near you and him. Why should we not be one, and watch over grandfather
together?’
At the young man’s words, a look of rapture crossed the girl’s face.
‘Dear Walter,’ cried she, ‘that is all I wish for in this world!’
She spoke like a true and tender woman—from her heart. Seated there
by that homely fireside, with the only two beings who were dear to
her, she never thought, or cared to think, that all the gold which
Walter Tiltcroft and the detective had found in the vault below the
strong-room in Crutched Friars would one day belong to her—that, when
her grandfather died, she would be a great heiress—worth, indeed, some
thousands of pounds. All she thought of, with that look of rapture in
her face, was that she had gained Walter Tiltcroft’s love.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Joe Grimrood having been accused of the robbery in Crutched
Friars, was tried, and convicted. Thereupon, he made a full confession.
For some days before committing the theft, he had watched Silas Monk
from the scaffolding, after the rest of the workmen had gone. Through
a chink in the old shutter he had observed every movement of the old
miser. He had seen Silas Monk raise the trap-door which led into the
vault; he had seen him descend with his lantern, and bring up bag
after bag of gold, and pour it out on the desk before him. Watching
in Crutched Friars, after having been shown to the door by Walter
Tiltcroft, he had seen the young clerk leave the premises. Re-entering
the house by means of a key which he had taken the precaution to
forge, he had gone straight to the strong-room, where he had met
with unexpected resistance. Silas Monk had displayed, according to
Grimrood’s statement, almost supernatural strength; defending his
gold as a tigress defends her young ones, with a savage leap at the
workman’s throat. When utterly exhausted, Grimrood had carried Silas
down into the vault and had closed the trap-door upon him. Then, having
placed all the gold with which the desk was covered, into the bags,
the burglar had decamped, making his way to the docks, and securing a
berth on board an emigrant ship which was on the point of departure for
the high seas.
Thus it happened that, but for the shrewdness and energy of the
detective, Joe Grimrood would have started on a voyage to Australia
with, as it appeared, nearly a thousand pounds in hard cash belonging
to Silas; and the old miser himself would in all probability have been
left to die in the vault under the strong-room in Crutched Friars,
and ‘the mystery of Silas Monk’ would have remained a mystery to the
present day.
All this occurred some years ago. Silas Monk is long dead; and Walter
Tiltcroft, who married the old miser’s grand-daughter, is now a
merchant-prince. He purchased, soon after the death of Mr Armytage, a
partnership in the great firm; and thus the gold which old Silas had
hoarded up in Crutched Friars proved the means, to a great extent, of
making Walter Tiltcroft’s fortune.
SOMETHING ABOUT THE HONEY-BEE.
BY A BEEKEEPER.
To ascertain the kind of flower, plant, or shrub which the honey-bee
mostly prefers, is worth care and consideration. Having been a keeper
of bees for some years, I think it may be useful to make known
the results of my experience and observations in Somersetshire,
Hertfordshire, and Middlesex.
I will suppose that I have purchased a new stock and hive, bar-frame
for preference, and caused it to be removed from the market-gardens
around Middlesex to a country town in Hertfordshire. My bees on arrival
examine their prospect, and what an estate-agent may call their
‘outlook,’ very minutely, going even over the walls and trees adjacent
to their own hive, and taking trial-trips of flight into the air,
straight up—very like the rising of a skylark from a field—and dropping
again almost as suddenly. Having to some extent, after a day or two,
mastered the topography of the district, they will, if on a warm day
in February, commence upon the crocuses, and work only upon them—not,
as some may suppose, dodge about irrespective of the kind of flower.
Although the casual spectator may see bees upon every description of
open flower upon one and the same day, yet they are winging their way
from different hives. Our bees have commenced on the crocus. The day
following this, they will try the common field dandelion; and the next,
the white arabis of the garden culture. Then the black-thorn; later
on, the currant and gooseberry blossoms, and the sweet ‘may’ of our
hedgerows; and of trees—lime, palm, chestnut come next.
The hive should face the south, and the alighting-board occupy as free
a space as possible. Water should be given, even during winter—inside,
if frost is severe.
Some beekeepers suppose that colour attracts the bee; others, that
they possess acutely the sense of smell; and much has been written on
the subject. But our readers are to suppose that we are keeping bees
between us, and that I am relating my own experiences, which point to
this—the preference of these intelligent insects for some plants over
others. I have tried to educate my bees, by inducing them on certain
days to gather from flowers presented to them in small bunches upon
the alighting-board of their hive. In two instances I succeeded. One
was with white clover, which I picked in a field a mile distant. This
appeared to cheer the bees greatly, and drove away their listlessness
and inactivity. After making an examination of my offering, they began
work in earnest; and this stimulant had the desired effect of inducing
an idle community to work well. The second experiment was much more
demonstrative. Early in the morning, before the workers came forth,
I placed by the alighting-board some bunches of alder-flower. I had
shortly the satisfaction of seeing the outgoing bees return with little
white trousers of pollen, and I watched their flight to an alder tree
at a corner of the garden, not far from their hive. This was conclusive.
