from what far antiquity comes the traditionary virtues of many of our native plants? Within the pale of the Church of Rome were, doubtless, preserved and cherished those precious remains of ancient literature, science, and art, which had been rescued from the havoc of the incursions of the Northmen. The sanctity of the altar, and the respect for the churchmen, were shown in various ways. Wells of medicinal repute, situated hard by the old sacred groves, and whose virtues were attributed to some presiding deity, were dedicated to some favourite Saint; and several plants were in like manner dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The fields of the monks exhibited a style of cultivation worthy of the practical students of Virgil and Columella, and the poor were fed at a bountiful rate from their well-stored granges. The frequent fastings and abstinence from animal food led to the introduction from foreign lands of plants that were both useful and grateful to the palate. The attention bestowed by the clergy in ministering to the ailments of their people, was in like manner favourable to the progress of gardening. Previous to the ascendancy of the Church of Rome, in the physic-garden of the Saxon age we find "peppermint, rosemary, sage, rue, pennyroyal, fenugrek, cumin, watercress, cornflag roses, lovage, fennel, tansy, white Lilies, kidney-beans, and savory; corianders and poppy were grown in the kitchen garden.' At a later period, in monkish gardens might be seen “bluebells, bachelor-buttons, balm, daffodil, golden and silver-rod, honesty, lily of the valley, marigold, mint, narcissus, Solomon's seal, southernwood, and Star of Bethlehem." There is abundant evidence to show that above three hundred species of "medicinal plants were known to the monks and friars, and used by the religious orders in general for medicines." The learned Chalmers has adduced proof, that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries every house in the Eastern Border towns and villages had a garden for raising culinary herbs; and a good history of monkish botany would, doubtless, prove invaluable for settling disputes about certain indigenous and naturalized plants. وو The Borders had been originally covered with noble forests, which gradually disappeared before the improvident waster in peace, but, above all, by the havoc of contending armies to prevent the frequent ambuscade of foes. Thus, in course of time, the whole country was bared to the sweep of the winter's blast; bogs filled up the valleys, gendering unwholesome exhalations; the crops were scanty and late; severe famine for both man and beast was of frequent occurrence. The Reformation swept away all monkish establishments. In the day of distress there were no well-stored granaries for the famished, no medicines for the afflicted; yet some knowledge of medical botany lingered amongst the people, and was cherished in simple faith down to these latter days, and even yet it lingers amongst the unlearned in retired places.-See Dr. George Johnston's Botany of the Eastern Borders. CURIOSITIES OF BEES. PLINY thus mentions the hive-bee, attributing to it properties which really belong to another, and misstating the motive of the action :- If haply there do arise a tempest or a storm whiles they [the bees] be abroad, they catch up some little stony greet to ballance and poise themselves against the wind. Some say that they take it and lay it upon their shoulders. And withall, they flie low by the ground, under the wind, when it is against them, and keep along the bushes, to breake the force thereof. This notion was first entertained by Aristotle, and repeated by Virgil, to whose poetic imagination such a trait in the habits of his favourite insects would be highly grateful.-(See his fourth Georgic.) This fable has also been frequently found in later dissertations on the natural history of the bee, and adduced as a surprising instance of beeinstinct, notwithstanding the corrections of Swammerdam, Reaumur, and later naturalists, all of whom have shown that here the mason-bee has been mistaken for the honey-bee; the former being often seen hastening through the air, loaded with sand and gravel, the materials of its nest. (See Note in the Naturalist's Library.) The wonderful economy of bees was described by Aristotle, 2200 years ago, as we have it at present; but that he mistakes the sex of the queen. The discoveries of Huber, Swammerdam, Reaumur, Latreille, Bonnet, and other moderns read more like a fairy tale than anything else, yet the subject is far from being exhausted. At the same time, modern naturalists have substantiated the accuracy of the ancients in many statements which were considered ridiculous fables. The ancients anticipated us so far as even to have used glass hives, for the purpose of observing the bees at work: see an old writer quoted by Bochart. Jones of Nayland says: "Consider the wisdom and happiness which is found among a swarm of bees; a pattern to all human societies. There is perfect allegiance, perfect subordination; no time is lost in