at all superior to the simple box, or the common chamber hive. You may certainly claim _equal credit_ with Dzierzon for originality in observation and discovery in the natural history of the honey bee, and for success in deducing principles and devising a most valuable system of management from observed facts. But in _invention_, as far as neatness, compactness, and adaptation of means to ends are concerned, the sturdy German must yield the palm to you. You will find a case of similar coincidence detailed in the Westminster Review for October, 1852, page 267, et seq. I send you herewith some interesting statements respecting Dzierzon, and the estimate in which his system is held in Germany. Very truly yours, SAMUEL WAGNER. REV. L. L. LANGSTROTH. The following are the statements to which Mr. Wagner refers.-- "As the best test of the value of Mr. Dzierzon's system, is the _results_ which have been made to flow from it, a brief account of its rise and progress maybe found interesting. In 1835 he commenced bee-keeping in the common way, with 12 colonies--and after various mishaps, which taught him the defects of the common hives and the old mode of management, his stock was so reduced that in 1838 he had virtually to begin anew. At this period he contrived his improved hive in its ruder form, which gave him the command over all the combs, and he began to experiment on the theory which observation and study had enabled him to devise. Thenceforward his progress was as rapid as his success was complete and triumphant. Though he met with frequent reverses--about 70 colonies having been stolen from him, sixty destroyed by fire, and 24 by a flood--yet in 1846 his stock had increased to 360 colonies, and he realized from them that year six thousand pounds of honey, besides several hundred weight of wax. At the same time most of the cultivators in his vicinity who pursued the common methods, had fewer hives than they had when he commenced. In the year 1848, a fatal pestilence, known by the name of "foul brood," prevailed among his bees, and destroyed nearly all his colonies before it could be subdued--only about ten having escaped the malady, which attacked alike the old stocks and his artificial swarms. He estimates his entire loss that year at over 500 _colonies_. Nevertheless he succeeded so well in multiplying by artificial swarms, the few that remained healthy, that in the fall of 1851 his stock consisted of nearly 400 colonies. He must, therefore, have multiplied his stocks more than three fold each year."