Useful, however, as is the honey-guide, it must always be carefully watched, and the traveller must not follow it without keeping his eyes well open. For although, as a general fact, the bird will lead its followers to honey, it has a strange habit of leading them to the spot where lies hidden some dangerous animal. Sometimes it brings them to a rhinoceros, wallowing in a mud pool. Sometimes it directs them to a solitary buffalo, one of the most dangerous animals that Southern Africa produces, and one which the natives fear but little less than the lion itself. And more than once the too-confiding traveller has followed the honey-guide, and been led to a spot where was lying one of the venomous serpents. The Americans, who have not the African honey-guide, employ several well-known methods to track bees to their hives. One of the most common though ingenious modes is to place a piece of bee-bread on a flat surface, a tile for instance, surrounding it with a circle of wet white paint. The bee, whose habit it is always to alight on the edge of any plane, has to travel through the paint to reach the bee-bread. When, therefore, she flies off, the observer can track her by the white on her body. The same operation is repeated at another place, at some distance from the first, and at right angles to the bee-line just ascertained. The position of the hive is easily determined, for it lies in the angle made by the intersection of the bee-lines. Another method is described in the 'Philosophical Transactions for 1721.' The bee-hunter decoys, by a bait of honey, some of the bees into his trap, and when he has secured as many as he judges will suit his purpose, he encloses one in a tube, and, letting it fly, marks its course by a pocket-compass. Departing to some distance, he liberates another, observes its course, and in this manner determines the position of the hive, upon the principle already detailed. These methods of bee-hunting depend upon the insect's habit of always flying in a right line to its home. Those who have read Cooper's tale of the 'Prairie' must well remember the character of the bee-hunter, and the expression of "lining a bee to its hive." In reading these and similar accounts of the bees of distant parts of the world, we must not conclude that the descriptions refer to the same species as the common honey-bee. There are numerous species of social bees, which, while they differ in many circumstances, agree in the practice of storing up honey, in the same way as we have numerous species of the mason-bee and of the humble-bee. _CHAPTER VII._ CARPENTRY OF TREE-HOPPERS AND SAW-FLIES.