AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 65 
like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a 
bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or 
a cistern in their own house. 
Bees are exposed to many hardships and many 
dangers. Winds and storms prove as disastrous to 
them as to other navigators. Black spiders lie in 
wait for them as do brigands for travelers. One day 
as I was looking for a bee amid some golden-rod, I 
spied one partly concealed under a leaf. Its baskets 
were full of pollen, and it did not move. On lifting 
up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was am- 
bushed there and had the bee by the throat. The 
vampire was evidently afraid of the bee’s sting, and 
was holding it by the throat till quite sure of its death. 
Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species 
of salamander, as an enemy of the honey-bee. We 
have no lizard that destroys the bee ; but our tree-toad, 
ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, 
snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that 
subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsus- 
pecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse 
and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and 
our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, 
but the latter devours only the drones. The workers 
are elther too small and quick for it, or else it dreads 
their sting. 
Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child’s 
knowledge of the honey-bee. There is little fact 
and much fable in his fourth Georgic. If he had 
ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it is 
-hard to see how he could have believed that the bee 
in its flight abroad carried a gravel stone for ballast: 
‘* And as when empty barks on billows float, 
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat ; 
