Caroline Hadley

“ A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
But a swarm in July
Is not worth a fly."
"Why not?" asked Annie. [Pg 57]
"Because it is smaller and weaker, and it is later in the year, so they have not such a long time to get honey to keep them through the winter. They will generally die off, if they are not fed."
"Suppose the queen dies, what do the bees do then, grandpapa?"
"They are greatly concerned; they run about the hive touching every bee they meet with their little horns or feelers. ”

“ It's rather a touchy job, is taking a wasp's nest,—very different from hiving bees; we give them a home, but we take one from the wasps.
"If the queen bee falls into the new hive, the bees are right enough—they are sure to go where she is; but the wasps are naturally angered and frightened at being suffocated out of their home. So, I say, keep clear of wasps' nests; those jobs are best done on the quiet." ”

“ You must not suppose that the sweet scent of flowers is for our pleasure alone. The perfumes are of great use to the plants themselves, and to the insects that live on honey."
"Of what use can they be to the plants?" asked Mary.
"The perfume is chiefly due to a kind of oil found in the blossoms of plants, and sometimes in the leaves as well. Lavender, rosemary, thyme, and herbs used in cooking, are examples of plants whose leaves as well as flowers possess this ethereal oil, as it is called. Caterpillars do not like the taste of these oils, and leave these highly-scented plants alone. ”

“ And now you can see why flowers which bloom at night need to have a strong odour. There are some plants which
'Keep their odours to themselves all day'
but towards evening they
'Let the delicious secret out;'
and it is that moths and insects that fly about at night may know whereabouts the flowers are. The bees are busy in the day-time; but there are a great many kinds of moths, in fact there are more moths than there are butterflies, and they only fly about at night, and the honey of flowers is their sole food. So you see the scent of flowers has a great use. ”

“ He was glad of this, for the delicate perfume of the garden freely came into his cell.
"What a growing pleasure was this garden! Every flower had its own special odour—the rich rose, the tall, queenly lily, and the lowly violet—each in its way the sweetest.
"At first he thought that only the flowers had perfume, but he soon found this was a mistake. By taking more careful notice he perceived that leaves as well as flowers were sometimes scented, as in the musk plant, the [Pg 109] geranium, and even those of black-currant bushes. ”

“ I have seen many of the bushes quite smothered, and even killed, by this unpleasant and greedy plant.
"When you are older, if you study the ways of plants, you will find them quite as interesting as those of animals. They have to get their living; and some, like the dodder, prefer to get it at the expense of another; and others resort to all kinds of plans to keep themselves and their kinds alive.
"The acid of the pretty wood-sorrel is a poison, so nothing will eat it; and the buttercups growing in meadows are untouched by cattle, because of the poison in their leaves and stems. ”

“ Now, if there's one thing more than another that I hate about a garden, it's cats. They do trample down things and spoil the beds. As this house is lonesome rather, we don't get much of that pest, I'm glad to say; and then Smut is not a sociable cat. But I'll tell you of a curious thing that happened to him [Pg 41] one day. There was a pair of thrushes who had built their nest in the laurel hedge at the bottom of the garden next to the field. You know, Master Jack, there's a broad gravel path along the garden side of the hedge. ”

“ I know a keen sense of smell is sometimes disagreeable for its owner; but as a rule, when a smell is unpleasant it is unwholesome, and the nose is like a sentinel that gives warning of danger, so that we may either get out of the way or remove the cause. Some people really seem to have no noses, considering what they will endure in the way of bad smells, and how careless they are about keeping windows shut that ought to be opened to let in the fresh air and sunshine. ”

“ That was the wasp's egg; and the caterpillars were for its food when it was hatched, which would be in about three weeks."
"Don't wasps make honey?" asked Annie.
"No; the common wasp feeds her very young grubs upon the sweet juice of ripe fruit; in fact they like fruit over-ripe, and that is why they choose plums and pears and peaches that have fallen down to the ground. It is dangerous to eat any ripe fruit that has fallen, without first looking to see if there is a wasp inside it. ”

“ The children looked through the sheets, on which were pressed the leaves of the oak, the elm, the birch, the willow, and many others besides, all so different in shape.
"The leaves are very well," said Katey, "but not the flowers. I soon left off pressing them, for the poor flowers looked so wretched, so unlike the living ones, that I did not care to go on."
"I have felt just the same about some of the things in the museums in London," said Mary. "They may interest grown-up people, but not us. They are so dried and withered, that they don't give you much of an idea of what they were in life. ”

“ Wasps are great pests, Master Jack, I can tell you. They are very fond of honey, and they go into the bee-hives to steal it, especially when the mornings and evenings get cool, and the bees are not watching at the holes of their hives, because they've gone inside to keep themselves warm. ”

“ The wasps spoil a lot of fruit. If there's one peach finer than another, they know it; and as for the plums, green-gages in particular, why, they are as mad after them as the birds are for the cherries. What with the [Pg 60] caterpillars and slugs being after the vegetables, and the birds and the wasps making such havoc with the fruit, I wonder sometimes how we ever get any for ourselves. ”

“ It is not at all the same kind of bird as the house-sparrow, for it is one of the warblers. It is a prettier bird, and has prettier eggs than the common sparrow. He builds his nest very early, before the hedges are covered with leaves; so his nest often gets stolen. He is one of the birds that stay in England all through the winter.—These speckled eggs of a bluish-gray belong to the linnet, which has a very sweet song, although not very powerful.—These belong to the chaffinch ”

“ He turns the other young birds that have been hatched with him out of the nest, and the true parents of these little birds have to spend all their time in feeding the cuckoo. It takes a great deal to feed him, because he grows so fast, and is so much larger than they are. They don't seem to mind it though.—Those pale-green eggs with dark-brown spots belonged to a rook's nest in the elm-tree at the bottom of the garden. There's a curious story about those rooks down there, for they have not been there long. ”

