something about fast horses. Now you take warning by me and don't think that every horse that we raise is going to beat some other man's horse. And, said I, let this thing of trying to be jockeys end here.

Mr. YOUNG. I would inquire of Mr. Bascom if, in his remarks in regard to racing, he meant to include the heat-nag as well as other shorter forms of the race-track. It occurred to me that probably the President did not measure the entire length of its bearing upon the organism and purpose of the horse. It occurred to me that endurance was one of the main objects in the production of the farmhorse. In my idea, heat-racing is unconnected with horse growing among farmers. The President is aware that endurance comes from protracted effort.

President BASCOM. There are two kinds of endurance. Endurance may show itself in different ways. I do not doubt the twoforty horse has a certain kind of endurance that does not belong to any other kind of horses. But it is a kind of endurance that will not suffice for other kinds of wants, for instance, to be able to stand a good hard day's work and plow on the farm under moderate motion. That is one kind of endurance required. But to stand very rapid motion for a few minutes on the race-track is another kind of endurance, and that is not what is wanted by farmers. And just at this point I object wholly to this boat-racing in colleges, and on that ground I have a certain charity for that as a means of pleasure. But the truth is, that the man who is hard and plucky for drawing an oar in a boat-race, is not plucky and hard for solving a difficult problem in mathematics. It is like a mill-dam, if we draw off the water from it to a mill on one side we cannot draw it off to the mill on the other side. The men who can think the most and strongest are the men who keep up their general nutritive system, and thus direct their forces in the channel in which they propose to use them.

Mr. STEWART. I think a horse of a medium size is about what a farmer wants on the average, especially where we can't support a team for the various purposes for which we want horses. For a team for all purposes, a medium-sized team is the best.

General DELAPLAINE. The importance of good walking in horses is generally overlooked. I understand that the premium offered in England for good walkers is larger than for any other kind of speed.

It seems to me that it is a very necessary kind of gait for farmer's horses. I have thought that this matter ought to be taken up at our fairs, and that better premiums ought to be given for good walkers.

Mr. BENTON. I want to say that the last gentleman has struck the key-note, we want the walkers. There is our success in almost every occupation as farmers, it is in the horse that can walk, and do it easily. I hope that subject will receive attention from those in the management of our fairs.

APICULTURE OR "LIGHT IN THE BEE-HIVE."

BY G. W. MARYATT, MILTON.

The Creator has stamped the seal of His infinity on all his works, so that it is impossible by searching, to find out the Almighty to perfection. On none of them, however, has He displayed Himself more clearly than in the economy of the honey-bee. No doubt He intended the bee, as truly as the domestic animals, for the comfort of man. In the early ages of the world, and even until quite modern times, honey was almost the only natural sweet and the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey had once a significance which it is difficult for us fully to realize. The honey-bee is the only insect that has been domesticated by man, and besides giving us wealth and a splendid luxury, it possesses many charms and is a study for the naturalist.

There are very few societies in this country for learning and investigating the wonders of this little insect. For ages past, organizations have been effected by our best men to develope the various agricultural resources of the land, and during the same period the most industrious workers of our continent have been consigned to the ignominy of a death by fire and brimstone.

If apiarists had given the time and attention in selecting the males and females from the largest, most industrious, prolific, and docile colonies to breed from, with the same care, shrewdness and attention that has been practiced with horses, cattle, sheep, hogs and poultry, we would have a race of bees far superior to what we now possess.

Man cannot obtain labor from any other source as cheap as from the honey-bee, as they work for nothing and find themselves, requiring only a free tenement. The census returns of 1850 show the amount of wax and honey in the United States to be 14,853,790 pounds. In 1860, 126,386,855 pounds. With the increased attention given to the pursuit, together with the increase of colonies, we have no doubt that the present returns will show a vast increase of product. Possessing, as we do, a genial climate and a fertile soil, producing plants with a due degree of skill and enterprise, capable of the production of richly varied honey and flowers, the bees can be increased to an extent that the profit arising therefrom will pay all our taxes, and furnish our tables daily with one of the choicest luxuries of life.

The honey-bee belongs to the genus apis and is of that class of insects that live in perfect societies. A full colony or swarm consists of one queen, being a perfect female, and fifteen to thirty thousand workers, and also a few hundred drones. The latter are the only perfect males and are only found during the summer or swarming season. No colony can long exist without a queen. She lays all the eggs, but does not govern her subjects or dictate their workings, but is governed by them in all her movements, being fed by them to control the number of eggs required according to the season and capacity of the hive. When she becomes old she is superceded by a young queen, raised by the workers, who kill the old The same egg that will produce a queen can also produce a drone or worker, depending on the skill of the latter in forming the cell and kind of food furnished. If a queen is required, three cells are converted into one, and the young grub on being removed to it must not be more than five days old, and then fed for eleven days on what is called payal jelly. Hence, a queen is produced in sixteen days, while it requires twenty-one to develop workers.

one.

