176 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 7-8, OCT.-NOV., 1922 



Chaucer, Pope, Montgomery and many later poets contain 

 passages mentioning mites, but there is no hint in any of these 

 allusions which would indicate a recognition of their relation 

 to the spiders. Only the web-making spiders have been noticed 

 by poets and although Samuel Butler was renowned as a very 

 learned man in his day, he makes this statement: 



"As spiders never seek the fly, 

 But leave him of himself to apply," 



thus ignoring the numerous "wolf spiders" which make their 

 living by hunting flies. The Phalangidae appear in poetry only 

 during very recent days, as exemplified by Joe Lincoln in "Cape 

 Cod Ballads": 



"Then the girls they'll be a-yippin', 'cause a bug is in the cream; 

 And a 'daddy-long-legs' skippin' round the butter makes 'em scream." 



The Sunday School Picnic. 



In a consideration of the insects of poetry by ordinal arrange- 

 ment, it becomes immediately evident that for frequency of men- 

 tion, the Hymenoptera must be awarded the primacy. This is 

 true, however, solely because a single member of the order, and 

 man's chief domestic servant among insects, the honey bee, has 

 ever been the favorite of poets in all ages. Previous to the intro- 

 duction of the silkworm into Sicily from Greece, in the twelfth 

 century, the honey bee was man's sole servitor among insects 

 in the Occident and still remains as such in most portions of the 

 globe. The reasons for its popularity among poets are not far 

 to seek, as they doubtless reside in the intimacy existing between 

 the insect and the flowers; as the only source of sweets known 

 to man during many centuries, to its musical hum, its industry 

 and social habits, and above all to its familiarity to man since 

 time immemorial. No poetic portrayal of the pastoral beauties 

 of nature, or of that peaceful and placid state of being, toward 

 which man is ever reaching out but seldom attaining, is complete 

 without its bee. Most people have heard the time-worn story 

 of the city man who aspired to become a suburbanite in order 

 that he might " keep a bee " ! In like manner almost every poet 

 has kept his bee, not, however, for the sake of its honey, but in 

 order that it might caper and buzz throughout his verse when- 

 ever the spirit moved him. Thus we find the insect "bee" 

 adjectived unmercifully by rhymsters and poets both modern 

 and ancient, literally without end and on all occasions. In point 

 of fact, the verses of some poets (Ethel Louise Cox, for instance) 

 are so swarming with bees, that only an experienced bee-keeper 

 is safe in turning the pages. 



The bee of poets is, above all things, busy, laboring, diligent, 

 industrious, toiling, laden, sedulous, and although sometimes 



