poetry and charity in Virgil, who could refer the complicated and wonderful economy of bees to nothing less than the direct inspiration of the Divine Mind. Bees indeed seem to have claimed generally a greater interest from the ancients than they have acquired in modern times. De Montford, who drew the portrait of the honey-fly' in 1646, enumerates the authors on the same subject, up to his time, as between five and six hundred! There are, to be sure, some apocryphal names in the list-Aristæus, for instance-whose works were wholly unknown to Mr. Huish; a fact which will not surprise our readers when we introduce him as the son of Apollo, and the father of Actæon, the peeping Tom' of mythological scandal. Aristaus himself was patron of bees and arch-beemaster; but no ridicule thrown on such a jumble of names must make us forget the real services achieved in this, as in every other branch of knowledge, by the Encyclopædiast Aristotlethe pupil of him who is distinguished as the Attic Bee;' or the life of Aristomachus, devoted to this pursuit; or the enthusiasm of Hyginus, who, more than 1800 years before Mr. Cotton, collected all the bee-passages which could be found scattered over the pages of an earlier antiquity. (Col. ix. 11.) Varro, Columella, Celsus, and Pliny have each given in their contributions to the subject, and some notion may be formed of the minuteness with which they entered upon their researches from a passage in Columella, who, speaking of the origin of bees, says, that Euhemerus maintained that they were first produced in the island of Cos, Euthronius in Mount Hymettus, and Nicander in Crete. And considering the obscurity of the subject and the discordant theories of modern times, there is perhaps no branch of natural history in which the ancients arrived at so much truth. If since the invention of printing authors can gravely relate stories of an old woman who having placed a portion of the consecrated elements at the entrance of a bee hive, presently saw the inmates busy in creating a shrine and altar of wax, with steeple and bells to boot, and heard, if we remember rightly, something like the commencement of an anthem *—we really think that they should be charitably inclined to the older bee-authors, who believed * We saw lately published in a weekly newspaper the notes of a trio, in which the old Queen and two Princesses (of the hive) are the performers, the young ladies earnestly begging to be allowed to take an airing, while the old duenna as determinedly refuses. This apiarian Pray, goody, please to moderate' grows louder and thicker, faster and faster, till at last the young folks, as might be expected, carry the day; and what I can nearest liken it to,' says the writer, is a man in a rather high note endeavouring to repeat, in quaver or crotchet time, the letter M, with his lips constantly closed.' This is a tolerably easy music-lesson: let our readers try. The fact, however, is that all this music is originally derived from a curious old book-The Feminine MoB 2 narchy, believed that they gathered their young from flowers, and ballasted themselves with pebbles against the high winds.* We shall have occasion to show as we proceed how correct in the main the classical writers are on the subject of bees, compared with other parts of natural history; but the book of all others to which the scholar will turn again and again with increased delight, is the fourth Georgic. This, the most beautiful portion of the most finished poem of Roman antiquity, is wholly devoted to our present subject; and such is the delightful manner in which it is treated, and so exquisite the little episodes introduced, that it would amply repay (and this is saying a good deal) the most forgetful country gentleman to rub up his schoolboy Latin, for the sole pleasure he would derive from the perusal. We need hardly say that no bee-fancier will content himself with anything less than the original: he will there find the beauties of the poet far outbalancing the errors of the naturalist; and as even these may be useful to the learner for there is no readier way of imparting truth than by the correction of error- -we shall follow the subject in some degree under the heads which Virgil has adopted, first introducing our little friends in the more correct character which modern science has marked out for them. The 'masses' of every hive consist of two kinds of bees, the workers and the drones. The first are undeveloped females, the second are the males. Over these presides the mother of the hive, the queen-bee. The number of workers in a strong hive is above 15,000, and of drones about one to ten of these. This proportion, though seldom exact, is never very much exceeded or fallen short of. A single family, where swarming is prevented, will sometimes amount, according to Dr. Bevan, to 50,000 or 60,000. In their wild state, if we may credit the quantity of honey said to be found, they must sometimes greatly exceed this number. 'Sweet is the hum of bees,' says Lord Byron; and those who have listened to this music in its full luxury, stretched upon some sunny bed of heather, where the perfume of the crushed thyme narchy, or the History of Bees,' by Charles Butler, of Magdalen (Oxford, 1634): at p. 78 of which work this 'Bees' Madrigal' may be found, with notes and words. Old Butler has been sadly rifled, without much thanks, by all succeeding bee-writers. He has written upon that exhaustive system adopted by learned writers of that time, so that nothing that was then known on the subject is omitted. Butler introduced eight new letters-aspirates-into the English language, besides other eccentricities of orthography; so that, altogether, his volume has a most outlandish look. The latter mistake arose probably from the mason-bee, which carries sand wherewith to construct its nest. For an account of the 145 varieties of English bees consult Kirby's Monographia Apum Angliæ.' struggled struggled with the faint smell of the bracken, can scarcely have failed to watch the little busy musician 'with honey'd thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing,' too well to require a lengthened description of her; how she flits from flower to flower with capricious fancy, not exhausting the sweets of any one spot, but, on the principle of live and let live,' taking something for herself, and yet leaving as much or more for the next comer, passing by the just-opening and faded flowers, and deigning to notice not even one out of five that are fullblown, combining the philosophy of the Epicurean and Eclectic; —or still more like some fastidious noble, on the grand tour, with all the world before him, hurrying on in restless haste from place to place, skimming over the surface or tasting the