Now for some descriptions of preference shown by bees. I have grown
garden-peas of various descriptions near my hives without inducing the
bees to notice them. Yet they will greedily gather from French beans or
scarlet runners the whole day, till long after sunset. In spring-time,
the yellow gorse on uncultivated spots forms a very strong attraction
for the honey-bees; yet they never touch the blossom of the laburnum,
which to ordinary mortals smells much the same. The cultivated hyacinth
they do not care about, although they gather from the wild sort in
the woods and shady groves. Bees show great preference for the pollen
of some sorts of lilies, yet are wholly indifferent to the lily of
the valley. They gather from the field-daisy, yet are careless of the
cultivated sort.
Stocks they prefer to pinks, and lavender to either; also the small
flower of the borage delights them; yet wild foxglove possesses little
charm. I have heard that bees like monkshood, and will gather from it,
but I have never seen them do so. If they did, their honey would be
poisonous. Bees are passionately fond of clover and certain vetches,
and they will desert any garden flowers for such natural feeding.
Wild thyme and heather, which improve the flavour of the honey, bees
perfectly revel in. Garden primroses, they do not care much for; and
auriculas, however gaudy in colour, form no kind of attraction. The
polyanthus they have a languid liking for. I have seen the wild-bees
attack the cowslip; but not the honey-bee of our hives. I saw a bee
once upon a cultivated rose; it was only resting. I have likewise a
distinct remembrance of seeing many upon the wild-rose and dog-rose,
wild clematis, honeysuckle, and blackberry blossom.
The situation of our hive cannot always be in such a flowery land; and
the beekeeper will do well to study the different flora and trees in
the immediate neighbourhood of his hive, and endeavour to supply any
deficiencies of pollen-bearing plants, as well as to give a gentle
hint to the inhabitants of his hives of any honey-bearing plant from
which he especially wants them to gather. Of course, in wild heather
districts, there is no need to resort to planting or sowing for the
bees; they will in such places always take care of themselves. In
Somersetshire, bees find honey from the many miles of apple-orchard
stretching away to the mild county of Devon; and farmers well know that
a good bee season, with a warm and early spring, means a plentiful
show of fruit in the autumn for cider. In and around Middlesex, there
are market and fruit gardens; and in Hertfordshire, grazing and clover
lands, besides hedges lined with limes and hawthorn, and later on,
honeysuckle.
It is always a good plan to send late swarms of the hive into
heather-bearing counties; for the bees being young, and having every
inducement to work for the approaching winter, will store better than
hives which have been ‘swarmed’ and deprived of honey, the colonies
of which are worn or fatigued with the long-continued gathering of a
summer in more southern counties. It must likewise be remembered that
bees cannot gather, or rather will not do so, late in the autumn, when
the cold prevents them sealing over with wax the top of the cell.
And now, a last word as to the preference of our bees for certain
flowers over others, which we would imagine, with our limited powers
of the sense of smell and taste, would be preferred by these insects,
and for which we have the greater amount of regard. I have seen, upon
the approach of a bee to any flower, that it flies around the calyx
almost always before alighting upon the flower itself. This is a
cursory examination; and with its antennæ outstretched and quivering,
it is evidently scenting the honey contained within. Should this prove
a fruitful flower and of the flavour required, the bee settles on
the centre of the stamen, and clutching it with its four front-legs,
steadies itself with its longer outstretched two hindermost ones, and
withdraws the nectar by its proboscis, the rings of the body assuming
a vibratory motion the while. The bee’s proboscis is a most important
instrument. It is composed of forty cartilaginous rings, each of which
is fringed with minute hairs, having also a small tuft of hair at its
extremity, where it is somewhat serrated. Its movement is like the
trunk of an elephant, and is susceptible of extension and contraction,
bending and twisting in all directions. Thus, by rolling it about,
it searches out the calyx, pistil, and stamen of every flower, and
deposits its nectar upon the tongue, whence it passes into the gullet
at the base. The gullet or first stomach is the honey-bag. No digestion
takes place here. In shape, it is like an oil-flask, and when full,
contains about one grain. It is susceptible of contraction, and is so
arranged as to enable the insect to disgorge its contents into the
cells of the hive. A short passage leads to the ventricle or true
stomach, which is somewhat larger. This receives the food from the
honey-bag, for the nourishment of the bee and the secretion of wax.
Dzierzon says that the honey which a bee can take into her stomach will
enable her to subsist for a week under some circumstances, while under
others she will die of hunger within twenty-four hours. This opinion
of Dzierzon settles my conviction, that in the selection of the kind of
food which will enable the bee to live longest, the true guide is to be
found in the flowers for which it has the strongest preference.
