" TELLIN' FRIENDS." [To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—It is interesting to find that the custom of "tellin' the bees" exists also in the mountainous parts of the Southern States of America—Virginia, Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. An American book on bee culture (The A.B.C. and X.1" .Z. of Bee Culture, by A. I. and E. R. Root) says that the mountaineers are of pure Anglo-Saxon blood, and that, by virtue of their isolation, they have retained many of the habits and modes of speech of their English ancestors of the seventeenth century. They keep their bees, as their forbears did, in rough boxes or "gums," and " whenever there is a death in the family the bees must be notified by pounding on the gum and telling it that So-and-so is dead." On Washington's birthday, February 32nd, they must move the gums an inch or two or the bees will die. If a visitor happens to inquire how many colonies a beekeeper has, the latter always replies that he does not know exactly, and if the visitor proceeds to count them for himself he is begged to desist, otherwise calamity is sure to follow.—I am, Sir, &e., F. C.
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