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THE HONEY-BEE IN NEW ZEALAND. 63

agreeable summer drink. It may be either used plain or
made to effervesce by a little soda.
A cunning housewife, doubtless, would improve on
many of these receipts; her main difficulty in supplying
a family with these beverages will be straining the
honey, which runs very slowly when of a thick quality.
This I think may be obviated by boiling clean honey
combs in a due propotion of water, and then letting the
liquor stand till cold, when the wax will have formed on
the top, and may be taken off. Then proceed as above.
A less agreeable, thou not less useful, application of
honey, is in the form of cough mixture.
Fill a quart bottle three parts full of clarified honey,
mix well with this a teaspoonful of Ipecacuanha, then
fill up with sharp vinegar: a spoonful or two of this,
whenever the cough is troublesome, will have a very
good effect.
The "Times Bee-Master" closes his correspondence
on Bee Management thus - he says - I have directed
your attention to bee-keeping, not as a fancy pursuit, or
as an interesting entomological investigation, but as a
practical and real work. Hence I have not discussed a
variety of toys used as bee-hives, very pretty and very
tasteful to the eye of a sentimental apiarian, but so
bothering to the bees that they wish such houses were
at the bottom of the sea. Simplicity of strucure, direct-
ness of use, and availableness for deprivation of honey,
and yet preservation of the honey-makers, ought to be
the guiding law. Bees don't like to be paid too many,
too obsequious, or too patronising attentions. I want,
however, in this closing letter to turn my largest hive
into a pulpit, and to preach a short apiarian homily to
cottagers, which I know they will read, and hope they
will "mark, learn, and inwardly digest."

A Sermon on Bees.
1. They may carry from the hive to the cottage-hearth
a lesson of industry. During work the bees are so in-
tensely absorbed in their duty, that they ignore every
distracting and diverging object and interest. They
have learnt well a text their masters would do well to