88 AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



as I was looking for a bee amid some golden-rod, I 

 spied one partly concealed under a leaf. Its baskets 

 were full of pollen^ and it did not move. On lifting 

 up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was am- 

 bushed there and had the bee by the throat. The 

 vampire was evidently afraid of the bee's sting, and 

 was holding it by the throat till quite sure of its death. 

 Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species 

 of salamander, as an enemy of the honey-bee. We 

 have no lizard that destroys the bee ; but our tree- 

 toad, ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, 

 snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that 

 subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsus- 

 pecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse 

 and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and 

 our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, 

 but the latter devours only the drones. The workers 

 are either too small and quick for it or else it dreads 

 their sting. 



Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child's 

 knowledge of the honey-bee. There is little fact 

 and much fable in his fourth Georgic. If he had 

 ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it is 

 hard to see how he could have believed that the bee 

 In its flight abroad carried a gravel stone for ballast 



" And as when empty barks on billows float, 

 With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat ; 

 So bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight 

 Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight ; " 



or that when two colonies made war upon each other 



