It has often been suggested to me, to point out _how_ the culture of Honey-Bees might be more generally extended in this country, and rendered more advantageous to the cottager than it has been hitherto. As regards the extension of Bee-cultivation, I would observe, that if those gentlemen, especially those gentlemen resident in the country, who possess affluence, influence, and leisure, would undertake to promote it--would set the example and keep Bees, their example alone would go far to induce the cottager to keep them; and that, as other countries boast, and that so usefully, their apiarian societies, the formation of such a society, or societies, could not fail to be attended with beneficial effects. Some feeble attempts, it is true, to establish such a society have been made, but have proved abortive, whilst premiums on the subject have been offered by other societies,[M] injudiciously, as they have tended to perpetuate mistaken views, and to retard the progress of more correct ones. I am not insensible of the extreme benefit which has resulted to the different branches of industry, and to agriculture and horticulture in particular, by well-regulated scales of premiums, emulating to superiority and necessarily promoting a beneficial stimulus in the different branches with which they are connected. And, in my opinion, nothing would more easily tend to the inculcation of sounder views of practice, than, if gentlemen, pursuing my principles, would interest themselves in connecting with the objects of such associations more generally, graduated scales of prizes, regulated by the quantity of honey obtained from stocks, the prosperity of the hives afterwards, and the state of the apiary generally, &c. Were they also to countenance the plan of placing colonies under the care of labouring cottagers, giving them premiums as an inducement to careful management, they could not fail of conferring a benefit, by initiating them into the plans of the system, as well as by more advantageously dividing the pasture of the district among the different hives, and thereby rendering the labour of their collecting the stores considerably less to the Bees. This would, undoubtedly, effect much, but I know of no means so decidedly calculated to foster and encourage the culture of Honey-Bees among all classes, and more particularly among the population of rural districts, as apiarian societies, formed for the express purpose of extending and improving the cultivation and management of Honey-Bees. [Footnote M: A premium was last year (1833) awarded by the Cambridgeshire Horticultural Society, to a Mr. Widnal, for his exhibition of a glass of honey. But whether the encouragement of Bee-culture be an object of that very respectable society,--or whether the reward given to Mr. Widnal on that occasion was a sort of bye-premium, bestowed for the gratification of seeing a curiosity, it did not appear.] CHAPTER XIX. MISCELLANEOUS DIRECTIONS.