especially as one of
the stablemen, who joined the admiring domestic crowd witnessing the
process, proved to be endowed with the immunity some persons have from
the stings of those insects, and was able to take them by handfuls from
the tree where they were clinging, and put them on the stand where the
bee-hive prepared for them was placed. I had read of this individual
peculiarity with the incredulity of ignorance (incomparably stronger
than that of knowledge); but seeing is believing, and when my
fiery-haired Irish groom seized the bees by the handful, of course there
was no denying the fact.

There is a row of large old acacia-trees near the house, inhabited by
some most curious ants, who are gradually hollowing the trees out. I can
hear them at work as I stand by the poor vegetables, and the grass all
round is literally whitened with the fine sawdust made by these
hard-working little carpenters. The next phenomenon will be that the
trees will tumble on my head, while I am pursuing my entomological
studies. [To avert this catastrophe, the trees had all to be cut
down].... Dear H----, I never contemplated sacrificing my child's, or
anybody else's, health to my desire for "doing good." There is a
difference between living all the year round on a rice-swamp, and
retiring during the summer to the pinewood highlands, which are healthy,
even in the hot season; nor am I at all inclined to advocate the neglect
of duties close at hand for quixotical devotion to remote ones. But you
must remember that _we are slave owners_, and live by slave-labor, and
if the question of slavery does not concern us, in God's name whom does
it concern? In my conviction, that is _our_ special concern.... There is
a Convention about to meet at Harrisburg, the seat of Government of this
State, Pennsylvania, for the election of Van Buren, the Democratic
candidate for the Presidency....

The politics of this country are in a strange, uncertain state, but I
have left myself no room to enlarge upon them.

I have just finished reading Judge Talfourd's "Ion," and Lamartine's
"Pelerinage" to Palestine. God bless you, dearest H----.

Ever yours,
F. A. B.

[Sydney Smith said that he never desired to live in a hot climate,
as he disliked the idea of processions of ants traversing his bread
and butter. The month of June had hardly begun in the year