The Life of the Bee 

 god who has taken possession of them, 

 who is too vast to be seen and too alien 

 to be understood, their eyes see further 

 than the eyes of the god himself; and 

 their one thought is the accomplishment, 

 with untiring sacrifice, of the mysterious 

 duty of their race. 



[4] 



Let us now, having learned from books 

 all that they had to teach us of a very 

 ancient history, leave the science others 

 have acquired and look at the bees with 

 our own eyes. An hour spent in the 

 midst of the apiary will be less instruc- 

 tive, perhaps ; but the things we shall see 

 will be infinitely more stimulating and 

 more actual. 



I have not yet forgotten the first apiary 

 I saw, where I learned to love the bees. 

 It was many years ago, in a large village 

 of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant 



18 



