and bee-bread, and the comb, when made up, consists of small pieces of this wax about the 180th part of an inch in thickness, the wax being softened by the heat of the bees.

All the work of collecting pollen is carried on in the day time, and all the work of employing it in its various uses in the hive is done at night, for the bees never sleep in their final state "there is no night there"-all their sleep was done in the intermediate state, that is, the life which connected the first with the last state; this may appear a little thing to an ordinary mind, but is not there a great thought concealed in it?

And what equally great thoughts are contained in what is told us in such words as these: "The working bee spins its cocoen in 34 hours. After passing about three days in this state of preparation for a new life it gradually undergoes so great a change as not to retain a vestige of its previous form. When it has reached the 21st day of its existence, from the time the egg was laid, it comes forth a perfect winged insect."

The queen bee is the only perfect female in the hive, and all the eggs are laid by her. The drones are the males, and the workers are imperfect females, retaining only the instinct of females in the care they take of the children and the management of the home.

It sometimes happens that the queen deposits more eggs than there are nurses to attend to them, or cells to accommodate them; those persons who are fond of new laid eggs will be amused to hear that in such cases the nurses make a meal of the excess; but if the bees are so fond of new laid eggs, what self-denial must they practice in resisting the temptation to devour any but such as would be wasted!

The honey, of course you know,

275

was intended to be the store of food for the bees during the winter season. There are two very remarkable facts in respect to bees in the storing of their food; first, they know just the quantity necessary for the whole family during the winter, that is, the royal family, consisting of her majesty and the princesses, the workers, who do all the business of the hive, and the drones, who, like other drones in another great family, generally do nothing; but here comes the second part of the story: the drones-the "gentlemen," that is, of the hive-the lazy bees-have no stings, and cannot, therefore, defend themselves; when the winter is usually severe, should there not be sufficient food for the whole family, the workers, every one of whom is armed, fall upon the drones, sting them to death, and cast out their carcases from the hive.

So,

The drones lead what some of my young friends wonld thoughtlessly call an "awfully jolly" life; they eat and drink and are merry, never collect any pollen, never make any wax, never attend to the duties of home, and never look after the children-"awfully jolly!" yes, but they seldom live more than four months, and very often come to an untimely end, as I have said, when the cupboard is getting bare; the workers live nearly double the time of the drones, and the royal family live to a good old age, sometimes reaching a year to a year and a half. We may see in this a wise design, for, if the workers and drones lived as long as the queen, the superabundance of bees, multiplying as fast as they do, would be a very doubtful blessing, for, from one swarm in two weeks there may be five others, and in warm latitudes, ten or a dozen swarms have been known to have come from one, and considering there may be from thirty to a hundred thousand bees in a hive, and

that one hive of fifty thousand is said to have contained twenty thousand drones, my readers will see the necessity of the brief life, both of workers and drones, and that He who made the bees knew how their lives were to be shortened for the necessities of

man.

In nothing does the honey-bee show its wisdom more than in the selection of plants from which to extract the nectar and pollen, in the pursuit of which they keep to one species of flower each visit; if this were not done, what a family of hybrids would Flora have! This singular fact is confirmed by the highest authority (Sir John Lubbock), and in examining our prepared specimen we shall not find any mixed pollen in its stomach; but only imagine a bee passing over one species for another, "just for the day," and amidst the variety of species adhering to that, and no other! The honey, when prepared in the stomach, is brought up for storage through the mouth. I cannot tell you how many visits a bee, who is a very early riser, will make in a day, but Sir John Lubbock says that a wasp he dealt with, beginning its work at four o'clock in the morning, and working, without intermission or rest till a quarter to eight in the evening, paid him no less than a hundred and sixteen visits, after its visits in other directions.

But I must close this article with what perhaps will amuse and instruct you more than any of the "little things" recorded in this brief chapter. Like every other creature, bees have their enemies, and I wish to let you know how they dispose of them. You know what a disagreeable thing is one of our big garden slugs, and what a nuisance such a thing would be in a bee-hive; it is one of the honey-bee's greatest enemies, and being very fond of honey it worries the

poor things terribly, fouling their hive, devouring their food, and destroying their home. Now then, what will you think of the wisdom of the bee when I tell you what I have had confirmed in my repetition of this story, namely, that directly the slug enters the hive and, crawling up the wall, begins its work of destruction, the bees hold a council? The slug, you know, would be far too big for them, even by united force, to eject; you would suppose that could be ea. sier than for the workers to fall upon him and sting him to death, and then -and then what? The dead slug would stink in the hive and the poor bees' last case would be worse than the first, so they cover him over with wax, and hermetically seal him in the coffin which is fixed upon the walls of the hive, so he dies in his own tomb and does no harm.

