Note 3 — LETTER LI.

Agnes, on reading this, is sure to ask me ‘how he taught them?’ Which is just what, as a student of new methods of education, I should like to know myself; and not a word is said on the matter: and we are presently pushed on into the history of the larger animal which I call a humble, but Agnes, a bumble, bee. Not, however, clearly knowing myself either what the ways of this kind are, or why they should be called humble, when I always find them at the top of a thistle rather than the bottom, I spend half my morning in hunting through my scientific books for information on this matter, and find whole pages of discussion whether the orange-tailed bee is the same as the white-tailed bee, but nothing about why either should be called humble or bumble:—at last I bethink me of the great despiser of natural history; and find that stout Samuel, with his good editor Mr. Todd, have given me all I want; but there is far more and better authority for ‘bumble’ than I thought. However;—this first guess of Johnson’s own assuredly touches one popular, though it appears mistaken, reason for the Shakespearian form. “The humble bee is known to have no sting. The Scotch call a cow without horns a ‘humble cow.’ ” But truly, I have never myself yet had clear faith enough in that absence of sting to catch a humble bee in my fingers;3 only I suppose Bottom would have warned Cobweb against that danger, if there had been such, as well as against being overflown with the honey bag.4 Red-hipped, Bottom calls them; and yet I find nothing about their red hips anywhere in my books.