Hitherto I have referred to the writers on natural history in general, or to the natural historians of bees in particular: many writers, however, have paid great attention to the domestic management of these insects. Their culture is indeed an object highly deserving the attention of the agriculturist as well as of the natural philosopher. In the hands of a judicious and moderately attentive apiarian, they may become a profitable branch of rural œconomy: even the most humble cottager may be made to participate in the benefit of an improved mode of managing them: and as there is so much to admire in their general œconomy and peculiar habits, the man of leisure may secure to himself a source of pleasing and rational amusement in the possession of an Apiary; for the pursuit of apiarian science, in common with the study of other branches of natural history, leads to a salutary exercise of the mental faculties, induces a habit of observation and reflection, and may sometimes prove a valuable resource for keeping off that _tædium vitæ_, but too frequently attendant upon a relinquishment of active life. No pleasure is more easily attainable, nor less alloyed by any debasing mixture; it tends to enlarge and harmonize the mind, and to elevate it to worthy conceptions of Nature and its Author: "The men Whom Nature's works can charm, with God himself Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day. With his conceptions; act upon his plan. And form to his the relish of their souls." +Akenside.+ In the following Treatise it has been my endeavour to combine, as much as possible, the profitable with the instructive and amusing; in seeking which object, I have endeavoured to clear the ground before me, of the wild-flowers of conjecture and hypothesis, with which the fecundity of the human imagination has strewed it, and to substitute in their place the less showy but more useful products of experiment and rational deduction, the growth of which it should be the object of every labourer in the field of science to promote. Always bearing in mind that false theories often lead to erroneous practices, I have carefully abstained from an indulgence in theory of a merely speculative kind, and confined myself simply to offering such opinions to the attention of my readers, as have been confirmed by repeated experiment and observation, and to the recommendation of such practices as have been found useful by myself, or by others on whose reports I can place the fullest reliance.