the woman fell into the deepest part of the stream, and disappeared. Dick's wrath, when there was no opposition to feed it, was as short-lived as a straw fire. He looked at the rings of water widening round the spot where Polly had fallen in, with an expression which rapidly changed from extreme rage to one more like extreme vexation. "D- it all," he said to himself "what if I've drowned her?" But he might have spared himself his anxiety. The cold water sobered her in a moment; and rising from the mud at the bottom, into which her head had at first plunged, she came to the surface. Ten feet lower down, a fallen tree lay half across the stream. The current bore her on before she had time to sink again. She clutched the branches, which bent and ducked her again and again. But at last she landed herself, and clambering up the bank, wet and dripping, turned in fury upon her lord and master. Dick was sitting on the grass, laughing as if it was the best joke he had ever known in his life. "I told you how it would be, Polly, if you split. Now you see. Lord! if you could only get a sight of your own face!" She had risen from the waves, like Venus Anadyomene. Encumbered as she was with her draggled clothes, she only resembled the goddess in that one fact. Besides the mud at the bottom, which was still in her hair and bonnet, she had collected a goodly quantity of duckweed on her way out of the water, which hung in graceful festoons upon her shoulders. "You'd better go home to your mother and get dry, Polly.' very sorry, and I haven't told nobody-on my sacred word, I haven't. I said I'd been a blackberryin', and fell in." Dick poked an unrelenting head out of the window. At sight of it, his wife put her handkerchief to her face and sobbed loudly. "Polly," said the inhuman Dick, "you may go to the devil." Polly went home. She arose early next morning, and repaired again, trembling, to the house. But she might just as well have gone defiantly, for Dick Mortiboy was off to town by the six o'clock train. DION BOUCICAULT. THE subject of our cartoon, Mr. Dion Boucicault, is a native of Dublin, where he was born on December 26th, 1822. He is the youngest son of Samuel Boucicault, a well-known merchant. His elder brothers have earned in Australia both fame and fortune on the colonial press as newspaper proprietors and editors: one, George D. Boucicault, having been for many years editor of the Melbourne Daily News; the other, Arthur Boucicault, is now the editor and proprietor of the Northern Argus. The late George Darley, the dramatic poet and essayist, was the uncle of these men-so literature may be said to be hereditary in their family. In 1841, at the age of nineteen, Mr. Dion Boucicault produced his first dramatic work, "London Assurance." His later works, "The Colleen Bawn and "Arrah-naPogue," have somewhat eclipsed his earlier productions, and the public are inclined to regard him as a writer of melodrama only. But of all the dramatists who are now living and writing, he is the only one who has produced a series of plays of the highest class, amongst which the following five-act comedies and tragic plays may be recorded:— "I'll cry all over Market Basing that I'm your wife. I'll have revenge, you black," murdering villain. I'll have my rights out of you, I will." "Then, Polly, perhaps next time you go into the river, you will stay there." Dick strode off alone, leaving his wife on the other side. When he got home, he bolted the door, so that her key was of no good. Old Heads and Young Hearts," "The School for Scheming," "The Irish Heiress," "Woman," "Love in a Maze," "Louis the Eleventh." His comedy, "London Assurance," has been played for the last hundred nights at one of the West-end theatres. Amongst the dramas which have flowed unceasingly for the last thirty years from his prolific pen, we remember "The Willow Copse," "The Corsican Brothers," "Faust and Margaret," It was Polly, and Margaret," "The Vampire," "Janet Pride," "Used Up," "The Octoroon, "The Colleen Bawn,' ""The Streets of Lon About ten o'clock, a little gravel was thrown up at his window. It was Polly, crying. "Dick, let me in-let me in, Dick. I'm ,, don," "Rip Van Winkle," "Formosa," "After Dark," ," "Hunted Down," "Arrah-na-Pogue," "Jezebel," "The Long Strike," "Flying Scud," and recently a little gem entitled "Night and Morning." In 1853, Mr. Boucicault married Miss Agnes Robertson, an actress, and went to the United States, where they resided for seven years. During this period, he adopted the stage as a profession; but as his performance of Irish character proved to be his most perfect delineation, he has of late confined himself to that speciality. In 1860 he returned to England, and appeared in September in the memorable "Colleen Bawn," as Myles-na-Coppaleen. In 1864 he joined Mr. Vining at the Princess's, and produced "The Streets of London" and "Arrah-naPogue." Very few authors have been so uniformly successful, but very few possess the assemblage of powers and qualifications which unite in him to render success almost a certainty. He is not only an experienced dramatist and actor, but his knowledge of all departments of the theatre and their resources is complete. He models and sketches his own scenery, and contrives his mechanical effects. He selects the appropriate music-fashions the action of his piece-drills the supernumeraries and ballet. ficulty in reconciling their prejudice with such a programme. No life is more methodical. In 1868, after an engagement in Dublin, Mr. Boucicault declared his intention of retiring from the stage, and devoting himself exclusively to literary pursuits. But his reappearance a few months ago seemed to be the result of a conviction-in which our readers will cordially join-that his "second thoughts are the best;" the more so that his retirement withdrew from the stage his wife, the most elegant and purest of our soubrettes, whose performances cannot be called delineations: they are personifications of the characters in which she appears, so perfect of their kind, that no actress possibly, in her own line of characters, could be acceptable to the public in her stead. We need hardly remind our readers of Mr. Boucicault's connection with this magazine, as Mr. Charles Reade's partner in writing" Foul Play"—a novel which appeared in ONCE A WEEK in the first six months of 1868. A GOSSIP ABOUT BEES. BY A COUNTRY BEE-KEEPER. 