"On books deep poring, ye pale sons of toil, Who waste in studious trance the midnight oil, Say, can ye emulate, with all your rules, Drawn or from Grecian or from Gothic schools. This artless frame? Instinct her simple guide, A heaven-taught insect baffles all your pride. Or ye on theory's wild wave that roam, And skim from science but its froth and foam, Who wield 'gainst Truth the sharp yet shivery lance, Devoted bending to your idol, Chance; Oh! say, could Chance her lawless atoms bind, And weave the tissued woof of sense and mind, Or her blind impulse in yon mansions trace The firmest fabric with the amplest space? No! while ye boast to bow at Reason's shrine, That Reason bids you hail the Power Divine. Not huge Behemoth, not the whale's vast form, That spouts a torrent and that breathes a storm, Transcends in organs apt the puny fly, Her fine-strung feelers, and her glanceful eye Set with ten thousand lenses. Not the pile By fabled giant raised in Erin's isle, Not Staffa's crystalled shore, where now, Fingal, Roar the hoarse surges through thy columned hall, Nor all yon marshalled orbs that ride so high, Proclaim more loud a present Deity, Than the nice symmetry of these small cells, Where on each angle genuine Science dwells, And joys to mark through wide creation's reign How close the lessening links of her continued chain." [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER III. MODERN BEEHIVES. § I. COMMON COTTAGER'S HIVE. [Illustration] WE will commence our list of hives with this, the very simplest form of adaptation to the depriving system. The upper hive is intended for a super and the lower one is the "stock" for the bees' settled habitation. The directions for applying this, as well as for stocking the hive and taking the honey, will however be obtained under the head "Neighbours' Improved Cottage Hive" (page 116), and in the sections referred to there on "Hiving Swarms," "Applying Supers," etc. The hive is well suited for those who are desirous of leading their poorer neighbours into the humane system of bee-keeping. See the remark at the end of the next section respecting the hole for giving admittance to the super. § II. NEIGHBOURS' CRYSTAL PALACE SKEP. [Illustration] This hive (so styled from its obtaining a prize at the Crystal Palace Show in 1875) differs from the foregoing in being larger, and in having a thicker floor-board, a hooped fitting at the base, a window in the super, and a movable cap as a finish to either super or stock hive, according as the former is in use or not. The outside dimensions of the lower hive are seventeen inches diameter by nine in depth, and of the super thirteen inches by five.