Sometimes a snail will find its way into the hive, and being, like the slug, fond of sweets, proceeds to crawl along the cells, frightening the inmates out of their property; the snail carries its house with him, you know, and hides himself in it, so our friends, not wasting the wax to cover the shell, simply-shall I say solder?— the intruder round its opening, and leave him there also as a warning to others.

The death's-head moth is another enemy to the bees, making a tremendous fuss in their home, and alarming them fearfully; what do you think they do if they are in a neighborhood where this rather rare moth is found, or are removed from one where it is not, to another where it is? They reduce the entrance to the hive to such dimensions that only one bee can come in or go out at a time, and the enemy, not able to enter, is kept out. Do you not see another great thought in this little thing? Will our future knowledge be intuitive?

THE CHRISTIANS DAILY

BATTLE.

BY REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER.

A Christain life is one of constant conflict. The better the man is the hotter the fight. If the conflict with self and sin and Satan could be settled once for all-in some decisive Gettysburg or Waterloo-then the Christian life would be heaven in advance. But the campaign is never over until the crown is won.

The sharpest fight is with self. It is the subtle deceiver who is fertitle in all kinds of excuses and adroit in all manner of diguises. Often as we imagine that we have buried this enemy, lo, he is on his feet again as cunning and as pertinacious as ever. The minister needs to write upon his study wall, "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not!" When he is most thoroughly emptied of all thought about himself, and most completely filled with the Holy Spirit he achievies the grandest results. Self is left beneath the pulpit-stairs. and Christ alone is exalted.

This is the battle which our church members have to fight every day in the week. In the shop or in the count ing-room there comes a temptation to some hazardous speculation or sharp transaction that has an ugly look to the man's concience. Self whispers, "It will pay "; concience says, It is no better than gambling. Christ looks on, and if self carries the day, the Master sees Peter's sin committed over again, and without Peter's contrition. Self has won that battle When evening comes, the bell for prayer service rings, and self begins its fluent excuses. "I am to tired to go to-night," or "I have another engagement" or "The meetings are dull," and so self finishes an ill spent day with a prayerless night and concience smothered. Is that man a Christian? Yes; just such an one as Peter was; he

277

has got a disgraceful fall; and if Christ should give him up he would be a lost backslider. Days of disgraceful defeat do not mean utter destruction, or else very few Christians would ever reach heaven. Timely repentance and reconversion saves the Peter's still; the tree that was bent, but not broken off, straightens up again.

The strongest Christain is the man who has given Christ the most entire sovereignty over his affections and the most complete control in his heart. The more of Christ the less room is there for self. Down by the sea-side certain mollusks may sometimes be seen sticking fast to the rocks. The reason why the mollusks cling to the rocks so tenaciously is that they are empty. If they were filled with flesh or filled with air they would drop off instantly. So when a true child of God is emptied of self, he clings, by a law of spiritual adhesion, fast and tight to the Rock of Ages. If he should be puffed up with pride, or conceit, or selfish ambition, he would be swept off the rocks by every wave of temptation. The victory that overcometh in his case is faith, for faith is simply the clinging of the soul to Christ Jesus.

Ought Christians to be discouraged because their lives are scenes of endless conflicts? Shall they give up because they have had some humiliating defeats? No, a thousand times no! There is not a faultless saint on the pages of the Bible. Paul himself laid no claim to sinless perfection. "So fight I," he exclaims, "and not as one that beateth the air." The Christian who comes off finally victorious will have many a dent in his armour and many a scar. He that through many a battle with self and many an assault of Satan' "endureth to the end, shall be saved." If there were no hard battles to be fought, we never could come off conquerors.

BY IRENE W. HARTT.

The whole country has been given up during the past months to the celebration of our four hundredth birth day. Old Chinese records have it that we are much older than that. There is a book in the British Museum called Zobedj: or the Chinese in America, which tells us that Buddhist monks came here from China in the year 432. They journeyed across the Pacific, touching on our western coast, calling the country Fusang. A book called Fusang: An inquiry into Chinese Discoveries of America, was published in New York in 1868.

Some years afterward, as late as 464, a Chinaman by the name of HoeiSchin, which means "universal compassion," and some companions started on a second expedition. These men are supposed to have touched at San Blas, Mexico. Hoei-Schin's report of what they saw there was entered in the Chinese Year Book. We do not know that any more people came over from China at that time. Yet great numbers may have done so; for, certainly, evidences of early settlers have been found both in Mexico and the

United States.

