[640.] Brande’s Pop. Antiq., ii. 300.
[641.] Bucke on Nature, i. 413, note.
[642.] N. and Q., iv. 309.
[643.] Brand’s Pop. Antiq., ii. 300.
[644.] Fosbr. Encycl. of Antiq., ii. 738.
[645.] Brand’s Pop. Antiq., ii. 300.
[646.] Langstroth on Honey-Bee, p. 80.
[647.] Mag. of Nat. Hist., iii. 211, note.
[648.] Ibid., i. 303. London, 1829.
[649.] Peter Rotharmel had three specialties: Bees, Wheat, and Bonaparte. Concerning Bees, he had many strange notions, but the above recorded is the only one of which I have any positive information. Concerning wheat, at one time in his life he purchased an almanac, which indicated, among other things, the high and low tides, and, from studying this, he got it into his head that the fluctuations in the price of wheat were intimately connected with the rise and fall of the tides. So impressed was he with this idea, that he ever afterward yearly bought that particular almanac, and prophesied from it to his neighbors the probable value of their coming crops of wheat. On Sunday, he would walk fifteen and twenty miles through the country, to examine the different wheat-fields, and to afford him a topic of conversation for the ensuing week. But Napoleon was his principal study and his greatest mania. On him he would talk for hours, on the slightest provocation. The history of Bonaparte and his campaigns, which he only read, was an old German one.