gentians. How curiously this flower looks, with its deep blue petals
folded together so tightly--a bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun
among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and cloaked.
The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets.
I have seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had forced his
way into the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, but he
had never returned with the knowledge he had gained.

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we
will make our first trial--a high stone wall that runs parallel with
the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field.
There are bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but
little maneuvering to sweep one into our box. Almost any other
creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into
a cage in this way would show great confusion and alarm. The bee is
alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love
of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat,
but to carry home as booty. "Such rage of honey in their bosom beats,"
says Virgil. It is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and
as quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the
wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one
of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it.
Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces,
and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue
sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising
slowly and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey
behind and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly
increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute objects first,
then the larger and more distant, till having circled about the spot
five or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away for home.