There is infinite diversity in the loads of these pollen-carrying bees. Hardly a colour, or shade of colour, in the rainbow fails to pass during every moment across the thronging way. Every bee carries a half-globe of this substance, beautifully rounded and shaped, on each of her two hind-legs. It is possible, by marking the colour of her burden, to tell with certainty what flower she has been plundering on each of her trips. This bright orange, which makes always the largest and heaviest bales in the stream of merchandise, is from the dandelions. From the gorse-flowers come loads of deep rich brown almost as weighty. The charlock, that mingles its useless, wanton beauty with every farm-crop, yields the bee interminable gold. White clover, red clover, sainfoin, all load up the little hive coolies with different shades of russet. From the apple-orchards come bursting panniers of pale yellow; the blackberry-blossom yields pollen of a delicate greenish-white. When summer comes, and the poppies make scarlet undertones amidst the wheat and barley, these winged merchant-women stream homeward with their pollen-baskets laden with funereal black. But, if you watch a hive at work on any bright spring or summer morning, you will see single bees occasionally pass with loads whose source has never yet been fathomed. The lean, glistening, rufous stuff that is continually borne through the hustling crowd is resin gathered from poplar or pine, and used to glue the straw hive down to its base-board, or to stop up draughty crevices and useless corners, or, diluted into varnish, to paint the honeycombs with an acid-proof, preservative film. But now and then comes a bee with a load whose colour shines up like a danger-signal in darkness. Brilliant scarlet, or soft rose-crimson, or pale lavender, or gleaming white—who shall say in what far, forgotten nook of the country-side she has been adventuring, or what rare blossom she has chanced upon in the wilderness, and, despoiling it of its maiden treasure greedily, has quickened into duplication the beauty that was its reason for life?