6 INSECTS. 



epigram, which at least reminds us of the answer of 

 Venus to young Love's complaint, 



" Oh, mother, I am dead ! 

 An ugly snake, they call a bee, 

 see it swell ! hath murdered me. 



" Venus with smiles replied, ' Oh sir, 

 Does a bee's sting make all this stir ? 

 Think what pains then attend those darts 

 Wherewith thou still art wounding hearts,' " &c. 



The great blue bee also appears in the Hindoo Mytho- 

 logy, reposing on a lotus, and sacred to Vishnu, the second 

 person (or preserver) of the Trimurrti, or Trinity.* 



The bee is found on the coins of those parts of 

 Greece in which the ancient and beneficent god Aris- 

 tseus, son of Apollo and Gyrene, was worshipped. He 

 taught men to keep bees, and the medals of Athens, of 

 Ceos, and other places, bear this insect as his attri- 

 bute. It occurs also on the coins of Ephesus, the 

 city worshipping the great goddess of all fertility and 

 abundance, whose symbol was a bee. 



Again, the bee occurs in the representations of the 

 mithraical worship of Persia, as afterwards adopted in 

 Rome, where the principle of fertility or production is 

 combined with that of strength, under the figure of 

 a lion with a bee at the mouth, forcibly reminding 

 us of the Hindoo use of the same symbols. A very 

 beautiful ancient gem with this subject is figured by 

 Agostino (Gemma Antiquce], in which, according to 

 him, allusion is made to the riddle of Samson, " Out 

 of the strong came forth the sweet. "t 



* For figures of the above Hindoo representations, see the " Nouvelle 

 Galerie Mytkologique, par J. D. Guigniaut." Paris, 1850. 



t A woodcut of this gem will be found at the head of the first chapter 

 on Hymenoptera. 



