Note 1 — LETTER LI.

And, passing by for the present the extremely difficult and debateable question, by what kind of entertaining and simple bibles Agnes shall be first encouraged in the pursuits of literature, I wish to describe to-day more particularly the kind of book I want to be able to give her about her bees, when she is old enough to take real charge of them. For I don’t in the least want a book to tell her how many species of bees there are; nor what grounds there may be for suspecting that one species is another species; nor why Mr. B—— is convinced that what Mr. A—— considered two species are indeed one species; nor how conclusively Mr. C—— has proved that what Mr. B—— described as a new species is an old species. Neither do I want a book to tell her what a bee’s inside is like, nor whether it has its brains in the small of its back, or nowhere in particular, like a modern political economist; nor whether the morphological nature of the sternal portion of the thorax should induce us, strictly, to call it the prosternum, or may ultimately be found to present no serious inducement of that nature. But I want a book to tell her, for instance, how a bee buzzes; and how, and by what instrumental touch, its angry buzz differs from its pleased or simply busy buzz.1 Nor have I any objection to the child’s learning, for good and all, such a dreadful word as ‘proboscis’ though I don’t, myself, understand why in the case of a big animal, like an elephant, one should be allowed, in short English, to say that it takes a bun with its trunk; and yet be required to state always, with severe accuracy, that a bee gathers honey with its proboscis. Whatever we were allowed to call it, however, our bee-book must assuredly tell Agnes and me, what at present I believe neither of us know,—certainly, I don’t, myself,—how the bee’s feeding instrument differs from its building one, and what either may be like.