One more superstitious custom is said to prevail in Devonshire, viz., at the funeral of a deceased bee keeper, the turning round of every hive that belonged to the departed, and this just at the moment the corpse is being carried out of the house. We do not pretend to explain this curious fancy. It may have originated in an experiment to avert the supposed disastrous connection between the bees and the death of their owner. Anything would seem to do for a charm to minds imbued with superstition. Borlase, in his _Antiquities of Cornwall_, mentions one other superstition of apiarians of that county. He says: "The Cornish to this day invoke the spirit Browny when their bees swarm; and think that their crying 'Browny, Browny,' will prevent their returning to their former hive, and make them pitch and form a new colony." It is not wonderful that the many extraordinary facts connected with bees, coming at various times under human observation, should have led to notions of marvels, founded, not on observation, but on fancy. There is a strong tendency in the human mind to desire explanations of phenomena, and where there has been no scientific training in observation, false deductions are easily arrived at, or guesses as to causes are made, which have no foundation in fact. Bee-keeping has, for the most part, till in quite recent times, been chiefly in the hands of people of the more ignorant classes, among whom wonderful stories easily arise, are rapidly propagated, and tenaciously believed. Any circumstances seeming to support a previously established fancy would serve to increase the strength of superstition; while any number of instances not corroborating prevailing ideas would be disregarded. But, when once the spirit of sound investigation is applied to these vulgar errors, they become so manifestly absurd, that the marvel is how they can possibly have arisen.