trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a
rare flower in this locality. I had walked this way many times before
I chanced upon its retreat; and then I was following a line of bees. I
lost the bees but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower looks,
with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly--a bud and yet a
blossom. It is the nun among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled
and cloaked. The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries to rifle it of
its sweets. I have seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He
had forced his way into the virgin corolla as if determined to know its
secret, but he had never returned with the knowledge he had gained.

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we
will make our first trial--a high stone wall that runs parallel with the
wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field. There
are bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little
maneuvering to sweep one into our box. Almost any other creature rudely
and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into a cage in this way
would show great confusion and alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment,
but the bee has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of
death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home
as booty. "Such rage of honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is
quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to
filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove
the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled
cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, come
ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon
the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background.
In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from
the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey behind and it marks the
place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying
the near and minute objects first, then the larger and more distant,
till having circled about the spot five or six times and taken all its
bearings it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to the
bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it,
and often one's eyes are put out by the sun. This bee gradually drifts
down the hill, then strikes away toward a farm-house half a mile away,
where I know bees are