the sexes
in bee-life had been aboriginal, the relations of
drone and worker, as we see them in the hives
to-day, would be meet and reasonable enough ;
but there seems to be clear evidence that, far back
in the life of the race, the female bee was not so
hopelessly superior to her mate. The queen-bee,
in all likelihood, fairly represents the mother-bee
as she was before the cooling crust of the earth
made some sort of protected habitation necessary,
which led first to close clustering for mutual
warmth, and then gradually developed the com-
plicated hive-life of to-day. But evolution will
hardly account for all that we see: revolution
must have had its part in the production of the
modern self-unsexed worker. It has been seen
that there is no physiological reason why each
worker in the hive should not have grown into the
fertile mother of thousands. The workers are not
a stunted, specialised race, slowly evolved by time
and necessity, and procreating their own stunted
236 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
kind; but each worker is deliberately manufactured
to a set pattern by the authorities in the hive,
obedient to the call of the State. And when did
the female bees begin this tampering with the
springs of life, this improving upon Creation, which
was the first vital step, failing which the present
bee-commonwealth had been impossible? It looks
very like a superb act of generalship in the great
primeval war of sex—a brilliant piece of strategy
that gave victory at a blow, and rendered the
after-steps in the scheme of conquest a matter of
logical sequence.
The whole question of the artificial production
of the worker-bee is surrounded with difficulties ;
and it seems possible, on our present level of
knowledge, to do little more than state the facts,
and there leave them. The supremacy of the
females in hive-life appears to have dated from
the time that the vast majority deprived themselves,
or were deprived by their immediate ancestors, of
their share in procreation, and the ovipositor dis-
covered itself as a weapon of offence and defence.
_Before the worker-bees existed as an armed force,
there is no reason to suppose that the female bee
had a great physical advantage over the drone.
The queen-bee’s propensity to thrust her ovipositor
into the spiracles of her rival, and so effectually to
despatch her, as well as her inveterate hatred of
her kind, may both be late developments, due to
the isolated, artificial life she now leads. While
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 237
the worker is ever ready with her sting, the queen
uses it so rarely that many old experienced bee-
keepers of the present time deny her altogether
the power of stinging. A much more natural
tendency with her is to bite; and when it comes
to the use of the sharp, strong, sidelong jaws, the
drone has a more redoubtable equipment than
any, although he has apparently lost the will and
sense to use it.
Whatever the drone may have been in far-off
ages, the worker-bees have him now well under
the iron heel of matriarchal expediency ; and they
see to it that he shall be fit only for the one in-
dispensable office, although in that regard they
exhaust every ingenuity to make him all that his
kind should be. It is plain they would do without
him altogether if that were possible. As it is, for
nine months in the year there are no drones at all,
and then only a few hundreds are raised in each
hive—the bare minimum that will ensure the suc-
cessful mating of the young queens when the
summer sunshine calls them to their wooing. It
might be supposed that where there are com-
paratively so few queens to be fertilised—only
two or three at most from each hive, and these
only once in a lifetime—that even those drones
which are now tolerated are in excess of the
number required. But a cardinal principle in bee-
life is that the young queens shall choose their
mates from another tribe, and so ensure a continual
238 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
influx of new blood to the colony. This can only
be effected out-of-doors, and as far as possible
from the parent hive. The strongest impulse,
therefore, of the virgin-queen, when she goes off
on her mating-flight, is to get away quickly from
her home surroundings. She flies straight off at
tremendous speed, and thus has every chance of
getting unperceived into new country, and so into
the reconnoitring: ground of strange drones.
Another reason for her extended flight and its
remarkable pace is that only the strongest and
swiftest drone of all the pursuing multitude is
likely to overtake her, and this again makes for
the betterment of the race. Perhaps there is no
parallel instance in nature where the selection of
the fittest individuals to continue a species is so
carefully provided for, and no doubt this accounts
for the high place of the honey-bee in the scale of
created things. But this scheme involves enormous
risk to the young queen. A hundred dangers lurk
on her path. She is a tempting morsel for every
bird that throngs the air of the June morning.
Her untried wings may fail her. Even if she gets
back safely to the bee-garden, she may enter the
wrong hive, to her instant destruction. But she
must take her chance of all risks; and the only
thing to do is to render her absence from home as
brief as may be, and her fertilisation as sure, by
making the wandering drone-population large
enough to cover all probable ranges of flight.
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 239
From the very first the drone is nurtured in
a different way from the worker-bee. The egg is
laid in a wider and deeper cell ; and during its first
three days of life the drone-larva is fed with bee-
milk, probably of a special kind and certainly of
more generous quantity. After the third day this
chyle-food is reduced, as is the case with the
worker-grub ; but while the worker is then given
only honey, it is certain that the drone-larva
receives both honey and pollen, and that for a
full day longer. In all, it takes about twenty-four
‘or twenty-five days to produce the perfect drone-
bee, as against an average twenty-one days for the
worker. The queen-bee, as has been already seen,
is developed in much less time than either, little
more than a fortnight elapsing between the time
the egg is laid and the time she is ready to gnaw
her way out of the cell.
After the drone is hatched, it will be another
two weeks or so before he makes his first venture
in the open air. A\ll this time he has the free run
of the larder, and steadily gorges himself on honey
when he is not sleeping off the effects of his surfeit
in some snug, out-of-the-way corner of the hive.
But honey is not his only, or even his principal,
food. Throughout his whole life he is constantly
fed by the house-bees with the rich chyle-food
given to him as a larva, and it has been proved
that if this is withheld from him for the space of
three days he will die of starvation, even in the
240 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
midst of abundant honey. Thus the worker-bees
have him completely in their power.
The first flight of the drones is a stirring event
in the bee-garden. The common sound of the
hives goes on practically the whole year through.
Every sunny midday, when the temperature
mounts to 45° or 50°, will see each hive the
centre of a little galaxy of singers: it is only the
volume of the music that varies with the waxing or
waning days. But with the coming of the drones
the whole symphony of the bee-garden abruptly
changes. They never move from their snug in-
door quarters until the day is wearing on towards
noon, and then only in the brightest weather.
Blundering aggressively through the crowd of busy
foragers, they rise heavily on the wing, and soon
the ordinary note of the garden is drowned in the
new uproar. They seem to come almost simulta-
neously from all hives at once. For a minute or
two the rich, hoarse melody holds the air; and then,
almost as suddenly, it dies away, as these royster-
ing ne’er-do-wells troop off over hill and dale,
each to his favourite hunting-ground.
There is great divergence of opinion as to the
limits of flight of the drone, but probably he goes
farther and faster than any have yet credited. His
magnificent stretch and strength of wing mark him
for a flier. He is all brute force and lusty energy ;
and it would be strange if, with but one thing to
do in life—to gad about in search of amorous
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 241
adventure—he could not do it to a purpose. If a
hive of bees be removed to a distance in the height
of the season, some of both workers and drones are
sure to find their way back to the old spot. This
has constantly taken place when hives have been
carried no farther than two miles. But in one case,
when the distance was more than twice as much,
no workers were seen round the old hive-station,
yet a little company of drones was winging aim-
lessly about the tenantless stool, and there can be
little doubt that these belonged to the removed
colony. It is not suggested that they deliberately
travelled all these miles. The chances are that, in
their daily flight, they got so far away from the
new station that they came within the zone of old
landmarks, and thus naturally went on by the
long-accustomed ways.
As a typical instance of a sluggard and idler, the
drone-bee has enjoyed a vogue in the preparatory-
school books for ages past. But, whatever his
primzeval equipment for usefulness may have been,
it is evident now that he could not labour if he
would. Physically, in all points but that of muscle,
as well as mentally, he has become degraded to the
inferior of the worker-bee in every way. He is
destitute of all those special contrivances with
which she is so amply furnished. He has no
baskets for pollen-carrying, nor any of the in-
genious brushes and combs which she uses to
scrape the pollen from herself and others. He has
16
242 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
neither wax-generating organs, nor leg-pincers to
deal with wax. His tongue is too short for honey-
getting. His brain is much smaller than even that
of the feeble-minded queen. The intricate gland-
systems, which play so important a réle in the daily
life of the worker, are either completely atrophied
in the drone or exist only in an elementary state.
While it has been the communal will of the hive
that the worker-bee should develop an amazing
proficiency of mind and body, the same forces have
been steadily at work to degrade the male-bee into
a creature of dependence, gradually training out of
him all initiative and idea, except in the one direc-
tion, Just as in the case of the queen and the
worker, drone and worker-bee seem hardly to
belong to the same race.
And yet, for all his frank incapabilities and lack
of ideals, the drone offers, in one respect, a refresh-
ing contrast to his sour, stern, duty-worshipping
sister. He isa life-long, incorrigible optimist. He
fiddles gaily while the city burns. All his misery
and mourning would not serve to quench a single
spark of it; so he eats, drinks, and is merry, with
the intuition of all drones that Nemesis waits on
the morrow with something disagreeable. It is
impossible to study his ways for long without re-
cognising the spirit of rude jollity and horse-play
that thoroughly pervades all he does. In and out
of the hive he blusters, cannoning roughly against
all he meets, and raising his burly, bullying song
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 243
in the air as a sort of protest against all this anxious
‘industry going on about him. Once gone from the
neighbourhood of the hive, he seems to keep in-
cessantly on the wing until hunger prompts him
home again. For no one has ever seen a drone-
bee among the insects that haunt the flowers, nor
ever seen him basking on a sunlit wall or tree-
trunk, after the kind of almost every other winged
atom in the universe.
He comes back to the hive with the same noisy,
careless fanfaronade, and is received by the workers
with the same sullen indifference. They give him
his fill of bee-milk, linking tongues with him as he
sits up like an overgrown baby, voracious, clamour-
ing to be fed. They suffer him to swill at the
honey-stores unchecked, but plainly regard him
with contumely. He is a terrible expense to the
State, yet a necessary one. Silently they go about
their uncongenial business of nourishing him—
silently, and with an ominous patience: They
grudge him every drop, and, all the more, urge
him to his excesses. It is not for long. The day
of reckoning is near at hand. Already the poppies
glow scarlet on the hill—the poppies that mark the
turning-point of the summer ; and after them the
long decline, with its ever-diminishing sun-glow ;
each day with a scantier meed of blossom, until
the path runs again into the dreary levels, the
sober greys and russets, of winter death.
Now the worker-bee is to show a grizzly seam
16—2
244 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
in her nature, matching ill with the fine hues and
qualities of mind for which she is so justly famed.
And that she is not all lovable, all admirable,
accounts for the exceeding love of her that moves
the hearts of men who know her through and
through. The story of the massacre of the drones
has hardly a parallel for sheer relentless ferocity—
unrecking abandonment to a vengeance long with-
held for expediency’s sake. There come the first
chill nights of mid-July, and the honey-flow is
suddenly at an end. The clover and sainfoin
have already fallen to the sickle. Nothing but
the bravest warmth and exuberance of the summer
could now withstand the drain of the myriad honey-
makers, and a few hours’ cold dams up at once the
attenuated stream. The time of prosperity is over.
There will be no more abundance of honey. It
remains for the genius of hive-economy to prove
how much of what has been gathered can be pre-
served for future needs.
The first sign of the déddcle is the throwing
out at the hive entrance of certain pale, gruesome
objects—the corpses of immature drones, not dead
from mischance, but ruthlessly torn from their cells.
This may go on intermittently for many days, and
while the fell work is proceeding the living drones
seem to take no warning. They keep up their
merry round; the unending feast riots forward ;
daily the bee-garden is filled with their careless,
overweening song. And then at last the signal
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 245
for the slaughter is given. Within each hive a
curious sobbing outcry begins—a cry that is
nothing but sheer terror put into sound. The
drones no longer lie in easy ranks between the
combs, placidly sleeping off one debauch and
dreaming of another. They are all awake now,
and fleeing abjectly for their lives through the
narrow ways of the bee-city, the workers in hot
pursuit,
The deep, vibrant, horror-laden note increases
hour by hour. As each executioner overtakes her
victim, she grips him by the base of the wing;
and, helped by others all alike infuriate at the
work, she half drags, half pushes him through the
throng, until she has him in the light of day, and
tumbles with him to the ground; he for ever
fighting and struggling, and uttering that frenzied
note of fear; she savagely gnawing at the wing
until it is disabled, and he can never more return
to the hive. Many of the strongest drones escape
from their persecutors for the time being, and fly
away unhurt. But it is only for a few hours.
Hunger is sure to bring them back to the hive,
when the waiting guards fall upon them, and maim
or drive them off once more. It is specially to be
marked that the bees never sting the drones at
this great annual feast of carnage. There is that
much method in the madness which has seized
upon them ; for, in the rough-and-tumble of such
a conflict, stings would be plucked out by the
246 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
roots, and thus valuable lives would go down with
the worthless. The sole object seems to be to
rid the hives as effectively as possible of the
presence of the drones; and the disablement of
one wing appears to be all that is necessary, and
therefore all for which the deft assassin strives.
With some bee-races the massacre of the drones
is carried through in an incredibly short space of
time ; with others the agony of the thing is drawn
out for days together. The wretched sires of the
hive are caught between two evils, each as fatal as
the other. If they fly off to the fields, starvation
and the night-chills will swiftly bring about their
end. If they return to the hive, a still speedier
death awaits them. Night and day, at this time,
the guard-bees are doubled and re-doubled at the
city-gates ; and there is little chance of the wiliest
drone outwitting them. But he usually takes the
home-hazard ; and sooner or later comes blunder-
ing in, receiving with open arms, as it were, his
share of the knife, as Huddlestone faced the
Carbonari.
All this is the common way with the bee-
republic, when the season goes as it should ; and
the hive is in possession of a mother-bee—young,
strong, and of proved fecundity. But there are
times when the drones—for all their great expense
and drain on the wealth of the colony—are suffered
to live on until the late autumn, or even to remain
unmolested throughout the winter and following
THE DRONE AND HIS STORY 247
spring. If the bee-master sees drones about a
hive, when other colonies have long ago made
a good riddance of them, he well knows what ails
the stock. Its queen is old and failing ; and these
astute amazons have given reprieve to their male-
kind until a new mother-bee can be raised and
properly mated. It is a case of mercy to the drones
tempered with so much justice to themselves that
the original virtue is largely discounted.
And where the drones are carried through the
winter, it is ever a sign that the hive is not only
without a queen, but never will contrive one, of
their own race. Yet they know that, in the
preservation of the drones, they have at least one
indispensable element for their salvation, and—
who shall gainsay it of the sovereign honey-bee ?—
perhaps they rely on the bee-master to guess their
plight, and furnish them with another queen, in
time to save his property from extinction.
CHAPTER XV
AFTER THE FEAST
S the year grows in the bee-garden, so it
goes, with all but imperceptible tread and
tread. In southern England, after the seed-
hay is down, there is little more for the bees to do
but prepare their hives for the coming winter.
The queen is slowly weaned from her absorption in
egg-laying by a gradual change in food. Day by
day she receives less of the mysterious bee-milk
which was her urging and inspiration ; day after
day she finds herself the more constrained to slake
her hunger at the open honey-cells with the com-
mon crowd, Every day sees fewer bee-children
born to the hive, and every day sees more and
more of the old workers—worn out with a short
six weeks or so of summer toil—pass away in that
inexplicable fashion, using, perchance, their last
strength of wing to hie them to the traditional
graveyard of their kind. What becomes of them
all, not the wisest among beemen knows ; but it is
certain that, as they lived by communal principle,
in the same faith they die; and their last act may
248
AVI OL GAMINOAN LON ST AHS NAHM NOLLNALLY TWISAdS ON MAH AVA S MOM AHL LVHL DNIMOHS ‘NOS¥aS-ddO NI AAI NAA
Me Ms
AFTER THE FEAST 249
be the truly collective one—of removing their own
bodies out of the way of harm to the cherished
State.
With the waning months, the population of the
hive decreases visibly, and, as their numbers fail,
the temper of the bees suffers just as evident a
change. Old bee-keepers know by sharp ex-
perience that early autumn is a time when vigi-
lance well repays itself. For all life the season of
autumn has its peculiar tests and trials of character ;
and this is especially true with regard to the
honey-bee. Each strain of bees has its proclivi-
ties, good or bad, which are sure to come to the
front at this season. And, more than any, bad
qualities will show themselves, now that the rush
of the year’s work is over, and the common energy
must take its course through an ever shallowing
and straitening way.
To find rank dishonesty in a creature of so
small account in creation as an insect, is rather
startling to old-fashioned ideas; but it is never-
theless beyond dispute that some stocks of
bees are prone to develop a tendency to house-
breaking and robbery of their neighbour's goods
during early autumn, and, in a lesser degree, when
the first scanty supply of nectar begins in early
spring.
Virgil, and almost all the classic writers, give
stirring accounts of the frequent battles among
bees in their day. We are told of vast conflicts
250 THE LORE OF THE HONEY BEE
taking place in mid-air, of the kings leading forth
their hosts of warriors—the din of carnage—the
wounded and dying falling like rain out of the blue
of the summer sky. These descriptions have
always been a great puzzle to modern students of
bee-life, because nothing of the kind seems to take
place at the present day. Each hive goes about
its business, apparently in complete disregard of
the existence of other hives. Neither at home,
nor abroad in the fields, are reprisals ever wit-
nessed among bees, whether singly or collectively.
The most peaceable creature in the world is the
honey-bee, except in the single case when her home
is being wantonly assailed.
But in autumn frequent encounters take place
between robber-bees and the hive they are attack-
ing, and one is constrained to believe that it is of
this Virgil writes.
Perhaps when once a stock has discovered that
stealing honey is a much quicker and easier
method of obtaining it than by the laborious pro-
cess of gathering, these particular bees will never
again be won back to honest courses. Not only
will the parent hive continue to break out in this
way at the close of every season, but all swarms
from the same hive are certain to develop the like
tendencies. The strain will be a continual source
of annoyance and loss to the bee-master, and, if
he be wise, he will take the shortest and surest
way of putting an end to the trouble, by promptly
AFTER THE FEAST 251
changing the queen, and thus in the end exter-
minating the original stock. Where this is in
his own garden, there will be no difficulty in the
matter; but often the robbers are wild bees,
brigands inhabiting a hollow tree in some neigh-
bouring wood, and making sudden raids upon
their law-abiding neighbours in adjacent villages,
after the manner of brigands all the world over.
The strangers have often a peculiar appearance,
which singles them out immediately from the
legitimate members of the gardens. They are
darker in colour and shinier ; and they have a bold,
yet furtive, way of getting about, which suggests
at once the prowling marauder.
Wandering among the hives on a fine Sep-
tember morning, several of these light-fingered,
sinister folk may be seen hovering about the
entrance to a hive, or trying to creep in unob-
served. Their presence is promptly detected, and
a sudden hubbub arises as the guard-bees set upon
the intruders and drive them off. There is no
doubt of their intention. They are spies from the
robber camp, and their object is to discover those
hives which are weak in population, and so will fall
the easier prey to the depredators when in force.
Strong stocks have little to fear from robbers ;
they can always hold their own against attack, and
therefore are seldom molested.
These scouts disappear for a time, and the hive
settles down to its wonted, busy tranquillity. But
252 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
soon a little blur of bees may be seen coming over
the hedge-top, and making straight for the selected
hive. There is no more crafty reconnoitring. It
is to be battle undisguised. The robbers descend
upon their prey, and at once a terrific uproar
begins, a desperate hand-to-hand fight between
besiegers and besieged. Left to themselves, the
weak stock will have little chance from the outset.
It is quickly overcome. And then a curious thing
often happens. The bees of the home-colony
which have survived the fight, join forces with the
victors, and themselves help to rifle and carry
away to the robbers’ lair the treasure which is
their own by right. Luckily, the bee-master has
an all but unfailing preventive of this vexatious
trouble ready to his hand. He can safely leave
all those hives which are numerically strong of
citizens to take care of themselves, and those
which are weak of population he can join together
in twos or threes, converting them also into strong,
self-protective colonies. The modern movable-
comb hive is a power in the hands of the capable
beeman, for the comb-frames from several hives
can be placed together in one, and the bees will
unite quite peaceably at this season, if all are well
dusted with a flour-dredger, or treated with a
scent-spray, so that in odour and appearance they
may be alike. Probably every hive has its own
distinct odour, which is shared by all its denizens,
and this is no doubt the means by which the
AFTER THE FEAST 253
sentinel bees at the entrance recognise their own
comrades, while they promptly fall upon all inter-
loping strangers.
The preparation of the hive for the winter is of
a piece with all else that the bee undertakes. As
the area of the brood-nest shrinks, the empty cells
are filled with honey, this being brought down
from the store-cells farthest away. The foragers
keep steadily at work whenever the weather holds,
gathering up the remnants of the feast and bring-
ing them home to swell the winter-larder. Where
there is much ivy, a fine October will often see
the hives as busy again as ever they were in the
bravest days of June; but the throng of bees is
manifestly smaller. The rich song of life begins
later in the day, and lasts only during the brightest
hours ; and that wonderful night-sound, the deep
underground thunder of the fanning bees, is gone
from the bee-garden, just as the scent of the
clover-nectar, brewing and steaming in the hives,
no longer drifts across in the darkness, filling the
bee-master’s house with the fragrance he loves
more than all else in the world.
The old ragged-winged bees, that have stood
the brunt of the season, are now, too, nearly all
gone. The hives are filled with bees of the same
race, inspired by the same traditions ; but they are
at the beginning of life, the raw recruits of destiny,
a mere stop-gap crew. They have no memories
of the time when work was a fever, a tumultuous
254 THE LORE OF THE HONEY BEE
race with the sun, in which the swiftest must lag
behind. They have never known the over-
weighty cargoes, the bursting honey - sacs, and
pollen-panniers so laden that they could be scarce
dragged into the hive, and they will never know
them. These bees, born late in the season, have
their lot cast in the torpid backwaters of their
little world. Theirs is to be but a dreary eking
out of days, so that they may have strength
enough to warm the first spring broods into life.
The few hot days that burn in the midst of the
snows of each English March—immeasurably far
off now, and unattainable, seemingly—will be all
they will ever see of the power of sunshine,
Winter bees are born to the prison-house ; and in
it, and for it, live and die.
At the most, a worker-bee sees but six months
of life: at the least—and this is the lot of many—
she withstands the incessant wear and tear of her
hard calling for six, or possibly eight, weeks.
Thus, though the hive may be always packed with
citizens, the population is for ever changing.
Half a dozen times in the year, perhaps, and for a
score of years, you may go to your bee-garden, and
each time move among tens of thousands to whom
you are an utter stranger, and whom you have
never seen before. And yet, in all its customs, its
propensities, its traditions, the life of the bees is
Continuity impersonified. You may go round the
world, and spend ten years on the journey; and,
AFTER THE FEAST 255
coming back to the old leafy nook of the country,
find the old green hive still in its corner under
the lilac, still the centre of what seems the same
crowd of winged merchant-women sailing home
under the same gay colours, singing the old glad
songs, building the old wondrous fabrics in the
darkness, transmuting the same fragrant essences
into the same elixir of gold. And what is this
mysterious thing called the Bee-Commonwealth,
which is alone immortal, while all that composes it,
and pertains to it, and upholds it, passes and dies ?
You must not forget the queen-bee here. She
alone, it must be remembered, persists year in
and year out, while generation after generation
of her children grow up and die about her—a
hundred thousand of them, may-be, in each twelve-
month, thousands even between one single summer
dawn and the dusk of the western sky. Methu-
salah of old, on the more moderate human scale,
must have had some such experience—must have
divined the broader plan of life from the incessant
repetitions of chance and change that passed before
him. The power to generalise into symbols comes
only to the ancient of days ; and he of all men had
learnt to fathom, to estimate, to winnow out the
sober drab grain from the glittering, rainbow chaff
of life. Over and over again he must have kept
the true true to itself with one wise word, and
turned back the false, dazzled and discomfited,
with one flash from his mirror of the ages. He
256 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
was a living history-book, where all men might
read the common drift and outcome of life; and as
a record of the hive’s story, a living archive for
its plans, its systems, its ideals, the mother-bee
may exist to-day—she who, in comparison with its
ever coming and going thousands, is an age-old,
imperishable thing.
And so you may think of her, in the short days
of December twilight, or in the interminable night-
darkness full of the raging of the winter wind,
gathering her children about her, and telling them
tales of their forbears’ prowess ; teaching them old
bee-songs which have but the one refrain of work
and winning ; and never forgetting her own little
story—of the one brief hour of her love-flight and
marriage, bought and paid for by widowhood
lasting her whole life.
CHAPTER XVI
THE MODERN BEE-FARM
T is well enough to consider the scientific side
of hive-life for its intrinsic interest, to treat it
for what it really is—one of the most absorbing
studies available for leisure hours. But the honey-
bee is something more than a wonder-maker, or
a peg on which to hang dilettante moralisms.
Rightly treated and exactly understood, she can
be made of great use in the world.
There are two things in this England of ours
which profoundly astonish all who love bees, and
have a true conception of their possibilities.
Travel where you may in the land, the last thing
you are likely to meet with is a bee-farm, or even
a few hives in a cottage-garden; while every yard
of your way has its nook of blossom, and every
mile its stretch of flowery pasture, where, in sober
truth, tons of honey are annually running to waste.
All this could be garnered and sold to the people
at little trouble and great profit, if only enterprise
would wake up from its island-lethargy and stretch
forth the hand. But the years dribble uselessly
17 257
258 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
by, and nothing is done. Here and there a wide-
awake husbandman gets a little township of hives
together, sells in the neighbourhood all the honey
his bees make, and puts to his pocket a gold and
silver lining. But this is only a drop in the ocean,
and the British people must send abroad for their
honey, which they do to the pretty tune of more
than £30,000 a year.
Hitherto, reasoning backward from effect to
cause, it would seem that farming has been re-
munerative only when undertaken on a large scale;
but those who can read the signs of the times tell
us that the age, just dawning to the country-side,
will be the age of the small man. And this must
mean that the hereditary aristocracy among crops
—wheat, oats, barley—will slowly give place to
little-culture: in a word, that the land will be made
to produce, not the things that tradition and our
yeoman family pride have ordained as the be-all
and end-all of farming, but the minor, humble
necessities for which each town and village should
look to the good brown earth immediately about it,
but at present looks in vain. Farmers’ ladies may
then no longer sit in their drawing-rooms and ride
in their carriages, but that will be a change for the
simpler, more proportionate. Those who live in
towns have little conception of it; but the country-
dweller knows well what complexity and luxury
have got into the old English farmhouses, for all
the outcry about hard times ; how the farmer’s
THE MODERN BEE-FARM 259
wife no longer goes to her dairy, nor makes any ot
the good old farmhouse things that served to up-
hold country England in days gone by; and how
the master-agriculturists now are the sinews of the
great London Stores, while. the little local shop-
keepers are left to the field-labourer with his
twelve or fifteen shillings a week.
For the class of small-holders that must now
multiply throughout the length and breadth of the
land, there is awaiting an enterprise—a source of
livelihood—as yet hardly tapped. A stock subject
of envy with most artisans is the capitalist who
leads an easy life while his factory hands toil for
him. But if the small-holder will take up bee-
keeping, he too can look on, to a large extent,
while his thousands of winged labourers are filling
his/storehouse with some of the most useful and
saleable merchandise in the world. It is a truism
in commerce that a good supply creates a demand
just as certainly as that the universal want of a
thing stimulates its production. One of the needs
in England to-day isa full, good, and cheap supply
of honey ; and when this is forthcoming there will
be little fear but that the present demand will
increase hand over hand.
There are many reasons why the people should
choose honey for their principal food rather than
the beet sugar which is now so largely consumed.
In the first place, honey is a pure, natural, un-
doctored sweet, while in the manufacture of
17—2
260 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
ordinary sugar the use of more or less noxious
chemicals seems to be indispensable. When a
stock of bees must be artificially fed, and common
grocers’ sugar is used for the purpose, the result
is generally that half the stock is poisoned by the
chemicals with which the sugar has been treated
at the mill. And if this is its effect on bees, the
inference must be that it cannot prove altogether
wholesome for men. But its purity is not the
chief reason why honey should be the universal
sweet-food of the people. Honey is the ordinary
sugar of nectar concentrated and converted into
what is chemically known as grape-sugar ; and thus,
in ripe honey, the first and most important part of
digestion is already effected before it leaves the
comb. This explains why so many delicate people,
and particularly children, can assimilate food
sweetened with honey, when they can take no
other form of sweet.
Doctors are continually finding some new virtue
in honey. Its gently regulating action has been
long known, and there is good authority for stating
that there is not an organ in the human body which
does not benefit from its habitual use. In all
wasting diseases, and triumphantly in consump-
tion, it will prevail as an up-builder when every-
thing else fails. There is no doubt at all that cases
of consumption have been entirely cured by a
liberal diet of honey; and, notoriously, honey is
the main ingredient in nearly all patent medicines
THE MODERN BEE-FARM 261
for diseases of the chest and throat. Thera-
peutic hints from laymen are generally looked upon
askance by medical men—at least, by those of the
old-fashioned type; yet, on the chance that this
page may come under the eye of some of the more
elastic-minded, the thing may be hazarded. There
are many who believe in it, and with good reason,
as a sovereign specific where the disease is a wast-
ing one. It is nothing else than the once famous
Athole Brose, which, as all Scottish bee-keepers
know, consist of equal parts of good thick honey,
preferably from ling-heather, and of cream, and of
mature Scotch whisky from the pot-still. Little
and often is the rule for its administration, but, un-
like most old wife’s remedies, faith has nothing to
do with its wonder-working. Scepticism is a soil
in which it seems to flourish as well as any.
The man of business, resolved to take up bee-
keeping as a livelihood, must, at the outset, decide
on what scale he will carry the matter through.