Within from three to six days after the queen leaves her cell, she flies abroad to mate with the drones in the air, and returns to make the hive populous. Her natural life is four years, but is sometimes superceded in the first year. A prolific queen will lay two or three thousand eggs per day. The workers are smaller than the queen or drone and are in fact non-sexual, though really imperfect females; yet they nurse the young, gather the honey, obtain the pollen, propolis-glue and other substances requisite for honey-preserving pur

poses in the hive, and are armed with stings to defend the community. The drones are like some of the human family, eating much and doing little; hence, when the drone season is over, the workers kill the drones or drive them out to starve. If the workers make a mistake and form too many drone-cells, the drones will sometimes be so numerous as to eat the honey as fast as the workers can procure it; but by the improved method of bee-keeping, in the use of movable frames, the drone can be removed, and comb for raising workers inserted in its place. In fact the whole breeding department can be regulated in the same manner. The wax is produced for building comb in which to store the honey and pollen and for the deposit of eggs.

The workers which produce the wax do nothing else. The wax exudes from their bodies in scales; is a costly matter in the way of time for the bees, as only in the honey-season can they make one pound of wax, while they can procure twenty pounds of honey. Dr. Kirtland says they consume twenty-five pounds of honey to producing one pound of comb. Pollen, or bee-bread, is gathered from, and is the fertilizing dust of flowers. The color and quality varies with the different plants. It is never stored in drone-cells but used to feed the young in early spring before flowers appear. If flour of rye is placed near the hives, the bees will obtain from it a similar substance, and are stimulated to brood early in the spring. Each swarm will profitably use two pounds of flour before vegetation is in bloom.

Bee-keeping has been so simplified, the science has been reduced to such an art, that any one who chooses can keep bees and manage them well, and the land described as flowing with milk and honey can be realized in Wisconsin, and honey become abundant for home use and profit in the market.

Honey in clear white comb, still commands the highest price, but is not the most profit to the producer or consumer. By a cheap aparatus the honey is driven from the comb by centrifugal force without injuring the comb, and the entire comb restored to the hive to be refilled, and in the best of the honey-season can be successfully done every third or fourth day. Those who eat honey in the comb also eat the wax which is indigestable and unwholsome, which is not the case in the use of extracted honey. By this process we can have clover, linden, or buckwheat honey as we choose:

and all who use the Melipulte testify that three pounds can be obtained where only one can be had in the ordinary way. If the bee had not such a formidable weapon, both of offense and defense, multitudes who now fear it might easily be induced to enter upon its cultivation; but the science teaches us laws by which all necessary operations may be performed without incurring any risk of exciting its anger while removing comb covered with bees, forming new swarms, exhibiting the queen, transferring them and their stores to other hives and extracting the honey, and thus enjoying the pleasure and profit of a pursuit which has been appropriately styled the poetry of rural economy. The laws are only three:

First. The honey-bee, when filled with honey, never volunteers an attack, but only acts on the defensive.

Second. They cannot under any circumstances resist the temptation to fill themselves with liquid sweets.

Third. When frightened, they immediately begin to fill themselves with honey from their combs. By blowing upon them smoke, it will always frighten them so that the largest and most fiery colony may at once be brought into complete subjection.

In this consists all the secrets, charms, and receipts for taming bees with which unprincipled venders have long humbugged a too credulous public. The soul of this system is a complete control of the combs. With gentle movements and a thorough knowledge of the science, any one, male or female, can superintend a large apiary, performing every operation necessary for pleasure and profit with as little risk of stings as must be incurred in managing a single hive in the ordinary way. The eggs of the queen are deposited equally on each side of the comb, to economize heat for developing the brood, seventy degrees of Farenheit being required. It requires twenty-four days to perfect the drones, twenty-one days to perfect workers, thirty-six hours of which it occupies in spinning its cocoon; and sixteen days to perfect a queen, twenty-four hours of which time it occupies in spinning its cocoon. Such is the enmity of young queens to each other that the one that first emerges from the cell rushes to those of its sisters and tears to pieces even the imperfect larvæ. There are five peculiarities of queens:

1st. She arrives at maturity almost one-third sooner than a drone, and just one-third sooner than a worker.

2d. Her organs of reproduction are completely developed.