d were usually wealthier in honey than any of their
cogeners, and existed in larger communities. But the herd-boys of the
parish, and the foxes of its woods and brakes, shared in my interest in
the wild honey bees, and, in the pursuit of something else than
knowledge, were ruthless robbers of their nests. I often observed, that
the fox, with all his reputed shrewdness, is not particularly knowing on
the subject of bees. He makes as dead a set on a wasp's nest as on that
of the carder or humble-bee, and gets, I doubt not, heartily stung for
his pains; for though, as shown by the marks of his teeth, left on
fragments of the paper combs scattered about, he attempts eating the
young wasps in the chrysalis state, the undevoured remains seem to argue
that he is but little pleased with them as food. There were occasions,
however, in which even the herd-boys met with only disappointment in
their bee-hunting excursions; and in one notable instance, the result of
the adventure used to be spoken of in school and elsewhere, under our
breath and in secret, as something very horrible. A party of boys had
stormed a humble-bees' nest on the side of the old chapel-brae, and,
digging inwards along the narrow winding earth passage, they at length
came to a grinning human skull, and saw the bees issuing thick from out
a round hole at its base--the _foramen magnum_. The wise little workers
had actually formed their nest within the hollow of the head, once
occupied by the busy brain; and their spoilers, more scrupulous than
Samson of old, who seems to have enjoyed the meat brought forth out of
the eater, and the sweetness extracted from the strong, left in very
great consternation their honey all to themselves.

One of my discoveries of this early period would have been deemed a not
unimportant one by the geologist. Among the woods of the hill, a short
half-mile from the town, there is a morass of comparatively small
extent, but considerable depth, which had been laid open by the bursting
of a waterspout on the uplands, and in which the dark peaty chasm
remained unclosed, though the event had happened ere my birth, until I
had become old and curious enough thoroughly to explore it. It was a
black miry ravine, some ten or twelve feet in depth. The bogs around
waved thick with silvery willows of small size; but sticking out from
the black sides of the ravine itself, and in some instances stretched
across it from side to side, lay the decayed re