TENNYSON'S POET'S SONG.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE SPECTATOR,"]
Sin,—Tennyson is not the only writer who has sung of swallows and bees—and not swallows only have been described as enemies of the hive. There is a charming passage in the "Letters from an American Farmer," by Saint-John de CrCvecceur, in regard to king-birds, which the farmer could not ordinarily persuade himself to shoot. On one occasion, however, when he fired at a more than commonly impertinent specimen, and brought it down, "and immediately opened his maw," be took from it one hundred and seventy-five bees.
More of the farmer's figures are given in the following paragraph :— "I laid them all on a blanket in the sun, and to my great surprise fifty-four returned to life, licked themselves clean, and joyously went back to tho hive; whore they probably informed their companions of such an adventure and escape as I believe had never happened before to American bees."
This episode (whether or not we can accept it as veracious) pleasantly reminds us of a certain chapter in another "American Farmer's" book, written almost a century later I refer to Ik Marvel's "Farm at Edgewood." "I have not the heart to shoot the king-birds, nor do I enter very actively into the battles of the bees," he confesses. "I give them fair play, good lodging, limitless flowers, willows bending (as Virgil advises) into the quiet water of a near pool." Evidently it was not Tennyson alone who saw "The swallow stop as he hunted the boo."
New York City. am, Sir, &c., WARREN BARTON BLARE.
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