clusters, at a season when very
few blossoms are to be seen, is a sight most beautiful and refreshing.

"Here their delicious task, the fervent bees
In swarming millions tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube,
Suck its pure essence, its etherial soul."
_Thomson._

Our villages would be much more attractive, if instead of being filled
as they often are, almost exclusively with maples and elms, they were
adorned with a greater variety of our native trees. The remark has often
been made, that these trees are much more highly valued abroad than at
home, and that to see them in perfection, we must either visit their
native forests, or the pleasure grounds of some wealthy English or
European gentleman.

Of all the various sources from which the bees derive their supplies,
white clover is the most important. It yields large quantities of very
white honey, and of the purest quality, and wherever it flourishes in
abundance, the honey-bee will always gather a rich harvest. In this
country at least, it seems to be the most certain reliance of the
Apiary. It blossoms at a season of the year when the weather is usually
both dry and hot, and the bees gather the honey from it, after the sun
has dried off the dew: so that its juices are very thick, and almost
ready to be sealed over at once in the cells.

Every observant bee-keeper must have noticed, that in some seasons, the
blossoms of various kinds yield much less honey than in others. Perhaps
no plant varies so little in this respect, as the white clover. This
clover ought to be much more extensively cultivated than it now is, and
I consider myself as conferring a benefit not only on bee-keepers, but
on the agricultural community at large, in being able to state on the
authority of one of New England's ablest practical farmers, and writers
on agricultural subjects, Hon. Frederick Holbrook, of Brattleboro',
Vermont, that the common white clover may be cultivated on some soils to
very great profit, as a hay crop. In an article for the New England
Farmer, for May, 1853, he speaks as follows:--

"The more general sowing of white clover-seed is confidently
recommended. If land is in good heart at the time of stocking it to
grass, white clover sown with the other grass-seeds will thicken up the
bottom of mowings, growing some eight or ten inches high and in