There are two aspects of the thing, each more
alluring than the other, according to the tempera-
ment and point of view. There is the Simple
Life and the bee-garden—a life spent in the
green quiet of an English village, within reach ot
a market town, where the produce of the hives
may be disposed of. And there is the greater
enterprise, the foundation of a bee-farm on an
extensive scale, and on the most approved scien-
tific principles, where the object is to supply the
262 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
great central markets at a distance rather than the
immediate local needs.
In the establishment of a bee-farm the first care
must be the choice of a suitable district. The
nature of the surrounding country must largely
govern the systems on which the farm can be most
profitably worked. The first maxim in success-
ful beemanship is to get all hives filled to the brim
with worker-bees by the time the great honey-
flow sets in. This time, however, varies accord-
ing to the district. In the orchard-country we
need bees early; in heather-districts we want
them late. In south-west England, where the
country is half fruit-ground and half moorland, the
hives must be huge in population both late and
early. But where the bee-keeper follows the sheep-
farmer—and there is no better guide to honey than
the sheep—his true policy is to work his colonies
slowly and steadily up to their greatest strength
by the time the main feed-crops come into blossom,
which is seldom before the middle of May. And
all these considerations land us on the brink of a
very vexed question in modern bee-craft—whether
bees should be artificially fed, and if so, how and
when ?
If only the purest cane-sugar is used, and the
syrup well boiled and never burnt, there is nothing
to say against the practice on the score of harm to
the stocks. Where early bees are wanted, it is
absolutely necessary to give them a continuous
THE MODERN BEE-FARM 263
supply of sugar-syrup from the first moment that
breeding commences in the hives. Chemically,
the sweet constituent in nectar is almost identical
with that from the sugar-cane; and sugar-syrup
has this advantage over honey given—that it more
nearly simulates the natural flow. The bees re-
sponsible for the nursery-work in the hive and the
regulation of the queen’s fecundity, are young bees
that have never yet flown. Theycan, therefore, only
judge of the progress of the season by the amount
of nectar and pollen coming into the hive. Where
this is steadily increasing day by day—and it is
this regular natural progress in prosperity which
the bee-keeper must strive to imitate in artificial
feeding — the nurse-bees gain confidence, and
brood-raising forges rapidly ahead.
But sugar-syrup and pea-flour are not natural
foods for bees, and there is little doubt that a pro-
longed course of such diet tends to lower the tone
and stamina of the race, and thus may prepare the
way for disease. The golden rule in the matter
seems to be that artificial feeding should be re-
sorted to only where strength of stocks is neces-
sary to secure the harvest, or where actual starva-
tion threatens. In purely heather-districts, when
the big population is quite early enough if it is
to hand in late June, nothing short of imminent
starvation should induce the bee-master to give
artificial, and therefore unavoidably inferior, food.
In sheep-country the same rule holds. Except in
264 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
the most unfavourable years, a hive, headed by
a young and vigorous queen, can be relied upon
to get itself into the finest fettle by the time the
main crops are ready for exploitation. In this
case the beeman has only to make certain from
time to time that no stock is in absolute want of
the ordinary means of subsistence.
But in those warm, favoured regions of the
south-west, the lands of the apple-blossom and the
heather, where there is a very early and a very
late harvest to be gathered, a different system must
be pursued. Here we touch on the second grand
principle of successful bee-keeping—the necessity
for having in all hives only the most prolific mother-
bees. For profitable honey - getting a queen
should seldom be kept beyond her second year.
After that she is usually of little account, and
should be superseded, either by the bee-master or
the bees. But where a queen has been over-stimu-
lated by feeding to raise an immense population in
the spring of the year, she is rarely capable of
another supreme effort in the autumn. The best
policy, therefore, if the heather-harvest is an im-
portant one, is to remove the old queens as soon
as the spring work is over, and to substitute for
them queens that are in their best season, but at
the beginning of their resources instead of at the
end. In this way another huge army of workers
is soon born to the hive, and the double harvest is
secured.
AT Sau 2 dIHSNV
THE MODERN BEE-FARM 265
On the question of the best hive to use in com-
mercial bee-keeping, on either a large or small
scale, it is hard to particularise. Generalisation,
however, is not difficult here. Every bee-master
has his own ideas as to details, but all are happily
agreed on the main constructive principles. Ex-
perience has fairly well decided that a good queen,
under the modern system of intensive culture, will
require for her brood a comb-surface of about
1,800 square inches. A brood-nest of smaller
capacity than this is liable to cramp her operations
at their highest, and anything in excess of it will
simply mean so much new honey lost to the super-
chambers, where alone the bee-master requires it.
Honey stored in the brood-nest, except during the
off-season, is loss instead of gain. The best hive,
therefore, will contain just as many brood-combs in
movable frames as will ensure the right capacity ;
and all comb-frames throughout the bee-farm must
be of the same size, so that they will be strictly
interchangeable among the various hives. This is
a vital point in successful bee-culture, because it
enables the master not only to equalise the strength
of his stocks by transferring combs of hatching
brood from one to the other ; but he can also give
to penurious stocks frames of sealed honey from
the abundance of their neighbours, and he can
unite the weak colonies, thus rendering all strong.
For the rest, the hives must be so made that
heat will be perfectly retained in the cold season,
266 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
and as perfectly excluded during the sultriest time
of year. Double walls round the brood-chamber
are a necessity in the changeable British climate,
where chilly days are always probable during ten
months out of the twelve.
As well as honey-production, the bee-farmer will
find an equal source of profit in the production of
wax. Just as there is nothing like leather, beeswax
holds its own as a marketable commodity in spite
of paraffin substitutes. But if it is almost univer-
sally degraded by adulteration, the fault lies with
the beemen, who have never seriously attempted
to meet the demand for it. Wax-production on a
large scale is perfectly feasible, and there is little
doubt that it could be developed into an important
British industry, as it used to be in medizeval
days. Yet these are times of revolution: the
honey-bee may yet find herself entirely restored
to her old national avocation—of bringing light to
our darkness, and to our bodies one of the best
and purest ot foods.
CHAPTER XVII
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE
T is a quality of English sunshine that it comes
and goes capriciously, so that no man may be
sure of the comradeship of his shadow from
day to day. But when there is sunshine in
England, it always seems an abiding, permanent
force. The grey of yesterday, and the patter-song
of the rain on the leaves, were only adream. You
were sleeping under the changeless blue of a
summer night, and had but a vision of weeping,
drab skies, gone now with the joy that comes in
the morning. And to-morrow, when perh&ps the
old wild scurry of storm-cloud is alive overhead,
and all the house resounds with the runnel-music
from the pouring eaves, still it will be only a
dream. Of a surety you will tell yourself so, as
the sun breaks through the griddle of cloud, and
the wind relents, and the Dutchman can get to
his tailoring; and when you are stepping out
amidst the swamp and glitter and rehabilitation of
life, as glad of it all as the finches and butterflies
that sweep on before you down the lane. The
267
268 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
sun shines : you know it has always shone, change-
less as Time itself.
With such a faith—unfounded and therefore
uncontestable—I came under the glow of one
brave June morning, threading field after field of
blossoming clover until I stood at the gate of the
bee-garden over against the hill. With its name
I had long been familiar, for in the county paper
there was always the little five-line advertisement,
quaintly worded, announcing honey for sale. But
I had never yet seen it, nor, indeed, ever set foot
in this part of the good Sussex land. So, on this
brimming June morning, giving rein for once to
the indolent Shank’s mare of moods that is fated
to carry me, I set out into the bright sloth, the
joyous hastelessness, of the day; and came at
length to my destination—to the bee-garden that
nestles under the green Downland hills.
It was girt about with a tall hedge of hawthorn,
smothered in snowlike blossom, with just that rosy
tinge upon it which is the first hectic of decay.
Beyond the hedge I could see, stretching aloft,
green apple-boughs, whose full-blown posies were
alive with the desperate humming energy of count-
less bees. There was a blue wisp of smoke trail-
ing idly away from a chimney-stack, all that could
be seen of the snug thatched cottage within; and
there were voices, a leisurely baritone, a sudden
peal of laughter high-pitched and obviously a
woman’s, and now and then a bar or two of an
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 269
old song sung in an intermittent, absent-minded
way.
In one of the pauses of this song, I raised the
latch of the gate. Its sharp click drew to its full
lean height a figure at the end of the garden,
which was bending down in the midst of a wilder-
ness of hives. As the man came towards me
coatless, his rolled-up shirt-sleeves baring wiry
brown arms to the hot June sun, I took in all the
‘busy, quiet picture. The red-tiled, winding path,
the sea of old-fashioned garden-flowers on every
hand, billows of lilac and red-may and laburnum,
shadowy blue deeps of forget-me-not, scarlet tulips
amidst them like lighthouses, and drifting shallows
of amber mignonette. A decent house stood hard
by, its windows bright and clean as diamond-
facets. There was a gay flicker of linen on a line
beyond. An old dog lolled in a straw-filled barrel.
A cat kept company with a milk-jug on the spot-
less doorstep. And everywhere there were bee-
hives, each of a different harmonious shade of
colour, not ranged in stilted rows, but scattered
here and there in twos and threes in the orderless
order beloved of bees and unsuburban men.
The bee-master had keen grey eyes, set deep in
a sun-blackened, honest face, and the ever-ready
tongue of him was that of the beeman all the
world over. He was ripe and willing to talk of
his work, explaining what he was, and what he
had done, as we slowly wandered through his
270 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
domain. He was a Londoner—he told me—at
least, that was his fate half a dozen years ago—a
City clerk, pale as the ledger-leaves that fluttered
through his fingers from nine to six of the working
day. And at home, in a dreary desert of house-
tops called Nunhead—whither may an unkind fate
never lure me—his sisters sewed for a living,
white-faced as himself. But one day, in an old
second-hand book-shop, he lit upon a threepenny
treasure—a book on the management of bees.
He read it as his train crawled homeward on one
stifling, freezing, fog-bound winter’s night; and
there and then, in the mean, dirty cattle-box of a
third-class carriage, in fancy the bee-garden was
inaugurated, that has since developed into all I
saw around me on that brave morning in June.
It was a long time in the doing, he told me, as
we sauntered among the busy hives, speaking with
a delightful Sussex intonation already veneered
upon his Cockney brogue—a long and weary and
scraping time. There was money to be saved,
the capital needed for the enterprise ; and this was
no easy matter out of a total family income of
forty shillings a week. But at last it was done,
and well done. There came a day when the three
of them shook the dust of Nunhead from their
feet, and took over possession of the little tumble-
down cottage with its bare half-acre of neglected
ground. Well, those were hard times to begin
with—he said, with an unaccountable relish in the
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 271
recollection ;—but now, look how all was changed !
He waved a triumphant, proudly proprietary arm
around him. The cottage was sound and well
furnished throughout. The three or four bought
hives, with which he had started his business, had
multiplied into sixty or seventy, all made by his
own hands. Where had he got the bees? Well,
that threepenny book had taught him a secret—
the art of bee-driving. Nearly all the cottagers
for miles round were in the habit of sulphuring
their bees to get at the honey. The first autumn,
and every autumn since then, he had gone to his
neighbours and told them he would take the bees
out of the hives for them, and leave them all the
combs and a good trink-geld into the bargain, if
they would let him have the bees for his trouble.
And they were more than willing. And thus he
had gradually built up his little principality of
hives.
But, the profit of the thing? This, indeed,
was nothing much to boast of. He sold all the
honey and wax he got, sending it away, for the
most part, by post, and extending the circle of his
custom by little and little with every year. Taking
the bad years with the good, he had made a
net return of £2 for every hive; in bumper-
seasons it was always much more. It was nota
great deal, but there were only three of them, and
their wants were simple. Their greatest needs—
fresh air, peace, and quiet, the healthful life of the
272 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
country—these were to be had for nothing at all.
And as for clothes—you never know, until you
give over trying to keep up appearances, how very
little appearances count in the world. At any
rate, for them, the whole thing was a complete
success. There were men round about that
country-side who farmed whole provinces, and
still grumbled; but here was he, getting peace
and plenty from half an acre; and as for the
girls, they did nothing but laugh and sing all day
long.
Thus we wandered and talked; and I—feigning
ignorance of bee-matters, lest he might think I was
but carrying coals to Newcastle in clumsy charity
—bought honey, and asked many questions ; and
slowly the entire meaning of what had been done
by these emancipated slaves of City clerkdom was
revealed. The bee-master pushed his old straw
hat back over his clever forehead, and lit the most
comfortable pipe I had ever set eyes on. He had
evidently thought the whole thing out long ago,
and got it down to its essential elements.
‘What we are doing here,” he said, “could be
done by hundreds of others who are still in London
in what was once our old plight. Large bee-farms
are all very well, but they are more or less a thing
of the future—something that is still to be evolved
out of twentieth-century needs. But the bee-
garden has its immediate use and place in every
district where there is an average population.
APTARY
A FOREST
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 372
People generally have got out of the habit of eat-
ing honey because it is so seldom on sale in the
shops; but if you steadily and continuously remind
them of it, they will buy, and soon‘grow to wonder
how they did without it for so long. But it must
be set before them in an attractive way. Run-
honey must be bright and pure to look at, and
neatly bottled and labelled. If you sell honey in
the comb, the section-boxes must be spotlessly
clean and white. In that old book that first led
me to bee-keeping, it says that only the English
bee should be kept, because it is a better honey-
gatherer. But, from the salesman’s point of view,
there is a much more weighty reason for abjuring
all foreign strains of bees. English bees leave a
thin! film of air between the honey and the cell-
cappings, and the result is that the comb always
looks perfectly white. But nearly all foreigners
fill their cells to the brim, and this means that the
finest honeycomb will have a dark and dirty
appearance, and no one will be tempted to buy.
That is the sort of thing a business-man thinks of
first, so the old training days in London have not
been altogether without their use even here.”
The song, aloof and desultory, that I had heard
from the garden-gate, was growing clearer as we
walked ; and now we turned the house-corner, and
came upon more hives, with a neat, girlish figure
busy among them; and, hard by, a tiny laundry-
shed, wherein I caught a glimpse of brown arms
18
274 THE LORE OF ‘THE HONEY-BEE
deep in a wash-tub, and heard the last stanza of
the vagulous song.
‘Hetty, there,” explained the bee-master, “helps
in the garden, and Helps, did I say? Why,
she is far and away a better hand at it than I.
There is so much in hive-work that needs the
light touch which only a woman can give. And
Deborah, she keeps house for us. Did you know
that the word Deborah was Hebrew for a honey-
bee? But come and see where I make the hives
on winter days, and where we sling the honey, and
fill the super-crates with the sections, and all the
rest of it.”
He showed me then his workshop and a little
gauze-windowed shed where there was a home-
made honey-extractor—a cunning, centrifugal thing
by which the combs could be emptied and restored
unbroken to the bees, to be charged again and
again. And there was a storehouse, where long
rows of honey-jars, and stacks of sections, and
blocks of pale yellow wax were waiting for the
purchaser, and a packing-shed where the post-
boxes of corrugated cardboard were made up.
Finally there was pointed out to me, in a far-off
corner of the garden, a donkey—shaggy, well-fed,
placidly browsing-—and, under a neighbouring
pent-roof, a little cart that was a curiosity in its
way. Its wooden tilt was made to represent a big
beehive, and on it was painted the name of the
bee-garden and a list of hive-products which it
BEE-KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 275
carried for sale. The bee-master put an admiring
hand upon it.
“It was all Hetty’s idea,” he said. ‘“ London
girls for pluck, you know! And she goes into the
town with it once a fortnight in the season; takes
it away crammed full, mind, and never brings back
an ounce! Somehow or other, I think those girls
ought to change names !”
Journeying back to the railroad-station under
the eternal English sunshine and through the chain
of blossoming fields, I listened to the chant of the
bees around me; and though it was the familiar
sound of a lifetime, there was something in it then
which I had never heard before. The rich note
rose and fell; died down to silence as the path led
through impregnable red-clover ; swelled again as
the land paled to the rosy hue of the sainfoin ; burst
out into a loud, glad symphony where a patch of
charlock blent its despised, uncoveted gold with
the farmer’s drill. ‘You thought you knew our
ways of life from Alpha to Omega ”—so seemed
to run, in fancy, the wavering refrain. ‘‘ You have
pried upon us day and night, in season and out of
season. You have chloroformed us, vivisected us,
torn our dead sisters limb from limb to feed the
cruel, glittering eyes of that binocular of yours.
You have come at last to think that there was
nothing about us, within or without or round about,
that you had not got to know. And here a common
18—2
276 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
City clerk, turned tail on his hereditary duty, has
shown you, in one short hour, a whole sheaf of
things about us which you—Peeping Tom that you
are !—in a whole life’s keyhole-prying have never
guessed, Out upon you! You deserve to have
to do with nothing better than bumble-bees for the
rest of your days!”
For the more I thought of little bee-gardens,
such as the one I had just visited, established here,
there, and everywhere throughout the land, the
plainer it became that this, after all, was a mission
for the honey-bee that had quite escaped me ; and
the fonder of the idea I grew. With bee-keeping
on a grand scale there was the difficulty that an
apiary might become too large for the resources of
the country about it, although it is all but certain
that crops grown specially for bees can be made to
pay. But a small garden could never exhaust the
land within its necessary three-mile radius, and all
the nectar its bees could gather would be obtained
free. Nunhead has done it gloriously, thought I,
tramping steadily onward through the clover. And
why not all the other Nunheads that hem in the
great cities? There must be plenty who love the
dust and din, and are willing to stop there; so the
little band of bee-gardeners will never be missed.
And there was something else I thought of, too,
as I strode along under the English sunshine which
lasts for ever, swinging my box of superfluous, yet
much-prized honey as I went.
BEE KEEPING AND THE SIMPLE LIFE 277
The song and that pleasant ripple of laughter—
they were in my ears still, and mingling with the
labour-song of the wayside bees. Now, only a
dozen miles or so, away over the hill-tops in the
blue Sussex weald, I knew of just such another
bee-garden, where two brothers—not Londoners
this time, but true-born Downland lads—had well
established themselves, were getting comfortably
off, but were still single men. And only a week ago
they had deplored this fact to me, and But
avast! Match-making was never yet to be
reckoned part of the Lore of the Honey-Bee.
THE END
INDEX
A
Advice to Bee-masters, Butler, 35
After-swarms, 189
Athol Brose, 261
Ancient Roman Hives, 22
Anglo-Saxon Bee-keeping, 22
Antenne of Bee, Functions of,
155
Ants and Bees, Analogy in Swarm-
ing, 178
Aristotle’s Bee-lore, 2
Artificial Food for Bees, 262
B
Barat-Anac, the Country of Tin,
19
Bee-bikes, 139
breeding, 48
burning, 48
city: problems involved in
construction, 202
colony, Progress of, 97
craft, Medizeval, 46
culture in Ancient Britain, 21
driving, 271
farming, Success in, 262
garden, Profits of, 271
gardens, Scarcity of, in Eng-
land, 257
generation, 33
hives in First Century, 4
in Mythology, v
keeping as a Livelihood, 261
in Anglo-Saxon Times,
24,
Modern, 47
larva, Spinning of Cocoon,
137
278
Bee life, Study of, 146
the Old-Age Problem in,
; 134
lines, 224
masters, Medieval, 29
milk, its Nature and Uses,
123, 166
monarchy, 32
scouts in Swarming, 186
stings, 52
superstitions, 40
under Microscope, 148
Bees and Birds, 87
and Holy Wafer, Story of, 37
and Spiders, 41
Cleansing-flights, go
English and Foreign, 220
from Dead Lion, 46
Generated in Flowers, 32
in Ancient Egyptian Times,
vii
Knowledge of,
Ancients, 30
Bees’ Sense of Smell, 62
Breathing-system of Bee, 163
British Beer (?) in Third Century,
B.C, 21
Brood-cells, Cappings of, 140
Dimensions of, 108
nest, Globular Form of, 31
Butler's '‘ Feminine Monarchie,”’
33
among
Cc
Chapel built by Bees, 36
Classic Bee-fathers, 28
Comb built Upwards, 217
cell, Reasons for Hexagonal
Shape of, 135, 206
INDEX
Comb-construction, 99, 197, 204
Evolution of, 135
Mathematics of, 208
Supposed Laws of Mutual
Interference and Pres-
sure in, 212
Preservation of Verti-
cality in, 215
Communal Mind in Hive, 69
Corsica’s Tribute of Wax to
Romans, 16
Country Housewife’s Garden,”
42
D
Dead Bees, Method of Bringing
to Life, 46
Decline of Mead-drinking among
Saxons, 26
Discipline in Hive, 14
Divine Origin of Bees, 6
Drone, 14, 41, 43, 74, 118
and Worker-eggs, Theory of
Laying, 122
His Place in the Hive, 237
Drone-breeding Queen, 110
cells, 213
fly, 10
Drones in Winter, 246
Mid-day Flight, 64
Slaughter of, 244
E
Egg-stealing by Bees, r11
Emergency Comb, 201
English Black Bee, 76
Ethelwold’s Allowance of Mead
to Monks, 24
Evolution in Hive-life, xviii, 79
Eyes of Bee, Compound and
Simple, 154
F
Fanning-army, 59, 92
Strength of Air-current, 62
Fertile Worker, Anomaly of, 144
First Bee-hunter, xi
Flight of Bee, Mechanism of, 157
Extent of, 224
of the Drones, 240
Foot of Bee, Construction of, 151
279
Freemasonry of Bee-keeping, 195
‘Further Discovery of Bees,’’ by
Rusden, 1679, 31
G
Glandular System of Bee, 167
Guard-bees of Hive, 62
H
Hexagonal Principle in Hive, 134
Hive, Division of Labour in, 83
life, System and Order in,
128
Preparation for Winter, 253
Hiving Swarms, 182
Honey as Hair-restorer, 45
a Manufactured Product, 222
and Sugar: Comparative
Values as Food, 259
‘* Honey-bearing Reed,"’ 23
Honey-bee, Origin of, 78
bees, Varying Intelligence of,
143
bee’s Year, Beginning of, 84
comb, Construction of, 137
crops, 226
dew, 226
flow, Duration of, 95, 221
from the Skies, 5
Imports, 258
in Medizval Cookery, 23
in Middle Ages, 24
Medicinal Properties of, 44,
260
Preparation of, for Market,
273 .
Huber’s Leaf-hive, 30
I
Ideal Hive, The, 265
Infant Mortality in Bee-life, 63
Insects : Reasons for Bodily Con-
struction, 158
Isle of Honey, 18, 22
Italian Bee, 77
J
Jaws of Bee, Construction of, 154
L
Larva-cocoons, Differences in,
138
280
Larve, Hatching of, 72
Laying Queen's Attendants, 107
Legs of Bee, 149
Life of the Hive, 54
of the Queen, 119
Longevity of Bee, 15
M
Master-Bees, 42
Matriarchy in the Hive, xiii
Mead: Ancient Recipe, 26
in Anglo-Saxon Times, 24, 25
like Canary-sack, 27
making, Modern, 26
Modern Bee-culture: Its In-
fluence on Bee-life, 190
Hive, Capacity of, 95
Morat, 25
Moses Rusden, King’s Bee-
Master, 31
N
Nectar: Temperature required
for its Secretion, 228
Night in the Bee-Garden, 60
Nursery-work in the Hive, 71
oO
Oil of Wax, 45
Old Bee-garden, 51
Overseers in Hive, 64
Oxen-born Bees, 7
Oxymel, 44
P
Parthenogenesis, 105, 122
Piginent, 25
Pliny and the Bee, 11
Pliny’s Mirror-stone Hive, 30
Poison-sac of Bee: Its Contents,
223
Pollen from Evening Primrose,
34
gathering, 32, 55
loads, Homogeneity of, 57
Sources of, 56 .
Prehistoric Man and Honey-
Bee, x
Propolis: Its Nature and Uses,
57, 204
THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE
Q
Queen and Worker: Differences
in Bodily Structure,
IOI
Eggs, Identity of, 100
Queen-bee, 34, 41, 68, 71, 86
Apparent Rulership of,
96
Battle-cry of, 166, 193
Death of, 115
Duration of Life, 255
Fecundity of, 72
Fertilisation of, 121
Hatching of, 113
Her Mating-flight, 72, 117
in Swarming-time, 178
Physiology of, ror
Rearing of, 103
Supersession of, 109
the Original Female Bee,
98
Workers’ Managementof,
123
cell, Construction of, 100, 110
larva, Feeding of, 113
Rearing of, 99
Queenless Hives, 105, 144
Queens: Five in Single Hive, 96
Mutual Antagonism, 114
Plurality of, in Hive, 94
R
Reason and Instinct, 69
“Ringing the Bees,"
Origin of, 38
Robber-bees, 144, 250
s
Samson and the Lion, 11
Sanitation in the Hive, 88
Sexes, Proportion of, in Hive,
124
Sex-question in Hive, xvi
Sirius, the Honey-Star, 13
Skep, Ancient Method of Dress-
Roman
ing, 37 ;
Small-holder and Bee-keeping,
259
Socialism and Hive-life, 75, 130
Soot-fungus, 229
Sororicide in the Hive, 120
INDEX
Sources of Honey, 230
Sting of Bee, Construction of,
170
Sugar-cane, First Introduction of,
23
Swarm-hiving, First Century, 5
in Middle Ages, 37
Swarm in May, 174
Legal Rights in, 40
Site selected by, 185
Swarming, 38
Impulse, 96, 175
Objects of, 189
Signs of, 182
T
Temper in Bees, 219
Temperature of Hive, 91, 161
Tongue of Bee, Construction of,
152
U
Undertakers in Hive, 63
Vv
Variation in Hive-rules, 94
Ventilation of Hive, 60, 91
Virgil as Bee-master, 2
Voice-apparatus of Bee, 163
281
Ww
Wax, 15, 198
Ancient Sources of, 16
Bees' Method of Working,
201
in the Bronze Age, vi
Medicinal Properties of, 44
making, Food Consumed
during, 161
production, a Profitable In-
dustry, 266
Water, Need of, in Hive, 84
Winter-feeding, Method of, 86
life in Hive, 86
Worker-bee, 81, 85, 233
Age of, 85, 254
Artificial Creation of,
130
Birth of, 140
Early Life in Hive,
I4I
Glandular System of,
142
Supremacy of, in Hive,
68
Various Occupations of,
127
larve, Feeding of, 131
PRINTED BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD,
GUILDFORD
A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS -
PUBLISHED BY METHUEN
AND COMPANY: LONDON
36 ESSEX STREET
W.C.
CONTENTS
PAGE PAGE
General Literature, . - 2-22 Little Galleries, ‘ 28
‘. Ancient Cities, . . . 22{ Little Guides,. . 28
Antiquary’s Books, . 22 Little Library, Bel a. 028 29
Arden Shakespeare 5 23 Little Quarto Shakespeare, 30
Beginner's Books, . 2 23 Miniature Library, . 7 30
Business Books, . f r 23 Oxford Biographies, . , 30
Byzantine Texts, . " . 24 School Examination Series, gr
Churchman's Bible, . . 24| School Histories, . a. ke YARED
Churchman’s Library, . . 24 Simplified French Texts, . gi
Classical Translations, oe 24 Standard Library, . * .. 3
Classics of Art, - . . “24 Textbooks of Science, . . 32
Commercial Series, ‘ a 25 Textbooks of Technology, . 32
Connoisseur’s Library, ‘ 25 Handbooks of Theology, . °' 32
Mlustrated Pocket Library of Westminster Commentaries, 32
Plain and Coloured Books, 25
Junior. Examination Series, ” 96 :
Junior School-Books, . . 27| Fiction, . . . . « 33-39
Leaders of Religion, . 7 Books for Boys and Girls, 39
Library of Devotion,. . oe 27 Novels of Alexandre Dumas, 39
Little Books on Art, . . 28! Methuen’s Sixpenny Books, 39
- SEPTEMBER 1908
A CATALOGUE OF
Messrs. METHUEN'’S -
«
In this Catalogue the order is according to authors.
that the book is in the press.
PUBLICATIONS...
An asterisk denotes
* Colonial Editions | ‘are jpublished , of all’ Mésérs. METHUEN’S Novels issued *
at a price above 25. 6d., and- similar editions are published of some works of
General Literature.
These are marked in the Catalogue.
Colonial editions
are only for circulation in the British Colonies and India.
All books marked net’ are not subject ‘to discount, and cannot be bought
atless than the published price.
discount which the bookseller allows.
Messrs. Meruuen’s books are kept in stock by all good booksellers.
Books not marked net-are subject to the
If
there is any ‘difficulty i in seeing copies, Messrs. Methuen will be very glad to
have early information, and specimen guys of any books will be sent on
receipt of the published price p/us postage
price for ordinary books.
or net books, and of the published
I.P.L. represents Illustrated Pocket Library.
Part I,.—GeENERAL LITERATURE
Abbott ia. H. M.). AN OUTLANDER IN
ENGLAND: Second Edition. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
‘A Chena Edition is also published.- -
Abcahae (GeoreeD THE COMPLETE
MOUNTAINEER. With 75 Ilustrations.
Second Edition. Demy 8vo.' 158. net. '
A Colonial Edition is also published,
Acatos(M. J.). See Junior School Books.
Adams(Frank), JACK SPRAT.: With 24
Coloured are eae Foes 16720. ae
Adeney (W. F.), M See Bennett (
Ady' (Cecilia M.). HISTORY. OF
MILAN UNDER THE SFORZA, , With
20 Teenie and a Map. Demy 8x0.
10s. 6d. rei
ischylus. “See Classical *Tisndlarione "
sop. Seel.
insworth (Ww. Harrison). Sed 1.P.L.
gis manor. THE QUEEN OF
LETTER. WRITERS, “Marquise, , DE
Sévicné, Dame DE Bourbitty, 1626+96.
With 18 ee Second Edition.
Demy 8v0. 125. 6d. 1
A Colonial Edition i a als ublished.
Alesantet (William), eats
Arma, HO ue GH ND
COUNSELS OF © MANY Sy BARS.
ent 167206128. Sa" :
Alken (Henry),. LP.L.
Allen (Charles* es. iSee Textbooks of
Technology.