BOOK GOSSIP.
The Norman Conquest is one of the great outstanding and predominating
facts in English history. It occasioned a sudden break in the life of
the English people, and its influence is felt in their character and
institutions even to the present day. A hundred and fifty years before
that event, the long black ships of the Norse pirates entered the wide
mouths of the Seine and the Loire, and their crews, the rudest of the
rough barbarians of Denmark and Norway, sacked the towns and pillaged
the churches of the country which was afterwards to be called by their
name. They had no science, no arts, no culture. Their physical strength
was their glory; and their weapons of war, their defence at home,
served also as their passport into the lands of the stranger whom they
plundered and slew. But they had a remarkable power of adaptation.
However foreign to them the environment into which their hardy courage
had brought them, they did not long remain untouched by it. Without
losing their own native hardihood and fearlessness, they quickly
absorbed into them the spirit of the peoples and institutions among
which they had taken root; and before a century had passed over their
heads in France, they had already become one of the great political
forces of Europe. It was this people, brave, warlike, and with strong
practical sagacity, who landed on the English shores in 1066, and
shattered the Saxon arms on the slopes of Senlac. The battle at ‘the
hoar apple tree,’ where Harold lay dead with the Norman arrow deep in
his brain, marks the beginning of a new epoch in England.
The history of that great event, with its antecedents and consequents,
has rarely been better told than it is by Mr Wm. Hunt, in the new
volume of the ‘Early Britain Series,’ entitled _The Norman Conquest_
(London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge). As compared with
the work of Freeman, this is in bulk but a small book; yet it contains
within it all that thousands of readers would desire to know of the
history of the Conquest. The author is extremely well-informed on his
subject, and his scholarly little book gives evidence not only of
original research but of much original thought. The pictures he draws
for us of the England that preceded the Conquest, and of the England
that followed it, are sketched with a fullness and beauty of detail
which amply exhibit the capacity and preparedness of the author for
the task which he undertook, and which he has executed so well. His
extensive reading has enabled him to take advantage of the results
obtained by all the best and more recent investigators in this section
of European history; and the Northmen both before and after their
descent on France, as well as the Saxon tribes and Danish hordes that
scoured our coasts centuries before, are portrayed with a quick and
living touch. Still more interesting is the story of the Normans after
their taking possession of England; and the strange manner in which
the Saxon head eventually conquered the Norman hand—the Saxon language
and institutions arising in more than their original vitality and force
out of the ashes, as it were, of a temporary death—is here narrated
with admirable clearness and coherency. The book is one of the best of
the very valuable series to which it belongs.
⁂
The same publishing house issues another learned little volume on
_Anglo-Saxon Literature_, by Mr John Earle, Rawlinson Professor of
Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford. It belongs to the series
bearing upon ‘The Dawn of European Literature,’ and is rich with
the results of the best modern scholarship on the early history and
growth of our language. The time when Latin and Greek formed the
chief essentials of learning is fast receding into the past, and
these languages are having a place assigned them more consistent
with the necessities of the modern world, which is not tolerant of
the acquisition of a kind of knowledge that in great part is archaic
and useless. Under the influence of this change, our own language is
rising into an importance which it could never attain so long as it
was regarded simply as a vulgar tongue, and the historical study of
English is becoming one of the most popular as well as one of the most
useful pursuits of our philologists. The great English Dictionary of
the Philological Society is only one evidence of this; for individual
scholars, during the last twenty years, have done not a little to lay
bare to us the inner structure of our language, and the changes and
modifications to which it has been subjected in the course of its long
descent.
In the little work under review, Mr Earle states that Anglo-Saxon
literature is the oldest of the vernacular literatures of modern
Europe. The materials of this early literature are found chiefly in
written books and documents; but they are found also in such subsidiary
sources as inscriptions on churches and church towers, sun-dials,
crosses, and even on jewellery. One of the most remarkable in this last
category is what is known as the Alfred Jewel. It was discovered in
Newton Park, near Athelney, in 1693, and in 1718 had found its way to
the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, where it still is. It consists of an
enamelled figure enshrined in a golden frame, with a golden back to it,
and with a thick piece of rock-crystal in front, to serve as a glass to
the picture. Around the sloping rim the following legend is wrought in
the fabric: ÆLFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCEAN (‘Alfred me commanded to make’).
‘The language of the legend,’ says the author, ‘agrees perfectly with
the age of King Alfred, and it seems to be the unhesitating opinion
of all those who have investigated the subject that it was a personal
ornament of the great West-Saxon king.’ Mr Earle traces the language
from the Heathen Period—that is, from the time previous to the English
conversion to Christianity, about 597 A.D.—down to the times that
immediately succeeded upon the Norman Conquest, and gives examples
of the language during these six centuries, with translations of the
various passages adduced. All who have an interest in the study of the
English tongue, and of the changes superinduced upon it by contact
with other European vernaculars, will find Mr Earle’s volume a ready
and efficient guide.
