Culture, farming, rearing, and raising are synonymous terms when applied to any of the members of the vegetable or animal kingdom that are under the fostering care or guiding hand of man. Our chief aim in these matters is the selection of the fittest that may become in one way or the other useful to us. There is no cultural under so great a disadvantage, as it regards the selection of the fittest, as the bee-keeper. Those interested in the culture of members of the animal kingdom other than bees, can select and mate both sire and dam with a reasonable probability of producing a certain ideal or development of an animal more akin to man's requirements than those that were the parentage of the said production. So with the vegetable kingdom. The knowledge we have, and the power we possess as it regards cross-fertilisation, has put such a lever in our hands, that, after having conceived the idea of what may be an improvement either in colour, form, flavour, or bulk, something near thereto is the result. I know that the percentage of failures are far greater than the successes, but from these we select the fittest, and these survive. In these matters the bee-keeper is under one great and lasting hindrance to his success, he cannot select and mate both sire and dam. With him, there is no reasonable probability of achieving an ideal type of bee that may suit his fancy. Neither can the bee-keeper ever hope to have the power in his hands to regulate the mating of his stock, so as to change the character of the wild type, either in form or size. Freaks in these matters undoubtedly have occurred that, according to our way of thinking, have produced a bee an improvement on her ancestors. There have been cases of albinos; but even supposing that these cases were more numerous, and still supposing that albino bees would be an improvement on their more sombre brethren, a new variety could not be worked up therefrom, because the cases have always occurred among drones and infertile females (workers), and not fertile females (quecns). Again, we occasionally see working-bees extra long in the abdomen; that length not being produced by the surcharged honey sac, and, indeed, some queens seem disposed to produce inmates of two orthree different types. This differentiation in the case of drones is the result of being bred in worker-cells. These drones while in a chrysalid form are easily distinguishable by the capping of the worker's cell being much more elevated than those surrounding it. It is a question with me if these drones bred in worker-cells have the power of pro-creation. Even if it were so, our so far utter inability to mate such an ideal drone with a queen of an unusually long abdomen is debarred by our not having the power to control the mating instinct of bees. A gentleman once said to me, ''I have found a method by which I can increase the size of the honey bee,'' The method was by enlarging the size, ever so little, of the impressions on the foundation comb, and after breeding many generations of this enlarged bee, to again increase the pattern on the foundation, and so on, as the increased size of the bee became fixed. Of course, he knew nothing of practical bee-keeping, and less of its scientific aspect. But when I pointed out that if it were possible to increase the size of the physical structure of bees the whole of the entomophilus flowers would have to undergo a series of new evolutions, so as to fit the enlarged bee, for, according to the Darwinian theory, flowers have evolved to fit the bees, it would appear, according to the creative standpoint, the size and forms of the bees were made to fit the flowers. Be this as it may, we cannot, even if we would, breed bees for a material alteration in form or any increase in size.