Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/229

Rh which will affect the produce of both, in honey and bees, but to which both are liable. We are now to compare the suffocating system with that by which, even though we defer the honey harvest to the usual late period of September, we may obtain the same quantity of produce, and at the same time save the lives of the bees. "Were we to kill the hen for her egg," says Wildman indignantly, "the cow for her milk, or the sheep for the fleece it bears, every one would instantly see how much we should act contrary to our interest; and yet this is practised every year in our inhuman and impolitic slaughter of the bees." It is mortifying to find writers of some celebrity in this branch of rural economy, defending the practice of suffocation, and using such arguments as the following: "If he who dines every day on a good dish of animal food, does not find fault with the farmer who sold his cattle to the butcher, or who carried them to the market after he had himself cut their throats,—why does he exclaim against the Bee-cultivator who suffocates insects destined by nature to die in the following year?" Independent of the consideration that the carcase of the bee is not, like that of the sheep or ox, of use after its death, and that advantage may be derived from it while in life, the cold calculating spirit which could approve and recommend such uncalled-for barbarity, seems very inconsistent with the enthusiastic admiration of the insect generally felt by apiarians, and betrays more of the selfishness of the honey-merchant,