' 



OP THE HONEY BEE. XIX 



came out against you, and chased you as bees do, and destroyed 

 you." 



Honey was also considered a great delicacy. Was a king 

 to give a sumptuous repast, or a queen invited to a special 

 banquet ? was an exhausted soldier to be revived, or an invalid 

 prince to be nourished ? honey was an universal accompaniment 

 of the most nutritive and costly articles of harmless diet. 



As far back as human records extend ; in as free and full 

 expressions as human pen can give, testimony to the culture, 

 the importance, and the value of the honey bee is universal 

 and abundant. On every page of history we meet her name ; 

 in every volume of political economy or domestic industry her 

 diligence is the motto ; in the sweetest strains of Parnassus, her 

 cheerful " hum " is the key-note everywhere, and at all times, 

 her products have " lightened " the darkest hours of grief and 

 sweetened the bitterest cups of human woe ; while her industry 

 has both urged and inspired man to higher aims and nobler 

 achievements. 



41 So work the honey bees, 

 Creatures that, by a rule hi nature, teach 

 The art of order to a peopled kingdom," 



that philosophers have embellished their most brilliant attain- 

 ments by the hues of her character, statesmen have given 

 strength to empire by copying her colonial system, and war- 

 riors have become conquerors by emulating her courage. 



While the ancients studied assiduously, and wrote volumin- 

 ously upon the natural history of the honey bee, yet it is a 

 strange fact, that after the first simple hive a home with one 

 room, perhaps first used by the father of our race to convey a 

 swarm with him to the wilderness when expelled from Para- 