Allen (L. Jessie). See Little Books on Art.
Allen (J. Romilly), F.S.A. See Antiquary’s
Books.
Alasack (E.), F.S.A. See Little Books on
Amherst (Lady). A SKETCH OF
EGYPTIAN Prony zeN THE
EARLIEST TIMES’ TO.'THE “PRE: |
SENT DAY. With many TEieations
wee ees
and Maps. 4 New and Cheaper Issue.
Demy 8voe. 78. 6d. net.
Anderson (PF. M.). THE STORY OF THE
BRITISH EMPIRE FOR CHILDREN,
With 42 Illustrations. Cv. 8
Anderson (J. G.), BA, “NOUVELLE
GRAMMAIRE FRANCAISE, A L/USAGE
DES EcoLtns ANGLAISES. ‘Crown 8vo. 25.
EXERCICES DE GRAMMAIRE FRAN-
AISE. Cy» 8v0. 15. 6d.
Andrewes (Bishop), PRECES PRI-
TAE. Translated and -‘edited, with
. Notes, by F. E,. BRiGHTMAN, M.A. of
Pusey House, Oxford. Cv. ‘870.
{ See also Library of Devotion.
‘An mee Ruste abet AFTER- GLOW ME-
RIES. Cr. 8v0._ 6s.
Anon. HEALTH, WEALTH, AND WIS-
DOM. Crown 800, 1s. net.
Aristotle. THE ETHICS OF. Edited,
with an Introduction and Notes by Joun
eeu A, Cheaperissue. Demy 8v0.
Ios.
Ase H.:N.), M.A. B.D. See Junior
School Books. |;
Atkins (H. G. i See Oxford Biographies,
Atkinson (C. Mz). Joe BENTHAM.
Demy 8vo. 58. net.
*Atkinson (C. T.), M. A., Fellow of Exeter \
= College, Oxford;: sometime | ‘Demy:oF Ma,
dalen College. A HISTORY OF GER-
MANY, from 1713 to as
Maps. Demy 8vo. 155. net.
Atkinson (T. D.). ENGLISH ARCHI
TECTUR With 196 Illustrations.
Second Edition. Feap. 8vo. 35. 6d. net.
A GLOSSARY OF TERMS
‘ yENGLISH ARCHITECTURE. With
Seas Ti bess tents Second Edition. Feap.
8v0. 35. 6d, net.
With many ~
SED IN
GENERAL LITERATURE 3
Auden (T.), M.A., F.S.A. See Ancient Cities.
Aurelius Marcus). WORDS OF THE
ANCIENT WISE. Thoughts from Epic-
tetus and Marcus Aurelius. Edited by
. H. D. Rouse, M.A., Litt. D.
8v0. 3s. 6d. net. -.
See also Standard Library.
Austen (Jane). See eee Library,
Little Library and Mitton (G.
Aves Ernest), co- OPERATIVE IN-
DUSTRY. Crown 8u0. 5s. net.
‘See Standard Library
- and Little Library.
Baden-Powell (R. S. S.) THE MATA-
BELE CAMPAIGN, ‘1896, | With nearly
100 Ultstes tone Fourth Edition. Large
Cr. Bua, 6s.
Bore’ (Richard). THE LAKES OF
ORTHERN ITALY. With 37 IIlustra-
tionsanda Map. fap. 8vo. gs. net.
Bailey (J. C.), M.A. See Cowper (W.).
Baker (W. G.), M.A. See Junior Examina-
tion Series. «
Baker (Julian L.), F.LC., F. c. S. See
THE LIFE OF
Books on Business.’
Balfour (Graham).
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. With
a Portrait. Fourth Edition in one Volume.
Cr. 8v0. Buckram, 6s.
- A Colonial Edition is also published. «
pellaed (A.); B. A., LL. D. See Antiquary’ S
Ball
Ban!
Feap.
ieee (Francis).
(S. E.). ‘See Commercial coe :
ce tzabete ee THE AUTO.
BIOGRAPHY OF A (NEWSPAPER
GI gi Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
See Little Library.
Barham Rie H.).
Baring: ue Hon. Maurice). . WITH
USSIANS- ‘IN| MANCHURIA.
Third Paton Demy 8vo. 78. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also-published. *
A YEAR IN RUSSIA. Second Edition.
Demy 8vo.' 10s. 6a. net.
A Colonial Edition i is ‘also published.
nae -Gould (S.). THE LIFE’ OF
APOLEON BONAPARTE. Withnearly
Bes Sng, including a Photogravure
Frontispiece. Second Edition,
' Royal Bvo. ros. 6a. net.’
. A Colonial-Edition is also published.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE C4SARS:
A Srupy oF THE CHARACTERS OF THE
‘CsSars’ OF THE JULIAN ‘AND ‘CLAUDIAN
Houses. With numerous Illustrations from
Busts, Gems, gE? tes Sixth Edition,
Royal 8vo. xos. 6d. 2
A BOOK OF RAT RY TALES. With
“shumerous Illustrations. by A. J. GaskIn.
~" Third Edition, Cr. 8v0, Buckram, 6s.,
also Demy 8va, 6d.
OLD ENGLISH ‘FAIRY TALES. With
numerous Illustrations by F. D. Beprorp.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. Buckram. 6s.
THE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW. Re-
vised Edition. With a Portrait. Third
. Edition. Cr 800. 3s. 6d.
oLp ‘COUNTRY. ‘LIFE. “With 69 Illustra-
tions. Fifth Edition. Large Crown 8vo. 6s.
Wide |:
A ae OF COUNTRY SONG:
eneuse Folk Songs with their Traditional
lodies, Collected and arranged. by S.
Banine- Gov. and H. F.. SHEpparp.
Demy 4to. °
SONGS OF THE WEST: Folk Songs of
Devon and Cornwall. Collected from the
Mouths of the People. ByS. BArinG-GouLD,
M.A.,and H. FLezrwoop SHEPPARD, M.A.
Newand Revised Edition, under themusical
editorship of eee J. SHarv.
ertal 80. 5S. #
A BOOK OF NURSERY SONGS AND
RHYMES, Edited by S. Barinc-Goutp.
Illustrated. Second and Cheaper Edition,
Large Cr. 8vo. _ 25. 6d. net.
STRAN GE SURVIVALS: Some Cuaprers
In THE History or Man. Illustrated.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d. nets
YORKSHIRE ODDITIES: Incipents
pale ee ae fifth. Edition.
yo. 28. 6:
THE BARING. Gout SELECTION
READER. Arranged by G. H. Rosz.
Illustrated. Crown 8v0. 15. 6d.
THE BARING:GOULD CONTINUOUS
Large Im-
‘READER. Arranged by G.. H. Rosz.
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 18.6d.
A BOOK OF CORNWALL.’ With 33
Illustrations. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
BOOK OF DARTMOOR. With. 60
Tiyetatiba Second Edition. Cre -Bva.
A Sook OF DEVON. » With 35 ‘Thus.
trations. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
A BOOK OF NORTE yer - With 49
Illustrations. Cy. 8:
A BOOK OF SOUTH WALES. “With 57
Illustrations. Cv. 8vo.
A BOOK OF BRITTANY. With 69 Illus
trations. Cr. 8va. 6s.
A BOOK OF THE RHINE; “From Cleve
to Mainz. With 8 Illustrations in Colour
by Trevor Happen, and 48 other Hlus-
trations. Second Edition. ~' Cr. 8v0.. : 6s.
"A Colonial Edition is also‘published. +
A BOOK OF THE RIVIERA. With 40
Illustrations. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
A BOOK OF THE PYRENEES. With
25 Illustrations. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
See also Little Guides.
See Textbooks of
Barker (Aldred F.).
Technolo;
Barker (Ey M. A. (Late) Fellow of Merton
College, Oxford. THE OLITIGAL
THOUGHT OF PLATO AND ARIS-
TOTLE. Demy a ‘ros. 6a. net. °
Barnes ((W. B.); D.D. See Churchman’s
ible
Barnett (Mrs. P. A.). See Little Library.
Baron(R. R. N. ), M.A. FRENCH:PROSE
on RO ITION. Third Ldition. Cr.8vo.
2s. 6d. Key, 35. wet.
"Sée also Funior Senet Books. ,
Barron (H.. M.), M.A., “Wadham Sélkge
Oxford. TEXTS FOR SERMONS. With
4 MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
a Preface by Canon Scort Hotvanp.
Cr. Bvo. 35. 6d.
Bartholomew (J. G.), F.R.S.E. SeeC. G.
Robertson
Bastable C, PF.) LL.D. THE COM-
MERCE OF NATIONS. Fourth Ed.
Cr. Bv0. 25. 6a.
Bastian (H. Charlton), M.A.,M.D., F.R.S.
THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE: With
Diagrams and many Photomicrographs.
Demy 8vo. 78. 6d. net.
Batson (Mrs. Stephen). A CONCISE
HANDBOOK.O! GARDEN FLOWERS.
Fe cape 8v0. 35. 6:
6d.
THE SUMMER GARDEN OF
PLEASURE. With 36 Illustrations in
Colour by OsmunpD Pittman. Wide Demy
8v0. 155. net.
Batten (Loring W.), Ph.D.,S.T.D. THE
HEBREW PROPHET. C~.8voe. 35.6d. net.
Bayley, moe Child). THE COMPLETE
TOGRAPHER. With over x00
ier ctor Third Edition. With Note
on ee Colour Process. Demy 8vo.
tos. 6d. ne
A Colonial Edition is also published,
Beard (W. S.). EASY EXERCISES IN
ALGEBRA FOR BEGINNERS. Cy». 8vo.
xs. 6d. With Answers. 15. 9d.
See also Junior Examination Series and
Beginner's Books. :
Bee ere ce THOUGHTS ON
NG. Edited by J. OrHo Pacer,
sae Ticaeaee by G. H. JALLann. Second
Edition. Demy 8vo. 6s.
Beckford (William). See pee Library.
Beeching (H. C. ‘2 Canon of West-
minster. See Library of Devotion,
warren Map). A POOR OF CARI.
. Lmperial 4to. 218. net.
Bepie ( (Haratdy. MASTER BONEERS:
lustrated. Dew
8ve. 75. 6d. 161
Behmen (Jacob). IALOGUES © Oi THE
SUPERSENSUAL LIFE. Edited. by
BERNARD Hoiianp. Fcap. Bue. 35. 6d.
Bell (Mrs. Arthur G.). THE SKIRTS
OF THE GREAT CITY, With 16 Ilus-
trations in Colour by ArTHuR G. BEL,
17 other Tilustrations, anda. Map. Second
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s. —
Belloc (iilaire), M.-P. PARIS. With
7 Maps and a Frontispiece in Photogravure.
Second Edition, Revised. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
HILLS AND THE SEA) Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
ON. NOTHING AND anneeD SUB-
JECTS. cap. 8vo.
‘A Colonial Edition is aie published. '
Bellot (H. H.L.), M.A. See Jonestt A.A.)
Bennett -) M.A.. A PRIMER: OF
THE BIBLE. With a concise Bibliogra-
phy. fare iat Cr. 8u0. 28. 6a. -
Benne’ tt (W. H.) and Adeney (W. F.). A
’ BIBLICAL INTRODUCTION. Fourth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 75.
Benson (Archbishop) Cop's ‘BOARD
Communion Addresses, Second Edrtion.
Feap. 8vo. 35. 6d. net,
Benson (A. C.), M.A. See Oxford Bio-
graphies.
Beneor (R. M.). THE WAY OF HOLI-
ESS! a Devotional Commentary on the
an oe Mt Bv0. 5%
Bernard (BE. R.), M.A., Canon of Salisbury.
THE BNGIISH SUNDAY: 11s Onicins
ANDITS CLAIMS. cap. 8vo. . 15. 6d.:
Bertouch (Baroness de). THE LIFE
OF FATHER IGNATIUS. Illustrated,
Demy 8vo. 105. 6d. net.
Beruete (A. de). See Classics of Art.
Betham-Edwards (Miss) HOME LIFE
IN FRANCE. With 2zo Illustrations.
Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Bietkgaecbaker (J. F.), M.A. See Hand-
books of Theology.
Bidez (J.). Bee Byzantine Texts,
Biggs(C.R.D.),D.D. See Churchman’s Bible.
bine (T. Herbert), B.D. THE OECU-
MENICAL DOCUMENTS OF THE
FAITH, With dagedechons and Notes.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Binns ee ee THE TIRE or WALT
WHITMAN. Illustrated. Demy 8vo.
ros. ae net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Binvon es Laurence). NINETEENTH
CENTURY PROSE. Selected and ar-
ae: i Crown 8v0. 6s.
Bingen | (Laurence). THE DEATH OF
ADAM ANDOTHERPOEMS. Cr. 8v0.
38. 6d. net,
See also Blake (William).
Birch (Walter de Gray), LL.D., F.S.A.
See Connoisseur’s Library.
Birnstingl(Ethel). See Little Books on Art.
Bin cemaatie Bernace) See I.P. L.
Blair (Robert).
Blake viltham): “Tinie “LETTERS OF
WILLIAM BLAKE, TocEerHER WITH A
Lire BY FREDERICK TATHAM. Edited
from the Original Manuscripts, with an
Introduction and Notes, by ARCHEBALD G.
Dee pies we 12 Illustrations.
s. 6d. 1
ILLUSTRATIONS oF THE BOOK OF
OB. With General Introduction by
AURENCE BINYON. Quarto. 21s. net.
See _ also. Blair (Robert), I-P, Ley and
. Little Library,
Bloom Ge Rees ry), M. A. SHAKE-
SPEARE’S few ARDEN. Illustrated.
Feap. Bue. 38. 6d. 3; leather, 4s. 6a. net.
See also Antiquary’ s Books
Blouet (Henri). See ee 's Books.
Boardman (T. H.), M.A. See French (W.
Bodley (J. ES C.), ‘Author of France.’ TH
CORONATION OF EDWARD VII.
Demy 8v9. 215, 2xet, By Command of the
King,
Body y George), D.D. THE SOUL'S
RIMAGE: Devotional Readings
hon the Published and Unpublished writ-
ings of George eee D.D. Selected and
arranged by’ J URN, B.D., F.R.S.E.
Demy 16mo. 28. 6d.
GENERAL LITERATURE 5
Bona (Cardinal). See Library of Devotion.
Boon (F. C.)., B.A. See Commercial Series,
Borrow (George). See Little Library.
Bos (J. Ritzex “aj. . AGRICULTURAL
ZOOLOGY. ‘translated by J. .R.. Ains-
worTH Davis, M.A. With 155 Illustrations.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35, 6d.
Borne (e- G.), BA. EA g Y- GREEK
EXERCISES. Cy. 8v0. ‘25. :
See also Junior Examination Series.
Boulting (W.) TASSO AND HIS TIMES.
With 24 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 10s, 6d.
net.
Boulton (E. S.), M.A. GEOMETRY ON
MODERN LINES, Cy. 80. 2s.
Boulton (William B.). THOMAS
GAINSBOROUGH. His Life and Work,
Friends and Sitters. With 4o Illustra-
tions, Second Ed. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. With
49 Llustrations. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
Bowden (E, M.). THE IMITATION OF
DHA: Being Quotations. from
Buddhist Literature for each Day in the
Year. Fifth Edition. Cr. 16mo, 25. 6d.
Boyle(W.). CHRISTMAS AT THE ZOO.
With Verses by W. Boyie and 24 Coloured
Pictures by H. B. Nertson. Super Royal
160, 25.
Brabant (F. G.), M.A. See Little Guides.
Bradley (A. G.). ROUND ABOUT WILT-
SHIRE. _ With 14 I}lustrations, in Colour
by T. C. Gorcu, 16 other Illustrations, and
a ee Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s,
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE. ROMANCE OF NORTHUMBER-
LAND. With 16 Illustrations in Colour by
Frank SoutucaTe, R.B.A., and 12 from
Photographs. Demy 8vo. 75. 6d net,
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Bradley (John W.). See Little Books on
rt. Ina
Braid (James), Open Champion, "oot 1905
and_1906. .ADVANCED GOLF. ith
88 Photographs and Diagrams. Third
Edition. Demy 8va.. 10s. 6d. net. -
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Braid (James) and Others. GREAT
GOLFERS IN THE MAKING. Edited
by Henry Leacu. With 24 Illustrations.
Second Edition. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published,
Brailsford (H. N.) -MACEDONIA:
ITS RACES AND THEIR FUTURE.
With Photographs and Maps. Demy 8vo.
128, 6d. net. .
Brodrick (Mary) and' Morton (A. Ander-
son). CONCISE DICTIONARY OF
EGYPTIAN ARCH/EOLOGY. A Hand-
Book for Students and Travellers. With 80
Illustrations and many Cartouches, Cv, 8vo.
Ss. 6d. :
Brooks (E. E.), B.Sc. (Lond), Leicester
Municipal Technical School, and James
(W. H.N.), A.R.C.S., A.M.1L.E,E., Muni-
cipal School of Technology, Manchester.
See Textbooks of Technology.
Brooks (E. W.). See Hamilton (F. J.)-
Brown (P. H.), LL.D. SCOTLAND IN
THE TIME OF QUEEN MARY. Dem.
8vo. 75. 6d. net.. :
Brown (S, E.), M.A., B.Sc., Senior Science
Master at Uppingham. A PRACTICAL
CHEMISTRY NOTE-BOOK FOR
MATRICULATION AND ARMY CAN.
DIDATES. Easy Experiments on the
Commoner Substances. Cv. 4fo. 15. 6d. net.
Brown(J. Wood),M.A. THE BUILDERS
OF FLORENCE, With 74 Illustrations
by HerBert Ratton. Demy gto. 18s.net.
Brvene (Sir Thomas); See Standard
ibrary, -
Brownell (C. L.) THE HEART. OF
JAPAN. Illustrated. Third Edition.
Cr. 8vo. 6s.; also Demy 8v0. 6d. | |
Browning (Robert). See Little Library..
Bryant (Walter-W.), B.A., F.R.A.S.; F.R.
Met. Soc., of the Royal Observatory, Green-
wich, A HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY.
With 35 Illustrations. Desmy8vo. 7s 6d. net.
Buckland (Francis T.).) CURIOSITIES
OF NATURAL HISTORY. _ Illustrated
by H. B. Nettson.. Cv, 8ve. 3s. 6d.
Buckton (A. M.) THE BURDEN. OF
ENGELA. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 3.
6d, net. ce
EAGER HEART: A Mystery Play. Seventh
- Edition. Cr. 8vo. 2s. net.
KINGS IN BABYLON: A Drama,
Is, net.
SONGS OF JOY. Cr. 8vo. 15. net.
Budge (E. A. Wallis) THE GODS OF
THE EGYPTIANS. With over roo
Coloured Plates and many Illustrations.
Two Volumes. Royal 8vo. £3, 35. net.
Bull (Paul), Army Chaplain. GOD AND
OUR SOLDIERS. Second Edition.
Cr. 8vo. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Bulley (Miss). See'Dilke (Lady).
Bunyan (John). See Standard Library and
Library of Devotion. iff
Burch (G. J.), M.A., F.R.S. A MANUAL
OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCE. _ Iilus-
trated. Cr. 8vo. 35. ;
Burgess (Gelett). GOOPS AND HOW TO
BE THEM. Illustrated. Syali 4to. 6s.
Burke pig ered See Standard Library.
Burn (A. E.), D.D., Rector of Handsworth
and Prebendary of Lichfield. See Hand-
books of Theology. :
Born (J. H.), B.D., F.R.S.E. THE
CHURCHMAN'’S TREASURY OF
SONG: Gathered from the. Christian
poetry of allages. Edited by. cag. 8v0.
38. 6d. met. See also Library of Devotion.
Burnand (Sir F.'C.). RECORDS AND
REMINISCENCES. With a Portrait by
H. v. Herxomer. Cr. 8v0. Fourth and
Cheaper Editicn. 6s.
. A Colonial Edition is also published. .
Burns (Robert), THE POEMS, Edited b
ANDREW Lane and W. A. Craiciz. Wit!
Portrait. Third Edition. Demy 8vo, gilt
top. 6s.
See also Standard Library.
Cr. 8vo.
6 MEsSsRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
arsine Me » M.A. OLD TESTA-
MENT HISTORY FOR USE IN
SCHOOLS. Third Edition, Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6a.
Burton (aitred) See I.P.L.
Bussell (F. W.), D.D. CHRISTIAN
THEOLOGY A'NDSOCIAL PROGRESS
(The Bampton Lectures of 1905). Demy
8v0. 105. 6d. net.
Se (Joseph), D.D. See Standard
Caldecott (Alfred), D.D. See Handbooks
of Theology.
Calderwoor . S.), Headmaster of the Nor-
mal School, Edinburgh. TEST CARDS
IN EUCLID AND ALGEBRA. In three
ackets of 4o, with Answers. 1s. each. - Or
in three Books, price 2d., 2d. i and 3@,
Canning(George). See Little Library.
Cape! (E. F Pa e ar Oxford Biographies.
care ess ‘hohnny. See I.P.
Carlyle (Thomas). THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION. Edited by C. R. L.
Fietcuer, Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford. Three Volumes. Cr. 8vo. 18s.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF. OLIVER
‘CROMWELL. With an Introduction
by C. H. Firtn, M.A., and Notes and
Appendices by Mrs. S. C. Lomas. Three
Volumes. Demy ay 18s. net.
Carlyle (R. M. and A. J.), M.A. See
Leaders of Religion. ~—
Carmichael (Philip). ALL ABOUT
PHILIPPINE. ith 8 Illustrations.
Cr. 8v0. 2s. 6d.
Carpenter Margarets syd): THECHILD
ART. With 50 Illustrations. Second
Edition. Large Cr. 8vo. 6s,
orate Cerne M.D. (Edin.). THE
CARE THE BODY. Second Edition.
Demy tee 7s. 6d. net.
Celene fr bamas. we THE LIVES OF ST.
CIS OF ASSISI. Translated into
_Eeglsh by A. G. Ferrers Hower. With
* a Frontispiece. ee oe 5S. net.
Channer (C. .
Hail (mary “A WOMAN’S TREK FROM
E'CAPE TO CAIRO. With 64 Illus-
tee and: 2 Be Second Edition.
Demy 8vo. 16s. net.
Hall (R. N.) and Neal (W. G.). THE
ANCIENT RUINS OF RHODESIA.
Illustrated. Second Edition, vevised.
Demy 8vo, 105. 6d. net.
‘A Colonial Edition is also published.
Hall (R. N.). GREAT — ZIMBABWE,
With numerous Plans and Tiseeanone
Second Edition. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
Hamel ie FAMOUS FRENCH
SAL With 20 | Illustrations.
Demy 8vo," tas. 6d. net.
‘A Colonial Edition is also published.
Hamilton (F we D.D. See Byzantine Texts,
Hannay (D.). A SHORT HISTORY OF
THE ROYAL AAV. goeatel Tllus-
trated: ‘Demy 8vo. 7s. 4
Hannay Games oo M. ae “THE SPIRIT
AND .O OF . i ae aa
SN ASTICISM. Cr. 80. * 6
THE WISDOM OF THE DESERT. Feap.
“Bdor 35. 6d. net. |
Hardie Martin}. s See Connoisseur 'S Library.
Hare (A.. T. HE CONST:
TION OF DARGHINDUCTION COILS.
‘With numerous aia rams. Demy 8v0. . 6s.
Harvey (Alfred), M. See Ancient Cities
and Antiquary’s Books.
Hawthorne(Nathaniel). See Little Library.
Heath (Frank R.). See Little Guides.
Heath (Dudley). See Connoisseur's Library.
Hello (Ernest), STUDIES IN SAIN
SHIP. Feap 8v0. 35. 6d.
MEssrS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Henderson (B. W>), Fellow of Exeter
College, Oxford.» THE LIFE AND
PRINCIPATE OF THE EMPEROR
NERO. llustrated. MWew and cheaper
issue. Demy 8vo. 78.6d. net.
AT INTERVALS. cap 8vo.
Henderson. (M. Sturge). GEORGE
EREDITH: NOVELIST, POET,
REFORMER, With a Portrait in Photo-
gravure. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
eoereen (T. Fe See Little Library and
Oxford iograph: jes.
Hone son F.), and Watt. (Francis).
SCOTLA D OF TO-DAY. With ‘20
Illustrations in colour and .24 other Illus-
trations. Second Edition. Cr..8v0. 6s.
A Colonial es is also published. -
ueuley (WwW. ENGLISH LYRICS.
CHAUCER BS POE, £3E TP Second
Edition.’ Cr. 8v0. 28. 6d. net. |
Benen EB. end wy hibley. Cc.) A BOOK
OF ENGLISH PROSE, CHARACTER,
AND’ INCIDENT, 1387-1649. Cr. Bue.
2s. 6d. net.
Henson (H: H.), B.D., Canon of Westminster.
LIGHT AND LEAVEN: Historica
AND SoctaL Sermons. Cy. 8vo. 6s.
Herbert (George). See Library of Devotion..
Herbert of. Cherbury (Lord). See Minia-
ture Library.
Mewins (W. A. S.), B.A, ENGLISH
DE AND FINANCE IN THE
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Cr. 8vo.
as. 6d, net.
Hewitt (Ethel M.) A GOLDEN DIAL. :
Day: Book of Prose and Verse. Fcap.
8vo. 2s. 6d. net.
Hey (H.), Inspector, ae Education Com-
mittee,‘and Rose (G. H.), City and Guilds
Woodwork Teacher. THE MANUAL
TRAINING CLASSROOM: Woop.
worK. Book I. 40. 15. ‘ 5
Heywood (W.). BALIO AND PONTE.
A Book of .Tuscan.Games. Illustrated.
Royal 8vo. 215. net. :
ee also St, Francis.of Assisi. , - “
Hill (Clare), See Textbooks of Technology.
Hill (Henry), B, A., Headmaster’ a ee
High School, Worcester, Cape Colo
SOUTH AFRICAN: ARITHM! 10:
Cri Bue. 35. 6d; 7 |
Hind (C. Lewis), DAYS IN CORNWALL.
With 16 Mlustrations in Colour by Wittiam
Pascoz, and 20 other Illustrations and a
Map. Second Edition. Cyr. 8vo.' 6s.
Hirst (F. W.) See Books on Business.: |
Hoare a Douglas) A HISTORY. OF
ARCTIC EXPLORATION. With 20
Illustrations & Maps. Demy 8wo. 7s. 6d.net.
Hobhouse (L. T. » ae Fellow of So WC,
Oxford. THE' EORY OF KNOW:
LEDGE. Dem Hi en Ios. 6, ae
bec A.) A. INTERNATIONAL
RA fA eindy | of Economic pepe laa?
oe a as. 6d. m
PROBLEMS OF "POVERTY. An guicy
into the Industrial Condition of the Poor.
Sixth Edition, Cr, 8v0, 28. 6d.
GENERAL LITERATURE.
THE PROBLEM. OF THE UNEM-
PLOYED. Third Edition. Cr.8vo. 25.6d.
Hodgetts se; ei Brayley), THE COURT
OF RUSSIA IN THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY, With 20 Illustrations. Two
Volumes. emy 8vo0. 248. net.
A Gereriat Edition i is also published.
Hoagkis: (T.), D.C.L. See Leaders - of
ion.
Hodgson (vi Mrs. W.) HOW TO IDENTIFY
INESE PORCELAIN. With 40
Illustrations. Second Edition. ' Post8vo. 6s.
Hogg (Tt (Thomas Jefferson). SHELLEY
XFORD. With an Introduction by
R. in. STREATFEILD, Feap. 8vo._ 25. net.
Holden=Stone (G. de). See Books on
Business. \
Heldicu (Sir T. HH.) K.CLE. . THE
DIAN BORDERLAND: being a
Paronet Record of Twenty Years. [ilus-
trated. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
A Colonial “edition i is also published.
Heldeworau (W. S.),M. A HISTORY
ENGLISH LAW. Jn Two Volumes.
Pont L, Demy 8vo. 0s. 6d. net.
Holland (H. Scott), Canon of St. Paul's.
See Newman (J. H.).
Hollway~Calthrop. di. C.), Tate of’ Balliol
College, Oxford; Bursar of Eton College.
PETRARCH : HIS LIFE, WORK, AND
TIMES. With 24 Illustrations. Demy
8vo. 125. 6d. net, .
-A Colonial Edition is also published, | f
Halt t (Emily). THE SECRET OF POPU-
: How e gonieve Social Success.
i mH 38. 6d. 2
A Colonial Eaition is also published.
Moteake (G. J.).. THE CO-OPERATIVE
MOVEMENT OF TO-DAY. | Fourth Ed.
Cr. 8v0. 28, 6d.
Hone (Nathaniel) ). See Antiquas "s Books.
~? HUMANITY AND ITS
PR OBLEMS._ Cr. 8vo0. 58. net.
Hoppner. See Little Galleries.
Horace. See ice Translations.
Horsburgh (E. L. S.), M.A. WA ATERLOO:
ve Plans. ee "Edition. Cr. 8va 55.
. ,,See also Oxford Biographies.
Horth (As. cs See Textbooks of Technology.
Horton(R. F.), D.D. eae Religion.
Hosie (Alexander), MANCHURIA. With
._ Illustrations and a Map. er Edition:
“Demy, 8vo.. 73, 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
How (F. D.). SIX GREAT SCHOOL-
MASTERS, | With Portraits and These:
tions. Second Edition. Demy 8vo. a
Howell (A. G. Ferrers). FRANCI CAN
DAYS. Being: Selections for every day in
the year from, supient Franciscan writings.
Cr. 8v0. 38. 6a. ne
Howell (G.3. TRADE UNIONISM—New
ee Oup. Fourth Edition, Cr. 8v0.
Hug ane Sir William), K.C.B., O.M.,
ageing § THE Deva SOCIETY.
With 25 Pe cana Wide Royal 8ve.
45. 6d. net
II
Hughes (C. E.). THE PRAISE OF
SHAKESPEARE. An English Antho-
logy. With a pri by SIDNEY Lez.
