compactness of appearance are objects aimed at. Besides, it is possible to place a great many hives within small compass, and be free from all danger of receiving mistaken visits. Many of our hives are removed, in spring, to cottage and market gardens in the country. We pay rent for a small space, and make it answer well. The following representation will show the reader how ten hives can be safely placed on a spot not much larger than a diningroom table.

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Every hive is separate from the rest, and so placed that there could be no mistakes made by the bees as to their own hives; but there is not room enough between them to hold a swarm from each hive without risk.

As there is a peculiar smell in each hive, which appears to be the bond of union in the community of it-bees knowing each other by smell-the intelligent bee-master will keep his hives as far asunder as he can conveniently, or sufficiently far to prevent the peculiarity from being lost. Close proximity may destroy it.

CHAPTER XV.

BEE-HOUSES.

Ir appears a work of supererogation to say a word about bee-houses in a work on the profitable management of bees. Such houses are very expensive and inconvenient. All bee-keepers of experience consider them a hindrance to good management, and objectionable in many senses. We have nothing to say in their favour, save this, that they help to protect hives from the severity of winter storms. Of course there are people who will have beehouses, and have them to please the eye of the most fastidious, real models of beauty and architecture. One gentleman in this neighbourhood built one, some four years ago, at a cost of £20. He placed some hives of bees in it; but every year something went wrong with them. We called this season to see them, about swarming time. We found three hives on one bench, containing bees of the most social and neighbourly characters and dispositions we had ever seen; for they marched in and out of each other's hives in the most friendly manner, apparently without let or hindrance. This gentleman met the writer about a month ago, when he said—“I have lost all my bees; I can't manage them." No wonder his bees did not prosper. In bee-keeping there is no profitable return for foolish and unnecessary expenses. If this gentleman's bees had been kept apart, on separate stands, he would have had success instead of loss and disappointment.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE PASTURAGE OF BEES.

WHAT a mint of money, what a mine of wealth, rise up before the mind of a thinking man as he approaches the consideration of this subject! Bee-pasture? A mint of money? A mine of wealth? Why, sir, you once said that, “At the rate of £2 profit per hive, it took fifty bees a whole season to earn one farthing's worth of honey and keep themselves.” Why, then, talk about a mint of money in connection with this subject? Stop a little, and think a bit! How many hives will find ample pasture in a parish four miles square, containing 10,000 acres of land? How many parishes, some larger, and some less, in every county? If a twenty-acre field of grass, well sprinkled with the flowers of white clover, yield to the suck of bees 100 lb. at least per day, value £5, and strongly scent the air as well-and twenty acres of good heather yield probably 200 lb. of honey per day, value £20,-who will venture to calculate, and give the sum total of honey-value of all the counties of Great Britain and Ireland? We remember being startled at the statement of a citizen of Manchester, in a paper which he read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, while that Association met, two or three years ago, in this city. I forget the title of the paper, but the subject was the poisonous exhalations of the city. The

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number of tons of carbonic acid gas constantly passing off into the atmosphere was named, a number great enough to quicken the attention of all sanatory reformers, and the movements of the Corporation of Manchester. But who can accurately weigh or number the millions upon millions of pounds of honey that pass away (ungathered by bees) into the atmosphere? Who can estimate the millions of pounds worth of honey thus wasted on the "desert air"?

If our

Suppose a mild form of mania were to seize the railway porters of the wayside stations of the various railway companies of this country; and suppose it were to run in the direction of bee-hives. Well, what then? There can be no better position for bees than the banks of our railways. If fifteen hives were placed on an average per mile, how much income would be derived? At the rate of only one pound per hive annually (about one-half the usual rate), 500 miles would return £7500 yearly. worthy porters were to receive Christmas presents to the tune of £15 per mile of line, they would doubtless be pleased and full of gratitude; but if the money were to come from bees, and a little attention given to them, they would be equally enriched in purse, and probably much more so in mind, by their uplifting acquaintance with the industry and economy of honey-bees. "A land flowing with milk and honey" is this England of ours. Cows we keep to yield the milk: bees are either not kept or greatly mismanaged; hence the honey is not gathered.

But is it not possible to overstock a given locality or parish with bees? Yes; though we have never known one overstocked. We have known from fifty to one hundred hives standing in one garden, the stronger of which gained from 2 lb. to 5 lb. per day in fine weather. If

the number had been twice as large, the probability is great that the gains or accumulation of honey would not have been perceptibly less in any of the hives. If there be food enough in a grass field for thirty head of cattle, it does not matter much to the cattle whether ten or twenty be kept in it: there will remain grass uneaten. So with bees there is in almost every place far more food for them than they can gather.

But are all localities equally good for bees? No; there is a great difference. Some are very much more honeyed than others; and some are rich at one period of the season and poor at another. In my own garden, on the immediate south of the black city of Manchester, bees do very well in spring-till the apple-tree blossoms fail; afterwards it is a poor, poor neighbourhood for bees. They can barely keep themselves in ordinary seasons—in extra fine seasons they gather small stores of honey. We find it desirable to remove them farther into the country, where they can find better pasture. We have alluded to this elsewhere, and may allude to it again.

It is perhaps beyond the powers of the most observant and best-informed mind in the realm to name every plant in this country that yields honey, or from which honey may be gathered. Their number is great. But as there are some of greater value to bees than others, we will now mention those which we consider the best for yielding honey. In one small work on bees in my library there are upwards of seventy bee-flowers enumerated, and put in classes for spring, summer, and autumn.

Crocuses in early spring receive great attention from bees. Much pollen and some honey are collected from their flowers.

In some places there are two kinds of willow (salix)