'HAT most interesting father of all naturalists, our old friend Pliny, discoursing of insects, says— THAT We shall not forget the effect produced by the crowd of Irish peasantry in "Arrah-naPogue." He exercises and teaches each performer; and, indeed, instils into all parts "But among them, the first rank and our of his works a vigour and a life that we especial admiration ought in justice to be rarely find elsewhere. Where capacity and accorded to bees, which alone of all the inexperience are thus found allied with untir-sects have been created for the benefit of man. ing labour, it would be strange if the result were doubtful. Some idea of his appetite for work may be formed by considering his present announced engagements. He is the lessee and manager of Covent Garden Theatre for the winter season, beginning in the middle of August next, when he produces a great spectacular play. Until then he is engaged to perform every night at the Gaiety Theatre, where he produces four or five pieces during this summer. On the 9th of September he is announced to appear in New York, in November in Boston, in December in Philadelphia, and in January in California. Meanwhile, he will manage Covent Garden Theatre by the submarine wire, having left that enterprise organized and in working order. Those who regard a theatrical life as one of idleness and ease may find some dif They extract honey and collect it, a juicy substance remarkable for its extreme sweetness, their combs and collect wax, an article that lightness, and wholesomeness. They form is useful for a thousand purposes of life; they are patient of fatigue, toil at their labours, form themselves into political communities, hold councils together in private, elect chiefs in commerce, and—a thing which is most remarkable of all—have their own code of morals. In addition to this, being as they are neither tame nor wild, so allpowerful is Nature, that from a creature so minute as to be nothing more hardly than the shadow of an animal, she has created a marvel beyond comparison." Thus enthusiastically spoke Pliny of the valuable little Apis mellifica, or honey bee. And he was not the only one of the ancients who took an exceptional interest in bees and bee-culture. Have we not all, in our school-days, thought that fourth book of the Georgics, which the sweet Virgil devoted altogether to our friends of the flowers and the gardens, repaid us most for our trouble in the construing? Old Latin though it was, Nature, as we saw it around ourselves, came upon us fresh and sweet-scented in every line. "Plains, meads, and orchards all the day he plies, The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs: He spoils the saffron flowers, he sips the blues Of violets' wilding blooms and willow dews." Aristotle, too, made them his study. Aris. tomachus of Soli, in Cilicia, attended solely to bees for fifty-eight years; and Philiscus the Thasian-otherwise Agrius, or the "wild man"-passed his life in desert spots tending swarms of bees. Coming down to later times, we find such men as Swammerdam, Reaumur, Bonnet, Schirach, Thorley, Hunter, Huber, and a hundred less familiar authorities, writing learnedly and lovingly on a subject which, sneered at though it might be by some of the "heavy-armed soldiers" of the 'ologies, is one abstruse enough in itself, and yet far from being finally exhausted in respect to new facts and information. As the spring-time is now upon us, and as, acting upon the old maxim that "A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay" some of our readers may be inclined to make an experiment of bee-keeping on their own account, a passing gossip on bees and bee hives may not be out of place at this season. We have always thought that there are two kinds of people who ought to keep bees. First, the cottagers or small farmers, who might thus often add considerably to their income; for bee-keeping is by no means a bad business speculation. Secondly, people of quiet means and leisure, such as retired private gentlemen or country clergymen, who, besides giving an excellent example to their less educated and often vulgarly prejudiced neighbours of the poorer classes, would find in the cultivation of their bees a continual source of interesting occupation and good scientific study. A practical bee-master has well remarked that, among the humbler classes in the rural districts, the neglect of bee-keeping is to be attributed to an exaggerated idea of the trouble required for the care of a few hives, and also to igno-. rance of the easier and more profitable modes of modern management. Many of the wealthier country residents also are averse to the personal trouble which they fancy necessary in keeping an apiary; and perhaps some people are more afraid than they like to confess of that efficient weapon of defence with which the honey bee is fortified by nature. These prejudices against bees are altogether unfounded. Bees are tractable and safe enough, if people will only take the trouble to learn the very simple art of how to manage them. Before going into this question, let us first glance at a few of the facts peculiar to these interesting little workers. Of the bee tribe in England alone, about two hundred and fifty species have been discovered. Kirby divides them into two great groups-Apis and Melitta, which dif fer principally in the proboscis. In Apis, the tongue or central part of the proboscis is generally long, and the proboscis itselt has two joints, one near the base and another about the middle; that at the base directing it outwards, and that in the middle directing it inwards. When folded, the apex of the tongue points backwards. In Melitta, the tongue is short, and the proboscis has but one fold, which is near the base; and when folded, the apex of the tongue folds forwards. These, again, have been subdivided into smaller groups; but it is with the Apis mellifica, or hive bee, that we have to deal at present, leaving the discussion of the distinctions and peculiarities of the many different wild bees to more exact students of entomology. The honey bee always lives in society with those of its own species. In its natural state it generally constructs its nest in hollow trees, but throughout Europe it is seldom found otherwise than in a domesticated state. Every hive contains, in the summer time, three distinct classes of bees - the queen bee, with the pupa or embryos intended for queens; the neuter or working bees; and the drones or males. The physical distinctions of these classes may be described as follows. The drone or male bee is almost cylindrical in form, the separation between the thorax and the abdomen being much less distinct than in the females or neuters. The head is large, rather narrower than the thorax, which is thickly covered above and be |