It is, however, to wild or field flowers that the bee-master must chiefly look for the raw material on which his myriad artisans shall exert their skill. The white clover of the pasture[23]--the wild thyme on the hill--the heather on the moors--the furze and the broom on the sandy waste--offer exhaustless stores for a greater number of bees than can ever be located near them. Lime-trees, when in blossom, and mignonette are also' most valuable resources. There are also two or three peculiar sources of honey which one would not have suspected, as, for instance, the blossoms of the onion plant, of turnips, and, in still greater degree, the flower of the mustard plant. [Footnote 23: It is a good practice to induce the owners of adjacent fields to sow clover-seed.] In those districts of England where mustard seed is cultivated so extensively, it would be well worth while for the farmers to keep large colonies of bees. Another, but a very uncertain, source of honey is the "honeydew," which, in some seasons, appears in large quantities on the leaves of the oak, the lime, and some other trees. It is important to mention that bees, in the principal breeding season, require a plentiful supply of water. Owing either to their carelessness or eagerness, they are frequently drowned when drinking from any large quantity of water; the bee-keeper should, therefore, place near the hives shallow vessels of water containing pebbles, on which the bees may alight to take frequent but temperate draughts. THE LIGURIAN OR ITALIAN ALP BEE. A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America, as well as in this country. The ordinary bee is the _Apis mellifica_ of naturalists; the new kind is the _Apis ligustica_. It was also named "the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola, who found it in Piedmont in 1805; and he considered it to be the principal species known to the Greeks, who speak of the "best kind" of bee as being of a red colour. Leading apiarians agree in pronouncing these bees to be justly entitled to the high character given them. (See coloured engraving, Plate I., figs, 1, 2, 3.) Their special advantages are--greater fecundity of the queens, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance, for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees. Tennyson most probably refers to these Ligurian bees in the following stanza of his beautiful poem "Eleanore":-- "Or the _yellow banded bees_, Through half-open lattices, Coming in the scented breeze, Fed thee, a child, lying alone, With whitest honey in fairy gardens culled: A glorious child, dreaming alone In silk soft folds, upon yielding down, With the hum of swarming bees Into dreamful slumbers lulled."