BUTLER'S BOOK OF BEES. 209 



Many have prided themselves on their supposed knowledge 

 in the mysteries of bee cities. Amongst these,, Butler (not the 

 author of Hudibras, but a clergyman who died about 1640, 

 and who figures amongst Fuller's "Worthies as a " painful 

 preacher and a solid divine/') wrote a " Book of Bees," 

 wherein (says Fuller) " as if he had been their secretary, he 

 appears most knowing in the state mysteries of their common- 

 wealth, whence one wrote (in Latin) on his book : 



" ' Butler (he'll say who these thy writings sees,) 

 Bees counsel thee, or else thou counsellest bees.' ' 



Yet the knowledge of Butler, as compared with and tested 

 by that since acquired on the same subject is, after all, but 

 foolishness. 



Plenty of the worldly wise are disposed, doubtless, to look 

 upon the study of bees, or of any such small people, as also 

 altogether foolishness. We know how the mental appetite, 

 accustomed to excitation by highly seasoned and unwholesome 

 viands, is likely to lack relish for simpler fare, and how many, 

 perhaps of our readers, may be inclined to condemn the sweets 

 of knowledge derivable from bee-hives as utterly flavourless 

 and insipid ; but let these take in evidence the experience of 

 the intellectual Huber for the fact, that communities divinely 

 ruled, may become, as well as communities humanly misguided, 

 objects of intense interest. Let them receive to the same effect 

 the word of another,* who says, writing of bees, " Je n'ai 



* Gelieu. 



