“Coventry is a very old town. It also has a beautiful castle, where the fair Lady Godiva and her father used to live, about whom I suppose you have read. “Stratford is called ‘The Swan on the Avon,’ because that is where Shakespeare, the great poet, was born and died, and this is a little piece of poetry about him:— ‘Where his first infant lays, sweet Shakespeare sung, Where the last accents faltered on his tongue.’ “The river Avon takes its rise in the vale of Evesham, then winds through pleasant fields and meadows till it comes to the south of Warwickshire, and then it becomes broad and stately and flows on up to Coventry, where the Leam branches off from it (!), and then it becomes narrower and narrower until it gets out of Warwickshire and stops altogether at Naseby (!)” _Q._ How many kinds of bees are there in a hive? What work does each do? Tell how they build the comb. (Book studied, _Fairyland of Science_.) F. (aged 10), answer dictated:— “Three kinds. The _drones_ or males, the _workers_ or females, and the _queen_ bee. The drone is fat, the queen is long and thin, the workers are small and slim. The queen bee lays the eggs, the worker bee brings the honey in and makes the cell, and the drones wait to be fed. On a summer’s day you see something hanging on a tree like a plum pudding, this is a swarm of bees. You will soon see someone come up with a hive, turn it upside down, shake the bough gently, and they will fall in. They will put some clean calico quickly over the bottom of the hive, and turn it back over on a bench. The bees first close up every little hole in the hive with wax, then they hang on to the roof, clinging on to one another by their legs. Then one comes away and scrapes some wax from under its body, and bites it in its mouth until it is pulled out like ribbon, this she plasters on the roof of the hive, then she flies out to get honey, and comes home to digest it, hanging from the roof, and in 24 hours this digested honey turns to wax, then she goes through the same process again. Next, the nursing bees come and poke their heads into this wax, bite the wax away (20 bees do this before one hole is ready to make a cell). Other bees are working on the other side at the same time. Each cell is made six-sided, so as to take up the least wax and the smallest space. When the cells are made the bees come in with honey in their honey-bag or first stomach; they can easily pass the honey back though their mouths into the cells. It takes many bees to fill one cell, so they are hard at work.” G. (aged 9), written by child:— Composition on ‘_The Opening of Parliament_.’