In fine, about the beginning of February, after having travelled through the whole length of Egypt, and gathered all the rich produce of the delightful banks of the Nile, they arrive at the mouth of that river, towards the ocean; from whence they had set out: care is taken to keep an exact register of every district from whence the hives were sent in the beginning of the season, of their numbers, of the names of the persons who sent them, and likewise of the mark or number of the boat in which they were placed. Niebuhr saw upon the Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, a convoy of four thousand hives, in their transit from Upper Egypt to the Delta. Savary, in his letters on Egypt, also gives an account of the manner of transporting the hives down the Nile. In France floating bee-houses are common. Goldsmith describes from his own observation, a kind of floating apiary in some parts of France and Piedmont. "They have on board of one barge," he says, "three score or a hundred bee-hives, well defended from the inclemency of an accidental storm, and with these the owners float quietly down the stream: one bee-hive yields the proprietor a considerable income. Why," he adds, "a method similar to this has never been adopted in England where we have more gentle rivers, and more flowery banks, than in any part of the world, I know not; certainly it might be turned to advantage." They have also a method of transporting their hives by land in carts in Germany; and particularly in Hanover travelling caravans of bees may be seen during the season. I have thus briefly quoted from famous authorities, to impress upon those who keep apiaries the importance of transporting their bees from pasture to pasture. The advantage to weak swarms is very great, "but whilst so little of the true principles of bee management is understood, as that the destruction of the bees has been considered absolutely essential, in order to the attainment of their stores, it is no wonder that so little attention should have been paid to their cultivation in this country, and that it should not have proved a more productive department of rural economy." "Bees, like everything else worth possessing, require care and attention; but persons generally think it is quite sufficient to procure a hive and a swarm, and set it down in the middle of a garden, and that streams of honey and money will forthwith flow; and, perhaps, commence calculating, from the perusal of the statements of the profits made by Thorley from a single hive, which he estimates to be 4300_l._ 16_s._ from 8192 hives kept during fourteen years! deducting ten shillings and sixpence, the cost of the first hive!" The bar and frame-hives are so constructed that they can be moved from place to place with the greatest ease, and, perhaps, this may be an inducement for bee-masters to try the recommendations of transporting bees, and thus avoid one expense of feeding them during the winter.