Master Isaac's craft, under the word Apiary, which had greatly
interested me, and ought, I thought, to be interesting to the
bee-keeper. Still thinking of this I said,

"Do you ever take your bees away from home, Isaac?"

"They're on the moors now, sir," said Isaac.

"_Are_ they?" I exclaimed. "Then you're like the Egyptians, and like the
French, and the Piedmontese; only you didn't take them in a barge."

"Why, no, sir. The canal don't go nigh-hand of the moors at all."

"The Egyptians," said I, leaning back into the capacious arms of my
chair, and epitomizing what I had read, "who live in Lower Egypt put all
their beehives into boats and take them on the river to Upper Egypt.
Right up at that end of the Nile the flowers come out earliest, and the
bees get all the good out of them there, and then the boats are moved
lower down to where the same kind of flowers are only just beginning to
blossom, and the bees get all the good out of them there, and so on, and
on, and on, till they've travelled right through Egypt, with all the
hives piled up, and come back in the boats to where they started from."

"And every hive a mighty different weight to what it was when they did
start, I'll warrant," said Master Isaac enthusiastically. "Did you find
all that in those penny numbers, Master Jack?"

"Yes, and oh, lots more, Isaac! About lots of things and lots of
countries."