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should be supered and swarms be nadired. Sideboxes are the leading feature of Mr. Nutt's plan, about which so much has been written and lectured -but that there is nothing new in this, the title of a pamphlet published in 1756 by the Rev. Stephen White, Collateral Bee-boxes,' will sufficiently show. The object of Mr. Nutt's system is to prevent swarming, which he seems to consider an unnatural process, and forced upon the bees by the narrowness and heat of the hive, caused by an overgrown population. To this we altogether demur: the unnatural part of the matter is that which, by inducing an artificial temperature, prevents the old Queen from indulging her nomadic propensities, and, like the Gothic sovereigns of old, heading the emigrating body of her people. Moreover, with all his contrivances Mr. Nutt, or at least his followers, cannot wholly prevent swarming-the old people still contrive to make their home "too hot" for the young ones. But great praise is due to him for the attention which he has called to the ventilation of the hive. Whatever be the system pursued, this is a point that should never be neglected, and henceforth a thermometer, much as the idea was at first ridiculed, must be considered an indispensable accompaniment to a bee-house. To preserve a proper temperature within, the bees themselves do all they can; and it is quite refreshing to see them on a hot day fanning away with their "many-twinkling wings at the entrance of the hive, while others are similarly employed inside, creating such a current

air, that a taper applied to the inlet of the hive would be very sensibly affected by it. Mr. Nutt's book is worth reading for this part of the subject alone-but our own experience, backed by innumerable other instances within our knowledge, is unfavourable to the use of his boxes; and even those bee-keepers who continue them, as partially successful, have not yet got over the disappointment caused by his exaggerated statements of the produce.

Before entering further on the varieties of hives, we must premise for the uninitiated that bees almost invariably begin building their comb from the top, continuing it down as far as room allows them, and finishing it off at the bottom in a rather irregular curved line. Each comb contains a double set of honey-cells, dos-à-dos, in a horizontal position. To support these in common straw hives cross-sticks are used, around which the bees work, so that the comb is necessarily much broken in detaching it from these supports. Now, it having been observed that bees, unless obstructed, always work their combs exactly parallel, and at a certain distance apart, a hive has been constructed somewhat in the shape of a common straw one, only tapering more towards the bottom, and having a lid lifting off just where the circumference is the largest. On removing the lid are seen thin wooden bars about an inch and a half apart, running parallel from the front to the back of the hive, and these, being fixed into a ring of wood that goes round the hive, are removable at pleasure. Now it is obvious that, could we always get the bees to hang

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their combs along these bars, the removal of one or two of them at a time would be a very simple way of procuring a fair share of honey without otherwise disturbing the hive; but how to get the bees always to build in this direction was the question. This Huber solved: he fixed a small piece of comb underneath each of the bars exactly parallel; the bees followed their leader, so that any one of the pendent combs might be lifted up on the bar, the bar be replaced, and the bees set to work again. This starting-point for them to commence from is called the guide-comb, and the hive itself, though somewhat modified, we have the pleasure of introducing to our readers as that of the Greek islands (Naturalist's Library, p. 188); the very form, perhaps, from which the Corycian old man, bringing it from Asia Minor, produced his early swarms;-from which Aristotle himself may have studied, and which, no doubt, made of the reeds or oziers of the Ilyssus, had its place in the garden of Socrates—

"That wise old man by sweet Hymettus' hill."

We must refer our readers to p. 96 of Dr. Bevan's book for the later improvements upon this hive, as respects brood and honey cells (for these are of different depths), and the fixing of the guide-comb, suggested by Mr. Golding of Hunton, who, together with the Rev. Mr. Dunbar, has rendered very valuable assistance to Dr. Bevan's researches.

It is no slight recommendation of Mr. Golding to our good graces to learn that so practised a bee

GOLDING'S BAR-HIVE.

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master has discarded boxes from his apiary, and almost entirely restricted himself to the use of straw hives, and this not from any fancy about their appearance, but from a lengthened experience of their advantage. For ourselves, we dare hardly avow, this profit-loving age, how many pounds of honey we would yearly sacrifice for the sake of preserving the associations that throng around a cottage-hive. To set up in our humble garden the green-painted wooden box, which Mr. Nutt calls "The Temple of Nature," in place of our time-honoured straw hive, whose sight is as pleasant to our eyes as "the hum of murmuring bee" is to our ears!—we had as lief erect a Pantheon or a red-brick meeting-house on the site of our village church. If our livelihood depended on the last ounce of honey we could drain from our starving bees, necessity, which is a stern mistress, might drive us to hard measures, and, secundum artem, they being used to it, we might suffocate them "as though we loved them;" but to give up-and after all for a doubtful or a disadvantage-the pleasant sight of a row of cleanly hives of platted straw, the very form and fashion of one of which is so identified with its blithe inhabitants, that without it a bee seems without its home -to cast away as nought every childhood association, the little woodcut in Watts's Hymns,'-the. hive-shaped sugar-basin of the nursery,-the penny print that we have covered with coatings of gamboge —to lose for ever the sight of the new straw hackle that jauntily caps it like the head-dress of an Esqui

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maux beau-to be no longer cheered in the hot dusty city by the refreshing symbol that "babbles of green fields" in the midst of a hardwareman's shop-this would be too much for us, even though we might thus have assisted, as Mr. Huish would say, "to unlock the stores of apiarian science, and disperse the mists of prejudice by the penetrating rays of philosophy." We would rather bear the character of heathenish barbarism to the day of our death, and have Hivite written on our tomb. Seriously, it is no slight pleasure we should thus forego; and pleasure, simple and unalloyed, is not so cheap or so tangible a commodity in this life that we can afford to throw away anything that produces it, even though it hang but on the gossamer thread of a fancy.

Apart, however, from all such considerations, which, think and write as we may, would, we fear, have but little influence with the practical beekeeper, we are convinced that the moderate temperature which a straw hive produces, both in summer and winter, will not easily be counterbalanced by any other advantages which boxes offer; and as for management, there is scarcely any system or form to which straw may not be accommodated.

Those who have seen the beautiful bell-glasses full of virgin honey from Mr. Nutt's hives, which were exhibited lately either at the Polytechnic or Adelaide Gallery, and still more those who have tasted them on the breakfast-table, may perhaps fancy that boxes only can produce honey in so pure and