THE MONTH:
SCIENCE AND ARTS.
Projects for cutting waterways across isthmuses follow one another with
such amazing swiftness, and the project is in most cases so quickly
followed by realisation, that it would appear that before many years
have passed, all the available peninsulas of the world will have been
operated upon and transformed into islands. Our French neighbours
are at present discussing the feasibility of a gigantic undertaking
of this nature, which, if carried out, will unite the Bay of Biscay
with the Mediterranean. This projected canal, which is to be of such
dimensions that the largest ships afloat can make use of it, is to have
one entrance near Bordeaux, and the other at Narbonne. This short-cut
across France will obviate the necessity of the tedious voyage round
Spain and through the Straits of Gibraltar, and will undoubtedly be a
boon to shipping, and especially to British vessels; but the scheme is
at present only on paper. It remains to be seen whether the undertaking
is possible; by which is meant, in these days of engineering marvels,
whether it will pay.
Like most other canal projects, this one is by no means new; indeed, a
canal already exists almost along the same line of route—namely, the
Canal du Midi, which finds an outlet at Cette in the Gulf of Lions, and
joins the river Garonne at its other extremity at Toulouse; the entire
navigable distance from Bordeaux to Cette being three hundred and
thirty-two miles. The existing canal only accommodates small vessels,
and the entire journey is by no means a rapid one, for there are more
than a hundred locks to be encountered, which gradually raise the boats
to a level of nearly eight hundred feet above the sea. Whether the
engineers of the new undertaking propose any novel means of battling
with this difficulty of level, we do not know; but it will be readily
seen that the undertaking has not the simplicity of a simple cutting,
such as the Suez Canal presents. Another formidable obstacle to the
work is the presence of certain rivers which flow right across the
track. In the present case, these are crossed by aqueducts. But what
would be the size and cost of aqueducts which would give passage to the
floating palaces which have taken the place of the small vessels of
days gone by?
Coming nearer home, a project has been mooted for cutting a channel
from the river Tyne to the Solway; and another across the low land
which separates the Forth from the Clyde. It is true that in the latter
case a narrow passage already exists; but what is required is—according
to the opinion of a former President of the Liverpool Chamber of
Commerce, who writes to the _Times_ upon the subject—a channel which
will allow the passage of our largest merchantmen and ships of war,
so that in case of need the efficiency of our naval defences may be
practically doubled. In case of war, the advantages of quick transport
of our ships from one coast to the other is obvious, and may in a
manner be compared to the undoubted advantages which we reap from being
able to convey information quickly from place to place by telegraphic
agency.
Some very interesting Roman relics have recently been unearthed in the
bed of the river Rhone at Geneva, where some engineering works are in
progress. The most interesting of these is a Roman altar furnished
with an inscription to the effect that the writer, a certain soldier
of the twenty-second legion, who had been shipwrecked in the waters
hard by, had raised this altar to the god of the waves, Neptune, as a
thank-offering for his escape from death. We have also to record a far
more valuable find near Rome itself—at Subiaco, where several priceless
statues supposed to have been sent by the Emperor Nero to that place
for the decoration of his villa there, have been dug up. In Britain
too, a Roman villa has just been laid bare at Woolstone, Berkshire,
where, in addition to many tesselated pavements, several graves of
the Anglo-Saxon period have been found. In London, our knowledge of
the Roman city which lies beneath the busy metropolitan streets has
been much enriched by numerous discoveries made during the recent
excavations for the completion of the Underground Railway. There is
little doubt that interest in things antiquarian is rapidly increasing
on all sides. This is not only apparent from the attention which every
fresh discovery receives, but is indicated in a most satisfactory
manner by the circumstance that the University of Cambridge has given
archæology a recognised position among the subjects for the classical
tripos examination, and has just opened a Museum which will give an
impetus to studies of the kind.
Although interest in matters archæological shows a healthy increase,
we have to regret a decrease of interest in another important branch
of knowledge. The Royal Geographical Society, which has just held
its anniversary meeting, has had to deplore, by the mouth of its
President, Lord Aberdare, that the Council have failed in their attempt
to introduce the efficient study of geography into the curriculum of
our great public schools, such as Eton and Harrow. Prizes have been
offered; but there were few who cared to compete for them. This seems a
very extraordinary state of things in a country which is always proudly
pointing to its possessions as being so large that the sun must always
shine upon some part or other of them. But the fault probably lies with
the teachers more than with the pupils. The members of the Geographical
Society evidently understand this, for they are now about to institute
an inquiry into the systems adopted for geographical instruction in
continental schools, from which, if all reports speak truly, we may
well take a lesson.