thought us, the honey and the bees were inaccessible, and indeed invisible, save only when the natives cut it out and brought it to us in little sheets of bark, thus displaying a degree of ingenuity and skill in supplying their wants, which we, with all our science, could not hope to attain. They would catch one of the bees and attach to it, with some rosin or gum, the light down of the swan or owl; thus laden, the bee would make for the branch of some lofty tree, and so betray its home of sweets to its keen-eyed pursuers, whose bee-chase presented indeed a laughable scene."[1]
In the Western Hemisphere we find the honey-bee in as great variety and abundance as in the Eastern World. In the United States of America, and stretching as far to the westward, as 95 deg. W. long. the domestic bee of Europe has been naturalized, and appears to prosper amazingly, in the new countries continually opening to civilization in that region. Little more than thirty years ago, according to Warden, it was not found to the westward of the Mississippi; but is now spreading over the extensive prairies on the western banks of the Missouri. In these regions, bee-hunting, or bee-liming, as it is there called, is a very general occupation; and various modes are described by travellers of obtaining the fruit of the insects' labour. Knowing that in the breeding season, the bees resort much to springs of water in the woods, the hunter places on a flat stone
- ↑ Vol. i. p. 171.
