formation on improved bee-culture.

NOTE.--The time has hardly come when the attention of any of our
State authorities can be attracted to the importance of bee-culture.
It is only of late that they have seemed to manifest any peculiar
interest in promoting the advancement of agricultural pursuits. A
Department of Agriculture ought to have been established, years ago,
by the National Government at Washington. Let us hope that the
Administration now in power, will establish a lasting claim to the
gratitude of posterity, by taking wise and efficient steps to
advance the agricultural interests of the country. A National
Society to promote these interests has recently been established,
and much may be hoped from its wisdom and energy. Until some
disinterested tribunal can be established, before which all
inventions and discoveries can be fairly tested, honest men will
suffer, and ignorance and imposture will continue to flourish. Lying
advertisements and the plausible misrepresentations of brazen-faced
impostors, will still drain the purses of the credulous, while
thousands, disgusted with the horde of impositions which are palmed
off upon the community, will settle down into a dogged determination
to try nothing new. A society before which every thing, claiming to
be an improvement in rural economy, could be fairly tested, would
undoubtedly be shunned by ignorant and unprincipled men, who now find
it an easy task to procure any number of certificates, but who dread
nothing so much as honest and intelligent investigation. The reports
of such a society after the most thorough trials and examinations,
would inspire confidence, save the community from severe losses, and
encourage the ablest minds to devote their best energies to the
improvement of agricultural implements.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE ANGER OF BEES. REMEDY FOR THEIR STING. BEE-DRESS. INSTINCTS OF BEES.

If the bee was disposed to use, without any provocation, the effective
weapon with which it has been provided, its domestication would be
entirely out of the question. The same remark however, is equally true
of the ox, the horse or the dog. If these faithful servants of man were
respectively determined to use, to the very utmost their horns, their
heels and their teeth, to his injury, he would never have been able to
subject them to his peaceful authori