disputing or questioning; but business goes forward with cheerfulness at every opportunity, and the great object is the common interest. All are armed for defence and search for work; so that in every member of the community, the two characters of the soldier and the labourer are united. If you look to the fruits of this wise economy, you find a store of honey for them to feed upon, when the summer is passed, and the days of labour are finished." Kirby describes bees as those admirable creatures, which though, as a wise man observes, they are little among such as fly, their fruit is the chief of sweet things, those Heaven-instructed mathematicians, who, be fore any geometer could calculate under what form a cell would occupy the least space without diminishing its capacity, and before any chemist existed to discover how wax might be elaborated from vegetable sweets, instructed by the Fountain of Wisdom, had built their hexagonal cells of that pure material, had closed them at the bottom with three rhomboidal pieces, and were enabled, without study, so to construct the opposite story of combs, that each of these rhomboids would form one of those of three opposed cells, thus giving strength to the structure that, in no other plan, could have been given to it. Wise in their government, diligent and active in their employments, devoted to their young and to their queen, they read a lesson to mankind that exemplifies their Oriental name-she that speaketh. Whoever examines their external structure, will find every part adapted to their various employments. These valued animals, so worthy the attention of the sage, as well as the culture of the economist, are almost the only ones of the order that are guilty of no spoliation, and injure no one; they take what impoverishes no one, while it enriches them and us also, by the valuable products which are derived from their skill and labour-true emblems of honest industry. All insects of this order, in their perfect state, imbibe the nectar from the flowers; but none, except the hive and humble bees, and one species of wasp, with the view of storing it up for future use. Mr. Jesse observes :-To a thinking mind, few phenomena are more striking than the clustering of bees on some bough, where they remain, in order, as it were, to be ready for hiving. Where a hive is fixed over a swarm, the bees will generally go into it of their own accord, uttering at the same time their satisfied hum, and seeming to be aware of the object in placing the hive so near them. How the queen bee is made acquainted with so convenient a place for her retreat is unexplained: surrounded by thousands of her subjects, she makes her way through them all, and enters the hive followed by the whole swarm. Here the work of preparing future cells is instantly commenced, and it has been found that, although a swarm has not been able for two or three days to quit the hive after they had taken possession of it, a considerable number of cells had been nearly completed. Even as soon as the foundation of a cell is finished, the queen will sometimes deposit an egg upon it, the sides being afterwards built up. The relative value of a swarm, in the different months, is thus estimated : A swarm of bees in May You had better let it fly.] In some parts of Surrey, as at Dorking, the first migration from the parent hive is a swarm; the next a cast; while the third increase in the season, goes under the name of a cote. In the Midland Counties, the third is a spindle. In Sussex it is considered a sign of a death in the family, if bees, in the act of swarming, make choice of a dead hedge-stake for their settling-place. In Norfolk, if they swarm on rotten wood, it portends a death in the family. Chloroform renders bees quiet and innocuous, so that the honey may be taken from them without destroying them altogether. The Commonwealth of Bees.-Self-preservation and the transmission of life are here a charge performed, not by scattered couples, but by a varied society, marked out into separate divisions, with natural functions of extreme simplicity, and instincts so complex that they almost approach to reason. The relations of queen bee, workers, and drones have been the commonplace of poets and moralists, and the puzzle of scientific observers, ever since these roving colonies were domesticated. Virgil's description in the Georgics is a fair sample of common views, and of those obvious facts which perplex the eye unaided by the microscope. A lively French author has accused him of mistaking drones for workers; but that gentleman was not aware of the difference in colour between French and Italian bees. Herr von Berlepsch began to note with the microscope the economy of more than a hundred hives, and Professor Siebold brought the trained eye and varied culture of the practised zoologist to assist in reducing the facts to order and law. The principal results may easily be indicated in a few lines. The queen bee is nothing more than an ordinary worker, who has been reared in a royal or larger cell, and on paste which the workers