sweets of society, carrying off some memento from every spot he has lit upon, and yet leaving plenty to be gleaned by the next traveller, dawdling in one place he knows not why, whisking by another which would have amply repaid his stay, and still pressing onwards as if in search of something, he knows not what-though he too often fails to carry home the same proportion of happiness as his compeer does of honey. A bee among the flowers in spring,' says Paley, 'is one of the cheerfulest objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment: so busy and so pleased.' The Drone may be known by the noise he makes. Hence his name. He has been the butt of all who have ever written about bees, and is indeed a bye-word all the world over. No one can fail to hit off his character. He is the lazy yawning drone' of Shakspeare. The * 'Immunisque sedens aliena ad pabula fucus of Virgil. The drone,' says Butler, is a gross, stingless bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness. For howsoever he brave it with his round velvet cap, his side gown, his full paunch, and his loud voice, yet is he but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others' brows. He worketh not at all either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers: you shall never find his maw without a good drop of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft, and about, and that with no small noise, as though he would do some great act; but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to his cheer.' This is no bad portrait * Virgil, who has confounded their battles with their swarming, seems also to have made a Drone-king. What else can this mean 'Ille horridus alter Desidiâ, latumque trahens inglorius alvum '? of the burly husband of the hive. He is a proper Sir John Falstaff, a gross fat animal, cowardly, and given to deep potations. He cannot fail to be recognised by his broad body and blunt tail and head, and the bagpipe i' the nose.' He is never seen settling on flowers, except at the beginning of August, when he may sometimes be met upon a late-blown rose, or some double flower that the workers rarely frequent, in a melancholy, musing state, as if prescient of the miserable fate that so soon awaits him. occasion for so large a proportion of 'These lazy fathers of the industrious hive' The is yet an unsolved riddle. One author fancied them the watercarriers of the commonwealth. Some have supposed that the drones sit, like hens, upon the eggs;* in which case the hair on their tails would seem to serve the same purpose as the featherbreeches which Catherine of Russia had made for her ministers when she caused them as a punishment to hatch eggs in a large nest in the antechamber. But this is mere fancy, the earwig being the only insect, according to Kirby and Spence, that broods over its eggs. Dr. Bevan denies that they are useful, or at least necessary, in keeping up the heat of the hive in breeding-time, which is the commonly received reason for their great numbers. Huber thought so large a quantity were required, that when the queen takes her hymeneal flight she may be sure to meet with some in the upper regions of the air. Her embrace is said to be fatal. Last in our description, but 'First of the throng, and foremost of the whole, This is the queen-bee. Her power was acknowledged before her sex was known, for Greeks, Latins, and Arabs always style her 'the king;' and it may be thought an argument in favour of monarchical government, that the tyrant-quelling' Athenians, and republican Romans who almost banished the name with the blood of their kings, were forced to admit it to describe the first magistrate' of this natural commonwealth. The queen,' says our old author, is a fair and stately bee, differing from the vulgar both in shape and colour.' And it is amusing that the most sober writers cannot speak of her without assigning her some of those stately attributes which we always connect with human sovereignty. Bevan remarks that she is distinguishable from the rest of the society by a more measured movement;' her body is more taper By this time your bees sit.'-Evelyn's Calendar for March. "When it has deposited the eggs, it sits upon them, and cherishes them in the same manner as a bird.'Arabic Dictionary, quoted by Cotton. 'Progeniem nidosque fovent.-Georg. iv. 56. So also Shakspeare: They have a king,' &c.-Henry V., Act I., s. 2. than than that of the working-bee; her wings shorter, for she has little occasion for flight; her legs-what would Queen Elizabeth, who would not hear even of royal stockings, think of our profaneness? -her legs unfurnished with grooves, for she gathers no pollen; her proboscis short, for the honey comes to her, not she to the honey; her sting short and curved-for sting she has, though she seldom uses it. In addition to these, Huber and others have thought that they discerned certain black bees in many hives, but it is now generally allowed that these, if they exist at all, are not a different species, but superannuated workers. Having caught our hare,' got our stock of bees, the next question is, where shall we place them? and there is little to be added to Virgil's suggestions on this head. The bee-house should face the south, with a turn perhaps to the east, be protected from the north and prevailing winds; not too far from the dwelling, lest they become shy of man, nor too near, lest they be interrupted by him. No paths should cross its entrance, no high trees or bushes intercept their homeward flight. Yet, if placed in the centre of a treeless lawn, they would be apt in swarming to fly away altogether, so that Virgil rightly recommends the palm or some evergreen tree to overhang the hive. Another of his injunctions, which no modern writer seems to notice, is to sprinkle some neighbouring branch, where you wish them to hang, with honey and sweet herbs bruised. Those who have been so often troubled by the inconvenient places on which swarms have settled might do well to try the recommendation of the old Mantuan beemaster. A quiet nook in low ground is better than an elevated situation: they have then their uphill flight when their bodies are unburdened, and an inclined plane to skim down when they come home loaded with their hard-earned treasure. Rogers, at whose 'cot beside the hill A bee-hive's hum should soothe the ear,' has supposed the bee to be guided back to its hive by the recollection of the sweets it passed in its outward flight—a beautiful instance of the pleasures of Memory.' 'Who guides the patient pilgrim to her cell? Guards the least link of Being's glorious chain." Whether this be the true solution or not, her return to her hive, so straight as it is, is very curious. We are convinced of the use of bee-houses |