Demy 8v0. 35. 6a. 0
Hughes (Thomas). rom BROWN'S
SCHOOLDAYS. With an Introduction
and Notes by VERNON es Leather.
‘Royal 32m. 2s. 6d. net. Se
Berean (Horace G.) THE NEW
EST, Illustrated in colour with
E oes by WaLTER TyNDALE and 4
‘by Lucy Kemp-Weicu. Third Edition,
Cr. 8v6. 65,
Hutton (A. w.), M.A. See Leaders of
Religion and Library of Devotion.
Hutton (Edward). THE CITIES OF
UMBRIA. | With 20 Illustrations in Colour
by A. Pisa, and 12 other Illustrations, Third
Edition. Cr.8vo. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE CITIES OF SPAIN. ° ea 24 Illus-
trations in Colour, by A. W. RimincrTon,
zo other Illustrations and a Map. Second
Edition. Cr. 8v0. Gs..
A Colonial Edition is also published.
FLORENCE AND THE' CITIES OF
NORTHERN TUSCANY, WITH
GENOA. With x6 Illustrations in Colour
by Witir1am PaRKINSON, and 16 other
Illustrations. Second Edition, Cr. Bua. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published:
ENGLISH LOVE POEMS. Edited with
an Introduction. oie Bug. 38. 6d. net.
Hutton (R. H.). See Leaders of Religion.
Hutton (W. H.), M.A. THE LIFE OF
SIR THOMAS MORE. © With Portraits
after Drawings by Hotpein. Second Ed.
Cr. 8v0. 55.
See also Pa of Religion,
Hyde(A.G.) GEORGE HERBERT AND
HIS TIMES. With 32 Illustrations.
Demy 8vo0. 105. 6d. net.
Hyett(F. A.), FLORENCE: Her History
AND ART TO THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC.
Demy Bvo. 75. 6d. net.
Ibsen (Henrik) BRAND. ' A Drama.
Translated by WiLtiam WILSON. Third
Edition. a 8ve. 35. 6d.
Ing re (W. R.), M.A.,. Fellow and. Tutor of
ertford College Oxford, CHRISTIAN
MYSTICISM. (The Bampton Lectures of
1899.) Demy 8v0, 12s. 6d. net.
ee alsoLibrary of Devotion.
sb ic (B. P.). See’ Simplified | French
Innes(A. D.), M.A. A HISTORY OF THE
cae IN ee With Maps and
s. Cr, 8v0.
ENGLAND ‘GNDER THE TUDORS.
With pope Second Edition. Demy 8v0,
10s. 6d. ne:
Jackson (Ci. ES), B.A., Senior Physics Master,
Bradford Grammar School. See Textbooks
of Science... -
Jackson (S.), M.A. See Commercial Series.
Jackson (F. Hamilton). See Little Guides.
aac (F.), M.A. See Junior Examination
eres,
12
TRUSTS POOLS,
Jeans (J. Stephen).
AND CORNERS AS AFFECTING
COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY. Cr.
8uo. 25. 6d.
See also Books on Business.
reek Camilla) A STAR OF THE
NS: Juniz pe Lespinasse. With
= Pies: Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
is Colonial ee wi aso BE ais
Jeffe (Re:
THIRT EEN C COLONIES OF NORTH
AMERICA. With 8 Illustrations and a
Map. Demy 8vo. 75. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Jeffreys(D. Gwyn). DOLLY'S THEATRI-
CALS. ew eos 16mo. 25. 6d.
Jenks Ey B.C. AN OUTLINE
ISH! LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
ag Ed. Revised by R. C. K. Ensor,
M.A. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 64.
Jenner (Mrs. H.).._ See Little Books on Art.
Jenclags (Oscar), ARLY WOOD-
CUT INITIALS. ‘Demy ato. 21s. net.
Jessapp Gureatan) D.D. See Leaders of
eligion.
Jevons (PF. B.), M.A., Litt.D., pcos of
atfield Hall, Durl am. RELIGION
IN EVOLUTION. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d. net.
See also Churchman’s Library and Hand-
books of Theology.
Johnson (Mrs. Barham). WILLIAM BOD.
HAM DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS.
Illustrated. Dew: ae, ros. 6d. net,
Johnston a(Sie H. , KCB. BRITISH
CENT BPRICA With nearly 200
feo. ee Six Maps. Third Edition,
Cr. 4to, 18s. net.
A Colonial Edition is also ; ublished,
Jones ae See Commercial Series, —
Jones (H. F.), See Textbooks of ' Bie
Jones (L. A. Atherley), K. ae +» M.P., and
Bellot (Hugh H. L.), M.A., “D:C.L,
THE MINER'S GUIDE TO THE COAL
MINES REGULATION ACTS AND
THE LAW OF EMPLOYERS AND
WORKMEN. Cr. 8vo._ 25. 6d. net.
COMMERCEIN WAR. Royal8vo. ae net.
Jones Ae Compton), M.A. POEMS OF
TH NER eat FE. Selected me ee
Bek Tilton Feap.8vo. 28.6d. net.
Jonson (Ben). = Standard Library.
sae eady) of Norwich. REVELA.
ONS OF DIVINE LOVE. Ed.by Grace
vi Second Ed. Cr. 8va. 35. 6d.
Juyenal, See Classical Translations...
‘Kappa.’ LET YOUTH BUT KNOW:
A Plea for Reason in Education. Cr. 8vo.
38. 6d. net.
Kaufmann (M.), M.A. SOCIALISM AND
MODERN THOUGHT, Second Edition
Eee and Enlarged. Cr, 8v0, 28. 6d.
Keating (dE F. Py D.D. THE AGAPE AND
THEE ARIST. Cr. 8v0. 35. 6d.
Keats (ohn). THE POEMS. Edited
with Introduction and Notes by E. de Szuin-
court, M.A. With a Frontispiece in
James (W. H.N.).
Messrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Photogravure. Second Edition Revised.
Demy 8vo. 75. 6d. net.
REALMS OF GOLD. Secale fon the
Works of. Feap. 8vo, 39. 6a.
rae = _Little Library aa ‘Standen
Keble ‘Gohn). THE CHRISTIAN YEAR.
With an Introduction and Notes by W. Lock,
.D.D., Warden of Keble College. Illustrated
by R. ANNING BELL. ‘Third Edition. Feap.
80. 38. 6a. ; padded morocco, 5s.
Seealso’ ibiay oI of Devotion.’
xo oN ) CP. THE
DRIN ROBLEM: IN ITS MEDICO-
SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECT. __By four-
teen Medical Authorities. ee ie
With 2 Diagrams. Demy 8u
i ar Cibemas a). “THE. iM Sa hd eee
OF CHRIST. With an Introduction by
Dean noe Illustrated by C. M. Gere.
Third Edition. Feap. 80. 350 6a.; padded
morocco. 58. .
Also’ Translated by C. Bice, D. D. Cr.
8v0. 35. 6a.
See also Montmorency (J. E. G. de).,
Library of Devotion, and Standard Library.
Kennedy (Bart.). ae GREEN
SPHINX. | Cy. 8v0. 5. 6d: net. ;
Kennedy (James Houg’ ito , D.D., Assist-
ant Lecturer i in Divinityin the University of
Dublin. ST, PAUL’ SECOND AND
THIRD EPISTLES TO THE CORIN-
THIANS.' Mies Tateniditetioas Doers tichs
and Notes. “Cv. 8ve. 6s.
Kimmins (C. W.); M.A. THE CHEMIS-
iy OF LIFE AND HEALTH. Ills.
ted, 7a 8v0, 2s. 6d.
Kin; wiaicaith . W.). See Little ii,
pte ng (R udyard). BARRACK-ROOM
DS. 83rd Thousand. Twenty.
Sourth Edition. Cr. 8v0. 6s. Also Leather.
Feap. 8vo. 55.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE SEVEN SEAS. 67th Thousand,
Twelfth Agile Cr. 8vo. 6s. Also
Leather. Feap.8vo. 55. rae
A Colonial Edition is a published.
THE FIVE NATIONS. 62d Thousand.
Third Edition. Cr. . 8vo. 6s. | Also
‘Leather. Bee Bvo. 5s. :
A Colonial Edition is also published.
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. Sixteenth
ee Cr. 8vo. 6s. Also Leather. Fenp.
U0. 5S
A Colonial Edition is also published.
mage 14 (Albert E.).. THE COMPLETE
ETER. With 50 Illustrations.
Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. ne? *
A oe Edition is also published.
Kalgat (H. J. C.), BD. See Churchman's
Knowling (R. J), M.A, Professor of New
Testament’ Exegesis at King’s’ College,
London. See Westminster Commentaries.
Lamb (Charles and Mary), THE WORKS.
Edited by E. V. Lucas. Illustrated. 72
Seven Volumes. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. each.
See also Little Library and Lucas (E. V. ).
\
‘Locker (F.).
Lodge (Sir Oliver), F THE SU
Lorimer (George Horace). ©
«, FROM A F-
GENERAL LITERATURE
Lambert (F. A. H.). See Little Guides,
Lambios (Professor S. P.). See Byzantine
exts,
Lane-=Poole (Stanley). A HISTORY OF
EGYPTIN THE oe AGES. Fully
Illustrated. Cx 8v0. 6s.
Langhridge(r.))M. .A. BALLADS OF THE
Poems of Chivalry, Enterprise,
Courage, and Constancy. Third Edition.
ia (Willian ie See Lib
Ww iam ee Library of Devotion
and Standard Library, y
Leach (Henry). THE: DUK OF DEVON-
oe A Biography. ith x2 Illustra-
myBv0. 28: 6d. net.
THE: SPIRIT "OF THE LINKS, Cr. 8vo. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published. ,
See also Braid (James).
Le Braz enh: THE LAND.,OF
PARDONS, Translated by Frances. M.
Gost1inG. . With 12 Illustrations in Colour
by T. C. Gorcu,, and 4o other Illustrations.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Lee (Captain'L. Melville). A HISTORY
OF POLICE IN ENGLAND. |
38. 6d. ‘net.
Lewes (V. B.), M.A.
Illustrated. C7.8v0.. 28: 62.
Lewis (B. M. Gwyn). A CONCISE
HANDBOOK OF GARDEN SHRUBS.
ae 20 Illustrations. fae 8v0. . 38. 6d.
net,
Lisle (Fortunéede). See Little Books on Art.
Littlehales (H.). See Antiquary's Books, .
Lock. (Walter), D.D., Warden of Keble
Colle; . ST. PAUL, THE MASTER-
BUILDER... ‘Second Ed. Cr. 8v0. 38. 6d.
THE BIBLE ‘AND CHRISTIAN, LIFE.
Cr. v0. 6s. ~
See also Keble (J.
AIR AND WATER.
)'and-Leaders of Religion.
See Little ee
TANCE. OF FAITH RELIED WITH
“SCIENCE: A Catechism for Parents
and Teachers. Behe £4. Cr. 8v0. 25. net.
Lofthouse( W.F.), M.A. ETHICS AND
ATONE iy NT. With a Frontispiece.
Demy 8v0. 55. net.
ies (H.. W.). See Little Library.
LETTERS
: MADE MERCHANT
a ener Sixteenth Edition, Cr. 8v0.
a Sotonial Edition is also published.
OLD GORGON GRAHAM. Second Edition.
Cr. Bu0,: 6s. -
A Colonial Edition ‘is also published.
* Lover (Samuel), See I.P.L.
. Vv. L. and CL. G. ENGLAND DAY BY
.. DAY’: Or, The Englishman’s Handbook to
“Efficiency. Niietiated ee BSA
Fourth Kattan fe ae ee
Lmena (Es THE, IRE, ‘OF CHARLES
B. Vuh 28 Illustrations. Fourth
ce Revised arg in One Volume.
Demy 8v0. 78. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition i is also published.
cr Bue. |
13
A WANDERER IN HOLLAND. With
zo Illustrations in Colour by HERBERT
MarsHatt, 34 lustrations after old Dutch
Masters, and a Map. Sighth, Edition.
Cr. 8uo. ‘6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
A WANDERER IN LONDON. With 16
Ilustrations in Colour by Netson Dawson,
36 other Illustrations and a Map. Sixth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published. __.
THE OPEN ROAD :a Little Book for Way-
farers. Thirteenth ata Fcap. Bua.
5s.3 India Paper, 7s. 6
THE FRIENDLY KOWN : a Little Book
for the Urbane. Fourth fe Feap.
8vo. 58.3 India Paper, 7s.
FIRESIDE oe PxGiiNe ‘Third
Edition, Fcap. ve.
CHARACTER AND éOmepy. Thied
| Edition. Feap. Bua. 55.
THE GENTLEST ART. A Choice ‘of
Letters by ee Hands. Fourth
Edition. Feap.8
ASWAN AND HER FRIENDS. With’ 24
Illustrations. Demy 8vo, 125. 6d, net,
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Lucian. See Classical Translations..
Lyde(L. W.), M.A. See Commercial Series.
Lydon (Noel S.). See Junior School Books.
Eyre Won Mrs. A.). WOMEN AND
THE . Cr. Bvo. 2s, 6d.
Macaulay (Lord). CRITICAL AND HIS-
TORICAL ESSAYS, Edited by F. C. Mon-
TAGUE, M.A. Three Volumes. Cr. 8vo. 18s.
My Allen (J. EB. B.), MA. See Commercial
Ser
MacCulloch (J. A.)
See Churchman’s
Library. ‘
MacCunn. (Florence A.). MARY
STUART. With. 44 Illustrations, in
cluding a Frontispiece in Photogravure.
gen and Cheaper Edition. Large Cr. 8vo,
Obs also Leaders of Religion.
McDermott (E. R.). See Books on Business.
M‘Dowall(A. S.). See Oxford Biographies,
Mackay (A. M.), B.A. See_Churchman’s
Library.
Mackenzie (W. Leslie), M. A. . M.D.,
D,.P.H., etc. THE HEALTH OF THE
SCHOGL CHILD. Cr. 820. 2s.-6d.
Macklin (Herbert W.), M.A. See Anti-
quary’s Books. re
M‘Neile (A. H.), B.D.
‘Commentaries. ie
. gr Mori’ * author of). ST. CATHER-
E OF:S A AND HER TIMES.
With 28 Iustrations
net.
Magnus (Laurie), M. A A PRIMER OF
WORDSWORTH. (>. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Matsatty ¢ a P.), Litt.D. A HISTORY OF
THE YPT OF THE PTOLEMIES.
Fully ieee. re 8v0. 65.
a rsa re oe .A., LL.D. ROMAN
WIN THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND. Royal8vo. 7s. 6d.
See Westminster
Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.
14
Major (H.), B.A., B.Sc. AHEALTH AND
[EMPERANCE READER. Cr. 8v0.
Malden at E.), M.A. ENGLISH RE-
A Compeniey S the History of
Ene ae Cr, 8v0. 38. 61
THE” RIGHTS ‘AND DUTIES OF A
ony EN. Seventh Edition. Cr. 8v0.
IS,
See also School Histories, .
MaceRant (E. cs M.A., Fallow, of Peter-
beng Cambridge. A GREEK ANTHO.-
oGcy Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.
— also Cook (A. M.).
Ma ree cgigannette) *e A. ENGLISH
RAL DRAMA from the Restora-
oe - es date of the publication of the
‘Lyrical Ballads’ (s660- -1798). Cr. 8vo.
5S. met, -
Mare (3. E.), F.R.S., Fellowof St John’s Col-
lege, Cambridge,’ THE SCIENTIFIC
Stupy OFS ENER Ee Second Edition.
Illustrated. Cr.
AGRICULTURAL. GeOLOGY. Illustrated.
Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Marriott (J. A. R.), M.A.
AND TIMES OF LORD FALKLAND.
With ‘23 Illustrations. Second Edition.
Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
Marvell (Andrew). See Little Library.
Masefield (John). SEA LIFE IN NEL-
SON’S TIME. Illustrated. Cr. 8v0.
gs. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
ON THE SPANISH MAIN: or, Some
EneuisH Forays 1N THE IsTHMUS OF
Darign. With 22 Illustrations and a Map.
Demy 8vo. 1058. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition i se as published.
A SAILOR’S GARLA Selected and
Edited by. Second Ed. os Buo. 38. 6a. met.
AN ENGLISH PROSE MISCELLANY.
Selected and Edited by. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Maskell (A.). See Connoisseur’s Library.
Mason (A. J.), D.D. See Leaders of Religion.
Masterman (C. F. G.), -M.A., M.P.
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS
TEACHER. ‘Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Matheson (B. F.). COUNSELS OF
LIFE. Feap. ae 2s. 6d. net.
May (Phil). THE PHIL MAY ALBUM.
Second Edition, 4to. 15. net.
Meakin (Annette M. B.), Fellow of zie
Anthropological Institute. WOMAN I
TRANSITION, - Cr. 800. 65° «
Mellows (Emma S.). ASHORT STORY
OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. Cr.
8vo, 35. 6d.
Methuen (A. S.), M.A, THE
: TRAGEDY oF SOUTH ' AFRICA.
Cr, 8v0. 25. net. Also Cr. Bvo, 3d. net.
ENGLAND'S RUIN: Discussep 1n_Srx-
TexN LEeTTers To THE RicuT Hon.
JosepH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. Seventh Edi-
tion. Cr. 8vo. 3d. net.
THE LIFE |
MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Miles (Eustace), M.A. LIFE AFTER
LIFE: or, og ee pF REINCARNA-
TION. Cr. 800. 6d. 1
THE POWER or ‘CONCENTRATION :
How To aoe iT. Second Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 35. 6d. net.
ues 3 G. ). THE LIFE AND LET-
TE SIR JOHN - EVERETT
MILLAIS. F redentot the Royal Academy.
With many Illustrations, of which 2 are in
Photogravure. Wew Edition, Demy 8vo.
7s. 6d. net. :
See also Little Galleries.
Millin (G. F.). PICTORIAL GARDEN-
a . fae 2x Illustrations. Crown 8vo.
Millis. ‘c © ), M.ILM.E. See Textbooks of
‘ech: pe lo;
Milne a, M.A: A, HISTORY OF
EGYPF a UNDER ROMAN RULE.
Fully Ulustrated: Cr.8ve. 6s.
Milton (John). See Little Library and
Standard Library.
aay BOOK OF MILTON. ‘Edited by
R. F. Townprow. Feap. 800. 25: 6d. net.
Minchin (a C.),M.A. See Peel (R.).
Mitchell(P. Chalmers), M.A. OUTLINES
OF BIOLOGY. Illustrated. Second Edi-
tion. Cr. 8v0. 6s. :
Mitton (G. E.). JANE AUSTEN AND
HER TIMES. With ar Illustrations.
Scone and Cheaper Edition. Large Cr.
8vo. 6s. :
A Colonial Edition i is aie published.
Moffat (Mary M.). QUE LOUISA OF
PRUSSIA. With 20 Tiustrationd Fourth
Edition, Crown 8vo, 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
‘Moil ar +)? See Books on Business.
Moir (D. M.)._ See Little Library.
Molinos (Dr. Michael de), See Library of
Devotion.
Money, te. Ae Chiozza), ‘M.P. “RICHES
ERTY. Lighth Edition. Demy
ee a ae Also Cr. 8vo. xs. ét.
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL PRO-
BLEMS. Demy 8vo. gs. net. ~ 7
Montagu (Henry), Earl of Manchestes: See
Library of Devotion.
Montaigne. A DAY BOOK OF. Edited
by . Ponp. Fag. 8vo. 28. 6d. net: ’
Montgomery (H. B.) THE EMPIRE OF
EAST. Witha Frontispiece in Colour
and r6other Illustrations. Second Edition,
Demy 8v0. 78. 6d. net.
A Colonial Baltion’ e also published.
Monenoreasy aE » de), B.A.,
THO KEMPIS, HIS AGE AND
BOOK. With 22 Isstrations, Second
Edition. Demy 8vo.
Moore (H. B.). BACK or THe LAND.
Cr. 8vo. 25. 6d.
Moaause aie Hallam). NELSON'S
DY HAMILTON. With 5x Portraits.
ore Edntion, Demy 8vo. 75. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Moran (Clarence G.). See Books on Business.
More (Sir Thomas). See Standard Library.
GENERAL LITERATURE
Morfill (W. R.),. Oriel Collar: Oxford. A
ea OF RUSSIA FROM PETER
THE GREAT TO ALEXANDER II.
- With Mapsand Plans, Cv. 8v0. 35. 6d.
Morich (R. J.) late of Clifton College. See
School Examination Series; .
“Bee Pe (ins ‘aret W.), Founded on, THE
OPLE. bg 74 Illustrations.
34 Crean 8v0. 25. 6
LITTLE MITCHELL: Tue Srory OF A
Mountain Squirret Totp sy HimsE.r.
With many Illustrations. Sz. Cv. 8vo. 25.62.
Morris (J.). TH. E MAKE! ‘SOF JAPAN.
: wih 24 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d.
Morris (Joseph E.). See Little’ Guides,
Morton (A, Anderson). See Brodrick (M.).
Moule(H. C. G.), D.D., Lord Bishop of Dur
a See Leaders of Religion.
Muir (M. M._ Pattison), M.A. THE
CHEMISTRY OF FIRE, © Illustrated.
Cr. 8u0,,: 28. 6a.”
Mundella (V. A.), M.A. See Dunn (J. T.).
anne (R.), M. fer a, Di ‘See 'Antiquary's
‘ooks,
Mayers (A. Wallis), THE COMPLETE
. LAWN TENNIS PLAYER, With many
Uesteations: Second Edition. Demy 8vo.
Ios.
Naval Officer (A). See I. P. L.
Neal (W. G.). See Hall (R. N.).
Newman (Ernest), HUGO WOLF.
. With 13 Illustrations, Demy 8v0..75. 6d..net.
Newman (George), M.D.,D.P.H.,F.R.S.E.,
INFANT “MORTALITY; A Soctar
Prosiem.,, With’ 16 Diagrams. Demy
8v0. 75. 6d. net. -
Newman (J. H. -)and others. See Library
, of Devotion. .°
‘Newsholine (Arthur), M.D., F.R. c P.
» BHE PREVENTION OF TUBERCU-
“wit es ees e fe te A
ichols (Bowyer) ee Little Library,
Ne Klin (T.), M. EXAMINATION
. PAPERSIN THUCYDIDES. Cr. 8u0. 25.
Nimrod. See I. P. L.
iS ate (G. Le Grys). THE LIFE OF
SIR WALTER SCOTT. With 53 Illus-
: trations by Jenny Wvyiiz. Demy 8vo.
7S. 6d. net.
Norregaard (B. W.) THE GREAT
SIEGE: The Investment and Fall of Port
Arthur, With Maps, Plans, and 25 Illus-
trations. : Denty 8vo. 10s. 6d.net.
A Colonial Edition is also ublished.-
Norway (A. H.). NAPLES. Past anp
PrEsENT. With 25 Coloured Illustrations
by Mauricz,, GREIFFENHAGEN. Second
: Edition. Cr. 8v0, 6s.
.. A Colonial Edition is also published.
Novalis. THE DISCIPLES AT SAIS AND
OTHER FRAGMENTS: Edited by Miss
Una Brircx. one peat ae 6d. net.
Officer (An). See I. P. L.
‘Oldfield (W. J. )_ M.A., Prebendary of
‘Lincoln, A PRIMER OF RELIGION.
BasEp ON THE CATECHISM OF THE CHURCH
OF ENGLAND. Crown 8v0. 2s. 6d.
15
Oldham (F. M.), B.A. See Textbooks of
Science.
Oliphant (Mrs.). See Leaders of Religion.
Oliver, Thomas, M.D. DISEASES OF
OCCUPATION. ae) ee: Oe
cond Edition. > Demy Bu os. 6d. nei
Oman (CW. C.),:M.A., Fallow of All: ane i
Oxford. A HISTORY OF THE ART
OF WAR IN. THE MIDDLE AGES.
Illustrated, Demy 8vo._. 108. 6d. net. _-
Ottley (R. L.),.D.D. | See. ‘Handbooks of
Theology and.-Leaders of Religion...» -
Overton (J. H.)... See. Leaders of Religion.
Owen (Douglas). See Books on Business.
Oxford (M.N. } ofGuy’s Hospital. A HAND-
BOOK OF NURSING.” Fourth Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 38. 6d.
Pakes (W. .C. C:). THE SCIENCE OF
HYGIENE. Illustrated. Demy 8v0. 155.
Parker ee M.P. A LOV ERTS
DIARY. Feap, 8v0. g5. ;
i volume of poems.
Parkes (A..K.). SMALL LESSONS: ON
‘GREAT TRUTHS. Fcép,8va. : 18. 6d.
Hae acon Onn PARADISI IN SOLE
PARADISUS TERRESTRIS, OR A
GARDEN OF ALL SORTS oF /PLEA-
SANT FLOWERS. Folio. as. net.
Parmenter (John). SE ere oes OR
NEW POSIES. FOR -:SUNDIALS.
. Edited by PERCIVAL Lavon. Quarto.
38. 6dunet. _.
Parmentier (Prof. Leon). ise Bidez Ge
Parsons (Mrs. C.).. GARRICK AND H
CIRCLE. With 36 fikeestion. ee
Edition. Démy8uo. 125. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Pascal. See Library'of Devotion. -
Paston . (George). SOCIAL .CARICA-
TURE .IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY. With over 200 Hustranons:
ImperialQuarto, £2,125. 6a.
LADY MARY WORTLEY . MONTAGU
AND HER TIMES With 24 Illustra-
tions. Second Edition. Demy 800: 158. net.
See also Little Books on Art andd.P.L.
eee soe) envems Swift), LIFE’S
UESTIONINGS. Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.
Patterson @; H.). NOTES OF AN EAST
COAST: NAT
URALIST.. Illustrated in
Colour by F. Sourucate, R.B.A; Second
Edition, ' Cr. 8vo. 6s.
NATURE IN EASTERN NORFOLK.
With 12 Illustrations in Colour by. FRANK
OPE are R. B.A. Second Edition. Cr.
8u0.
WILD Lire ON A NORFOLK ESTU-
ARY. With 4o Illustrations by the Author,
and a Prefatory: Note by Her Grace the
DucHess oF Beprorp. Demy Bue.
tos. 6d. net. -
Peacock (Netta). See Little Books on Art
hae) (J. B.). See Simplified French
‘exts.
Peake (C. M. A.); E.RHS. A
CISE . HANDBOOK OF GARDEN
ANNUAL AND BIENNIAL PLANTS.
With 24 Illustrations. cap. 8vo. 38. 6d. net.
16
Pe ne and Minchin (H. C.), M.A
With ‘soo Illustrations in
oie = 8v0. 65.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Péel (Sidney), late Fellow of Trinity College,
Oxford, and Secretary to the Royal Com-
mission on the Licensing Laws. PRACTI-
CAL LICENSING REFORM. Second
Edition. Cr. 8vo, 15. 6d.
Petrie(W.M. Flinders), D.C. L., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Egyptology at University ‘College.
'A’ HISTORY OF. EGYPT. Fully Illus-
trated. /x six volumes. Cr. 8u0. 6s. each.
Vou. 1 From rue Earuest Kings to
XVItuH Dynasty. Sixth Edition.
Vor. u. THE XVIITH anp XVIIItH
Dynasties. Fourth Edition.
Vou. ut. X1XtH To XXXtH Dynasties.
Vou. iv. THe E¢yrt oF THE Provemies.
J. P. Manarry, Litt.D.
Vou. v. Roman Eoypr. J. G. Mine, M. A.
Vout. vi. EoyeT in THE MIpDLE- AGEs.
STANLEY Lane-Poore, M.A.
RELIGION AND CONSCIENCE IN
‘ANCIENT EGYPT._ Lectures delivered
‘at University Eelskss London. Illustrated.
Cr. 8va. ‘25.
SYRIA AND: EGYPT, FROM THE TELL
ELAMARNATABLETS. Cy.8v0. 48..6d.
EGYPTIAN’ TALES. . Translated from: the
Papyri. ‘First Series, rvth to xrith Dynasty.
Edited by W. M. Furnpers Perriz. Illus-
trated by ae Evuis. Second Edi-
tion. Cr. 870. 6d.
EGYPTIAN TALES. iraisinted! from the
Papyri. Second Series. xvimith to xrxth
Dynasty. Meee by TRIsTRAM ELLs.
Crown Bue.
EGYPTIAN BECORATIVE ART. A
Course of Lectures delivered at the Royal
Institution. Illustrated. Cv. 8v0. 35. 6d.
Phillips (W. A.). See Oxford Biographies.
Phillpotts (Eden). MY DEVON YEAR.
ith 38 Illustrations by J. Ley Peruy-
BRIDGE, ieee and Cheaper Edition.
Large Cr. 8v0. 6s.
UP ‘ALONG AND DOWN ALONG.
pesiaced by Crauve . SHEPPERSON.
4to 5 net. xo
Piytitan @ Ernest).. TREES IN NA-
TURE, (YT H, AND ART. With 24
iitustrations, Crown 8uo. 6s."
Plarr (Victor G.). . See neve! Histories.
Plato. See Standard Library.
Edited; with
+
Plautus. THE CAPTIVE,
an are re Textual Notes, and aCom-
nee M. Linpsay, Fellow of
Jesus tek, achat vee, 8v0. 108.6d.net.
Plowden- Wardlaw (J. T.), -» King's
College, Cambridge. See School Examina.
tion Series.
Podmore (Frank). MODERN. SPIRI-
‘TUALISM. ‘Two Volumes. Tey: 8ve.
" ars. net, . ss
Pollard (Alice). See Little Books on “Art.
Pollard(ElizaP.). See Little Books on Art.
Pollock (David), M.LN. A.
See Books on
Business. ey or i
‘Quevedo Villegas.
Rannie (D.
MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Potter (M. C.), M.A. F.LS. AN
ELEMENTARY «© TEXT - BOOK > OF
AGRICULTURAL ' BOTANY. __Iilus-
‘trated, Second Edition. Cr. Svo.' 4s. 6d.
ac O'Connor). THE MAKING
ATOR. Cy». 8v0. 6s. oes
Prance (G. . See Wyon
(R.).
Prescott (0: L.). ABOUT MUSIC, AND
WHAT IT 18 MADE OF. Cr. 8v0.
s. 6d. net.
Price aoe c.). A PRINCESS ‘OF
OLD WORLD. With 21 Illus-
aoa Demy 8vo. 125. 6d. net.
Price (L.:L..), M.A., Fellow of Oriel College,
xon, A’ HISTORY OF -ENGLISH
POLITICAL ECONOMY FROM ADAM
SMITH TO ARNOLD TOYNBEE.
Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 64.
Primrose Een A MODERN
BREOTIA. Cr. 8v0.
eemneige (Ernest). - SHE DOMINION
MAN. ‘GEOGRAPHY In 1Ts Human
ees With 32 full-page Illustrations.
Cr. 8v0. 25.
‘See Miniature Library.
T. OMe Couch). . THE
* “GOLDEN POMP. » PROCESSION OF
Encuisu Lyrics oe Surrey To SHtr-
LEY. Secondand Cheaper Edition. Cr. 8vo.
as. 6d. net.
G.R. andE. S. MR. WOODHOUSE'S
CORRESPONDENCE. Cx. 8v0. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published. -
Rackham (R. B.), M.A. See Westminster
ea .
Rage ge _ THE WOMEN ‘ART-
OF -BOLOGNA. With 2zo Illus-
trations. Demy 8vo. _7s. 6d. net.
Rage (Lonsdale). B:D., Oxon. DANTE
ND HIS ITALY.’ With 32 Tlustra-
foe py eo ak 6d. net.”
Rahtz (PF. J.), M.A., B.Sc, Lecturer in
English at tee Venturers’ Technical
College, Bristol HIGHER ENGLISH.
” Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.: -
Randolph (B. W.), D.D. See Library of
Devotion.
Boece A STUDENT'S
“HISTORY O SCOTLAND, Cr.800. 48 6d.
WORDSWORTH AND -HIS CIRCLE.
With 20 Illustrations. Demy 8v0. 12s. 6d.
oo
net. :
Rashdall (Hastings), M.A., Fellow and
Tutor of New College, Oxford. DOC-
TNE AND DEVELOPMENT. Cr
Raven (b Je); D.D,, F. 5. A. See Antiquary’ S
Raven-Hill(L.). See Llewell n (Owen).
Rawstorne (Lawrence, E See I.
Raymond (Walter). er sc noo! Piceoriee”
*Rea ailen) MADA DE LA FA-
YETTE. With a Tilustrations,
Demy 8u0. 10s, 6d. me
Real Pad
A) See
“Reason CW AeA sce NTVERSITY AND
SOCIAL RertiEMENts Edited by.
Cy, 80, 25,6d.
GENERAL LITERATURE
Redpath (H. A.), M.A., D. Litt. See West-
minster Commentaries.
Rees (J. D.), C.LE., M.P. THE REAL
pl Second Edition. Deny 8vo. tos.
net.
A Colonial Edition is dlso published.
“Rett (Boni), Doctor Juris;s WOMAN
ROUGH THE AGES. With 24 Illus-
face Two Volumes. Demy 8v0.215. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Roo (Sir Joshua). See Little Galleries.
Rhoades (J. F.). See Simplified French Texts,
Rhodes (Ww. EB.) See School Histories
Rieu (H. ad M.A. ee Sim: See French Texts.
Roberts (M. E.). hanner (C. C.),
Berean nae Lord Bishop. of
Exeter. REGNUM DEI. (The Bampton
Lectures of 1901), 4A New beans Cheaper
Edition. Demy 8vo. 75. 6a.n
Robertson (C. Grant). M.A, “Fellow of
All Souls’ College, Oxford. SELECT
‘STATUTES, CASES, AND CONSTI-
TUTIONAL DOCUMENTS, 1660-1832.
‘Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
Robertson c. Grant) and Bartholomew
J. G.), F.R.S.E., F.R.G.S. A HIS-
TORICAL AND MODERN ATLAS OF
ee BAe EMPIRE. Demy Quarto.
Robertson (SirG. Ss. )K.C.S.1. CHITRAL:
Tue Story oF A Minor Sizce. ‘Third
Edition. Wlustrated. Cr. 8vo._ 2s. 6d.net.
Reoron (A. W-), M.A. See Churchman's
Robinson cae THE MINISTRY
OF DEACONESSES. With an Introduc-
- tion by ne nae Archbishop, of Canterbury.
Cr. Bue. 35: 6d.
Robinson (F. S.). See Connoisseur’s Library.
Rochefoucauld Ea); See Little Library. —
Rodwell (G.), B.A. NEW TESTAMENT
: eRene A Course for Beginners. With
” a Preface by Warter Lock, D.D., Warden
of Keble College. Fcap. 8vo. 38. 6d.
Roe (Fred). OLD OAK FURNITURE. With
many Illustrations by the Author, including
a frontispiece in colour. Second Edition.
Demy 8vo. x08. 6d. net.
Rogers (A. G. L.), M.A.
R cone ee See Little Galleries.
ommne:
Romney ey See Little Guides. .
Rose deed). THE ROSE READER.
Illustrated. Cr. 8v0. 2s. 6d. Also in 4
Parts, Parts I, and II. 6d. each’; Part
IIT, 8d.; Part lV. 0d,
Rose (G. A. ). See Hey (H.)., and Baring-
Gould
Rowntree Se ataliaa), THE IMPERIAL
DR RAD A Re-STATEMENT OF
THE OPIUM Quzstion. ie Edition
Revised. Cr. 8vo. 25. net.
Royce sant (N. G.). THE PILLOW
OOK: A Garner or Many Moons.
Calleted, by. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
4s. 6d. ne:
PO SETS. 5 F OUR DAY. Selected,
with an Introduction, by. Feag. 8vo. 55.
See Books on
17
Ratle ¢ (A. E.), D.D- See Junior School
Russell” korchibate G. B.).: See Blake
~ (William).
Russell “(W. Clark). THE LIFE OF
ADMIRAL LORD COLLINGWOOD.
With Illustrations. by F. BRANGWYN.
- Fourth Edition. Cr. 8ve. 6s.
Ryley (M. Beresford). UEENS . OF
“THE RENAISSANCE. With 24) Illus-
trations, Demy 8vo. tos. 6d. net.
Sate (Harrington), M.D., F.R.C.P.
PRINCIPIA THERAPEUTICA.
Deis ea 1S. 6d, net,
St. Anselm. See Library of Devotion. ‘°
St. Augustine. See Library of Devotion.
St. Bernard. See Library of Devotion. '
St. ied (Viscount), See Oxford Bio-
graphies, :
St. Francis of Assisi. THE LITTLE
FLOWERS OF THE GLORIOUS
MESSER, AND OF HIS FRIARS.
Done into English, with Notes by WILLIAM
Heywoop. With 4o. Illustrations from
Italian Painters. Demy 8vo. 55: net.
See also Wheldon (F. W.), Library: of
Devotion and Standard Library..-
St. Francis de Sales. See Library of
Devotion. «
* Saki’ (H. Munro). REGINALD. Second
Edition. Feap. 8vo._ 2s. 6d. net.
Salmon es L.). See Little Guides,
Sathas (C.). See Byzantine Texts.
Schmitt ot). See eeaatae Texts.
Schofield (A. T.), M.D., Hon. Phys, Freiden-
ham Hospital. FUNCTIONAL . NERVE,
penestes ray 8v0. 75.
Scott sabre «Je WINSTON Secure
CHILL. ‘With Portraits and Hlus-:
‘trations: Cr. 8v0. 38. 6d,
Scudamore rg Soe Little Guides.
Sélincourt ae e.) See Keats(John). -
Sells (V. P.), M THE MECHANICS
oF ate Lire, Illustrated. Cv. 870.
Selous (Edmund), TOMMY vg a Ss
ANIMALS, Illustrated by G. W. Orv.
Tenth Edition. Feap. 8vo, 28. ee
School Edition, 1s. 6d. aes
TOMMY SMITH’S OTHER ANIMALS.
Illustrated by Aucusta Guest. Fourth
Edition. Ftap. 8vo. a 6a.
. School Edition, 1s. :
Senter (George), B. . Wend) Ph.D.
See Textbooks of Science.
Shakespeare (William).
THE FOUR FOLIOS, 1623; 16325 1664;
1685. Each £4, 4s. met, or a 2 complete set,
Hz, 12s. net.
Folios 3 and 4 are ready.
-Folio 2 is nearly ready.
THE POEMS OF WILLIAM SHAKE-
PEARE. With an Introduction and Notes
ee GEorGE WynpHam. Demy 8vo.' Buck-
ram, gilt top, 10s, 6d.
See also Arden Shakespeare, Standard
Library and Little Quarto Shakespeare.
A3
’
18
Sharp e Cr.
VICTORIAN POETS.
8ve. 2s.
Sharp (ecb), See Baring:Gould (S.).
Sharp (Elizabeth). See Little Books on Art.
lock ‘(J. 'S.) fae -PIANOFORTE
«SONATA. Cr. 8v0.. 5
Shelley. (Percy 'B.). Sea ‘Standard Library.
Sheppard (H. Po) M.A. See Baring-
Gould‘(S.).
Sierra (Arthas), M.A. LIFE IN WEST
em DON. : Fhird Edition. Cr. 8vo.
- as. 6
ant me Mary E. ) AN ENGLISH
ISTORY FOR CHILD-
REN RChith a Preface by the: Bishop of
Gibraltar. With Maps and Illustrations.
PartI. Cx. 8v0. 2s. 6d. net.
SichelL(Walter). See Oxford Biographies,
Sid pore Oe Alfred). HOME LIFE
IN ‘GERMANY, With 16 Illustrations.
Second indttion. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6a. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Sime (John). See Little Books on Art.
Simonson (G. A.). FRANCESCO
GUARDI. With 41 Plates. Lyferial
4to. £2, 25. net
Sketchiey (R. BE. D.).
Skipton (H. P. K.). See Little. Books, on
Sladen (Douglas). SICILY: The New
Winter Resort. With over 200 Illustrations.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo, 5s. net.
Saale yan), M.A, THE EARTH. An
Introduction 2 g PhySEETED DN: Illustrated.
Cr. Bue. 2s. 6
See Little Books on
Smaliwond i G. ). ae Little Books on |
Smedley OB See I. i :
Smith ( aa THe ‘WEALTH OF
NATIONS. ‘inditea with an Introduction
and, numerous Notes by Epwin Cannan,
M.A, Two volumes. Demy 8vq. 218. net.
Smith (H, Clifford). See Connoisseur’s
Lib: di
omtn jorace and James). See Little
ADrar’
Smith HH. B meee) M.A. A N EW
JUNIOR.ARILHMETIC. Crown 820.
Without Answers, 2s, With Answers, 2s. 6d.
Smith (R, Mudie). THOUGHTS FOR
DAY. Edited by. Feag. 8vo.
Z ve net.
smith (Nowell C.), See Werdeworty 'W).
ene oun Thomas), A BOO OR
Y DAY: Or, cease of the
nee a the Years 4766-1833. Edited by
oe ee ‘Illustrated. Wide
Demy 8vo, 125. 6d, n
Snell (F. J.). A BOOK OF EXMOOR.
Illustrated. Cv. 8ve.
Snowden ¢ E. ds A ANDY DIGEST OF
BRITISH, HISTORY. Demy 8v0. 4s. 6d.
Sophocles. See Classical Translations. | °
Sornet (L. A.) and Acatos (Mi. J.) See |
Junior School Books.
Suaen (B. Wilton), M.A, See Junior School
jooks
MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Southey (R.)} ENGLISH SEAMEN
Edited by Davin Hannay.
Vol. 1. (Howard, Clifford; , Hawkins;
Drake, Cavendish). Second Edition. Cn
8vo. 6s.
Vol. nm. (Richard Hawkins, Grenville,
Essex, and Raleigh). Cr. 8y0. 65.
See also Standard “Bee 8%
Spence (C. H.), M.A. See School Examina-
tion Series. it
aE pee Dykes),. M, A. . THE PAPER
A Descriptive and Historical
ca With Diagrams and Plans. Demy
8va, 2s. 6d. net.
Spooner (W. A.), M.A. See Leaders ot
Religion. .
Spragge (Ww. Horton), M.A. * See Junior
School Books.
Staley (EB cumbe).. THE GUILDS OF
FLORENCE. Illustrated. Second Edition.
* Royal 8vo. 6s, net.
Stanbridge (J. W.), B.D. See Library of
Devotion,
‘Stancliffe.’ eo DO'S AND DONT’ s.
Second Edition. Feap. 8vo. 15.
prena (D. W.).. See Gallaher (D.).
tedman (A.M. M.), M.A.
inne LATINA: Easy Lessons on Elemen-
ay Aceon Tenth Edition. Heep:
FIRST LATIN LESSONS, Eleventh Edi-
tion.
FIRST LATIN READER. | With Notes
adapted to the Shorter Latin Primer and
eee ales: Seventh Edition, 18910.
EASY. “SELECTIONS ‘FROM, CESAR.
ee Pi vesien War, Third dition.
EASY “SELECTIONS FROM LIVY. “The
ings of Rome, Second, Edition, 18m,
EASY’ ATIN PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN
a Twelfth Ea. .Fcap.
U0, 1s. 6
EXEMPLA LATINA, First Exercises
in Latin Accidence. ie Vocabulary.
Fourth Edition. Cr. 8vo.
EASY LATIN EXERCISES ON THE
SYNTAX OF THE SHORTER AND
REVISED LATIN PRIMER. With
Vocabulary. Twelfth and Cheaper Edition,
ea 8v0. a 6d. Original Edition. 28. 6d,
EY, 35.
THE LATIN COMPOUND SENTENCE
Rules and Exercises. Second’ Edition.
Cr. 8uo. 18. 6d. - eo aay 25 ¢
NOTANDA QUAEDA Miscellaneous
Latin Exercises'on Common Rules and
Idioms, Fifth Edition, Fcap. 8vo. 1s. 6d.
With Vocabulary. 2s, Key, 2s, net.
LATIN VOCABULARIES FOR REPE-
TITIONI: Arranged score i. Sebject
ace teenth Edition. Fa 6d. i
OCABULARY OF ATEN IDIOMS.
180. Fourth Edition, 15.
STEPS TO GREEK. Third Edition, ve-
vised, int, 8
GENERAL LITERATURE
A SHORTER GREEK PRIMER. Second
-Edition, Cr. 8vo. 15. 6d,
EASY GREEK PASSAGES FOR UNSEEN
s. TRANSLATION. Fourth Edition, re-
oft *VOCABULART
IES FOR RE-
PETITION. Arranged according to Sub-
jects. Fourth Edition, Heap. 8uo. 1s, 6d.
GREEK TESTAMENT ELECTIONS.
For the use of Schools, With Introduc-
tion, Notes, and Vocabulary. ' Fourth
“Edition. Feap. 8v0.. 2s. 6d.
eo £0 FRENCH. Eighth ‘Eiition,
FIRST FRENCH LESSONS. Eighth Edi-
tion, Cr. 800d. 15.
EASY FRENCH - PASSAGES FOR UN-
SEEN TRANSLATION: Sixth Edi-
tion. Fap. 8vo. 18.6
‘EASY FRENCH EXERCISES ON ELE-
' MENTARY SYNTAX. | With Vocabu-
_ lary. coe Edition. Cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
EY.
3s. 1
FRENCH VOCABULARIES FOR RE.
PETITION: Arranged according to Sub-,
ects. Thirteenth Edition. Feap. 8vo. is.
See also School Examination Series,
Steet (R. Elliott), aot F.C.S.. THE
ORLD OF SCIENCE, +-With 147
ienatione Second Edition. Cr. 8u0. 28. 6d.
See also School Examination Series. — .
Stephenson (C.), of the Technical College,
Bradford,
Yorkshire College, Leeds, XTBOOK
DEALING WITH ORNAMENTAL
DESIGN FOR WOVEN FABRICS. With
66 full-page Plates and numerous Diagrams
a the Text. Third Edition. Demy 8vo.
6d.
Stephenson. G ),
TRUTHS OF THE CHRISTIAN
FAITH. oe 8v0.'. 35.64,
Sterne (Laurence), ace Little Library.
Steuart (Katherine) BY ALLAN
WATER. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.~
RICHARD KENNOWAY AND HIS
FRIENDS. A Sequel we 5 BY Allan
Water.’ Demy 8vo. 75. 6d. 2
Stevenson Ln L.)
ROBER
His: FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
Selected and Edited by Sipney Co.vin.
Third Edition. 2vols. Cr. 8vo. 125.
“LibRaRY EDIrion. 2vols. Dent 8v0. 2a5s.net.
‘A Colonial Edition is also published.
VAILIMA LETTERS. With an Etched
Portrait by Witt1am STRANG.
Edition. Cr. 8ve. Buckram. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE LIFE OF R. L. STEVENSON. See
Balfour (G.).
Stevenson (M. I. .
TO THE Ee Being Letters
written by Mrs. I. STEVENSON during
1887-8. Cr. 8ud. a net.
A Colonial Edition‘is also published.
LETTERS FROM SAMOA, 1891-95. Edited
and arranged by M, C. Batrour With
and Suddard is (Fy of the.
‘MA. THE CHIEF:
THE URTTERS ‘OF.
LOUIS STEVENSON TO.
Sixth’
* |_| Tauler (J.).
FROM: SARANAC |
19
many Illustrations. Secotid Edition Cr
'8u0. 6s. net.
A Colonial Edition is ales published.
a (Anna iM.) See Oxford: Bio-
stikee “@. G.), B.A. HOURS “WITH
RABELAIS. From the translation of Sir
T. Urqunart and P. A. Motrevx. With
2 ee! in Photogravure. cr. ‘Bv0. 3S ode
Stone (Ss. I). : POEMS AND HYMNS.
With a Memoir by F. G. Everton,
M.A. With iva Cr. Bud. 65.-*
Storr (Vernon ete .A., Canon of Wih-
chester. DEVELOPMENT AND
DIVINE. PURPOSE Cr. Sua, 58. net.
Sry (Alfred T.). AMERICAN
SHRINES IN ENGLAND, Withmany
Illustrations, including two in Colour by
' A. R. Quinton. “Crown 8u0. 65. ee
See also Little Guides, :
Straker (F.). See Books on Business:
Biveane (A. W.), D. ‘Ds See Churchmani’s
ibh
Streatfeild fs A.). _MODERN MUSIC
AND SICIANS. With 24 Illustra-
en? roe Edition. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.
‘Stroud (Henry), D.Sc., M.A. ELEMEN.
“DARY PRACTICAL PHYSICS. - With
115 Diagrams, Second Edit., vevised. 4s. 6d.
Sturch (P.), Staff Instructor to ‘the Surre
Cous ty Counc, MANUAL TRAINING
DRAWING (WOODWORK). With
Solutions to Examination Questions, Ortho-
graphic, Isometric and:Oblique Projection.
i a a se Plates and 140 Figures, Foolscap.
Suldatds (P.).
Surtees (R. :
Sutherland @Winiam), OLD AGE PEN-
«. SIONS IN THEORY AND PRACTICE,
WITH SOME Foreicn EXAMELES. Cr. 8vo.
38. 6a. ae :
Symes (J. E.), M.A. THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION, Second Edition. Cr, 8vo.
2s. 6d.
Sympson (E. Mansel), M.A., M.D.
Ancient Cities.
Tahoe (Margaret £.). THE SAINTS IN
See epitepnertson (C.).
See
oe oe With 20 Illustrations. Feap. Bue.
s. 6d.
rei AGRICOLA. Edited by R. F.
Davis, M.A. cap. 8vo, 25.
GERMANIA. By the same Editor. Fcas.
8vo. 25.
See also Classical Translations. -
Tallack(W.).§ HOWARD LETTERS AND
MEMORIES. Demy 8vo. 105. 6d. neét.'
Tatham (Frederick). “See Blake (William).
See Library of Devotion.
Taylor (A. E.). THE ELEMENTS OF
METAPHYSICS, Demy 8wo. 105. 6d. et.
Taylor (F.G.), M.A. ‘See Commercial Series.
Taylor (I. a )» See Oxford eee
Taylor (John W.). THE COMING: OF
THE SAINTS. With 46° ‘Illustrations.
Demy v0. 75. 6d. net.
20
Taylor (T. M.), M.A., Fellow of poet
and ar Sones ences CON-
STITUTIONA OLITICAL
‘HISTORY OF "ROME, To the Reign of
Domitian. Cr. 8vo. 75, 6d.
Tenscetes Dene (G. "Fy. THE COM-
PL HOT. with ‘53 Illustrations.
: hid iden, Demy 8v0. x25. 6d. net..
\o =~ A Colonial Edition is Zale ublished.
Tennyson (Alfred, Lord). EARLY
.. POEMS. Edited, with Notes and an
Tateo duties. el Ze CuurToN Cotus,
M.A. Cr.
Inv MEMORIAM, “aun, AND THE
- PRINCESS. Edited by J. Cuurron
Couns, M.A. Cr. 8vo0.
See also Little Library.
Terry (C. S.). See Oxford Biographies.
.Thackeray (W. M.). See Little Library.
Theobald (F. V.), M.A. INSECT LIFE.
lustrated., Second Edition Revised. Cr.
Thivgudeant (A. Cc.). BONAPARTE AND
THE CONSULATE. Translated and
Edited by G. K. ForTESque, LL.D. With
12 Uinetrayooe Demy 8vo._ 10s. 6d. net.
Thompson (A. H.). See Little Guides.
Thom; ae (A. P.).
Tec
Tileston i Mary W ne DAILY STRENGTH
FOR DAILY NEEDS. Fourteenth Edi-
tion. Medium oe 2s. 6d. net. Also an
edition in superior binding, 6s. °
Tompkins (H. W.), F.R.H.S. See Little
Books on Art and Little Guides.
Townley thady Susan). MY. CHINESE
NOTE-BOOK With 16 Illustrations and
2 Maps. Third Ed. Demy 8vo. 105. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Tayntes (Paget), M.A., D.Litt. IN THE
FOOTPRINTS OF DANTE. A Trea-
. sury of Verse and Prose from the works of
Dante. Small-Cr. 8vo. fe 6d. net.
See also Oxford Biographies and Dante.
deepen (Herbert). DEIRDRE WEDDED
AND OTHER POEMS.. Second and
6s.
Reo Edition. Large Post 8vo. 6s.
NEW POEMS. Second Edition. Large
Post 8vo. 6s.
Trevelyan (G. M.), Fellow of Trinity College,
Cambridge. ENGLAND UNDER THE
STUARTS. With Mapsand Plans. Third
Edition. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net.
Troutbeck (G. Eo Se Little Guides,
Tyler (E. A.), B.A., F.C.S, See Junior
School Books,
Terran Gill en See Little Books
on Art, .
vangon mn ay THE COMPLETE
ith 63 Illustrations. Ninth
olin Demy 8vo. 105. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Vaughan (Henry). See Little Library.
Vaughan tectient M.), B.A. Ronee x THE
THE ROYAL STUARTS,
HENRY STUART, CARDINAL
DUKE OF YORK. With zo Illustrations.
Second Edition. Demy 8vo. 0s. 6d. net.
See Textbooks of.
MEsSRS.: METHUEN'S CATALOGUE
THE NAPLES RIVIERA. With 25 Ifus-
trations in Colour by Maurice GREIFFEN:
HAGEN. Cr, 8v0. ‘ 6s.
Yermus (Hon. W. Warren), M.A. READ-
NGS ON THEINFERNO OF DANTE.
With an Introduction by the Rev’ Dr.
Moore. Jn Two Volumes. Second Edition.
Cr. 8vo, 158. net.
READINGS ON THE PURGATORIO
OF DANTE. With an Introduction by
the late Dean Cuurcu. J Two Volumes.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 158. net.
Vigcsne EB... THROUGH EAST
NGLIA IN A MOTOR CAR. With
2 Hei in Colour by Frank Soutu-
GATE, R.B.A., anda Map. C» 8v0. 6s.
Voegelin (A.), M.A. See Junior Examina-
tion Series,
Waddell eat L. A.); LL.D.,C.B. LHASA
S MYSTERIES. Witha Record
oi ie ‘Bapelitien of 1903-1904. With 155
Illustrations and Maps. Third and
Cheaper Edition. Medium 8vo. 75. 6d. net.
Waste: ic RA D.D. OLD TESTAMENT
With Maps. Fifth Edition.
en ce Oe
Wade (G. W.), D.D., and Wade (J. H.),
M.A. See Little Guides.
Warner (Richard), RICHARD WAG-
NER’S MUSIC DRAMAS: Interpreta-
tions, embodying Wagner’s own explana-
tions. By Aticze LricHTron CLEATHER
and Basin Crump. Ja Three Volumes.
Feap 8v0. 28. 6d. each.
Vou, 1.—THE. RING oF THE NIBELUNG.
Third Edition.
Vou. 11.—PARSIFAL, LouENGRIN, and
Tur Hoty Grain.
Vou. 111.—TRIsTAN AND ISOLDE,
Walkley eS B.). DRAMA AND LIFE,
Cr. 8v0. 6s. Pe0s. >
Wall (J. C.). See Antiquary’s Books.
Wallace-Hadrill (P.), Second Master at
Herne Bay College. REVISION NOTES
ON ENGLISH HISTORY. Cr. 8v0. 15.
Walters (H. B.). See Little Books on Art
and Classics of Art.
Walton(F. W.). See School Histories.
waren (Izaak) and Cotton (Charles).
ee I,
Walton (Izaak). See Little Library.
Waterhouse (Elizabeth). WITH THE
SIMPLE-HEARTED: Little Homilies to
Women in Country Places. Second Edition.
Small Pott 8vo. 2s. net.
See also Little Librar: He
Watt (Francis). See ene nT F.).
Weatherhead.(T. C.), M.A. _EXAMINA-
TION PAPERS IN HORACE. Cr. 800. 2s.
See also Junior Examination Series. ++
oe (FP. C.). See Textbooks of Techno-
wel (Archibald), M.A. AN INTRO-
N TO THE HISTORY OF
MODERN EUROPE. Cv», 8vo. 6s.
Wells (Sidney H.) See Textbooks of Science.
GENERAL LITERATURE
Wells(J.),M.A., Te omsnd autos of Wadham
College. OXFORD AND OXFORD
‘LIFE. Third Ddition. “Cr .8u0, ) 38. 6s
‘A SHORT HISTORY OF ROME. : Eighth
dition. With 3 Maps. C7, 8vo. 35. 6d.
ti! See also Little Guides,
Wesle: (John), See Library of Devotion.
Wheldon (F, oe A LITTLE BROTHER
i: TO:THE BIRDS. The life-story of St.
Francis retold for children, With: 15 Illus-
trations, 7 of which. sey AL HB. Bucx-
LAND. Large Cr. 8vo0.
Whibley (C., See’ Henley “Ww. BE).
Whibley (L.), M.A., Fellow. of’ Pembroke
College, Cambridge. GREEK OLIGAR-
CHIES: , THEIR: ORGANISATION
AND CHARACTER. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
WHREe (G. H.), M.A. See Churchman’s
white Gilbert). See Standard Library.
Wialetiela (E. E.), M.A. See Commercial
Ser:
Whitehend (A. W.). GASPARD ‘DE
COLIGNY, ApmiraL oF FRANCE.
With Ti etrstiens and Plans. Demy 8vo.
12s. 6d. 26:
Whiteley R Lloyd), F.1.C., Principal of
the Municipal Science School, West Brom-
wich, A ELEMENTARY TEXT-
BOOK OF INORGANIC CHEMISTRY.
Cr. Bua. 25. 6a.
Whitley (Miss). See Dilke (Lady).
Whitling (Miss L.), late Staff ies ot
the National Training School of Cookery.
‘THE COMPLETE COOK. With 42
Illustrations. . Demy 8vo, 75. 6d. net.
A Colonial edition i is also published.
Whitten ea See Smith (John Thomas).
Whyte(A. G.), B.Sc. See Books on Business.
Wiliepicece (Wilfrid). See Little Books
on Art,
Wilde (Oscar),
Eleventh Edition, .Cr. 8v0.. 58. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE WORKS.
A ae Edition. Demy 8vo. ‘
Ss. 6d. net each volume.
ae DUCHESS OF PADUA: A Play.
OEMS.
INTENTI pis and THE SOUL OF MAN.
s. A, ae OM A FLORENTINE TRA-
GEDY,_ and VERA; or, THE
NIHILISTS.
LADY ee $ FAN: A Play
about a Good Wom
A Coes OF "NO IMPORTANCE:
AN’ IDEAL HUSBAND: A Play.
THE IMPORTANCE OF. BEING EAR-
NEST; | A Trivial’ Comedy for Serious
gre le.
HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES, THE
A POPES PRINCE, and OTHER TALES.
LoEs ARTHUR SAVILE’S CRIME and
OTHER PROSE PIECES.
DE PROFUNDIS.
Wilkins (W. H.), B.A. THE ALIEN
INVASION. Cy. 8v0. 2s. 6d.
DE PROFUNDIS.
21
PETROL PETER: or
Pictures. IIus-
. Mitus.. Demy
Williams (A.).
Pretty Stories and Funn
trated in- Colour by A,
4to. 38. 6d. net.
Williamson (M. G.)., “M. A,
Cities. ;
Williamson (W.), B.A. : See Junior Ex-
amination Series, Junior School Books, and
Beginner's Books.
Wilmot-Buxton ia M.). MAKERS OF
EURCPE. Outlines of European. History
for the Middle Forms of Schools. With 12
Maps. Winth Edition. Cr. 800. 35. 6d.
THE ANCIENT WORLD. With Maps and
Illustrations. Cr.8vo. 38. 6d.
