H YMENOP TERA . 315 



Aristotle knew well the three sorts of individuals which are comprised 

 under the title of bees, and some other principal facts relating to their 

 history ; but these facts are not stated accurately and precisely in his 

 account of them, and they are, above all, misinterpreted. The 

 Greek philosopher understood insects in general very badly. He 

 made them spring from the leaves of trees, and brought forward a 

 multitude of errors about them, which the most simple observation 

 would have sufficed to dissipate. Pliny tells us that Aristomachus of 

 Soles consecrated fifty-eight years to the observation of the habits of 

 the bee, and that Philiscus of Thrace passed, for the same motive, all 

 his life in the forests. But this devotion to one object does not 

 appear to have produced much result, if one compares the discoveries 

 of our own age with the errors which Pliny, Aristotle, and Columella 

 have chronicled respecting them. Pliny says that bees occupy the 

 first rank among insects, and that they were created for man, for 

 whom their work procures honey and wax. He adds that they form 

 political associations, that they have councils, chiefs, and even a code 

 of morality and principles. 



One sees by this opinion of the Roman naturalist in what high 

 esteem the ancients held bees. But they had the most singular 

 ideas on the reproduction of these little beings ; and as no one had 

 ever seen their generation, they invented fable after fable to explain 

 their origin. Some pretended that bees sprang from an ox recently 

 killed, and buried in manure. Others added that they only sprang 

 into existence from the chest of a young ox killed with violence. 

 The most courageous bees came from the belly of a lion in a state of 

 putrefaction. It was from the head of this same animal, in a state of 

 corruption, that the kings (i.e., the qtieens) were formed. The carcases 

 of cows furnished the mild and tractable bees ; a calf could only 

 furnish small and weak ones. Other naturalists, or rather other 

 dreamers, made these insects spring from the calices of sweet-scented 

 flowers. Combined and separated in a certain manner, the flowers 

 engendered bees. They said, further, that the bees sought on the 

 blossoms of the olive trees and of the reed a seed which they 

 rendered fit for the formation of their larvae. 



All these fables, which sprang from the imagination of the 

 ancients, were developed by a writer of the Renaissance, a certain 

 Alexander de Montfort, author of a work entitled " Printemps de 

 1'Abeille." If we were to believe him, the king of the bees is formed 

 of the juice which the workers extract from plants. These latter 

 are created from honey ; and the tyrants, i.e., the females, which do 

 not manage to become sovereigns of a hive, are formed only of gum. 



