1869 illust. mag.: the OTTER; BEE-KEEPING in Timor; French morals

Description

1869 illust. mag.: the OTTER; BEE-KEEPING in Timor; French morals
APPLETON’S JOURNAL
April 24,
1869
Bee-hunting in Timor
Otters
This is an issue of the illustrated weekly publication,
Appleton’s Journal,
which is
over 150 years old
. It measures 8 x 11 inches in size, and is 32 pages long. The paper came from a bound volume and has some minor disbinding marks at the spine, but is otherwise in excellent condition. I
t will be sent in a clear plastic report cover, to help preserve it in the future.
The issue begins with some fiction pieces, including part of Victor Hugo’s latest novel, in a continuing serialization. Then it switches to non-fiction essays on various topics, with these highlights:
* “BEE-HUNTERS OF TIMOR.”
Half a page (over 75 lines of text), by a writer who observed natives taking a hive. The article begins:
“The bees’-wax is an important and valuable product, formed by the wild bees (
Apis dorsata
), which build huge honeycombs, suspended in the open air from the underside of the lofty branches of the highest trees. These are of a semicircular form, and often three of four feet in diameter. I once saw the natives take a bees’ nest, and a very interesting sight it was. In the valley where I used to collect insects, I one day saw three or four Timonese men and boys under a high tree, and, looking up, saw on a very lofty horizontal branch three large bees’ combs. The tree was straight and smooth-barked, and without a branch, till at seventy or eighty feet from the ground it gave out the limb which the bees had chosen for their home. As the men were evidently looking after the bees, I waited to watch their operations. One of them first produced a long piece of wood, apparently the stem of a small tree or creeper . . . He then wrapped it in palm-leaves, . . . He then fastened his cloth tightly round his loins. . . Slung to his girdle he carried a long thin coil of cord . . . one of his companions had cut a strong creeper or bush-rope, eight or ten yards long, to one end of which the wood-torch was fastened, and lighted at the bottom, emitting a steady stream of smoke. Just above the torch a chopping-knife was fastened by a short cord.”
This description appears in the article’s opening paragraph, while the following three paragraphs tell how the native scaled the tree in bare feet, smoked out the bees, and gathered the honeycombs, though not without peril. (
“He was all this time enveloped in a crowd of angry bees, and how he bore their stings so coolly, and went on with his work at that giddy height so deliberately, was more than I could understand. . . . [The combs] furnished the whole party with a luscious feast of honey and young bees, as well as a valuable lot of wax.”
Etc.)
(Later in the issue is a separate 40-line piece in a section on “Literary and Scientific Notes,” about a convention of German bee-fanciers, with details from speeches on bees by Professor Leuckart and others.)
* “THE OTTER, The FISHERMAN’S ALLY.
One and a half pages, illustrated with two wood-engravings. This is a nice, wide-ranging natural history article on the otter. It says this, in part:
“This carnivorous quadruped conforms to the habits of his order by asking of the earth a place of shelter, but his sphere of action lies in the waters. The sea otter is practically amphibious, and touches the seal in the transition between quadrupeds and mammifers of the ocean. . . .
“Take a young otter from its mother’s breast, be amiable with it, caress it as you pet your puppies, and it will soon come to cherish the same attachment for you as your spaniel; it will follow you everywhere, will grieve in your absence, will salute your return with little stampings of joy . . . . Request it then to seek for you in a neighboring river of pond a respectable fish, it will plunge headforemost and presently bring it to your feet. . . .
“The Chinese, whom we treat like a community of maggots, and who retort upon Europe the stigma of barbarism, are far more advanced than ourselves in the are of making use of beasts, and have for centuries domesticated the otter. . . .
“The remarkable examples which the otter has given of his intelligence and docility whenever a fair trial has been made of these qualities, have not yet succeeded in opening the eyes of our poor fishermen, and they have declared upon him a war of extermination . . .
“. . . As it knows very nearly the range of a shot-gun, it likes to amuse itself by sitting on the bank at a respectable distance from the marksman. It breakfasts familiarly before him, rolls on the sand, and gambols provokingly. . . . There are otters who have sworn eternal hatred to civilized institutions . . .
“The otter-chase is really an ambush; dogs, however, sometimes hunt it. . . . In Lorraine I have seen poor devils of otter-hunters travel twenty-four miles in chase of the same animal, and miss him at last. . . .”
Etc., etc.
* “French Morals and Manners,” by a Roving American.
(over 2 full pages)
* “The Study of Language.”
(one and 1/2 pages)
* “Children in Modern Literature.”
(full page)
* “The Power of the Mind to Resist Knowledge.”
A great title for a full-page essay on human ignorance, of the willful sort.
***************************************************************
Background on this publication
:
Appleton’s Journal
was an illustrated weekly paper published in New York. Its parent company was D. Appleton & Co., Publishers, which at the time was one of America’s leading book publishers. The paper was founded in 1869, and achieved a widespread, but shortlived national popularity during the next six years. It carried some serial fiction, but most of its content was devoted to essays on Americana subjects, plus the arts and sciences. Following several changes in editors, however, it began suffering a decline in circulation. It subsequently switched to monthly publication after 1876, and went out of business in 1881.
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