1 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



intuitions and the general propriety of their observations, passing over 

 with uncensorious leniency the startling inaccuracy of certain of their 

 conclusions. 



Maeterlinck, in that remarkable life of the bee in which he weaves 

 with threads of purest fact such a marvellous woof of poetry, passes 

 poor Virgil's Georgic by in impatient haste as giving merely the legend 

 of the bee. " All that we can glean therefrom, which indeed is exceed- 

 ingly little," he says summarily, as he passes on to other fields. With- 

 out doubt, his conclusion is just. Virgil sang in an age whose ignorance 

 was vast, whose myths were many, and to one who searches for knowl- 

 edge from the vantage ground of to-day his poem is barren soil. But 

 to the student of human attainment, of man's gradual triumph in 

 wringing from the natural world the basic truths of science, the result 

 is otherwise. 



We are, perhaps, too prone to forget that all knowledge comes to us 

 as a long-accumulated heritage in which we enjoy a life interest, in 

 return for which, should we so desire, we may strive to add some trifle 

 to the principal sum. The world grows in the grace of knowledge, 

 albeit slowly; it moves at a glacier's pace, leaving stranded far behind 

 in the trail of its moraine even those who have been great in their day. 

 As Eenan says, 



Descartes would be delighted if he could read some trivial work on natural 

 philosophy and cosmography written in the present day. The fourth form 

 schoolboy of our age is acquainted with truths to know which Archimedes would 

 have laid down his life. 



This is true in apiculture, as in any other branch of natural science. 

 As Langstroth, " the father of American apiculture," declares, 



Any intelligent cultivator to-day may, with an observation hive and the use 

 of movable frames, in a single season verify for himself the discoveries which 

 have been made only by the accumulated toil of many observers for more than 

 two thousand years. 



To him who, laboring under these advantages, looks backward to learn 

 how much about bees the ancients were able to ascertain from the 

 limited means of investigation at their command, Virgil's work is rich 

 in pleasant surprises and astounding revelations. Without microscopes, 

 which enable us to examine perfectly the minutest organ of the bee, they 

 yet knew that the worker bees were females (as the gender of the pro- 

 nouns and adjectives which refer to them in Virgil's poem shows us con- 

 clusively), and that they never bore any young. Without movable 

 frames, which permit the beekeeper of to-day to examine the interior 

 of the hive at will, they nevertheless had a very clear understanding of 

 the different functions of the bees, and of the social life of the swarm. 

 If Virgil were to walk through a well-kept apiary of to-day, examin- 

 ing its regular rows of neatly painted, dovetailed hives which take the 



