Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/55

Rh just knocked out; they will begin to lick the first drops of honey which trickle on to the board, and will be led up by the scent of that which you have poured into the combs, to mix themselves with the other Bees.

"They will take to one another when they have helped each other to clean off the sugar with their tongues. The fact of their helping each other in their troubles makes them friends, just as it does grown men, and children, who are small men and women."—p. 68.

The entire detail of management is thus unfolded and explained in plain unadorned language; and you cannot resist the conviction that the author is well acquainted with the subject on which he is writing. This cannot be said of many authors of bee-books: these works are for the most part such wretched compilations, that one scarcely ever by chance meets with a paragraph in them worth the trouble of reading. Mr. Cotton, like the rest, has drawn abundantly from other sources, yet it is all fairly done; the original and copied parts of his book stand out distinctly from each other; there is no appropriation of another man's property without acknowledgment: all is fair and above-board even to the "Prelude of Mottoes," extending through five pages; a rare selection in truth, and a fair quiz on a prevailing passion.

We must give one quotation from More's 'England's Interest,' reprinted in 'My Bee-Book;' it includes Queen Elizabeth's receipt for making metheglin, and the author's encomium on that highly prized and ancient beverage.

"Take a bushel of sweet briar-leaves, as much of thyme; half a bushel of rosemary-leaves, and a peck of bay-leaves; and, having well-washed them, boil them in a copper of fair water: let them boil the space of half an hour or better, and then pour out all the water and herbs into a fat, and let it stand till it be but milk warm; then strain the water from the herbs, and take to every gallon of water, one gallon of the finest honey, and beat it together for the space of an hour; then let it stand 2 days, stirring it well twice or thrice a day; then take the liquor and boil it again, and skim it as long as there remains any scum; when it is clear, put into a fat as before, and let it stand to cool. You must then have in readiness a kive of new ale or beer, which as soon as you have emptied suddenly, presently put in the metheglin, and let it stand three days a working, and then tun it up in barrels, tying at every tap-hole, by a packthread, a little bag of beaten cloves and mace, to the value of an ounce. It must stand half a year before it be drank.

"As the vertues of honey are transcendent, so are the vertues of meath and metheglin: when old, it is a wine most agreeable to the stomach. It recovereth, 1. A lost appetite. 2. It openeth the passage for the spirit and breath. 3. It softeneth the