A BOOK OF NOBLE WOMEN. With
16 Illustrations. Cv. 8vo. 35. 6d.
A HISTORY. OF GREAT BRITAIN:
FROM THE COMING OF THE ANGLES TO
THE YEAR 1870. With 20 Maps. Cr. 8vo.
35. 6a. .
See also Beginner's Books.
Wilson(Bishop.). See Library of Devotion.
Wilson(A. J.). See Books on Business.
Wilson (H. A.). See Books on Business.
Wilton (J. A.) See Simplified French
exts.
Wilton peiehard)s M.A. LYRA PAS-
LIS: Songs of Nature, Church, and
Home Pott 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Winbolt (S. E.), M.A. EXERCISES IN
LATIN: ACCIDENCE. Cvz,.8vo. 1s, 6d.
LATIN HEXAMETER VERSE: An Aid
to Compositions, Cr, 8v0. 35. 6d, Kev,
5s. net.
Windle (B.: Cc. A.) D.Sc. JF R.S., F.S.A. See
Antiquary’s Books, Little Guides, Ancient
Cities, and School Histories.
Winterbotham, (Canon), M.A., B.Sc,
LL.B. See Churchman’ a Tae ,
Wood (Sir Pee a - ,G.C.B.,
G.C.M.G... FROM MIDSHIPMAN TO
FIELD-MARSHAL, With Illustrations,
-and 29 Maps: | #i/th'and Cheaper Edition.
Demy 8vo, 78. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
Wood or A. -E.). See ceetbrels of
Technolo
Wood (J. Hickory). DAN LENO. Ilus-
trated.. Third Edition. Cr. 8va. 6s.
A Colonial Edition is also published. .
Wood (W. Birkbeck), M.A., late Scholar of
Worcester Corea OMe, and Edmonds
(Major J. E.), R
HISTORY OF Tae ivi "WAR IN
“THE UNITED STATES. ‘' With an
Introduction by H. Spenser Wireinson.
With 24 Maps and Plans. Second Edition.
Demy 8v0, “12s. 6d: net.
Wordsworth (Christopher), M.A. See
Antiquary’s Books,
Wordsworth (W.)- THE POEMS OF.
With an Introduction. and Notes’: by
Nowett C, Smirtn, late Fellow of New
aa es oe ae Three Volumes.
POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.
Selected with an Introduction by Sroprorp
See Ancient
22
A. Brooxg. With 4o Illustrations by E.
New, including a Frontispiece in
. Phetogravure. : Cr. Bv0. 75. 6d. net.
See also Little Library.
Weer (W.) and d Coleridge (s. T.).
See Little Library.
ware (Arthur), D.D., Fellow of. Ousent s
lege, Cambridge. See Charchman’s
Library.
weight (C. Gordon)... ‘See Dante.
Wright.(J. C.). TO-DAY. Thoughts on
Life for every day. Demzy 16100. 18. 6d. net.
Went (Sophie). GERMAN VOCABU-
LARIES FOR REPETITION. Fcaf. 8vo
6d,
Wyatt (Kate M.). See Gloag (M. R.).
Wylde (A. B.). MODERN ABYSSINIA.
With a Map and a Portrait. Demy 8vo.
15s. wet.
wyilie (M. A.) NORWAY AND_ ITS
pon De With x6 Illustrations, in Colour
by W. L. Wyuue, R.A.,-and 17 other
. Illustrations. Crow 8vo. 6s. ~
A Colonial Edition i is also published.
MEsSsRS. .METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
ane (George). See Shakespeare
ilkiam)
yon on (3) and Prance (G.), THE LAND
BLACK AOE EEN ae
SE Cr. 8v0. 2s.
Yeats (W. B.) A BOOK: Or “TRISH
RSE. ia ates and Enlarged Edition.
Ee Bua. 38.
Yous Gruden), THE COMPLET E
RIST. With. 138 Illustrations.
New Buition (Seventh), with many addi-
tions, Demy. 8vo. 128. 6d. net.
A Colonial Edition is also published.
THE JOY OF THE ROAD: An Apprecia-
tion of the Motor Car. With a Frontis-
piece in a Small Deny 8vo.
58. ed.
Youn; ag Ne THE: AMERICAN
TON INDUSTRY: A Study of
Work and Workers. Cr. 8v0. Cloth, 2s. 6d. ;
. paper boards, 1s. 6d.
Zimmern aise ‘onia). WHAT DO WE
‘KNOW CONCERNING -ELECTRI-
CITY? Feap. Bvo. 15. 6d. net.
Ancient Cities
General Editor, B. C. A. WINDLE, -D.Sc., F.R.S.
Cr, 8v0.
Cones, By B.C. e Windle, D.Sc. F.R.S.
Illustrated by E. H. New. -
SHREwsBurRY. By T. Auden, M.A., F.S.A.
Illustrated bys Katharine M. Roberts, -
Cantersury. By J.C. Cox, LL.D., ‘F.S.A.
Illustrated by B C. Boulter. °
Epinsurcu, By M. G. Williamson, M.A.
Illustrated by | Herbert Railton.
4s. 6d. net.
Lincoty, By E. Mansel Sympson, M.Aw
M.D. Illustrated by E. H. New.
Bristou. . By Alfred Harvey, M. B, , Mlus-
trated by E. H. New.
Say ByS. A. O. Fitzpatrick. diiteeened
by W.C, Green.
The Antiquary’s Books
General Editor, J. CHARLES COX, LL.D., F.S,A.
Demy 8vo.
EncutsH Monastic Lire. By the Right
Rev. Abbot Gasquet, O.S.B. Illustrated.
Third Edition. :
REMAINS OF THE PREHISTORIC AGE IN
Eneranp. By B. C. A. Windle, D.Sc.,
F.R.S. With numerous Illustrations and
Plans.
Ox.v Service , Booxs oF THE ENGLISH
CuurcH. y - Christopher Wordsworth,
M.A., and "ieee Littlehales. | With
Coloured and other Illustrations.
Ceitic ArT IN PaGAN AND CHRISTIAN |
Times. By J... Romilly Allen, F.S.A.
With numerous Illustrations and Plans.
ARCHAOLOGY AND Fase - ANTIQUITIES.
By R. Munro, LL.D. Illustrated.
Surines oF British Saints. By J.C. Wall.
With numerous IIlustrations and Plans.
Tue Rovat Forests or ENcLtanpD. By J.
C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A. Illustrated.
| ENGLISH SEALS.
7s. 6d. net.
Tue Manor anp_ Mawnortat REcorps.
By Nathaniel J. oes Illustrated. ~
By J. Harvey Bloom.
Tllustrated. ° oe ea
Tue: Betts or ENGLAND. By Canon J. J.
‘Raven, D.D., F.S.A. With Illustrations.
Second Edition,
ParisH LirE In MEpI&vAL ENGLAND. By
the Right Rev. Abbott Gasquet, O.S.B.
With many Ilhistrations:' Second "Edition.
Tue Domespay Inquest. By Adolphus *
Ballard, B.A., LL.B. With a ftistrattons
Te BRASSES OF ENGLAND. By Herbert
‘W. Macklin, M.A. With many Illustrations.
Second Edition.
EnctisH Cuurcu Furniture. By J.C. Cox,
LL.D., F.S.A., and A. Harvey, M.B.
Second Edition.
Fork-Lore As AN Historicar Science. By
. Gomme. With many Illustrations.
*ENGLIsH CosTUME. By George Clinch, F.G.S.
With many Illustrations.
GENERAL LITERATURE 23
The Arden Shakespeare
Demy 800. 25. 6d. net each volume. -
An edition of Shakespeare in single Plays. Edited with a full Introduction, Textual
Notes, and a, Commentary at the foot'of the page.
‘* ue 1 +
Haver. Edited by Edward Dowden. ‘| MgasurE FoR MEasureE, Edited by H. CG
‘RoMEO AND JuLIET. Edited by Edward]° Hart. — BA ba.
Dowden. a8 Be i Twe.rtTH Nicur. Edited by Moreton Luce.
Kine Lear. Edited by W. J. Craig. THe MeErcHANT oF VENICE. Edited by
Jutius Cazsar. Edited by M. Macmillan, _} C. Knox)Pooler.
- Tue TEMPEsT. , Edited by Moreton Luce. TrotLus: aND CRESSIDA. Edited by K.
OTHELLO. Edited by, H. C.- Hart. Deighton. . -
Tirvs AnDRonicus. Edited by H. B. Bail- | Taz Two GENTLEMEN OF Verona. Edited
don. f : by R. Warwick Bond.
CyMBELINE. Edited by Edward Dowden. ANTONY. AND. CLEOPATRA. | Edited by-R, H.
Tue Merry Wives or Winpsor. . Edited by Case,
H.C. Hart. | __. | Love’s Lazour’s Lost. Edited by. H. C.
A Mipsummer Nicut's Dream. Edited by Hart. . ied ‘
H. Cuningham. & Pericies. Edited by K. Deighton.
Kine Henry V. Edited by H. A. Evans. Kine Ricuarp ui. Edited by A. H.
AtL’s WELL Tuat Enps WELL. Edited by Thonipson. ° wr ae ies
W. O. Brigstocke. ~~ Tue Lire anp Deatu or Kine Joun. Edited
Tue TAMING OF THE SHREW. Edited by by Ivor B.-John.
R. Warwick Bond. Tue Comepy or Errors. Edited by Henry
Timon oF ATHENS. Edited by K. Deighton. Cuningham. ao .
_. The Beginner’s Books
Edited by W. WILLIAMSON, B.A,
Easy Frencu Ruymes. By Henri Blouet. | Easy Exercises iN ARITHMETIC, _ Arranged
Second'Edition. Mlustrated. Feag. 8vo. 15. by W. S. Beard. Third Edition. Feap.
Easy Srorizs From ENGLISH History. B: 8ve, Without Answers, 1s, With Answers.
E. M. Wilmot-Buxton. Fourth Edition. 1s. 3a. ; Re sesh ee i
, Cr, 80. 1s. Easy DicraTion anp SpELLinG. By W.
SrokJES From Roman History. , By E. NM. |: Williamson, B.A. Sixth Ed. Feap. 8vo. 18.
Wilmot-Buxton Cr. 8v0.. 1s. 64. An Easy Porrry Book. , Selected and
A First History or Greece. By E. E, Firth. ‘arranged by W. Williamson, B.A. Second
Cr, 800, xs. 6d. Edition. Cr. 8v0. 15.
Books on Business
“Cr. 8v0. 28. 6d. met,
Ports anp Docks. By Douglas Owen. Tue AvutTomosiLE Inpustry. By G. de
Raitwavs. By E. R. McDermott. : Holden-Stone.: ,
Tue Stock Excuance. By Chas. Duguid. | Mininc AND Mininc Investments. By
. Second Edition. =. _ . ' ©A, Moil.’: :
Tue Business or Insurance. .By A. J. | THe Business or ADVERTISING. By Clarence
Wilson. G. Moran, Barrister-at-Law. Illustrated.
Tue Exvectricat’ Inpustry: Licutinc, | Trape Unions.. By G. Drage. ;
TRACTION, AND Power. By A. G. Whyte, | Civi, ENGINEERING. e By T. Claxton Fidler,
- BSe. . rar ‘M.Inst. C.E. - Illustrated.
Tue Suirevicpine .Lnpustry: Its History, | THe Iron Trape or Great Briram. By
Practice, Science, and Finance. By David J. Stephen Jeans. Illustrated.
Pollock, M.1.N.A. , Monopor.ims, Trusts, AND KarTELis. By
Tue Money Market. By F. Straker. ~_ F. W. Hirst.
Tue Business Sipe oF AGRICULTURE. By | THE Cotron InpustryY anp Traps. By
A..G. L. Rogers, M.A. ; | Prof. S. J..Chapman, Dean of the Faculty.
Law In BUSINESS. By H. A. Wilson. ' of Commerce in the University’ of Man-
Tue Brewinc INpustry. By Julian L. chester. Illustrated.
Baker, F.I.C., F C.S. Illustrated.
24
MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Byzantine Texts
Edited by J. B. BURY, M.A., Litt.D,
Tuer Syrrac CHRONICLE KNOWN AS THAT OF
ZACHARIAH OF MiTyLENE. ‘Translated by
F. J. Hamilton, D.D., and E, W. Brooks.
Tue History or Psgerius. Edited by C.
. Sathas. Demy 8vo, 155. net.
| Ectuesis CHRONICA AND CHRONICON ATHEN-
Demy 8vo. 125. 6d. net. arum. Edited by Professor S. P, Lambros,
i : Demy 8vo. 78. 6d. net, f :
Evacrius. Edited by L. Bidez and Léon | THe CuronicLe or Morza. Edited by John
Parmentier. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net. Schmitt. Demy 8vo. 155. net. t
The Churchman’s Bible
General Editor, J. H. BURN, B.D., F.R.S.E.
Feap. 8vo. 1s. 6d. net each.
Tue EpisTLe or St. Pau THE APOSTLE TO
THE GALATIANS. Explained by A. W.
Robinson, M.A. Second Edition.
cL eS Agnes Explained by A. W. Streane,
Tue Epistre or St. Pavt THE AposTLE TO
THE Puiurprians. Explained by C, R, D.
Biggs, D.D. Second Edition.
Tue Epistie or St. James.’ Explained by
H. W. Fulford M.A.
IsaraH. Explained by W. E. Barnes, D.D.
0 Volumes. With Map. 2s. net each.
TuE EPisTLe or St. Paut THE APOSTLE TO
THE EPHESIANS. Explained by G. H. Whita-
ker, M.A. ;
Tue GosPEL Actorpinc To St. Marx.
Explained by J.’ C. Du Buisson, M.A.
2s. 6d. net,
Tue Epistte oF Pauli, THE APOSTLE TO
THE COLOSSIANS AND PuiremMon. Ex-
plained by H. J. C. Knight. 2s. net.
The Churchman’s Library
General Editor, J. H.
Crown 8vo,
Tue BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY.
By W. E. Collins, M.A. With Map.
Tue Kinepom or Heaven Here AnD HERE-
AFTER. By Canon Winterbotham, M.A.,
B.Sc., LL.B. . ;
Tue WorkMANSHIP OF THE PraAyeR Book:
Its Literary and Liturgical Aspects. By J.
Dowden, D.D. Second Edition, Revised
and Enlarged.
BURN, B.D., F.R.S.E,
35. 6d. each,
Evotution. By F. B. Jevons, M.A,, Litt.D.
Some New TrsTaAMENT PROBLEMS. By
Arthur Wright, D.D. 6s.
Tue Cuurcuman’s INTRODUCTION TO THE
Ovp Testament. By A. M. Mackay, B.A.
Third Edition.
Comparative THEOLOGY.
By J. A. Mac
Culloch. | 6s. es me
Classical Translations
Crown 8vo.
Escuy_us—The Oresteian Trilogy (Agamem-
non, Choe pares Eumenides),
by Lewis Campbell, LL.D. 5s.
Cickro—De Oratore I. Translated by E. N.
P. Moor, M.A. . Second Edition. 35. 6d.
Cicero—The Speeches against Cataline and
Antony and for Murena and Milo.
lated by H. E. D. Blakiston, M.A.
Ciczro—De Natura Deorum,
F. Brooks, M.A. 3
Cicrro—De Officiis.
Gardiner, M.A,
58.
Translated by
Se Od.
Translated by G. B.
2s. 6d. .-
4 .
Translated |
Trans- |’
Horace—The Odes and Epodes. Translated
by A. D. Godley, M.A. 2s.
Luctan—Six Dialogues Translated by S. T.
Irwin, M.A. 38,62,
SopHocies—Ajax and Electra,
.E. D. Morshead, M.A. 2s.
Tacitus—Agricola and Germania. Trans-
lated by R, B. Townshend. 2s. 6a.
Juvenat—Thirteen Satires. Translated by
S. G. Owen, M.A. 25. 6d.
Translated by
6d,
Classics of Art
Edited by Dr. J.
Tue ART OF THE GREEKS. By H. B. Walters.
With 112 Plates and 18 Illustrations in the
Text. Wide Royal 8vo, tes. 6d. net.
H. W. LAING
VELAzQuUEZ. By A. de Beruete. With 94
Plates, Wide Royal 8vo, 195. 6d. net.
GENERAL LITERATURE
25
Commercial Series
Crown 8v0.
British COMMERCE AND Cotonizs rrom
ELIZABETH To VicToRIA. By H. de B.
Gibbins, Litt.D., M.A. Third Edition. 2s.
Commenctat Examination Papers. By H.
de B. Gibbins, Litt.D:, M:A. 1s. 6d. a
Tie Economics oF Commence, By H. de
B. Gibbins, Litt.D., M. A, Second ‘Edition.
1s. 6d."
A ‘German CommeEnctaL READER.
Bally. With Vocabulary. 2s.
A CoMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE BRITISH
Empire. By L. W. Lyde, M.A. Sixth
kidition. 28. °- “
A CommeErciaL GEOGRAPHY’ oF FOREIGN
Nations. ByF. Cc. Boon, B.A. 2s. -
A_ PRIMER oF Business. | By s. Jackson,
py Fourth Edition. 1s. 6d.
By S. E.
A SuorT CommeErcrat ARITHMETIC. ‘ By F
G. Taylor, M.A. Fourth Edition. xs. 6d.
FrencH CoMMERCIAL CoRRESPONDENCE. By
S. E. Bally. With Vocabulary. ~ Third
Edition, 25.
GERMAN ComMERCIAL CorREsPoNDENCE. By
S. E. Bally. With’ Vocabulary. _ Second
Edition. 2s, 6d.
A Frencw ComMerciaL READER. ByS. E.
‘Bally. With Vocabulary. Second Edition. 2s.
Precis WRITING AND OFFICE CORRESPOND-
' gENcE. By E. E. Whitfield, M.A. Second
‘Edition. 2s. :
A’ Entrance Guipe To PROFESSIONS AND
Business. By H. Jones. ts. 6d.
Tue PRINCIPLES OF BooK-KEEPING BY DoUBLE
Entry. By J. E. B. M‘Allen, M.A. 2s.
CommerciaL Law. By W. Douglas Edwards.
Second Edition. 2s.
The Connoisseur’s Library
Wide Royal 8vo. 255. net.
MEzzaTiINts.. ‘By Cyril Davenport. With’ 40 | Evrorpean ENAMELS.. ‘ By Henry H. ise:
’ Plates in ' Photogravure. hame, With 54 Plates in Collotype
PorceLain, - By Edward Dillon. With 19 and Half-tone and 4 Plates in Colour.
Plates in Colour, 20 in Collotype, and sin
Photogravure,
Miniatures. By Dudley Heath. With 9
. Plates in Colour, 15 in Collotype, and is in
Photogravure. *
Ivortzs. By A, Maskell. With 8 Plates in
Collotype and Photogravure.
EncuisH Furniture. By F. S. Robinson.
With 160 Plates in Collotype and one in
- Photogravure. Second Edition.
Encusx CoLourep’ Booxs. By Martin
Hardie. With 28 Illustrations 1 in Colour
and Collotype.
GoLpsMITHs' AND SILVERSMITHS’ Work. By
Nelson Dawson. With many Plates in
Collotype and a Frontispiece in Photo-
gravure. Second Edition.
Grass, By Edward Dillon. With 37 Illus-
trations in Collotype and 12 in Colour.
Seats. “By Walter de Gray Birch. With 52
Illustrations in Collotype and a Frontispiece
in Photogravure. -
Jewe.iery. By H. Clifford Smith. With 50
’ Tilustrations in Collotype, and 4 in Colour.
The Tllustrated Pocket Library of Plain and Coloured Books
Frap 8vo.
35. 6d. net cach volume:
COLOURED BOOKS
Oup ‘CoLourep Booxs. By George Paston.
With 16 Coloured Plates. Feap. 8vo. 2s. net.
oe Lire anv Deatu oF Joun Myrron, Esq.
ay Nimrod. With 18° Coloured Plates by
enry Alken and T. J. Rawlins. Fourth
Edition. i :
Tue Lire of A SporrsMan. By Nimrod.
With 35 Coloured Plates by Henry Alken.
Hanotey Cross. By R. S. Surtees. With
17 Coloured Plates Sua 106 Woodcuts in the
Text by John Leech: Second Edition.
Mr. Sronge’'s Sportinc Tour. By R. S
urtees.” With 1% Coloured Plates and go
codcuts in the Text by John Leech.
jouecs Jaunts anp Jouuitizs. ByR. 5.
Surtees. With 15 Coloured Plates by H.
Alken. Second Edition.
Ask Mamma. By R. S. Surtees. With 13
Coloured Plates and 7o Woodcuts in the
Text by John Leech,
Tue ANALYsIs oF THE HUNTING Fievp. By
R. S. Surtees. With 7 Coloured Plates by
Henry Alken, and 43 Illustrations on Wood.
Tue Tour or Dr. Syntax 1n SEARCH OF
tHE Picturesque ‘By William Combe.
With 30 Coloured Plates by T. Rowlandson.
Tue Tour or Doctor Syntax In SEARCH
or ‘ConsoLtaTion. By William Combe.
With 24 Coloured Plates by T. Rowlandson.
| TH Tuirp Tour or Doctor Syntax IN
SEARCH OF A Wire. By William Combe.
With 24 Coloured Plates by T. Rowlandson.
Tue History or Jounny Quake Genus: the
Little Foundling of the late Dr. Syntax.
By the Author of ‘The Three Tours.” With
24 Coloured Plates by Rowlandson.°
Tue EnciisH Dance or Death, from'the
Designs of T. Rowlandson, with Metrical
Illustrations by the Author of ‘Doctar
Sy ntax.”’ Two Volumes.
This book contains 76 Coloured Plates.
[Comtinued,
26
Messrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
ILLusTRATED Pocket Lisrary OF PLAIN AND CoLourED Books—continued.
THe Dance or Lire: A Poem. By the Author
of' ‘Doctor ‘Syntax.’ flustratéd with 26
Coloured Engravings by ‘I. Rowlandson.
Lirg 1n Lonpon: or, the Day and Night
Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his
Elegant Friend, Corinthian, Tom. sy
Pierce Egan. With 36 Coloured Plates by
I, R. and G. Cruikshank. With numerous
Designs on Wood. , : :
Reat Lire 1n Lonpon:, or, the Rambles
and Adventures of Bob Tallyho, Esq,, and
his Cousin, The Hon. Tom Dashall. By an
Amateur (Pierce Egan). With 31 Coloured
Plates by Alken and Rowlandson, etc.
Two Volumes. | i .
Tue Lire or AN Actor. By Pierce Egan.
With 27 Coloured Plates by Theodore Lane,
and several Designs on Wood. -- |
Tue Vicar of WAKEFIELD. By Oliver Gold-
smith. With 24 Coloured Plates by T. Row-
landson.
Tue Miiitary ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY
‘Newcome. By an Officer, With 15 Coloured
Plates by T. Rowlandson. ©
Tue Nationar Sports or GREAT BRITAIN.
With Descriptions and 50 Coloured Plates |
_ by Henry Alken,
THE ADVENTURES OF A Post Captain. By
Naval Officer. With 24 Coloured Plates
by Mr. Williams.
PLAIN
Tue Grave: A Poem. By Robert Blair.
IJustrated by 12 Etchings executed by Louis
Schiavonetti from the original Inventions of
William Blake. With an Engraved Title Page
and a Portrait of Blake by T. Phillips, R.A.
The illustrations are reproduced in photo-.
gravure.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE Book or Jos.
vented and engraved by William Blake.
These famous Illustrations—21 in number
—are reproduced in photogravure.
fEsor’s FABLES. ith 380 Woodcuts by
homas Bewick. ,
Winpsor Castz, By W. Harrison Ainsworth.
With 22 Plates and 87 Woodcuts in the Text
by George Cruikshank.
In-
1 THe Compleat ANGLER.
Gamonta: or the Art of Preserving Game ;
and an Improved Method of making Planta-
tions and Coyers, explained and illustrated
by Lawrence Rawstorne, Esq. With 15
Coloured Plates by T. Rawlins. :
An AcApEMyY FoR Grown Horsemen: Con-
taining the completest Instructions. for
Walking, Trotting, Cantering, Galloping,
Stumbling, and Tumbling. Ilustrated with
27 Coloured Plates, and adocned with a
Portrait of the Author. By Geoffrey
Gambado, a
Rear Lire 1n [Revanp, or, the Day and
Night Scenes of Brian Boru, eps his
Elegant Friend, Sir Shawn O’Dogherty.
By a Real Paddy... With 19 Coloured Plates
by Heath, Marks, etc.
Tun ADVENTURES OF JounNy_NEwcomE IN
THE Navy. By Alfred Burton. With 16
Coloured Plates by T. Rowlandson. :
Tue Otp Encuisu Squire: A Poem. By
ohn Cateless, Esq. With 20 Coloured
lates after the style of T. Rowlandson.
Tue Encuisa Spy. By Bernard Black-
mantle. An original Work, Characteristic, |
Satirical, Humorous, comprising scenes and -
sketches in every Rank of Society, being
Portraits of the Iilustrious, Eminent, Eccen-
tric, and Notorious. With 72 Coloured
‘Plates by R. CrurksHANK, and “many ©
Illustrations on wood. Two Volumes.
qs. net, ‘i
BOOKS y
Tue Tower oF Lonpon. By W. Harrison
Ainsworth. With 4o Plates and 58 Woodcuts
in the Text by George Cruikshank.
Frank Farriecu. By F. E. Smedley. With
30 Plates by George Cruikshank.
Hanpy Anpy. By Samuel ‘Lover. With 24
Illustrations by the Author.
By Izaak Walton
and Charles Cotton. With 14 Plates and 77
Woodcuts in the Text.
Tue Pickwick Papers. By Charles Dickens.
With the 43 Illustrations by Seymour and
Phiz, the two Buss Plates, and the 32 Con-
temporary Onwhyn Plates,
Junior Examination Series
_Edited by A. M. M. STEDMAN, M.A. Fea. 8v0. 15.
Junior Frencu Examination Papers. By
» Jacob, M.A. Second Edition.
Junior ENGiisH EXAMINATION Papers. By
W. Williamson, B.A.
Junior ARITHMETIC EXAMINATION PAPERS.
- By W.S. Beard. Fourth Edition.
Junior ALGEBRA EXAMINATION Papers. By
S. W Finn, M.A,
Junior GrEEx EXAMINATION Papers. By T.
C. Weatherhead, M.A. Kev, 3s. 6d. ned.
Junior Latin EXAMINATION PAPERS,
Junior GENERAL
ByC.
Key,
InrorMaTION EXAMINA-
By W. S. Beard. Key,
G. Botting, B.A. Fifth Edition.
35. 6d. met. ©
TION PAaPERs.
3s. 6d. net.
Junior GzocrapHy ExaMINATION PAPERS.
By W. G. Baker,
Junior German EXAMINATION Papers. By
A. Voegelin, M.A.
GENERAL LITERATURE
Methuen’s Junior School-Books
Edited by O. D, INSKIP, LL.D.
A Crass-Book or Dicration Passaces. B
_W. Williamson, B.A. Fourteenth Edition.
. ee 80. oe
HE GospeL AccorvinG ‘ro St. Matruew.
Edited by E. Wilton South, M.A. With
.Three Maps. Cr. 8va. ° 1s. 6d.
Tue GosPEt AccorDINGTOSt. Mark. Edited
A. E. Rabie, D:D. With Three. Maps.
Cr. 8v0. 15. 6d.. ‘
A Junior Encuisu Grammar. By W. William-
# son, B.A. With numerous passages for parsing
arid analysis, and a chapter on Essay Writing.
Fourth Edition. Cr. 8ud. 2s.
A Junior Cuemistry. By KE. A. Tyler, B.A.,
» . FES, With-78 Illustrations. /ourth Edi-
tion. .Cr. 8v0. 25. 6d. :
Tue Acts or THE AposTLEs. Edited by
A, E. Rubie, D.D. | Cx 80. 2s.
A Junior French Grammar. By L, A.
Sornet and M. J. Acatos. Second Edition.
_ Cr. 800. 25. ne
ELEMENTARY EXPERIMENTAL Science. Puy-
sics by W. T. Clough, A.R.C.S., CHEMISTRY
by A. E. Dunstan, B.Sc. With 2 Plates and
27
, and W. WILLIAMSON, B.A.
154 Diagrams. Sixth Edition. Cr. 8vo.
2s. 6d.
A Junior Gzomerry. -By Noel S. Lydon.
ith 276 Diagrams. Sixth Edition. Cr.
8vo. ‘25. sa
ELEMENTARY, EXPERIMENTAL CHEMISTRY.
By A. E. Dunstan, B.Sc. With4 Plates and
1og Diagrams. Second Edition revised.
Cr. 8v0. 25.
A Junior Frencu Prose. By R. R.N.
‘Baron, M.A. Third Edition. Cr.8vo. 25.
THE Gosret AccorbDinG To St. Luxz. With
an Introduction and Notes by William
Williamson, B.A. With Three Maps. C7.
8v0. 25.
Tux First Boox or Kincs. Edited by A. E.
Rusiz, D.D. With Maps. Cr. 8ve. 25.
A Junior Greek History. By W. H.
Spragge, M.A. With 4 Illustrations and 5
Mare Cr. 8vo. 28. 6d. .. Rasen
A Scuoot Latin Grammar. By H. G. Ford,
A. Cr. 8v0. 25. 6d, ° S, ;
A Junior Latin Prosz. By H. N. Asman,
M.A., B.D. Cr. 8v0. 2s. 6d.
Leaders of Religion
Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A., Canon of Westminster.
Cr. 8voa,
CarpinaL Newman. By R. H. Hutton.
OHN Wes.Lzy. By J. H. Overton, M.A.
SHOP WILBERFORCE. By G, W. Daniell,
CarpvinaL Manninc. By A, W. Hutton, M.A.
Cuarves Simgon. By H.C. G. Moule, D.D.
Joun Knox. ByF.MacCunn. Second Edition.
