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68 I insert here a stray fact, lest it should be forgotten. In Abbeokuta and throughout the Aku country, old women are seen nursing infants, not their own, as, in many instances they were far beyond the period of life when such a thing is at all possible.

Wild bees are very common in Africa. One day a large swarm alighted near our house. I essayed to take them in a box, and after two or three unsuccessful attempts, abandoned the undertaking, as it seemed utterly impossible to induce them to take up with a civilized abode. Next morning passing near the box, which was thrown carelessly under a tree, I was surprised to find, that they had quite changed mind, and were busily laboring in their new domicile. They continued several weeks, when ceasing to hear their busy hum, I examined, and found that they had again departed. They carried off, of course, all the honey, but left plenty of wax, which I prepared and brought with me as a sample of African beeswax. The natives thought me a charmed man, because, forsooth, I was not stung to death in the undertaking. This section of Africa is sometimes the theatre of terrible thunder-storms. In one of these, my colleague, Dr. Delany, accompanied by Reverend Mr. Reed, missionary at Oyo, was caught one night returning from a visit to a friend, some distance from our dwelling