June 23. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



489 



chapter, ver. 42. et seq., he evidently refers to 

 Apocalypse vii. 9. : 



" I Esdras saw upon Mount Sion a f^reat people whom 

 I could not number: and they all praised the Lord with 



8ongs So I asked the angel, and said, Sir, what 



are these? He answered and said unto me. These are they 

 that have put oflf the mortal clothing, and put on the im- 

 mortal, and have confessed the name of God ; now they 

 are crowned, and receive palms." 



F. C. H. 



Partial parallels to Matt, xxiii. 34 — 38., and 

 Luke xi. 49, 50 , xiii. 34., may be fouml in 1 Kings 

 xix. 10. 14., 2 Chron. xxxvi. 16., and Jer. ii. 30. 

 The inference that the image of the hen and 

 brood, and the penalty for slaying the prophets, 

 are borrowed from the Second book of Esdias, or 

 from tlie same source as the latter, should be re- 

 versed, the Latin author of tliis apocryphal book 

 having most probably borrowed them from Mat- 

 thew and Luke. The words " And the wisdom of 

 God hath said," or, as in the Peschito and several 

 MSS., " And the wisdom hath said," Luke xi. 49., 

 are omitted in some MSS. On this passage 

 Kuinoel says : 



" Matthaeus, xxiii. 34 , loco (ro<j>iag toC ®eoO cujus Lucas 

 h. L meminit, habet iyi>, et Jesum loquentem inducit. 

 Nempe Sapientia Dei est id. qd. Deus sapientissimus. ut 

 aliis in locis Dei potenfia pro Deus potens oocurrit. Deus 

 sapientissimus, qui etvos vestramque simulatam pietatem 

 probe novit, per me, me interprete, sic loquitur." — See 

 1 Cor. i. 30., and Acts viii. 10. 



There is no complete parallel in the Old Testa- 

 ment to the above passages in Matthew and Luke. 

 The Second book of Esdras has no authority in 

 any church.* St. Jerome treated it, as well as 

 the first bonk (!), as the work of a dreamer. (In 

 Prcsf. in librum Esdrce et Nehemice.) Luther has 

 omitted both books of Esdras from his translation 

 of the Apocrypha. Eichhorn (pp. 337, 338.) 

 omits wholly the second book, and shows how the 

 first book was compiled mainly from canonical 

 books ; the exception applies to 1 Esdras iii. iv. v. 

 1 — 6., as follows : 

 1 Esdras i. " =2 Chron. xxxv. xxxvi.'' 



„ ii. 1 — 14. = Ezra i. 



„ ii. 15—25. = „ iv. 7—24. 



„ iii. iv. V. 1 — 6. = authority unknown. 



„ V. 7—70. "= = Ezra ii. 'iii. iv. 1—QA 



» vi. = „ V. vi. 1—12. 



„ vii. = „ vi. 13 — 22. 



„ viii. = „ vii. viii. ix. x. 1 — 6. 



„ ix. 1—36. = „ X. 7—34. 



„ ix. 37 — 55. = Neh. vii. 73. ; viii. 1— IS.f 



T. J. BUCKTON. 

 Lichfield. 



* " The Council of Florence recognises only," savs 

 Eichhorn (Apoc Schrift, p. 37fi."), " the Hebrew Ezra and 

 Nehemiah ( the First and Second book of Ezra according 

 to the language of the Latins) as canonical." 

 t The exceptions to such identity are : 



» 1 Esdras i. 21, 22. ^ 2 Chron. xxxv. 11. 



' « V. 55. d Ezra iii. 8. 



"the whole duty of man: popular eeror. 



(Vol. xi., p. 384.) 



I beg to assure your correspondent F. that 

 there is the best "foundation for this" acknow- 

 ledged " fact, that the sting of the bee is fatal to 

 itself;" or rather, which is what I presume he 

 means, as the author of the above work clearly 

 does, that the bee by stinging another animal 

 loses its own life. Aristotle asserts {Hist. An., 

 p. 297.): " Tb Se Kevrpop cmofiaWovaa r) fj-eAirra 

 a.Trodvi)(TK.ei." And Virgil {Georg. iv. 236. seq.) : 



" Illis ira modum supra est, lajsseque venenum 

 Morsibus inspirant, et spicula cajca relinquunt 

 Affixae venis, animasque in vulnere ponunt." 



And a note in my copy of the Georgics refers me 

 to Pliny, xi. § 19., for corroboration of the same 

 fact. But as the authority of these ancient 

 worthies may not be deemed sufficient — for they 

 took so much on trust, and handed down such 

 errors, as that the monarch of the hive was of the 

 male sex ; and such palpable absurdities, as that 

 an entire swarm of bees might at any time be ob- 

 tained from the carcase of a suffocated calf under 

 skilful treatment (Georg. iv. 299. seq.) — I will 

 state my own experience in the matter. 



I will premise that I have been for years a 

 practical bee-keeper ; and, reading whatever I can 

 meet with on the subject, often light upon star- 

 tling statements, both true and false, from modern 

 as well as ancient writers. But I am constantly 

 testing these experimentally, which my varieties 

 of hives enable me to do. And of the truth of the 

 particular fact in question, I satisfied myself very 

 early in my apiarian career ; and that by a simple 

 process, which your correspondent F. may easily 

 adopt. He has but to irritate a fevr bees till they 

 sting him in some part convenient to himself. I 

 find the left-hand the best. If he looks quietly at 

 them, immediately that they have accomplished 

 their (and in this case his') object, he will see them 

 all firmly attached to his flesh by their tails, and 

 struggling to get free. But, if they have been 

 properly irritated in the first instance to drive 

 their weapons home, not one will effect her free- 

 dom without the loss of her weapon, and its very 

 large bag of poisonous ammunition into the bar- 

 gain. As each bee detaches herself from this, he 

 will become acutely sensible of it by the increased 

 pain caused by the influx of the whole contents of 

 the poison-bag, consequent on the withdrawal of 

 the retentive power exercised by the animal her- 

 self. The sting is a beautiful little tube, formed 

 like a telescope, through which the poison from 

 the bag to which it is attached is injected. More- 

 over, if F. now watches the sting narrowly, he 

 will find it apparently sinking deeper still into 

 him ; which is accounted for in the same manner 

 as is the fact of the bee being unable in the first 



