DESCRIPTION OF A BEE HUNT.

THE beautiful forest in which we were encamped abounded in bee trees; that is to say, trees in the decayed trunks of which wild bees had established their hives. It is surprising in what countless swarms the bees have overspread the far West, within but a moderate number of years. The Indians consider the bee

the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man; and they say that in proportion as the bee advances the Indian and buffalo retire. They are always accustomed to associate the hum of the bee hive with the farm-house and flower garden, and to consider those industrious little insects as connected with the busy haunts of man; and I am told that the wild bee is seldom to be met with at any great distance from the frontier. They have been the heralds of civilization, steadfastly preceding it, as it advanced from the Atlantic borders; and some of the ancient settlers of the West pretend to give the very year when the honey bee first crossed the Mississippi.

The Indians, with surprise, found the mouldering trees of their forests suddenly teeming with ambrosial sweets; and nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness. At present, the honey bee swarms in myriads in the noble groves and forests that skirt and intersect the prairies and extend along the alluvial bottoms of the rivers. It seems to me that these beautiful regions answer literally to the description of the land of promise,—“a land flowing with milk and honey;" for the rich pasturage of the prairies is calculated to sustain herds of cattle as countless as the sand on the sea-shore, while the flowers with which they are enamelled render them a very paradise for the nectar-seeking bee.

We had not been long in the camp when a party set out in quest of a bee tree; and, being curious to witness the sport, I gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. The party was headed by a veteran bee hunter, a tall, lank fellow, with a home

spun garb that hung loosely about his limbs, and with a straw hat shaped not unlike a bee hive. A comrade, equally uncouth in garb, and without a hat, straddled along at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. To these succeeded half a dozen others, some with axes, and some with rifles; for no one stirs far from the camp without his fire-arms, so as to be ready either for wild deer or wild Indians.

After proceeding for some distance, we came to an open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which he placed a piece of honey-comb. This, I found, was the bait or lure for the wild bees. Several were soon humming about it, and diving into the cells. When they had loaded themselves with honey, they rose into the air, and darted off in a straight line, almost with the velocity of a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a hole, about sixty feet from the ground.

Two of the bee hunters now plied their axes vigorously at the foot of the tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and amateurs, in the meantime, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the way of the falling of the tree, and the vengeance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the axe seemed to have no effect in alarming or disturbing this most industrious community. They continued to ply at their usual occupations; some arriving fully freighted into port, others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in a money-making metropolis, little suspecting impending bankruptcy and downfall. Even a loud crack, which announced the disruption of the trunk, failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of gain. At length, down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open from end to end, and displaying all the hoarded treasures of the commonwealth.

One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp of lighted hay, as a defence against the bees. The latter, however, made no attack, and sought no revenge; they seemed stupified by the catastrophe and unsuspicious of its cause, and remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins, without offering us any molestation, Every one of the party now fell to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of old date, and of a deep brown colour; others were beautifully white, and the honey in their cells was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment; those which had been shivered in the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every bee hunter might have been seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream-tart before the holiday appetite of a school-boy.

Nor was it the bee hunters alone that profited by the downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees would carry through the similitude of their habits to those of laborious and gain-loving man, I beheld numbers from rival hives arriving on eager wing, to enrich themselves with the ruin of their neighbours. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerfully as so many wreckers on an Indiaman that has been driven on shore; plunging into the cells of the broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way, full-freighted, to their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them; but crawled backward and forward in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow with his hands in his pockets whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his house which had been burned.

It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived from time to time with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in the air, in the place where their fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding it all a vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their

disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neighbouring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic.

We now abandoned the place, leaving much honey in the hollow of the tree. "It will all be cleared off by varmint," said one of "What vermin?" asked I.

"Oh, bears, and "The bears are the tree in the world.

the rangers. skunks, and racoons, and 'possums," said he. knowingest varmint for finding out a bee They'll gnaw for days together at the trunk, till they make a hole big enough to get in their paws, and then they'll haul out honey, bees, and all."

W. IRVING.

WILD HORSES OF THE PRAIRIE.

"WHEN Columbus discovered the New World no animal of the horse kind was found there. The horse that at present inhabits America, though not indigenous, has proved a flourishing exotic. Not only in a domestic state has he increased in numbers, but he has in many places escaped from the control of man, and now runs wild upon the great plains both of North and South America. Although you may find in America almost every breed' of horses known in Europe, yet the great majority belong to two very distinct kinds. The first of these is the large English horse, in his different varieties, imported by the Anglo-Americans, and existing almost exclusively in the woodland territory of the United States. The second kind is the Andalusian-Arab-the horse of

the Spanish conquerors, -a much smaller breed than the EnglishArabian, but quite equal to him in mettle and beauty of form. It is the Andalusian horse that is found throughout all Spanish America, it is he that has multiplied to such a wonderful extent, -it is he that has 'run wild.'

That the horse in his normal state is a dweller upon open plains is proved by his habits in America; for in no part where the forest predominates is he found wild-only upon the prairies of

the north, and the llanos and pampas of the south, where a timbered tract forms the exception.

He must have found these great steppes congenial to his natural disposition; for, only a very short time after the arrival of the Spaniards in the New World, we find the horse a runaway from civilization-not only existing in a wild state upon the prairies, but in possession of many of the Indian tribes.

It would be an interesting inquiry to trace the change of habits which the possession of the horse must have occasioned among those Arabs of the Western World. However hostile they may have been to his European rider, they must have welcomed the horse as a friend. No doubt they admired the bold, free spirit of the noble animal, so analogous to their own nature. He and they soon became inseparable companions, and have continued so from that time to the present hour.

In ‘Prairie-land' every tribe of Indians is in possession of the horse; but the true type of the 'horse-Indian' is to be found in the Comanche, the lord of that wide domain that extends from the Arkansas to the Rio Grande.

The Comanche is on horseback almost from his infancy-transferred, as it were, from his mother's arms to the withers of a mustang. When able to walk, he is scarcely allowed to practise this natural mode of progression, but performs all his movements on the back of a horse. A Comanche would no more think of making a journey afoot-even if it were only to the distance of a few hundred yards-than he would of crawling upon his hands and knees. The horse, ready saddled and bridled, stands ever near— it is of little moment whether there is either saddle or bridle, -and flinging himself on the animal's back, or his neck, or his croup, or hanging suspended along his side, the Indian guides him to the destined spot, usually at a rapid gallop. It is of no consequence to the rider how fast the horse may be going, it will not hinder him from mounting and dismounting at will. At any time, by clutching the mane, he can spring upon the horse's shoulders—just as may be often seen in the arena of the circus."Reid.

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