In 727 Irish monks discovered Iceland, and made settlements on the southeast coast. These were maintained for nearly a century, and then abandoned. In 860 Iceland was again discovered. This time it was by Norsemen, and was called Snowland. A man by the name of Flokko, took a whole colony there five years later, but their cattle perished in the winter. They named the country Iceland, and the next year all returned to Norway. Eight years afterward Earl Ingolf successfully planted a colony there, at Reykiavik.

Two years later Greenland was discovered by a Norseman named Gun

before a colony was planted there. This was done in 983 by Eric the Red. He called the settlement Ericksford. Eleven years afterward one Bjarni was sailing from Norway to find his father in Greenland. He was driven out of his course, and sailed along the coasts of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Labrador until he reached Herfulness in Greenland. These were the first Europeans on record who saw the shores of the new continent. When Bjarni returned to Norway, and reported what he had seen, he was very much blamed for not landing on the unknown shores. The Norsemen were so anxious to learn more of this

years

new country, that Lief the Lucky, the son of Eric, bought Bjarni's boat, and, taking him and thirty-five other men with him, sailed back along the coast. island near Cape Cod, and a permanThey made their first landing on an ent camp was made at Mt. Hope Bay, in Rhode Island. They called the country Vinland. The next year the expedition returned to Greenland laden with grapes and timber. Two after this, Thorwald, Eric's brother, led a second expedition to Vinland. He wintered in Mt. Hope Bay, then explored Long Island Sound to New York Harbor. He found a wooden shed, but no inhabitants were seen by any one. The next year he explored the New England coast. and killed eight Eskimo. In the skirmish which followed this Thorwald was killed, and buried on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. The Eskimo made their escape in skin boats. The next year the expedition returned to Norway, loaded with timber and fruit. A year later, Thorstein, Thorwald's brother, sailed for Vinland for his brother's bones. He was unsuccessful, and when he returned home he died.

Thorfinn of Iceland and Liefs

brother-in-law, Thorvard, sailed in 1007 with three ships and a colony of a hundred and forty men and women from Iceland and Greenland. After stopping at various points on the New England coast, they winterered in Buzzard's Bay. Here was born Snorri, the first European child ever born in America. His parents were Thorfinn and Gudrid. He was the ancestor of the great sculptor, Thorwalden. The winter was very severe, and ten colonists started back. It was reported that they landed in Ireland, and were made slaves. The other continued their and landed at Mt. Hope voyage, Three years later they all returned to Greenland.

In 1011 two ships which contained sixty men and women under Thorvard and Hegli sailed for Mt. Hope. When they arrived the followers of Thorvard and Hegli quarrelled for the possession of the houses they found there. All of Hegli's party, thirty-seven in number, were murdered by the others. The survivors returned the next year. Nothing more is heard of any more Norsemen sailing to our shores.

These accounts, which may seem strange to us, all come from good authority. They were taken originally from the "Antiquitates Americana: Antiquarian Society of Denmark.”

More than a hundred and fifty years elapsed before we heard of more discoveries. In 1170, Madoc, a prince of Wales, according to tradition sailed westward with a fleet. When he returned he reported that he had left his followers in a pleasant country, supposed now to be America. He departed again with ten ships, but was never heard from.

In 1380 Nicolo Zeno sailed into the Atlantic in search of adventures, and reported the discovery of many strange lands and islands which have never been indentified. The next man who sailed over strange seas was Co

279

lumbus, in 1467, when he visited Iceland.

UNSEEN INFLUENCES.

BY SALLIE V. DUBOIS.

A little colored lad as he passed out of one of our great railway stations was singing softly:

"There'll be no sorrow there;

There'll be sorrow there."

An infidel who was just entering paused a moment as the words fell upon his ear.

The boy continued the next lines:

"In heaven above where all is love,
There'll be no sorrow there."

The colored lad departed and the sceptic went his way, but the simple words had found lodgment in his mind and would not depart. "No sorrow!" Could there be such a place? Certainly not upon earth, for he had visited many countries, and nowhere did he find peace and rest. The lad had spoken in confidence, but did he know? The words of the lad led the man who had long doubted the existence of a God to search his word and find the unspeakable riches and peace to which he had hitherto been a stranger.

A young man hastened down the street to join his comrades at the saloon. He was a trifle late, and in turning the corner carelessly ran into a lady who was leading a little child.

"I excuse you," she kindly said, "Doubtless you are hurrying home to your mother. Go, and think nothing more of it."

The lady passed on, but the young man stood where she had left him.

"Hurrying home to his mother!" Alas! little did his mother know where he was and what company he was seeking. Did such business pay? If he continued he would break his mother's heart and ruin his own soul.