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Cattle are very fond of sap; so are sheep, and will drink enough to kill them. The honey-bees get here their first sweet, and the earliest bug takes up his permanent abode on the "spile." The squirrels also come timidly down the trees, and sip the sweet flow; and occasionally an ugly lizard, just out of its winter quarters and in quest Of novelties, creeps up into the pan or bucket.

A pair of king-birds built in his father's orchard, and it was desirable to get rid of them, because they destroy honey-bees. Isaac watched for an opportunity, and one day when the birds flew away in quest of food for their young, he transfixed them both at once with his arrow.

Honey-bees do nothing but good that I can see, yet Nature 's pleased to fill the world with their enemies. Queen and drone and the poor unsexed workers all have their troubles; and so has the little world of the hive. Yet during the few weeks of a bee's life he does an amount of work beyond imagination to guess at." "And still finds time to steal from the hives of his fellows?"

One generation after another fall like honey-bees upon this memorable forest, rifle its sweets, pack themselves with vital memories, and when the theft is consummated depart again into life richer, but poorer also.

"Because I eat up all the honey-bees which the Munchkin farmers who live around here keep to make them honey." "Are you fond of eating honey-bees?" inquired the boy. "Very. They are really delicious. But the farmers did not like to lose their bees and so they tried to destroy me. Of course they couldn't do that." "Why not?"

Then all on a sudden, with such a nimbleness as took away my breath and drove all thoughts o' brambles and honey-bees clean out o' my pate, he jumps aside o' her, and gets her about th' middle, as he did that day under th' pear-tree, and quoth he, "Lass," quoth he, "dunnot break my heart! dunnot break th' heart that loves ye more than a' that's in the earth, or th' heavens above, or th' waters below!

I have repeatedly found honey-bees dead beneath the plants, and my cabinet shows a specimen of a large bumblebee which had succumbed to its pollen burden, its feet, and even the hairs upon its body, being fringed deep with the tiny clubs one of the many specimens which I have discovered as the "grist in the mill" of that wise spider which usually spreads his catch-all beneath the milkweeds.

Larks and chaffinches were everywhere in full song, and the sunshine had brought the honey-bees to the palm-willows which, during the last ten days, had changed their flower-buds from silver to gold. As Mary approached the farm she saw the first swallows of the season darting in tremulous flight across the meadows, and their presence cheered her.

The last day of the story is dated just subsequent to that point in the development of the seasons when country people go to bed among nearly naked trees, are lulled to sleep by a fall of rain, and awake next morning among green ones; when the landscape appears embarrassed with the sudden weight and brilliancy of its leaves; when the night-jar comes and strikes up for the summer his tune of one note; when the apple-trees have bloomed, and the roads and orchard-grass become spotted with fallen petals; when the faces of the delicate flowers are darkened, and their heads weighed down, by the throng of honey-bees, which increase their humming till humming is too mild a term for the all-pervading sound; and when cuckoos, blackbirds, and sparrows, that have hitherto been merry and respectful neighbours, become noisy and persistent intimates.

The Academy of the Honey-Bees comprised among its members all the independent thinkers of Turin: doctors of law, of philosophy and medicine, chemists, philologists and naturalists, with one or two members of the nobility, who, like Alfieri, felt, or affected, an interest in the graver problems of life, and could be trusted not to betray the true character of the association.