welcomed with gladness and enthusiasm? Had I not warned others of the dreadful consequences that would befall any disturbance of the sacred air by so much as the unauthorised report of a gun? How then was I to deal out justice to the defenceless bees that I had hurried hither, willy-nilly, without consideration of their likes and dislikes and their multitudinous descendants? How protect my investment in apiarist plant? How maintain the stock of honey, white, golden and tawny brown, excellent, wholesome delicious food, and still preserve the natural rights, the privileges of the birds? Had not the birds the right of prior occupancy and other legitimate claims, in addition to sentimental demands upon my conscience? Not only, too were the birds beautiful to look upon and of engaging habits; not only had they become companionable and trustful; not only were they among the primeval features of the island that I was so eager to leave unspotted from the world; but they were eminently useful in the work of keeping within bounds the rampant host of insects to which mankind is in the habit of applying the term injurious. It took no long time to make up my mind. Gladly came the determination to abandon the enterprise rather than do violence to the birds. Fortunately a kindly friend took the entire plant and the hives off my hands. We are the worse off in respect of honey; but we have the birds, and the thought comes that there are now hundreds of colonies of bees from the original stock, here and on the mainland, working out their own destinies. Had the enterprise been allowed to flourish, it would have been at the cost of the lives of hundreds of graceful birds; and hundreds of others that now merrily make so free would have been scared away. The money that would have been spent in cartridges is applied to the purchase of honey from foreign parts. No one is much the worse off. Indeed, my friend who purchased the stock is the richer by my abandonment of the calling, and am not I conscious of consistency? So, these my vocations drift into the gentle and devious stream of inconsequence. It would be vain-glorious, no doubt, to assert that there is placid indifference to vain-glory, which Carlyle declares to be, with neediness and greediness, one of the besetting sins of mankind; but am I not free from the cares that obtrude on those of tougher texture of mind who find joy in the opposite to this peace and unconcern for the rewards and honours of the world? Better this isolation and moderation in all things than, racked with worries, to moan and fret because of non-success in the ceaseless struggle for riches, or the increase thereof; better than to bow down to and worship in the "soiled temple of Commercialism" that haughty and supercilious old idol Mammon; better than to offer continual sacrifices of rest, health, and the immediate good of life to appease the exacting and silly deities of fashion and society.