panorama of the Catskills filled the far distance, and the more broken
outlines of the Shawangunk range filled the rear. On every hand were
precipices and a wild confusion of rocks and trees.

The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long
and eight or ten inches in diameter. With an ax we cut away one side
of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was
a most pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had
through their palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb
there were! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented,
uneven surface, it looked like some precious ore. When we carried
a large pail full of it out of the woods, it seemed still more like
ore.

Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of the tree by the time
the bee occupies in making its first trip. But this is no certain
guide. You are always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a
mile, and you need not as a rule look for your bee's return under ten
minutes. One day I picked up a bee in an opening in the woods and gave
it honey, and it made three trips to my box with an interval of about
twelve minutes between them; it returned alone each time; the tree,
which I afterward found, was about half a mile distant.

In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of the hunter are to
pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop away the branches or cut down
the trees, and set the bees to work again. If they still go forward,
he goes forward also and repeats his observations till the tree is
found or till the bees turn and come back upon the trail. Then he
knows be has passed the tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient
distance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces the space to be