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6 who, when tired, ill, and nervously worn out, began bee-keeping, and through it regained vigour and found a new interest in life. Notwithstanding the fact that bees have honest stings, they can work the miracle of changing a dyspeptic pessimist into a cheerful optimist with a rapidity and completeness that merits our highest admiration.

A love for natural science is a very good reason for keeping bees. Nowhere are there more fascinating problems for the investigator than those still unsolved in the hive. Of all the lower animals, bees are, perhaps, the most highly developed in certain ways; and it is more probable that the mysteries of the eternal heavens and the distant stars be made plain than that we ever learn the truths that underlie the development of the "Spirit of the Hive."

Another reason for keeping bees is the insight to be gained therefrom into the conditions of perfect communism. The bees and their relatives are the most intelligent and consistent socialists that have yet been developed in this world; and, through studying their ways, one may discern with startling clearness how the perfect socialism grinds off all the projecting corners of the individual until it fits perfectly in its communal niche. In the hive individual traits, as exemplified in kindness, selfishness, love and hate, are moved up a notch in the scale and characterise the whole community, even though they are eliminated from its members. If one is a social philosopher, he may become very wise, indeed, by studying the results of the laws of socialism