The United States Department of Agriculture, in one of its "Farmer's Bulletins," under the heading, "How to Avoid Stings," says, "First, by having gentle bees." At the time I first read this I thought they should have completed the advice by adding "and extract their stings;" but I find on investigation that the subject of gentle bees, is no light matter to the bee-keeper, and that my idea that "a bee is a bee and hence entitled to all the room he requires" does not hold good; that a bee-keeper when purchasing a colony of bees of any species not well known to him will ask if they are gentle in the same tone he would use if he were inquiring about a horse. Bees seem to do well wherever there are flowers enough to furnish them with food, and are kept for pleasure and profit in all parts of our country. A small plot of ground is devoted to bees by the farmer, a village lot is often filled with hives, and even in our larger cities, especially in New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati, if not in the gardens or on the lawns, they may be found well established on the house-tops, as many as thirty or forty colonies being found on a single roof. They can usually find enough food in and around a city to keep themselves busy without making long excursions; in fact, it sometimes happens that they find more abundant pasturage in a city than they would in the open country, especially where there are large parks and gardens or where the linden (basswood) trees have been set out in any considerable quantities. Sweet clover also sometimes overruns a neglected garden or vacant lot and furnishes a rich field for the city-bred honey-bee. In Egypt bees are transported on hive-boats from place to place along the Nile according to the succession of flowers. The custom also prevails in Persia, Asia Minor and Greece. In Scotland the same method is used while the heather is in bloom and in Poland bees are transferred back and forth between summer pastures and winter quarters. A few years ago a floating bee house was constructed on the Mississippi river large enough to carry two thousand colonies. It was designed to be towed up the river from Louisiana to Minnesota, keeping pace with the blossoming of the flowers and then drop back down the river to the sunny South before cold weather should set in in the fall. Honey-bee ships have also been talked of which could carry bees to the West Indies to cruise for honey during the winter.