Whenever I look at bees, I feel misgivings about the future of mankind. Think of the bees that invented the hexagonal cells, and the bees that go on building these cells and yet go buzzing against glass panes in one half of a window when the other half is open. The bees that could invent such cells, would surely have ability enough to find their way round glass. But bees are socialists; and socialism means that individuals of great ability will be kept down, and all ability will gradually be atrophied for want of use. I rather think that this is what has happened to the bees, and may be happening to mankind. Collingwood ate rats. He said ships’ rats were very clean feeders, and he always had a dish of them at dinner when he was at sea; and I have heard that many officers fought shy of invitations to the Admiral’s table. No doubt his dish of rats was properly cooked; but rat may be as dangerous as pig, considered as diet, since rats are also liable to trichinosis. Amongst human beings the disease is very rare in England as compared with Germany: they eat a great deal of smoked ham there, and mere smoking does not kill trichinæ. In former ages leprosy was common here. There was a hospital for lepers this side of Newton, founded by John Gilberd, 4 October 1538, “for the releff of powre lazar people wherof grete nomber with that diseas be now infectid in that partis to the grete daunger of infection of moche people to whom they use to resort and be conversant withal for lacke of convenyent hospitals in the county of Devon for them.” There were much older hospitals for lepers outside Exeter and Barnstaple and Tavistock and other towns; but these were more or less monastic, and had suffered from the dissolution of the monasteries. This hospital was then a quarter of a mile outside Newton Bushell; but the town has spread beyond it, and the old buildings have long since been replaced by alms-houses. Leprosy is quite extinct; but I fear that people hereabouts are careless in the cooking of cured food. Leprosy would naturally be commoner before the Reformation, as so much fish was eaten during fasts; and the fasts themselves made people weaker and less able to resist disease. I agree with old folks here who say that fasts should be a time of feasting for the poor. “Rich folk have money to buy butcher’s meat in Lent as well as other times; and if they will not eat’n, they should give’n to they as cannot buy.” However, fasting was enjoined on rich and poor alike, and was deemed of more importance than almost anything else. Machiavelli was not easily shocked, but he drew the line at Sforza’s coming to Florence and eating meat in Lent, _Istorie Fiorentine_, VII, anno 1471, “cosa in quel tempo nella nostra città ancora non veduta.” I can myself remember how frightfully Prince Napoleon shocked the pious French by eating beef-steak on Good Friday.