"WF

They had walked on a little way to meet Q, who was waiting for them in the shade, under the spreading branches of a chestnut tree. The spikes of blossom were fading, and one strong gust would have swept them down upon the grass, but hardly a breath was stirring, so they reddened and trembled and kept their places, and the large green fingers were holding nosegays. But what was that great black blot upon the tree, and why did a man with a blue apron over his head hammer on a cracked watering-pot, until Harry felt as if his skull were lined with cracked tin, and Joe Smith, the lame tinker, were kicking it with his wooden leg?

"Do let us go away from here," he repeated," or else I shall have one of those dreadful headaches that Nurse always has, when I ask her something she doesn't know." "Hush!" said Q, "the noise will stop now." And so it did, and the blue-headed man placed a ladder

against the side of the tree, and running up with a brush in one hand and a hive in the other, he swept the buzzing cluster into the hive. "It is a swarm of bees," said Q;

as soon as they are settled in their new home I will introduce you to the Queen."

They followed the man into a little garden, gay with cottage flowers, and saw the hive put carefully on a stand, in a warm and sheltered corner. Then Harry began to notice the bees, and he saw that they were not all alike, for some were much broader than others, and one was so immensely large and grand-looking, that Harry knew he was standing in the presence of royalty. "Are all kings and queens bigger than common people?" he asked, turning to Q.

"Well, the common people make believe that they are, which comes to much the same thing, but among bees there is no making believe at all. Come, speak to the Queen."

Harry had never spoken to a royal personage before, but, as he had been taught to observe the rules of good manners at all times and to everybody, he was not at all shy or awkward.

"Good morning, ma'am," he said, politely; "I hope you and the king are quite well to-day."

The Queen drew out a sting that was curved like a scimitar, not straight like the sting of a common bee, and Q nudged Harry so violently that he nearly fell against this royal weapon.

"I and the What?" asked the Queen, angrily.

"I beg your Majesty's pardon. Human queens very often have husbands who are called kings, and who rule with them and over them; but perhaps bee queens are different."

"Bee queens are real queens, and the others are makebelieves, that's all," she answered.

"You must never speak of a king while you are among bees," added Q, "because they are Amazons, if you know what that means."

Harry thought he remembered having seen a picture of a row of female soldiers called Amazons, but was not

sure.

“You are right,” said Q; "there is an old story about them told by Justin, which may not be true, but is amusing enough. Two princes set out to seek their fortune with a number of followers, both men and women, and after travelling for a long while they came to a very nice place full of fruit and game, and they determined to settle there. The nice place had one small drawback, which was that it belonged to other people, who were determined to drive the new-comers away, while the newcomers were quite as determined to stop. How do you think it ended?"

"In a fight, most likely," suggested Harry.

"Exactly. In several fights, I should say, for nothing was left of the rival armies, not even the end of a moustache. In that respect they out-fought the Kilkenny cats, which fought until nothing was left but the tips of their tails. Well, when the men were all gone the

women took up the quarrel, and one female army was victorious and lived happy ever after, reigned over by a queen. This is probably a fable, but bees are the real Amazons, and the queen is the mother of all the rest. You often hear a king called the father of his people, and that is generally a foolish saying, but when you call a queen-bee the mother of her subjects, you speak the simple truth."

"Yes," said the Queen, complacently, "I consider a thousand children quite a small family to bring up, in fact I never reared so few at a time; of course I have to employ a great many nurse-bees, to feed the little ones and attend to them."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," said Harry.

"It is quite true," replied Q; "the working bees are either in-door or out-door labourers; the former are nurse-bees, and they watch the young ones, and attend to the cells in which they lodge, and feed them with the greatest care; they make up honey and water and some floury stuff into a sort of whiteish jelly, which they give to the young bees, and as they get older the nurse-bees make this mixture stronger of honey, just as your nurse would gradually give more meat to a child that was growing out of infancy."1

"But then if they are all the Queen's children, which is the royal family?" asked Harry, greatly puzzled.

'Royalty among bees is a matter of breeding, not a matter of birth," Q answered; "three or four cells in 1 Kirby and Spence

every honey-comb are larger and deeper than the others; in these the Queen carefully places the eggs out of which future queens are to come, and young princesses are differently fed from common baby bees. In fact it is their lodging and feeding that makes them into princesses."

"That does not seem as if it could be true."

"No, but it has been proved by an experiment. If the Queen were to die, or be killed, the bees would choose a very young bee-baby and turn it into a princess. In the first place they would make a larger room for it by breaking down the nearest cells, for queens and princesses live in grand apartments, and the lodgings of common people must be swept out of the way if they interfere with royalty; then they would feed it with peculiar diet, so far the naturalists are quite sure; but no naturalist has yet found out what I strongly suspect— that they buzz to it in peculiar tones, teach it to know its destiny, and prepare it for its future life."

"And are bees all shes?" inquired Harry.

"Bless you, no, I wish they were," said the Queen; "the hes are called drones, and they are the most idle, useless lot that you can possibly imagine; they neither nurse the babies, nor repair the cells, nor collect the honey and wax, nor do any useful work whatever, but they eat immensely, gobble, gobble, gobble, all day long."

"I should get tired of them, and drive them out of the hive" Harry remarked.