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He then fastened his cloth tightly around his waist, and producing another cloth wrapped it around his head, neck and body, and tied it firmly, leaving his face, arms, and legs completely bare. Slung to his girdle he carried a long coil of thin cord; and while he had been making these preparations, one of his companions had cut a strong creeper, or bush-rope, eight or ten yards long, to one end of which a wood torch was fastened. was then lighted at the bottom, and emitted a steady stream of smoke. Just above the torch a chopping-knife was fastened with a short cord.

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The bee-hunter now took hold of the bush-rope just above the torch, and passed the other end around the trunk of the tree, holding one end in each hand. Jerking it above the tree a little above his head, he set his foot against the trunk, and leaning back began walking up it. It was wonderful to see the skill with which he took advantage of the slightest irregularities of the bark or inclination of the stem to aid his ascent, jerking the stiff creeper a few feet higher when he had found a firm hold for his bare feet.

It almost made me giddy to look at him as he rapidly got up-thirty, forty, fifty feet above the ground; and I kept wondering how he could possibly mount the next few feet of straight smooth trunk. Still, however, he kept on with as much coolness and apparent certainty as if he were going up a ladder, till he had got within ten or fifteen feet of the bees.

Then he stopped a moment and took care to swing the torch, which hung just at his feet, a little toward these dangerous insects, so as to send up the

stream of smoke between him and them. Still going on, in a minute more he brought himself under the limb, and, in a manner that I could not understand, seeing that both hands were occupied in supporting himself by the creeper, managed to get upon it.

By this time the bees began to be alarmed, and formed a dense buzzing swarm just over him, but he brought the torch up closer to him, and coolly brushed away those that settled on his arms and legs. Then stretching himself along the limb, he crept toward the nearest comb and swung the torch just under it. The moment the smoke touched it, its color changed in a most curious manner from black to white, the myriads of bees that had covered it flying off and forming a dense cloud above and around.

The man then lay at full length along the limb, and brushed off the remaining bees with his hand, and then drawing his knife, cut off the comb at one slice close to the tree, and attaching the thin cord to it, let it down to his companions below.

He was all this time enveloped in a swarm of angry bees, and how he bore their stings so coolly, and went on with his work at that giddy height so deliberately, was more than I could understand. The bees were evidently not stupefied by the smoke or driven away far by it, and it was impossible that the small stream from the torch could protect his whole body when at work.

There were three other combs on the same tree, and all were successively taken, and furnished the whole party with a luscious feast of honey and young bees, as well as a valuable lot of wax.

After two of the combs had been let down, the bees became rather numerous below, flying about wildly and stinging viciously. Several got about me, and I was soon stung, and had to run away, beating them off with my net, and capturing them for specimens. Several of them followed me for at least half a mile, getting into my hair and persecuting me in a most determined manner, so that I was more astonished than ever at the immunity of the natives.

I am inclined to think that slow and deliberate motion, and no attempt to escape, are perhaps the best safeguards. A bee settling on a passive native behaves as it would on a tree or other inanimate substance, and does not attempt to sting. Still these men must often suffer and learn to bear the pain impassively, as without doing so no man could be a bee-hunter.

A. R. WALLACE.

Notes and Questions. — A girdle is a band of cloth or leather which encircles the body at the waist.

Where is the Ma lay' Archipelago?

Language. - A pronoun is a word used instead of a name-word

(noun).

What word is used instead of "bee-hunter" in the second and third sentences of the fifth paragraph?

Does the use of the word "he" save the repetition of the name-word?

What, then, is one of the uses of a pronoun?

Who is the author of the lesson?

instead of his name? Why?

What word does he use

I, thou, he, she, and it are called personal pronouns and take the place of name-words; who, which and what, interrogative pronouns, when used in questions; who, which, and that (also what that which), relative pronouns when joining the words they introduce to a preceding word called an antecedent.

Composition.-Give a short description of the way in which bees are kept in this country.

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Every one who has looked at the map of Norway must have been struck with the singular character of its coast. On the map it looks so jagged, such a strange mixture of land and sea, that it appears as if there must be a perpetual struggle between the two-the sea striving to inundate the land, and the land pushing itself out into the sea, till it ends in their dividing the region between them. On the spot, however, this coast is very fine.

The long, straggling promontories are mountainous, towering ridges of rock, springing up in precipices from the water; while the bays between them, instead of being rounded with shelving, sandy shores on which the sea tumbles its waves, as in bays of our coast, are, in fact, long, narrow valleys, filled with sea, instead of being laid out in fields and meadows. The high rocky banks shelter these deep bays, called fiords, from almost every wind; so that their waters are usually as still as those of a lake.

For days and weeks together, they reflect each separate tree-top of the pine forests which clothe the mountain sides, the mirror being broken only by the leap of some sportive fish, or the oars of

the boatman as he goes to hunt the sea fowl from islet to islet of the fiord, or carries out his nets or his rod to catch the sea-trout, cod, or herring, which abound in their seasons on the coast of Norway.

It is difficult to say whether these flords are more beautiful in the summer or the winter. In summer, they glitter with golden sunshine; and purple and green shadows from the forest and mountain lie on them; and these may be more lovely than the faint light of the winter noons of those latitudes, and the snowy pictures of frozen peaks which then show themselves on the surface; but before the day is half over, out come the stars,-the glorious stars-which shine like nothing we have ever

seen.

There the planets cast a faint shadow, as the young moon does with us; these planets, and the constellations of the sky, as they silently glide over from peak to peak of these rocky passes, are imaged on the waters so clearly that the fisherman, as he unmoors his boat for his evening task, feels as if he were about to shoot forth his vessel into another heaven, and to cleave his way among the stars.

Still as everything is to the eye, sometimes for a hundred miles together along these deep sea valleys, there is rarely silence. The ear is kept awake by a thousand voices. In the summer there are cataracts leaping from ledge to ledge of the rocks; and there is the bleating of the kids that browse; and the flap of the great eagle's wings, as it dashes abroad from its aerie; and the cries of whole clouds of sea-birds that inhabit the islets; and all these sounds are mingled and multiplied by the strong

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