Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/287

Rh in the autumn of the year 1830, by Dr. T. B. Wilson, at the suggestion of his friend Mr. R. Gunter of Earl's Court, brought from London in a wire case. It arrived in safety, and the bees swarmed several times the first year; and in the True Colonist (a Hobart-Town newspaper) of February 14th 1835, it is stated that a hive descended from Dr. Wilson's, belonging to a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Hobart-Town, had already swarmed eighteen times!"

Major Mitchell states, in his recently published account of his expedition into the interior of Australia, that he sometimes met with bees in great plenty, and some of them were not a little curious in their habits. Although his rifle was in frequent use, he one day found that a quantity of wax and honey had been deposited in the barrel, and also in the hollow part of the ramrod! He had previously noticed a bee occasionally entering the barrel, and it now appeared that wax and honey had been lodged immediately above the charge to the depth of about two inches. The bee which he most frequently observed about his tent, and which was probably the species that selected this perilous depository, was as large as the English bee, and had a sting. "We were now," he says, in another part of his interesting work, "in a 'land flowing with milk and honey;' for the natives with their new tomahawks extracted it in abundance from the hollow branches of the trees, and it seemed that, in the season, they could find it almost everywhere. To such inexpert clowns, as they probably