have prepared, instead of pollen and honey. When a queen is old, and about to die, one of her brood is selected and reared as successor. When she is lost by any accident, the workers select some worker-cells furnished with an egg or young larva, and enlarge them into queen's cradles, and feed the occupant with royal food. The tasks of collecting honey, of forming cells, and ministering to royalty consume the entire energies of the worker-bees. The charge of reproducing the society devolves on the queen and the drones. Left entirely to herself, the queen is furnished with a store of eggs, from which any number of drones may be produced. Hence, in some cases of accident, a result well known to the keepers of hives occurs-only drones emerge from the cells, and the queen has to be killed, that her fatal fertility may not ruin the working colony. A necessary result of this is that no hybrid males can ever be found-where the queen bee is of pure stock they are always, in colour and shape, the counterparts of their mother. The workers, on the other hand, are the children of the drones and the queen; and the Italian and German broods have very often been crossed in this way. It is, therefore, the instinct of self-preservation as a community that leads the workers to rear and feed the drones. And it is worth observing how admirably, by this arrangement, an insect exposed to so many enemies is secured from the chance of extinction. If by any accident the queen bee and the males of the hive should perish, the workers would only need to exchange the larva's destiny of work for the destiny of royalty; and the queen would, in the course of time, stock the hive with drones. (See Saturday Review, April 25th, 1857.) Schirach asserts that in one season a single female will lay from 70,000 to 100,000 eggs. Reaumur says that, upon an average, she lays about 200 in a day, a moderate swarm consisting of 12,000, which are laid in two months; and Huber, that she lays above a hundred. All these statements, the observations being made in different climates, and perhaps under different circumstances, may be true.-(Kirby and Spence.) The bee has three large eyes, and, incredible as the fact may appear, 4000 smaller ones or telescopes; so that, by these manifold sources of vision, it is enabled, even at a great distance, to discover the nutrition most suitable for its sustenance, and to cull from the various flowers that substance from which it manufactures its honey and wax. Reaumur found that 336 bees weighed an ounce, and 5376 a pound. According to John Hunter, an alehouse pint contains 2160 workers. The sting of the Bee is a beautiful little tube, formed like a telescope, through which the poison from the bag to which it is attached is injected. This very fine and delicate apparatus is barbed at the end, and when firmly fixed below by contraction, draws the rest of the sheath after it; and the sting, with its appurtenances, is so large in proportion to the whole body of the bee, and the detaching it from the other parts so seriously disturbs the internal economy of the insect, that the wonder seems to be that it retains any animation at all after losing it. A bee, deprived of its antennæ, immediately becomes dull and listless: it desists from its usual labours, remains at the bottom of the hive, seems attracted only by the light, and takes the first opportunity of quitting the hive, never more to return. A queen bee, thus mutilated, ran about without apparent object, as if in a state of delirium, and was incapable of directing her trunk with precision to the food which was offered to her. There are two descriptions of males one not bigger than the workers, supposed to be produced from a male egg laid in a worker's cell. The common males are much larger, and will counterpoise two workers. There are also two sorts of workers-wax-makers and nurses. They may also be further divided into fertile and sterile; for some of them lay male eggs. There is found in some hives, according to Huber, a kind of bees, which, from having less down upon the head and throat, appear blacker than the others, by whom they are always expelled from the hive, and often killed. These are thought to be no longer capable of working, and to be superannuated bees. Thorley remarks, that if you closely observe a hive of bees in July, you may perceive many amongst them of a dark colour, with wings rent and torn; but in September, not one of them is to be seen. Should this conjecture prove true, the banishment and destruction of the seniors of the hive seems the law of their nature, to rid their community of all supernumerary and useless members, as is evident from their destruction of the drones after their work is done. New Queen.-If the bees are deprived of their queen, and are supplied with comb containing young worker brood only, they will select one or more to be educated as queens. These, by having a royal cell erected for their habitation, and being fed with royal jelly for not more than two days, will, when they emerge from their pupa state (though, if they |