Joun Howe. By R..F. Horton, D.D.. -
Tuomas Ken. By F. A. Clarke, M.A. —
Gerorce Fox; THE Quaker. By T. Hodgkin,
D.C.L. Third Edition. a
Joun Kesre. By Walter Lock,.D.D.
With Portraits.
2s. net,
Tuomas CHALMERS.
LanceLtor ANpREWEs. By R. L. Ottley,
D.D. Second Edition. si te eck
AuGusTine oF CANTERBURY. : By E. L.
Cutts, D.D. :
By W. H.-Hutton, M.A.
By Mrs. Oliphant.
Wituiam Laup.
Third Edition. :
po Donne. By Augustus Jessopp, D.D. -
HomMas CRANMER. By A. J. Mason, D.D.
By R. M. Carlyle and A.
By W. A. Spooner, M.A.
Bisnop LATIMER.
J. Carlyle, M.A.
BisHop BuTLeErR.
The Library of Devotion
With Introductions and (where necessary) Notes.
Small Pott 8vo, cloth, 2s. ; leather, 2s. 6a. net.
Tue Conressions or St. AuGustine. Edited
by C. Bigg, D.D. Sixth Edition.
Tue Imiration oF CurlisT: called also the
Ecclesiastical Music. Edited by C. Bigg,
DD. Fifth Edition.
Tue CurisTiaAn: YEAR. Edited by Walter
Lock, D.D. Fourth Edition. oa
Lyra Innocentium. _ Edited by Walter
Lock, D,D. Second Edition. fs
Tue Tempte. Edited by E. C. §, Gibson,
D.D. Second Edition.
A Boox-or Devotions. Edited by J. W.
Stanbridge. B.D. Second Edition.
A Serious Catt To A Devour anp Hoty
‘Lire. Edited by C. Bigg, D.D. Fourth Ed.
A Guipg. To ETERNITY. Edited by J. W.
Stanbridge, B.D.
Tue Inner, Way. By J. Tauler. Edited by
A. W. Hutton, M.A.
On tHE Love or Gop. By St. Francis de
Sales. Edited by W. J. Knox-Little, M.A.
Tue Psatms or Davin. Edited by B. W.
Randolph, D.D. :
Lyra Apostorica, ‘By Cardinal Newman
and others. Edited by Canon Scott Holland,
M.A., and Canon H. C. Beeching, M.A.
Tue Sonc or Sones. Edited by B. Blaxland,
M.A,
Tue Tuoucuts or Pascai. Edited by C.
S. Jerram, M.A. :
A Manuva. oF CONSOLATION FROM THE
Saints AND Fatuers. Edited by J. H.
Burn, B.D,
(Continued.
28
Tue Liprary or Devotion—continued.
Tue Devotions oF St: ANsELM. Edited by:
C. C. Js Webb, M.A.
GRACE BOUNDING TO THE CHIEF oF’ 'Sin-
NERS. By John Bunyan. Edited by S. C.
Freer, M.A.
Bishop Witson’s Sacra PRIVATA. Edited
*by A. E: Burn, B.
Lyra Sacra: A Book of Sacred Verse.
- Edited by Canon H. C. Beeching, M.A.
Second Edition, revised.
A Day Book FROM THE SAINTS AND FATHERS.
Edited by J. H. Burn, B.D,
A Littte Boor or HEAVENLY’ Wispom. ‘A
Selection from the English Mystics. Edited :
by E. C. Grego
Lieut, Lirg, and jove. A Selection from the
German Mystics. Edited byW.R.Inge,M.A.
An Intropuction To THE Devout Lire.
By St.' Francis de Sales. Translated and
Edited by T. Barns, M.A.
Tuz Little Fiowers or THE Grorious
‘Messer St. FRANCIS AND OF HIS
Friars. Done into English by W. Hey-
wood. With an Introduction by A,
Ferrers Howell.
MEssRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
‘Mancumsten AL “Monnvo: a Contemplatio
of ‘Death and Immortality,, By Henr
Montagu, Earl of. Manchester,, With a
Introduction’ by Elizabeth ‘Waterhous:
Editor of ‘A Little Book of Life an
Death.’
Tue Spiriruar Guwe, which Disentangli
the Soul and brings it by the Inward Wa
to the Fruition of Perfect Contemplatio:
and the Rich Treasure of Internal Peac
Written by Dr. Michaelde Molinos, Pries
Translated from the Italian copy, printed i
° = ence, 1685. Edited with an Introductig
Kathleen Lyttelton. And a Note t
Cote Scott Holland.
Devotions FoR Every Day or THE “Wee
AND THE GREAT FESTIVALS. y Job
Wesley. Edited, with an iia t
Canon C. Bodington. *
Preces Privata. ' By'Lancelot Andrewe
Bishop of Winchester. Selections from tl
Translation by Canon F. E. Brightma:
Edited, with an Introduction, by A. 1
Burn, ‘D.D. :
Little Books on Art
With many Illustrations.
Demy 16mo. 25. 6d. net.
Each volume consists of about 200 pages, and contains from’ 30 to 4o Illustration
including a Frontispiece in Photogravure.
Greek Art. H. B. Walters. Fourth Edition.
BooxptaTes._ E. Almack.
Reyno.ps. J. Sime. Second Edition.
Romney. George Paston. :
Warts. R. E. D. Sketchley.
LEIGHTON. Alice Corkran. -.
VeLasquez. Wilfrid Wilberforce and A. R.
Gilbert. :
Greuze AnD Boucner. Eliza F. Pollard.
Vanpvcx. M. G. Smallwood.
Turner. Frances Tyrrell-Gill. ‘
Dtrer.- Jessie Allen.
Hosein. Mrs. G. Fortescue.
Burne-Jones. Fortunée de Lisle. Third
Edition. Pein ie
. | RapHAEL,
Pape, H. P. K. Skipton.
REMBRANDT. Mrs. E. A. Sharp.
Corot. Alice Pollard and Ethel Birnstingl.
A. R. Dryhurst.
Mutter.’ Netta Peacock.
ILLuminaTEpD MSS, J. W. Bradley.
CuristT in Art. Mrs. Henry Jenner, « -:
JEWELLERY. Cyril Davenport. .
Craupe. ' E. ‘Dillon.
Tue ARTS oF Javan. E. Dillon.
Enamets. Mrs. Nelson Dawson.
Miniatures. C. Davenport.
ConstasLe. H. W. Tompkins.
Our LaDy IN Art. Mrs, H. L. Jenner.
The Little Galleries
Demy 6mo.
2s. 6d. net.
Each volume contains 20 plates in Photogravure, together with a short outline
the life and work of the master to whom the book is devoted.
A Litre GALLERY or REYNOLDS.
A Litrre GaLiery or Romney.
A Litrie GaLLery or Hoppner.
A Litrre Gacuery or MILtats.
A LitrLe Gatiery or Enciisu Ports.
The Little Guides
With many Illustrations by E, H. New and other artists, and from photographs
Small Pott 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. net.; leather, 35. 6a, net.
The main features of these Guides are (1) a handy and charming form ; (2) illu
trationsfrom photographs and by well-known artists ; (3) good plans and maps ; (
4)i
GENERAL LITERATURE
29
adequate but compact presentation of everything that i is ‘interesting in .the natural,
features, history,
CAMBRIDGE AND 1Ts CoLLEGES.! By A. i
Hamilton Thompson. Second Edition. oo By e SOREENER,
OxForD anp 1Ts CoLLzGEs. By J; Wells, Tue Istz oF Wicut. By G, Clinch.
M.A. Zighth Edition. - Kent, By G. ink
St. Paut’s CATHEDRAL. By George Clinch. | Kerry. By C. P. Crane.*" 1)
WESTMINSTER ApzEY. By G. E. Troutbeck. Mipp.esex. By John’B. Firth.
Second Edition. ° Naseer By x4 A. Dutt,
ORTRAMPTONSHTRE. By Wakelin; D
Tue Encuisu Laxzs. By F. . Brabant, M. i OxrornsnHire. By F: Br Wakeling Dr ri
THe MALvERN Country. By B. C&S Somerset. By G. W. and J. H. Wade.
Windle, D.Sc., F.R.S. Surrotk. By W. A. Dutt. . we
SHAKESPEARE’S ‘Countky. By B. C. A. | Sukrzy.- By F. A. H. Lambert. eet
“Windle, D.Sc., F.R.S.- Third Edition > | Sussex. By F, G. Brabant, M.A. Sheond
———— Editions - -
NortH Wares. By A. T. Story. Tue East Rinne OF Yorksuire. By J. E.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. By E. S. Roscoe. “) Mortis. I wv
CuEsHIRE. By W. M. Gallichan. Tue NortH RIDING OP VORNSHINE: ByJ E.
Cornwa.t, | By A. L. Salmon. Morris. ‘
DERBYSHIRE.” By J. Charles Cox, LL.D., ;
F.S. Brirrany. By S. Betag Cite
Devon. By S. Baring-Gould. Normanpy. By C. Scudamore.
Dorset. "By Brank & . Heath. Second Ed. | Rome By C.G. Ellaby. p
HAMPSHIRE, | By, J.C. Cox, LL.D., F.S.A. | Sicmry. By F. Hamilton jackson:
The Little Library _ Te RBs a 3
With Introductions, Notes, and Photogravure Frontispieces.
Small Pott 8vo. ‘Each Volume, cloth, 1. 6d. net ; leather, 25. 6d. net.
Anon, A LITTLE BOOK OF ENGLISH
LYRICS.
Austen (Jane). PRIDE AND PREJU-
ICE. Edited by E. V. Lucds. Two Vols.
NOs PEARCE ABBEY. Edited. by E. v.|
Bact (Francis). THE ESSAYS OF LORD
BAC oe ae by Epwarp WRIGHT.
DS. Edited by J. B.
Two Volumes.
Barnett ‘Mrs, re ae A LITTLE BOOK.
OF ENGLISH PROSE. Second Edition.
Beckford, “(William m). THE HISTORY
ie E CALIPH VATHEK. Edited
VES Laie Ross.
Blake Cyan) SELECTIONS FROM
IAM BLAKE. Edited by, M.
Besnene. es eines!
Borrow (George). ‘LAVENGRO. Edited
by F. Hinpes Groome. Two Volumes. -
THE ROMANY RYE. Edited by Joun
SAMPSON. _*
Browning (Robert).
FROM THE EARLY. POEMS OF
Barham
LEGE ATLAY.
THE INGOLDSBY !
SELECTIONS.
ROBERT BROWRENG: Edited by W..
Hatt Grirrin, M
Canin (Georee. ‘SELECTIONS FROM
THE ANTI- -JACO OBIN: with GEORGE
Comuee additional Poems. Edited by
’ Lioyp SANDERS.
Cowley Cranes THE ESSAYS: OF
ABRAHAM COWLEY.: Edited by H. C.
Mice
Cathe (George). SELECTIONS FROM:
ORGE CRABBE. Edited bye Cc.
ees i
| Dante aa
archaeology, and architecture of the town or district treated.
Seale nes) . JOHN HALIFAX,
TL B, MA - ectves by ANNIE
Matiects Two Volu
Crashaw (Richard). THE ENGLISH
POEMS OF RICHARD CRASHAW.
‘Rdited = Epwarp Hutton.
ighieri), THE: INFERNO OF
NTE. «. Translated by H. F. Cary.
‘Raited by. Pacer ToynBEE, M. a D. Litt.
THE PURGATORIO OF DANT Trans-'
lated by H. F. ee ‘Edited i Pacer
ToynseE, M.A., D.Litt.
THE PARADISO OF DANTE. Trans-
‘Yated by H. F. Cary. Edited by Pacer’
Toynsge, M.A., D.Litt.
nae (George), SELECTIONS FROM
OEMS OF GEORGE DARLEY.
Batted t by R.A. ele
Deane (A. C.). A LITTLE BOOK OF
LIGHT VERSE.
Dickens (Charles). CHRISTMAS BOOKS.
Two Volumes.
Ferrier (Susan) MARRIAGE. Edited
by A.c:GoopricH - FREER and Lorp:
IDDEStEIGH. - Two Volumes.’
THE INHERITANCE, . Two Volumes.
Gaskell (Mrs.).. CRANFORD. Edited by
E. V. Lucas. Second Edition. .
Hawthorne (Nathaniel)," THE SCARLET.
LETTER. Edited by. Percy DEARMER.
Henderson (T. F:). A BITTE, pigs
OF SCOTTISH VERSE, - in ah
Keats:(John). POEMS. With. an Tntro:
duction by L. Bixvon, and Notes ‘by’. J.
MASEFIELD.
Kinglake (A. W.). EOTHEN. "With an
Introduction and Notes. Second Edition.
(Continued.
30
Tue Lirtie Lisrary—continued.
Lamb (Charles). |
LAST crags OF ELIA. Edited: by
E. V. Lucas.
Locker (F). LONDON LYRICS Edited
A.D. Goptzy, M.A. A reprint of the
Pict Edition.
Longfellow (H. W.). SELECTIONS
FROM LONGFELLOW. Edited by
L. M. FairHFuti.
Marvell (endcen) THE POEMS OF
AND MARVELL. Edited by E.
cen
ee (John). _ THE MINOR POEMS
F JOHN MILTON. Edited by H. C.
eee nee: M.A., Canon of Westminster.
Moir (D. M. 5. MANSIE WAUCH, Edited
by T. F. Sor
Nichols (J. B. fs A LITTLE BOOK OF
ENGLISH SONNETS.
Ropietencaule (La). THE MAXIMS OF
ROCHEFOUCAULD. aa
= Dean Stanuore. Edited by G. H
PowELL.
Smith (Horace and James). REJECTED
ADDRESSES. | Edited by A. D. GopLEy,
Laurence). A SENTIMENTAL
EY. Edited by H. W. Pau.
Sterne
JOUR
ELIA, “AND THE:
MEssrRs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Tennyson one Lord) THE EARLY
POEMS F ALFRED; LORD TENNY.
SON. Bditedby' CuurTon Coins, M.A. +
IN MEMORIAM. . Edited by Canon
H. C. Begcuine, M.A.
THE PRINCESS. Edited by Exizasetu
WorpsworTu.
‘MAUD, Edited by ExizaserH Worpswortn,.
Thackeray(W.M.). VANITY FAIR.
_ Edited by S. Gwynn. Three Volumes.
PENDENNIS. Edited by S. Gwynn.
Three Volumes.
ESMOND. Edited by S. Gwynn.
CHRISTMAS ae Edited by S. Gwynn.
Vaughan (Hen E POEMS OF
a RY VAU' TAN. Edited by Epwarp
Hur
Walton. “(izaak), THE COMPLEAT
ANGLER. Edited by J. Bucnan.
Waterhouse (Elizabeth). A LITTLE
BOOK OF LIFE AND DEATH. Edited,
by. Eleventh Edition
Wordsworth (W.). SELECTIONS FROM.
WORDSWORTH. Edited by Nowe.
C. SmirH. ~
Warde worn (W.) and Coleridge (S. T.).
= YRICAL BALLADS. Edited by Gzorce
AMPSON.
The Little Quarto Shakespeare
Edited by W. J. CRAIG. With Introductions and Notes ates,
Pott 16mo. In 40 Volumes.
Mahogany Revolving Book Case.’
Leather, price 1s, net each volume,
10s. wet. ay A
Miniature Library —
Reprints in miniature of a few interesting books which have qualities of
humanity, devotion, or literary genius,
EurHranor: A Dialogue on Youth. By
Edward FitzGerald. I rom the edition pub-
lished by W. Pickering in 1851. Demy
32mo. Leather, 2s. net.
Potontus: or Wise Saws and Modern In-
stances. By Edward FitzGerald. From
the edition published by W. Pickering in
1852. Demy 32mo. Leather, 2s. net.
Tue RupArvAT oF Omar KuayyvAm. By
Edward FitzGerald. From the 1st edition
of 1859, Fourth Edition. Leather, Is. net.
Tue Lire oF Epwarp, Lorp HERBERT OF
Cuersury. Written by himself. From the
edition printed at Strawberry Hill in the,
year1764. Demy 320. Leather, 2s. net
Tue Visions oF Dom Francisco QuEvaDo
Vittecas, Knight of the Order of St.
James. Made English by R.'L. | From the
edition printed for H. Herringman, 1668,
Leather. 25. net. '
Poems. By Dora Greenwell.’ From the edi-
tion of 1848. Leather, 2s. net.
Oxford Biographies :
Fcap, 8v0. Each volume, cloth,
DanTE ALIGHIERI. By Paget To ea M.A.,
D.Litt, With 12 Illustrations. Third Edition.
Grrotamo SavonaroLa. By E. L. S. Hors-
burgh, M.A. With x2 ingtrations Second
Edition.
Joun Howarp. By E. C. §. Gibson, D.D.,
Bishop of Gloucester, With 12 Illustrations,
Avrrep Tennyson. By A, C, Benson, M.A.
With g IIlustrations.
Str’ Watter Racticu. By I. A. Taylor.
With 12 ADuserations.
Erasmus. By E. F. H. Capey. With 12
Illustrations.
Tue Younc Pretenper. By C, S, Terry.
With x2 Illustrations.
2s. 6d. net; oe 35. 6d. net.
RoBertT Boaue: ' By T. F. Henderson.
With 12 Illustrations.
CuatHam. By A. S. M‘Dowall.
Illustrations.
FRANCIS ‘oF ASSISI.
“With 12
By Anna M. Stod-
dart. With x6 Illustrations.
Canninc. By W. Alison Phillips. With 12,
- [lustrations, ‘ ,
BEACONSFIELD. By Walter Sichel. With r2-
Illustrations.
Jouann Worrcanc Gortue. By H. G.
Atkins. With 16 Illustrations.
Francois Frneton. By Viscount St Cyres.
With x2 Illustrations.
GENERAL LITERATURE at
School Examination Series
Edited by A. M. M. STEDMAN, M.A. Cr. 8v0. 2s. 6d.
French Examination Pavers. ‘By A. M. | History anp ‘GrocrarHy EXAMINATION
M. Stedman, M.A. Fourteenth Edition, Parers. By C. H.S e, M.A. Third
* eer Sixth aoe 6s. me i Edition. A sas ‘
ATIN EXAMINATION Papers. -By A. M. M. :
Stedman, M.A, Thirteenth Edition. eer waar i: PAPERS: BY Red
oKevi: Sixth £dition. 6s. net. c
Greex EXAMINATION ParERs, By A.M. M. TDecae Knowepce | EXAMINATION
Stedman, M.A. Winth Edition. APERS. By A. M. M. Stedman, M.A.
Key. Fourth Edition. 6s. net. Sixth Edition, -
GERMAN Examination Parers. By R. J. Kev. Yourth Edition. 7s. net. é
Morich. Seventh Edition. . EXAMINATION Papers In Encuisu History.
_ Key. Third Edition, 6s. net. By J. Tait Plowden-Wardlaw, B.A.
th School Histories
Illustrated. Crown 8v0. 15. 6d.
A Senoon History or WARWICKSHIRE. By ; A ScHoot History or Surrey. By H. E.
‘Windle, D.Sc., F.R.S. . Malden, M.A.
A ae History or Somerset. By
Walter Raymond. Second Edition. A Scuoon History or Mip.esex. By V.
A erHere History oF LANCASHIRE. By Plarr and F. We Walton.
W, E. Rhodes.
’
Methuen’s Simplified French Texts
Edited by T. R..N. CROFTS, M.A.
One Shilling each.
L’Historre p’unE Tuuipr. Adapted by T. R. | La Cuanson pg Rotanp, Adapted by H.
N.Crofts, M.A. Second Edition. Rieu, M.A. Second Edition.
AppaLLan. Adapted by J. A. Wilson. Z MEmorres DE Capicnon. Adapted by J. F.
Lg Doctreur Matutus. Adapted by W. P. Rhoades.
Faller. L’EquiraGE DE_LA_ Bgiie-NIVERNAISE..
La BouiLiie au Mie. Adapted by P. B. Adapted by T. R. N. Crofts. +
Ingham, © L’Historre ; pE_ PrerreE ET CAMILLE.
Jean Valjean. Adapted by F. W. M. Draper. Adapted by J. B. Patterson.
Methuen’s Standard Library
Cloth, 1s. net; doublevolumes,is.6d.net. Paper, 6d. net; double volume, is. net.
Tue Meprrations or Marcus Auretius. | THe Poemsanp PLays or OLIVER GoLDsMITH.
Translated by R. Graves. Cyntuia’s REvets. PoOETASTER. Ben
SENSE AND-SENSIBILITY. Jane Austen. Jonson.
Essays AND’ CouNnsELS and THe New | Tue Pormsor JounKearts. Double volume.
ATLANTIS. Francis Bacon, Lord |: cs Text has been collated by E. de
Verulam. Eee ma sal lincourt.
Reuicio Mepicr and Urn Burraz. Sir | ON THE nee oF See c ¥ Thomas
Thomas Browne. The text collated by A SNe Gigt Go oe ano How
AR. Waller.’
Tux Prrcrim’s Procress. John Bunyan. ‘'p ene mee ‘ohn Milton.
REFLECTIONS ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. | FioNOKLASTES AND THE TENURE OF Kines
Edmund Burke. AND MaGistTRATES. John Milton,
nae cble Volum Soncs or ROBERT BURNS. | trop, anp Poems. Sir Thomas More.
ouble volume. -Tue Rerusric or Prato, _ ‘Translated b:
Tue ANALOGY oF-RELIGION, NATURAL AND ‘Sydenham and Taylor. ‘ Double Volume.
Reveatep. Joseph Butler, Translation revised by W. H. D, Rouse.
MisceLtrangous Poems, T. CHATTERTON. | (up Lirtue FLOWERS OF: Si: RANCIS.
Tom Jones. Henry Fielding. Treble Vol. Translated by W. Heywood.
CRANFORD. “Mrs. Gaskell. : THE Wonee OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, In
¢ DECLINE AND FALL OF 10 volumes. i
ee se oP ae E. Gibbon. | Principat Poems, 1815-1818. Percy Bydhe
Text and Notes revised by J. B. Bury. ‘oer With an Introduction by.€. D.
coc!
olumes.
‘oes oy Ae Every Man in | Tue Lire or Netson. Robert Southey,
His Humour. Every Man Our or His | Taz Natura HIsTory AND-ANTIQUITIES OF
Humour. Ben Jonson. SeLporne. Gilbert White,
32
Textbooks
MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
of Science
Edited by G. F. GOODCHILD, M.A.,'B.Sc., and G. R. MILLS, M.A.
fully Illustrated,
S. H. Wells.
“3s. 6d.
PracticaL MEcHANICS.
Fourth Edition. Cr. &ve.
Practica Cuemistry. Parti. W. French,
M.A. Cr, 8vo. Fourth Edition. 1s. 6d.
Practicay Cuemistry. Parti. -W. French
and T. H. Boardman. Cr. 8vo, 15. 6d.
EXAMPLES IN Puysics. By C. E. Jackson,
‘B.A. Cr. 800. 25. 6d. : :
TECHNICAL ARITHMETIC AND GEOMETRY.
By C. T. Millis, M.I.M.E. Cr. 8y0.
38. 6a.
PLANT Lire, Studies in Garden and School.
By Horace F. Jones, F.C.S. With 320
Diagrams. — Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.
Tue CompLeTe Scuoo: Cuemistry. By F.
A.R.C.S. (Lond.), F.C.S. CHEMISTRY
Se By A. E. Dunstan, B.Sc. (Lond.),
F.C.S. With 2 Plates and 10 Diagrams.
Cr. 8vo. 25.
Exampies in , ELEMENTARY MEcuanics,
Practical, Graphical, and Theotetical. By
Ww. J. Dob bs, M.A. With sr Diagrams.
Cr. 80. 55> si
OuTLiNnES OF Puysicat Cuemistry. By
George Senter, B.Sc. (Lond.), Ph. D. With
many Diagrams. Cyr. 8vo. 25. 6d.
An OrGanic CHEMISTRY FOR SCHOOLS AND
Tecunicat InstTITUTES. ByA.E. Dunstan,
B.Sc. _(Lond.), F.C.S. : With fmany
eS ee ee With 126 Illustrations. Illustrations. Cr. 8v0. 25. 6d. ‘ f
ELEMENTARY SCIENCE For Purit Teacuers. | First YEAR Puysics. By C. E. Jackson,M.A,
Puysics Section. By W. T. Clough, With 51 diagrams. Cr. 8v0. 15. 6d.
Textbooks of Technology
Edited by G. F. GOODCHILD, M.A., B.Sc., and G. R. MILLS, M.A.
Fully Illustrated.
How To Make a Dress. By J. A. E. Wood.
Fourth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 1s. 6d.
CARPENTRY AND JoINERY.: By F.:C. Webber.
Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Mivunery, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL.
By Clare Hill. Fourth Edition. Cr.8vo, 2s.
TnepEberton IN Cooxery. A. P.- “THOMSON.
2s. 6
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE Stupy OF Tex-
tTILE Desicn. By Aldred F. Barker. Demy '|
8v0. 7s. 6a.
Handbooks
Tue XXXIX. ArticLes OF THE CHURCH OF
Encuanp. Edited by E. C. S. Gibson,
D.D. Sixth Edition. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d.
An INTRODUCTION To THE History oF
Re.icion. By F. B. Jevons. M.A.,
Litt.D. Fourth Edition. Demy 8vo..10s. 6d.
Tue Doctrine oF THE INCARNATION. By'R.
L. Ottley, D.D. Fourth Edition revised.
Demy 8vo. 125. 6d. e PAG
By H. C. Grubb.
By A. C. Horth,
BuiLpers’ QUANTITIES.
Cr. vo. 45. 6d.
Répoussé Meta Work.
Cr. 8v0. _2s. 6d.
Execrric Licht anp Power: An Intro-
duction to the Study of Electrical Engineer-
ing. By E. E. Brooks, B.Sc. (Lond.).
and W. H.N. James, A.R.C.S., A.1.E.E.
Cr. 8vo. 45. 6d.
‘ENGINEERING WorxsHor PRACTICE.
C. C. Allen. Cr 870. 35. 6d.
of Theology a
AN Ineneoeen de To THE Hisrory oF THE
-CrEEps.. By A. E. Burn, D,D. Demy
8u0. 10s. 64.,
Tue PuHILosopHy OF ’ RELIGION in ENGLAND
AND AMERIcA. By Alfred Caldecott, D.D.
Demy 8vo. 108. 6d.
A pigruey oF EarLy CHRISTIAN DocTRINE.
By J. F. A -, Bethune-Baker, M.A. Demy 8vo,
ros. 61 7 ‘
By
The ‘Westminster Commentaries
General ‘Editor, WALTER LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble College,
Dean Ireland's Professor of ‘Exegesis i in the University of Oxford.
Tue Boox or Genesis. Edited. with Intro-
duction and Notes by S, R. Driver, D,D.
Sixth Edition Demy 8vo. 105. 6d.
Tue Boox oF Jos. Edited by E. C, S. Gibson,
D.D, Second Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s.
Tue Acts oF THE AposTiEs. Edited by R. T
B. Rackham, M.A.
Edition. 0s. 6d.
Tue First Eptstte oF Pau THE AposTiz
Demy 8vo. Third
TO THE CorinTHIANS, Edited by H. L.
Goudge, M,A. Demey 8vo. 65.
Tue Epist.e or St. James. Edited with In-
troduction and Notes by R. J. Knowling, '
D.D. Demy 8vo. 6s.
HE Fock er Ezexter. Edited H. A. Red-
ge » D.Litt. Demy 8vo.__ ros. 6d.
"Gonineiehny on Exopus. By A. H.
M'Neile, B.D. With a Map and 3 Plans.
Demy 8ve. 10s. 6a.
FICTION
33
Parr II.—Fiction
bance ae : Maria): SUSANNAH AND
ot HER. Fourth Edition. Cr.
THR BLUNDER OF a INNOCENT.
Second Editi Cr. 6s.
CAPRICIOUS “CAROLINE. Second Edi-
tion. Cr. 8va.
LOVE AND LOUISA. Second Edition.
Cr. Bv0. 6s. Also Medium 8vo, 6d.
PETER, A PARASITE. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
THE BROWN EVES OF MARY. Third
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
I KNOW'A ‘MAIDEN. Third Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 6s. Also Medium 870. 6d.
Austen (Jane). PRIDE AND PREJU-
“DICE, Medium 8vo. 6d.
Bagot: (Richard), A ROMAN MYSTERY,
z eee Se aOm: Cr, 8v0. 6s. Also Medium
THE PASSPORT. Fourth Edition. Cr.
TEMPTATION. Fifth Edition. Cr. 800.
LOVE’ S PROXY. A New Edition,
DONNA, DIANA. Second Edition. Cr.
CASTING OF NETS. Twelfth Edition. Cr.
8v0. -6s. Also Medium 8v0.
Balfour (Andrew). BY STROKE OF
ORD. Medium 8vo.
Baring-Gould (S,). ARMINELL. Fifth
dition. Cr. 8v0, 6s.
URITH. Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. Seventh
Edition, Gr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8v0. 6d.
MARGERY OF QUBESER: Third
Edition. Cr. 8v0._ 6s.
TEs QUEEN OF LOVE. Fifth Edition.
7. 8vo. 6s. Also Medium 8vo. é
JACOURTTA. Third Edition. Cr.8vo. 6s.
KITTY ALONE. Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8v0. 6d.
NOEMI. Illustrated. Fourth Edition. Cr.
8v0.: 6s: Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
THE BROOM-SQUIRE. _ Imlustrated.
Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
DARTMOOR IDVLLS, Cr. 8v0.
THE | PENNYCOMEQUICKS.
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
GUAVAS 'THE TER
Second Edition, Cr. 8vo.
BLADYS OF THE GrRWPONEY, Ittus-
‘trated. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo,
PABO THE PRIEST. C+. 8vo. - 6s.
WinereE Illustrated. Second Edition.
Cr. 8ve. 6s. Also Medium 8vo, 6d."
