Thus, by forces seemingly antagonistic and destructive, has Mother
Nature accomplished her beneficent designs--now a flood of fire, now a
flood of ice, now a flood of water; and at length an outburst of organic
life, a milky way of snowy petals and wings, girdling the rugged
mountain like a cloud, as if the vivifying sunbeams beating against its
sides had broken into a foam of plant-bloom and bees, as sea-waves break
and bloom on a rock shore.
In this flowery wilderness the bees rove and revel, rejoicing in the
bounty of the sun, clambering eagerly through bramble and hucklebloom,
ringing the myriad bells of the manzanita, now humming aloft among
polleny willows and firs, now down on the ashy ground among gilias and
buttercups, and anon plunging deep into snowy banks of cherry and
buckthorn. They consider the lilies and roll into them, and, like
lilies, they toil not, for they are impelled by sun-power, as
water-wheels by water-power; and when the one has plenty of
high-pressure water, the other plenty of sunshine, they hum and quiver
alike. Sauntering in the Shasta bee-lands in the sun-days of summer, one
may readily infer the time of day from the comparative energy of
bee-movements alone--drowsy and moderate in the cool of the morning,
increasing in energy with the ascending sun, and, at high noon,
thrilling and quivering in wild ecstasy, then gradually declining again
to the stillness of night.
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