Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 40553-h.htm or 40553-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40553/40553-h/40553-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40553/40553-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://archive.org/details/cu31924003193673 [Illustration: THE FARMER'S WIFE] THE QUEEN BEE AND OTHER NATURE STORIES Translated from the Danish of CARL EWALD by G · C · Moore Smith Thomas Nelson & Sons London · Edinburgh · Dublin And New York · 1908 · · · PREFACE. BY THE TRANSLATOR. Carl Ewald's "Æventyr" or Nature Stories are well known and very popular in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia, though they have never before this been brought to the notice of English readers. There are a number of series of them, the first of which consists of the stories given in this little book. This first series appeared in 1882, but took its definitive form in the edition of 1895. When it first appeared, it was introduced by a preface written by the author's father, the well-known historical novelist, H. F. Ewald. This preface ran as follows:-- "It has often been a subject of complaint that our story books, with their nixies, trolls, and bewitched princes and princesses, give children superstitious ideas, and affect their imagination in a way which is not the best possible. "The author of the little stories to which I am writing a word of preface has struck out a way of his own. Holding that Nature, with its manifold and many-coloured life, contains new material on which children in their own way can draw, he has taken as the subject of his stories the phenomena of natural history. "As I think, he has performed his task in a taking and attractive manner, the child's fancy being sufficiently enthralled at the same time that it gets a true conception of the working of natural forces, a conception which will fix itself in the memory all the better for its poetical clothing. "It seems to me that the author's view is a sound one, so I gladly recommend his little book to parents who wish their children to read what is both pleasurable and instructive."