XX ORIGIN AND HISTORY 



dise thousands of years passed without any known effort to 

 improve the comforts of her house, or the facilities for econ- 

 omy in her products, by multiplying the number of apartments 

 and introducing a system of ventilation. 



Little as is now generally known of the economy of bee- 

 keeping, writers upon the subject have been far more numerous 

 than on almost any kindred topic. 



Democritus, who wrote upon this theme four hundred years 

 B. C., had already been preceded by more than five hundred 

 authors on bees and bee-keeping, among whom are several not 

 unknown to fame in the world of letters. Those have been 

 succeeded by a constellation of illuminating brilliants in each 

 succeeding age ; generally teaching without first having learned, 

 and always failing, in a greater or less degree, to afford reliable 

 information and clear illustration to the reader and the learner. 

 In tracing this line of authors on this subject for three thou- 

 sand years, we find the names of Aristomachus, who made 

 bees their character and habits his study for fifty-eight 

 years ; Philistratus, who became so absorbed in the study that 

 he retired to the wilderness and desert, and spent near a score 

 of years in learning their nature and instincts, when untram- 

 meled by man ; Aristotle, whose writings show the most per- 

 fect familiarity with the details of the apiary in his day ; Col- 

 umella, who tells us that the Greeks were the first to turn the 

 products of the bee to commercial account, and that the idea 

 originated on Mt. Hymettus, after the return of Cecrops from 

 Egypt to Attica ; Ceci, President of the Roman Academy of 

 Sciences ; Madam Merian, who beautifully illustrates the met- 

 amorphosis of the insects ; Maraldi, who, in 1712, invented the 

 glass hive, thus preparing the way for the experiments of 