ROYAL GEORGIE. Illustrated. Cv. 8vo. 6s.
Cr. 8v0.
6s.
Third
Tllustrated.
CHRIS OF ALL SORTS. Cy. 8v0, 6s. -
IN DEWISLAND. Second Ed. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE FROBISHERS, Crown 8v0.. 6s,
'__ Also Mediz 8vo. 6d.
DOMITIA. Illus. Second Ed. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN.
Crawn 8va,_ 6s.
LITTLE TU’PENNY. A New Edition.
Medium 8vo. 6d.
FURZE BLOOM. Medium 8vo. ‘
Barnett (Edith A.), A WILDERNESS
WINNER. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
eee (James). PUSHING. ae eee
A WILDERNESS. Cr. 8
Barr (Robert). IN THE “MIDST OF
ALARMS, Third BEE Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo.
THE COUNTESS, TRKLA. Fourth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
THE MUTABLE MANY. Third pee
Cr. 8v0._ 6s. Also Medium 8vo. 6a.
THE TEMPESTUOUS PETTICOAT.
‘Illustrated. Third Edition. Cr. 8v0, 6s.
a SL RONG ARM. Second Edition.
8v0.
JENNAD “BAXTER JOURNALIST.
Medium 8vo. 6d.
Begbie (Harold). “THE CURIOUS AND
DIVERTING ADVENTURES OF SIR
JOHN SPARROW; or, THE ProGRess
OF AN OPEN Minp. With a Frontispiece.
Cr. 8v0. 65.
Belloc Hilaire), N M. a EMMANUEL BUR-
DEN, MERCHANT. With “36 Lllustra-
tions by G. K. Cohen, Second Ed.
Cr.8v0. 65s.
Benson (E. FE. ) DODO: A DEtTatL oF THE
Day. Fifteenth Edition. Cr. 870. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
THE VINTAGE. Medium 8vo.
Benson (Margaret: Sieyeer TO
VANITY. Cr. 8v0. 35. 6d.
ira ham (George A.). THE BAD
SS. Second Edition. Crown 8yo.,
Bowles (G. Stewart), A GUN-ROOM
DITTY BOX. Second Ed. Cr. 8vo. 15. 6d,
Beerton cee Harold) THE
Bronté (cnariott SHIRLEY. Medium
8v0.
Burke oeee BARBARA GOES TO
OXFORD. With 16 Illustrations. Third
Qaitton Cr. 840. 65. :
Burton Ca Bloundelle). ee THE
SALT SEAS. Medium 8vo.
Safty (Mire. ) (‘Tota’). ‘ANNE SAU: LE-
RER. Medium 8vo. 6d.
campnen (Mrs. Vere). FERRIBY.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 65.
34
eee peers THE EXTRAOR-
INARY CONFESSIONS OF DIANA
| PREASE Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
AY OF ITALY. Fourth Ed. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
fe ae ae FISHES. Second Edition.
‘7. 8:
A Daa s: *TRAGE DY. Second Edition.
Cre 8v0. i
THE GREAT - SKENE _MYSTERY.
Second Edition, .Cr. 8vo. 65,
THE LAKE OF WINE. Medium B00. 6d.
Carey (Wymond). LOVE THE JUDGE.
Second Edition. Cp. 8vo. 6s
castle earns: and Nie cnt ; FLOWER
and Other Tales.
with a ieateniees ‘in Colour. by A. H.
Buckland. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Charlton (Randal). af AVE. Second
‘dition. Cr. 8vo.
THE VIRGIN Widow. Cr. 8v0.. 655
Chesney. a eerny THE TRAGEDY
OF THEGREAT EMERALD C7.8vo. 6s.
THE MYSTERY OF A BUNGALOW.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
oe fs W.K.). THE GETTING
LL OF DOROTHY. _ Illustrated by
Connon Browne, Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
A Kissu OF SUMMER. Medium 8v0. 6d,
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME. Medium 8vo. 6d.
Conrad (Joseph), THESECRET AGENT:
ASimple Tale. Fourth Ed. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Corbett Bl cate A Brees IN
GREAT ERS. Medium 8vo. -
Corelli LMarie), A ROMANCE OF TWO
WORLDS. Twenty-Ninth Ed, Cr.8vo. 6s.
VENDETTA, Twenty-Sixth Ed. Cr. 8va. 6s.
THELMA, Tee eee, Cr. 8vo, 6s.
ARDATH: T TORY OF A DEAD
SELF. Riedie: Sotto Cr. 8v0. 6s.
THE_SOUL OF ae TH. Fifteenth Edi.
tion. Cr. 8v0. 65.
WORMWOOD. Sixteenth Ed. Cr.8v0. 6s.
BARABBAS: A DREAM OF HE
WORLD'S aeecees Forty-Third
Edition, Cr. 8vo.
THE OE Re WS OF SATAN, Fifty-Third
Edition. Cr.8
THE MASTER "CHRISTIAN. Eleventh
Edition. 174th Thousand. , Cr. 8vo. 6s.
TEMPORAL POWER: A STUDY .I1N
SUPREMACY, rs07h Thousand. Cr.8u0.6s
GOD'S GOOD MAN: A SIMPLE LOVE
STORY. enh Edition. 147th Thou-
sand. Cn 8vo, . ;
THE MIGHTY ATOM.
“Edition. Cr. 870. 6s.
BOY: aSketch. /enth Edition. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
CAMEOS, Twelfth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Co ae Everard). See Sara Jeannette
Cotterell SESE THE VIRGIN
AND THE SCALES, Illustrated. Second
Edition, Cr. 8vo. 65.
Crockett (S. Pee paet of ‘The Raiders)
etc. LOCH yas . Illustrated. Third
Edition. Cr. 8
THE STANDARD BEARER, Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Twsenty-seventh
MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
Croker (B. M.). THE OLD CANTON.
MENT. Cr. 8vo._ 6s.
JOHANNA. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Also Medium 8vo, 6d.
Tae ee VALLEY. Third Edition.
6s.
7. 8v0. 6s.
A NINE DAYS’ WONDER. Third
Edition, Cr.8vo. 6s. i
PEGGY OF THE BARTONS... Seventh
Ed. Cr.8vo. 6s. Also ‘Medium 8v0. 6d.
ANGEL. Fourth Lae ‘Cr, 8v0. 65...
Also Medium 8vo.
A STATE SECRET. Third Edition, Cr.
8vo. 35. 6d. Also Medium 8vo, 6d.
Sroanie ‘Gilary). DISCIPLES. Second Ed.
cuthell edith E.)., ONLY A GUARD.
RO DOu. Illustrated by W. Parkin-
Le ee 8v0. 35. 6
Dawson (Warrington). . THE SCAR,
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE SCOURGE C7. 8v0._ 6s. : -
Deakin Dorathes ‘THE YOUNG
COLUMBINE. With 8 Frontispiece by
Lewis ae Cr. 8 6s.
Deane (Mary), THE ‘OTHER PAWN.
Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Doyle (A. Conan), ROUND THE RED
-LAMP. Tenth Edition. Cr.:8v0. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
Dumas (Alexandre), See page 39.
Duncan (care Jeannette) (Mrs,
Cotes) THOSE DELIGH
AMERICANS, Medium 8vo. 6d.
A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION, | Illus-
trated. Third Edition.. Cr. 8v0.. 6s.
., Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
Be ae Be), THE MILL ON THE
edium 8vo.
Erskine e (Mrs, Steuart) ore Macic
Cr, Bvo. 65.
Bean XG. Manville). SYD. BELTON; or,
The Boy who would not go to Sea. ° Tilus-
vas ae Son Browne. Second. Ed.
Cr. Bue.
Pindiater (J. s THE GREEN GRAVES
GOWRIE. Fifth Edition.
aA ree ee Also Medium 800. 6d.
THE LADDER TO ae STARS. nd
Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Findlater (Mary). 2 NARROW WAY.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo.. 6s.
OVER THE HILLS. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
THE sere OF JOY... Third Edition.
Cn
A LIND BIRD'S NEST. With 8 sige
trations. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Fitzpatrick ey THE WEANS AT
ROWALL Illustrated. Second Edi-
Everard
TFUL
tion. Cr. ore 6s.
Francis (M. E.). (Mrs. Francis Biun-
dell). STEPPING WESTW ARD.
Second See Cr. 8v0.°
MARGERY O’ THE MILL. Third
Edition. Cr. ‘are i? coe
Fraser ae ugh) THE SLAKING
OF H RD.
Second Edition.
Cr. 8vo, 6s.
FICTION
IN THE SHADOW OF cae LORD.
Third Edition. Crown 8v0.
Fry (B. and C,B.). A MOTHER’ S SON.
Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Fuller-Maitland | (Ella). : BLANCHE
ESMEAD. Second: Edition.’ Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Gallon (Tom). RICKERBY’S FOLLY.
Medium 8vo. 6d,
Gaskell (Ma) CRANFORD. Medium
MARY BARTON, Medium evo. 6d.
NORTH AND SOUTH. Medium 8vo. 6d.
Gates (Eleanor), THE PLOW-WOMAN.
Cr. 8voi_ 6s.
Gerard (Dorothea). HOLY MATRI-
% MONY. Medium 8vo.° 6d.
MADE OF MONEY. & 80.
(6s.
sn Also Medium 8vo.
THE IMPROBABLE” IDVL. Third
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s. :
THE BRIDGE OF LIFE. Cr. 8v0. 6s. .
THE LONCUESE OF LONDON. Medium
8v0. 6d.
Gissing (George). THE. “TOWN TRA-
VELLER. Second Edition. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
‘Also Medium 8vo. 6d. .
THE CROWN OF LIFE. Cr 8v0, 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
Glanville (Ernest). THE INCA’S TREA-
SURE. Illustrated. Cr. 8u0: 3. 6d.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
ae KLOOF BRIDE. Tilustrated. Cr. 8v0.
s. 6d, Also Mediunt 8vo.
Gleig (Charles). BONTERS CRUISE.
Mlustrated. Cr.'8v0o. 35. 6d.
- Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
Grimm (The Brothers). GRIMM’S FAIRY
TALES. MWlustrated.: Medium 8vo. 6d-
Hamliton (M.). THE oa CLAIM.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Harraden (Beatrice)... iN VARYING
ODS, Fourteenth Edition, Cr. 8v0. 6s.
THE SCHOLAR’S PEE fourth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 65.
HILDA STRAFFORD and THE REMIT-
TANCE MAN. Twelfth Ed. . Cr. 8v0.
6s. 4
Harrod (F.) (Frances Forbes Robertson).
THE TAMING OF THE BRUTE. Cx
Bu0. 6s.
Herbertson (Agnes G.). PATIENCE
THE PROPHET OF
DEAN. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Hichens (Robert).
BERKELEY SQUARE. Second Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 6s.
TONGUES OF CONSCIENCE. Third
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
FELIX. F ith Edition. Cr. 8vo.
THE WOMAN WITH THE FAN.
Cr. 8vo. fee ane
Cr. Bu. 6s.
THE GARDEN OF ALLAH,
THE BACK SPANIEL. Cr. B00. 6%.
‘7, Bu '
THE .CALL OF ae BLOOD. Seuenth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. Tip op is oe
H Anthon,
PER ee eaeion Cr. 8v0. 65.
Siscth
Sixteenth
35
A CHANGE OF ae Sixth . 8v0. 6s.
THE HOLE INTHE WALL. Fourth Edi.
tton. Cr. 8vo. 6s. Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
DIVERS VANITIES. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Nesbit (E.). (Mrs..H. Bland). THE RED
HOUSE. Illustrated. Fourth Edition.
Cr. 8vo. 6s: Also Medium 8v0.
6d.
HARRY AND URSULA:
Norris(W. E.),
Second
A Story WITH Two SIDES TO IT.
.. EBdition.. Cr. 8va.: 6s. -
HIS GRACE. Medium8vo. 6d.
GILES INGILBY. Medium 8vo.
THE CREDIT OF THE COUNTY.
Medium 8vo. 6d.
LORD LEONARD. THE LUCKLESS.
Medium 8vo. | 6d.
MATTHEW AUSTIN. Medium 8vo. 6d.
CLARISSA FURIOSA. Medium 8vo. 6d.
Oliphant (Mrs.). ee LADY’S WALK.
Medium 8vo.
an. ROBERT'S FORTUNE. Medium
6d.
THE PRODIGALS. Medium 8v0.
THE TWO ‘MARVS. Medium 8vo.
Ollivant (Alfred). OWD BOB, THE
_,GREY D DOG OF KENMUIR. With a
cg eRe Eleventh Edition,’ Cr.
‘Be.
(E. Phillips).
im MASTER -OF
oppenteimn ourth Edition, Cr.8vo. 6s,
Also Medium 8v0. 6d.
80,
, CHILDREN OF THE Mist.
37
Oxenham (John). A WEAVER:OF WEBS.
With 8 Illustrations by Maurice GREIF-
FENHAGEN. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE GATE OF THE DESERT. With
a Frontispiece in Photogravure by HaRoiD
Coprinc. Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
PROFIT AND LOSS. With a Frontispiece
in photogravure by Haroun Corrina.
. Fourth Edition, Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE LONG ROAD. With a Frontispiece
in Photogravure by pee CoppinG.
Fourth Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Pain (Barry). TELE RAYS, Third
dition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Pare es PIERRE AND HIS
txth Edition. Cr. 8u0. 6s.
MRS FALCHION. Fi/th Edition, Cr. 8vo.
iS.
THE - ee a ee SAVAGE.
Third Edition. Cr. 8
THE TRAIL OF TH SWORD. Illus-
trated. Ninth Eee Cr. 8u0. 6s.
Also Medium 8 6a,
WHEN VALMOND ¢ CAME TO PONTIAC:
The Story of a Lost Napoleon. Sixth
Edition. Cr. 8v0. ‘65
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.—
AN ADVENTURER OF THE. NORTH.
The Last Adventures of i a Pierre.’
Fourth Edition, Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. | Iilus-
trated. Fifteenth Edition. Cr. 8va. 6s.
THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG: a
Romance of Two Reet Tilustrated.
Sizth Edition. Cr. 8va.
THE POMP OF THE UAVILETTES.
Third Edition. Cr. ore 35. 6d.
Also Medium 8vo.
Pemberton (Max). THe FOOTSTEPS
A THRONE. Sears Third
Casita. Cr. Bue. 65.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d. °
I CROWN THEE KING. With I}lustra-
tions by Frank Dadd and Ae Forrestier.
Cr. Bua. "65. © ae”
Also Medium-8v0."
ese otts (Eden). LYive 1 PROPHETS.
trad Edition. Cr. 8
ack Edi-
tion. Cr. Quo. 65...
Also Medium 8v0.. 6d.
THE HUMAN BOY. With a Frontispiece.
Sixth Edition, Cr. 8vo. 65.
Also Medium 8vo._ 6d.
SONS OF THE _ MORNING. Second
Edition. Cr. vo. 6s.
THE RIVER. eee Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo.
THE AMERICAN prisoner. eNeE
Edition. Cr. 8vo.
_ euCrET WOMAN. Bourtle Edition.
KNOCK. ‘st ‘A VENTURE. LWitha Frontis-
piece. | Third Edition. Cr. 8x0. . 6s.
THE PORTREEVE, Fourth Ed. Cr.8v0. 65.
THE POACHER’ S WIFE. ‘Second Edition
Cr. 8v0. 6s. *
Also Medium Bv0. 6d.
$0
THE cite Vega HOURS. Second Edition.
Crow:
THE F TOLK AFIELD. Crown 8v0, 6s.
Pickthall (Marmaduke) SAID THE
FISHERMAN. Seventh Ed. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
BRENDLE. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE HOUSE OF ISLAM. Third Edi-
tion. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
*Q’ ee . T. Quiller Couch), THE WHITE
LF. Second Lae: Cr. 8v0. 65.
Also Medium 8vo. :
THE MAYOR OF TROY, Fourth Edition,
Cr. 8u0. 6s.
MERRY- GARDEN Poseaes OTHER
STORIES. Cr. 8v0
MAJOR VIGOUREUX. Third Edition.
ney). THE EN-
Cr. vo. 6s.
Rawson (Maud Ste
CHANTED GARDEN. Fourth Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 6s. :
Rhys _ (Grace). THE WOOING. OF
(EILA. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Ridge (CW. Pett) LOST PROPERTY.
Medium 8vo. 6d.
ERB. Second Edition. Cr. Bua. 6s.
A SON OF THE STATE, Second Edition.
Cr. 8v0. 35.6d. Also Medium 8uo, 6d.
A BREAKER OF LAWS. 4 New Edition.
Cr. 8v0, _ 38. 6d.
MRS. GALER’S BUSINESS:
Second Edition. Cr. 8ve.
a TO BAYNE, MM P. Cr. 8v0.
mites WICKHAMSES. Fourth Edition.
NAME” ore ‘GARLAND. Third Edition.
Cr. 80.
GEORGE aa THE GENERAL. Medium
Ritchie. ites, David G.).. MAN AND
THE a SOCK. Second Edition.
Crown ee 6s.
Roberts (C. G. D.).. THE HEART OF
THE ANCIENT WOOD. Cr. 8v0. 35. 6a.
Robins (Elizabeth). THE CONVERT.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Rosenkrantz (Baron Palle)... TH E
MAGISTRATE’S OWN CASE. Cr.
8v0. 65.
Illustrated.
Russell Ms Clark) MY DANISH
SWEETHEART. Illustrated. fifth
Edition. Cr. 8vo, . ee
Also Medium 8vo.
HIS ISLAND PRINCESS. Mlastrated.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Also Medium 8vo0. 6d.
ABANDONED. Second Edition. Cr. 8u0.' 6s.
Also Medium 8vo. 6d.
MASTER ROCKAFELLAR'S VOYAGE.
Illustrated by Gorpon Browne, - | Lhird
dition. Cr. vo. 38. 6d. ‘
A MARRIAGE AT SEA. Medium 8v0. ‘6d.
Ryan en Ellis). FOR THE SOUL
OF AEL. Cr. Bua. ‘6s.
Sergeant (Adeline). THE MYSTERY
MOAT. Second Edition. Cr.
8ve. 6s. '
WLESSKS. WETHUEN S CALALUGUE
THE PASSION: OF PAUL MARIL-
LIER. Crown 8va. 6s.
THE QUEST OF ee ee
DARRELL. Cx. 8v0
THE oe or THE. RANDOLPHS.
cn
THE PROGRESS OF RACHAEL. Cy
8vo. 6s.
BARBARA'S MONEY. Cx». 8v0..
Also Medium 8vo. - 6a.
THE MASTER OF BEECHWOOD.
6s.
Medium 8vo. 6d.
THE ee DIAMOND. Second Ed.
Cr. 8vo. 6s. Also Medium 8v0. 6d.
THE LOVE THAT OVERCAME, Medium
8uo. 6a.
Shannon (w. F.). THE MESS DECK.
Cr. 8ve. 38. 6d,
Shelley(Bertha). ENDERBY. Third Ed.
Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Sidgwick (Mrs. Alfred). THE ens
AN. With 8 Illustrations by C. E.
Brock. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
Smith (Dorothy V. Horace). MISS
MONA, . Cy, 8v0.. 35. 6d. -
Sonnichsen (Albert). DEEP-SEA VAGA-
NDS. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
eae (George), .THE HA'PENNY
MILLIONAIRE. Cr. 8v0. 38. 6d.
Surtees (R. S.). ANOLE CROSS.
Illustrated. Medium 8vo.
MR. SPONGE'S SPORTING TOUR.
Illustrated. Medium 8vo. 6d.
ASK MAMMA, Illus,” Medium 8vo.. 6d.
Uigar (M.), ‘A TRAGEDY IN COM-
MONPLACE. Second Ed, Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Vorst. Carle Van). THE SENTIMEN-
TAL ADVENTURES OF JIMMY BUL-
STRODE. Cr. 8v0. 6s.
Waineman (Paul). “THE BAY OF
LILACS: A. ‘Romance from Finland.
Second Edition. Cr. Buo. 6s.
aes SONG OF THE FOREST. C>. 8v0.
Walford (Mrs. E B.). MR, s MITH.
Medium 8vo,
THE BABY’S GRANDMOTHER
WMedium 8vo. 6d.
COUSINS. Medium 8vo. 6d.
‘Wallace eaeral Lew) BEN-HUR
Medium 8vo. 6d.
THE FAIR Gob. Medium 8vo. 6d.
Watson (H.. B. Marriott)... CAPTAIN
FORTUNE. Third Edition, Cr. 8v0. 6s.
TWISTED EGLANTINE. -With 8 Illus-
pele by FRANK Craic. Third Edition.
rr. 800. 65,
THE HIGH TOBY: Being further. Sania
in the Life’'and Fortunes of, Dick Ryder,
otherwise Galloping Dick, sometime Gentle-
man of the Road. Witha Frontispiece by
CLAUDE SHEPPERSON. Third Edition.
Cr, 8v0. 6s.
A MIDSUMMER’ DAY'S ‘DREAM.
Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. ;
FICTION
THE PRIVATEERS.
With 8 Illustrations
a Coens Cunzo.
Sccond Edition, Cr.
A POPPY SHOW: Beinc Divers anp
Diverse Taxes. Cr. 8v0: 6s.
THE ADVENTURERS. Medium 800. 64.
Weekes (A. B,)... THE PRISONERS OF
WAR. Medium Bue. 6d.
Wells (H. G.).. THE SEA tees Cr.
8vo. 6s. Also: Medium 8v0,
Weyman (Stanley). UNDER’ THE RED
ROBE. : With Tliateations by R. C. Woop-
‘VILLE, Twenty-First Edition, Cr. 8vo. 6s.
White (Percy). aoe SYSTEM. Third
Edition. Cr. 8
A (PASSIONATE PILGRIM. Medium
6a. :
Williams AMangety) THE BAR. Cr.
6S: 4
Bua.
Williamson (Mrs. C..N.). THE AD-
VENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA.
Second Naeibion Cr, 8v0. . 6s.
39
PAPA, Cn 8v0.
Williamson (C. N. and ‘AS: ‘M.): THE
LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR: The
Strange Adventures ofa Motor Car. With
ae. Illustrations. Seventeenth Edition. Cr.
THe PRINCESS PASSES:. A Romance
ofa Motor. With 3 Ilustrations.- Ninth
Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR. With
16 Illustrations, ‘\Minth Edit. ‘Cr. 8vo. 6s.
LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER.
Tenth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 65.
THE CAR OF DESTINY AND ITS
ERRAND’ IN SPAIN. With-17 Illus-
trations. Fourth Edition. Cr, 8v0. 6s,
THE BOTOR CHAPERON. ° Witha Fron-
tispiece in Colour by A. H. Buckanp, | 16
other pe oars and a Map. ‘FE th Edi.
tion.
SCARLET RUNNER. Witha eoneiagieee
in Colour by A. H. Buck.anp, and '8 ‘other
a WOMAN WHO DARED. Cyr. Bv0. Illustrations. Third Hd. Cr. 8vo: \ 6s:
Wyllarde (Dolf). THE PATHWAY OF
THE Pg COULD TELL. Second Edition. oe PIONEER (Nous Autres). Fourth
ition. Cr. 8vo.
tHE CASTLE OF THE SHADOWS. Yeldham (C. C.).’ SuRHAM's- FARM.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s. Cr, 8u0. 6s. '
Books for Boys and Girls
Lilustrated. .Crown:8vo. 35. 6a.
THe Gerrive Wett or Dororny. By Mrs,
K. Clifford. | Second Edition. "-*
OnLy A | GuaRD- Room Dos. ‘By Heath E.
Cuthell.
MASTER ROocKAFELLAR'S Vowudn;
Clark Russell. Third Edition. |
Syp BEevron : Or, the Boy who would not go
to Sea. By G. Manville Fenn. Second &ad.
By Ww.
THE RED Grance. By Mrs. Meleawonh
A Git or THE’ PzopLe. By L. T. Meade.
Second Edition.
Hepsy Gipsy. By L. T. Meade. 25. 6a.’
THE HonourasiE Miss. _ BY L T. Meade.
Second Edition. -—
THERE WAS ONCE A Prince. By Mrs, M. E.
Mann.
Wuen ARNOLD comes Home. By Mrs. M, E
. Mann.
The Novels of Alexandre Dumas
Medium 8v0.
_ Price 6d.
Double Volumes, 1s.
COMPLETE LIST ON APPLICATION.
Methuen’s Sixpenny Books
| Medium 8vo.
Albanesi ‘(E. Maria).
LOUIS.
1 KNOW-A MAIDEN
Austen (J.). PRIDE AND’ PREJUDICE
Bagot Cina A ROMAN MYSTERY.
CASTIN G OF NETS.
Ballou ( (Andrew), BY - STROKE. OF
Baring -Gould C a ,BURZE BLOOM,
CHEAP JACK Loe
tee BRSNES a
RITH.
THE ‘BROOM SQUIRE.
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA.
NOEMI. .
A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES.
Hietrated,
! Barr. (Robert). .
| Benson (E. F.).
AN.
. Busta Ge Pounmelle).
L. ° v E A N D ese Tren
THE PROBISHERS,
THE QUEEN OF LOVE.
JENNIE, BAXTER. .
IN THB :MIDST OF ALARMS...
THE COUNTESS TEKLA: | :--
| THE MUTABLE MANY. ee
DODO. :
THE VINTAGE. 2 s
Bronté (Charlotte). ‘SHIRLEY.
Brower (c. L.). THE HEART OF
ACROSS THE
ANNE MAULEVERER.
SALT,
Caffyn ae
40
capes (Bernard).
no (Mrs. W. K.). A FLASH OF
MRS. KEITH'S CRIME.
es A BUSINESS IN
THE LAKE OF
Coetety a sian
GR WAT:
ease yas B. Ms, ). ANGEL,
A STATE SECRE'
PEGGY OF THE BARTONS.
OHANNA.
ante (Alighieri). THE DIVINE
COMEDY (Cary).
nove (A. Conan) ROUND THE RED
AMP,
Duncan (Sara Jeannette).
OF CONSOLATION.
THOSE DELIGHTFUL AMERICANS.
lot iGeorge)- THE MILL ON THE
FLOSS.
Findlater. Jane H.). THE GREEN
GR S OF BALGOWRIE.
Gallon a Town). RICKERBY’'S FOLLY.
Gaskell (Mrs.). CRANFORD.
MARY BARTON.
NORTH AND SOUTH.
Cee (imvates HOLY MATRI-
THE conguRST OF LONDON.
MADE OF M EY.
Ce ty THE ey TRAVELLER.
HE CROWN OF LIF
Glagville. cE roast): ¥ HE INCA’S
THE iLOOF BRIDE.
Gleig (Charles). BUNTER’S CRUISE.
Grimm (The Brothers). GRIMM’S
‘FAIRY TALES.
Hope Anthony). A MAN OF MARK.
NGE. OF AIR.
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT
ANTONIO.
PHROSO.
THE DOLLY DIALOGUES.
Hornung (E. W.). DEAD MEN TELL
NO TALES.
Ingres (J. H.) THE THRONE OF
AVID.
Le Queux(W.). THE HUNCHBACK OF
STMINSTER.
pe aa (S. K.). THE TRAITOR'S
iieton ey Lyn THE TRUE HIS.
FyOsiuA DAVIDSON.
sa (edna). DERRICK VAUGHAN.
alet en THE CARISSIMA.
finan de ips EER HD
aan re WARD.
A LOST E
THE CEDAR STA AR,
Marchrmon (A. w eae ;
archmon . W.). ISER B
LEY'S SE ? HOAD
BTR Tete ont
arrya’ in ETER io.
JACOB FAITHF ‘ seen
A VOYAGE |
Messrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE
ichard), A METAMORPHOSIS.
Maren (wre ae A ORERAGE.
THE GODDESS.
THE JOSS.
Mason (A. E. W.). EEN
Mathers (Helen). NEY.
F OF ete) ESHSCOURT
Sant ‘3 SWEETHEART.
Meade (Mrs. L. T.). DRIFT.
Mitford (Bertram), THE SIGN OF THE
IDE:
SP R.
Montresor (F. F.). THE ALIEN.
Morrison (A (arth) THE HOLE IN
pele ie) LIne RED HOUSE.
orris ( e re wo GRACE.
CLLRS ING
THE CREDIT < OF THE COUNTY.
LORD LEONARD THE LUCKLESS.
MATTHEW nee
CLARISSA FURIO!
ptiphant (Mrs.). THE LADY'S WALK.
SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE.
THE PRODIGALS.
THE TWO MARYS.
Oppenheim (E. P.). MASTER OF MEN.
Parker (allbect). THE POMP OF THE
LAVILETTE:
WHEN, VALMOND CAME TO EN EIN
THE TRAIL OF THE SWOR
Pemberton Coe THE Todssiune
OF A THRO
I CROWN THEE KING.
Phillpotts {Eden THE HUMAN BOY.
CHILDREN OF THE MIST,
THE POACHER’S WIFE.
THE RIVER, »
uiller Couch
‘Qiltre Toul ne ee
Ridge Pere a SON OF THE
LOST Kos a pore
GEORGE aa THE GENERAL.
Russell (W.' Clark). ABANDONED.
A MARRIAGE AT SEA.
MY DANISH SWEETHEART.
HIS ISLAND. PRINCESS.
Sergeant (oaieline THE MASTE
BEECHWOOD, a: ee
BARBARA'S S$ MONEY.
THE YELLOW DIAMOND.
THE LOVE THAT OVERCAME. .
SeGicES EANPRY SOS
ASK MAI MA, ives
Walford (Mrs. L. B. : ."
Walford sb iaacin
THE BABY’S GRANDMOTHER,
Wallace (G 1 : ;
ine ee neneral Lew). BEN. HUR.
Watson (H. B. Marriot
Ne arriott), THE ADVEN.
Weekes (A. B.). PRISONERS OF WAR.
Wells (H. G.). THE SEA Lapy, . :
White (Percy). A P
PILGRIM. ASSIONATE
re be bce
ANH Tada Pt Dy
Fae
’ %