“ Only one bee lays eggs. She is the queen and the mother of all the others. She is a good deal larger than they are, and they all obey her.
One day about the end of May, just as the children's lessons for the morning were over, they heard the gardener come into the hall to tell their grandpapa that one of the hives had swarmed.
"Oh! what is that?" they cried. "Do tell us; do let us go and see."
"Wait a little, wait a little," said grandpapa. "It means that the hive won't hold all the bees any longer ”

“ They bring home from the fields something besides pollen and honey; it is a gummy substance which they get from the buds of trees. They use it with the wax, partly as a varnish and partly to make it stronger. They mend up broken places with it, and it answers the purpose of cement.
They use their cells for three things: to store honey, to store bee bread, and others are used to rear the young bees,—nurseries, in fact.
Bees have a great deal to do besides getting honey and building their cells. They have their young ones to take care of. ”

“ If the flowers which keep open late in the evening have not a very strong perfume, they are generally white or pale yellow, so as to be seen easily. There is one of these plants called the evening primrose—not that it is like a primrose except in colour—at the bottom of the garden walk. ”

“ Last winter was a very cold season. I don't know how you found it in London, Master Jack, but here there was a long hard frost for three weeks. We'd had a good deal of rain; then it turned to snow, and froze and snowed again till the snow lay pretty thick all over the ground. Then it cleared up, and the sun shone; but the sun hasn't much power at that time of the year, so it did not melt the snow. It was bitter cold by day, and worse at night. The birds that eat grubs and insects could not get any food at all. ”

“ They watched the bees fly into the hive, but they could not see what happened next and what became of their treasure.
Shall I tell you?
First of all, other bees come to help them to unload; then those that are hungry eat the honey; and what is not wanted is stored away in the cells which those that stay at home are making.
But how do they get the wax for their cells? It does not grow in flowers.
No; they make it out of honey which they retain instead of storing. It comes while the [Pg 49] bees are quiet; and many bees hang together for a long time while the wax is forming. ”

“ How alive with different sorts of fowls running hither and thither—black, and gray, and speckled; old motherly hens, and pert, lively young ones; while the cocks strutted about and crowed one against another. ”

“ Jack scampered away, and after a minute or two he was back with the report that he had counted seven winged flies and moths all busy feeding upon the honey of the different blossoms of the plant!
"Insects can smell things at a far greater distance than we can," said grandmamma. "The sense of smell seems to be their strongest sense." ”

“ But the very perfume which keeps away the enemies of the flower attracts its friends the insects, whose sense of smell is very keen."
"Why do flowers want insects?" asked Annie.
"Because they want their yellow dust taken from one flower to another, to ripen their seeds, or to fertilize them, as it is called. The seeds are far better if they are ripened by the pollen or dust of another blossom than by the pollen of their own flower. The bees, as you know, get covered with this dust as they visit one flower after another ”

“ These leaves will frequently fold up, if knocked, like the leaves of a sensitive plant. You can look for a plant [Pg 89] in the woods and try it. The leaves, too, have a very acid taste."
"I see a violet root. I like violets because of their sweet smell," said Annie.
"I like what are called dog-violets too," said her aunt. "They have no smell at all, but they grow all the summer through, in hedges and in grass, in such large quantities that the turf often looks like an embroidered carpet. ”

“ As to the gravel path by the thrushes' nest, Smut never came into that path again all the summer through. Smut's a deal too particular," added the gardener; "but I have heard of another cat that was almost as bad. The house-maid told me that in one of her places there was a fine tabby cat, or rather a good-sized kitten, which would never eat anything in the kitchen, and was so particular in his ways that he was called 'Sir Thomas.' At dinner time he had a trick of jumping up as quick as lightning just when [Pg 43] any one was going to put his food into his mouth with his fork. ”

“ Their skins secrete something unpleasant, which they can make come out of it when they are frightened or in danger. Dogs don't like catching hold of a toad with their mouths; but they are perfectly harmless, in fact they are very useful in a garden, as they eat slugs, beetles, caterpillars, and earwigs. ”

“ It is easy to hive them from a branch, but [Pg 52] needs a great deal more care if they swarm upon the ground. If any bees should settle on you, you must let them stay till they fly off of their own accord. If you try to brush them off, they will be nearly sure to sting you."
"I am almost afraid to let little Annie go, lest she should be frightened."
"I will take care of Annie," said grandpapa.—"You won't be afraid in my arms, will you, my little pet, even if some bees do settle on you? ”

“ The winds carry other seeds to great distances, because they have beautiful feathery down attached to them, which causes them to be easily blown about—such as thistle and dandelion seeds.
"Birds, too, are great seed-sowers: they eat the wild fruits which contain the seed. ”

“ They say it is only the male bird that calls 'Cuckoo,' that the female simply makes a chattering sound." [Pg 23]
"Did you ever see a cuckoo, grandma?"
"No, never a live bird, only one stuffed. I will tell you a story of how I heard one once. It was about five-and-twenty years ago. I wanted some primroses for a nosegay. I used to pick the long feathery moss that grows in these woods and put the primroses among it. I ran across the road outside of our gates—for I could run in those days—and soon filled my basket with as many primroses as I wanted. ”

“ They do say that dying by cold is an easy way—it's like going to sleep; so I'm not wishing any great harm to the little things. And now, Master Jack, how do you think these birds paid back your grandma for all her kindness? Why, as soon as ever the frost was gone, and the weather became warmer, and the yellow crocuses came into bloom, if these very birds, or some of them at least, did not slit the flowers all to pieces with their bills—that's what they did. The ground was covered with bits of flowers.—Do you know Mrs. Jones who lives on the green, Master Jack? ”