88 SOME EARLY ENGLISH NATURALISTS 



in the author s English Grammar. Some readers will 

 value this edition all the more because it contains 

 complimentary verses by George Wither. One sentence 

 in the book shows Butler's politics : " The bees abhor as 

 well Polyarchy as Anarchy, God having shewed in them 

 unto men the most natural and absolute form of 



GOVERNMENT." ^ 



Butler looks up to Aristotle as the chief authority on 

 natural history, though he does not hesitate to correct 

 even Aristotle when there is cause. Aristotle, while 

 admitting that the case was not clear, had called the 

 supposed governor of the hive the king-bee ; Butler 

 insists that in this community the males bear no sway 

 at all ; it is an Amazonian or feminine monarchy. He 

 does not realise that the queen is under normal con- 

 ditions the mother of the entire family. 



Of the drones he says that they are found in the 

 hive during the whole breeding season and then only ; 

 they are bred and reared by the workers. Wasps and 

 "dors" (humble-bees) have their drones, as well as 

 hive-bees. 



The workers, which he calls the "honey-bees," lay 

 all the eggs from which drones or workers are hatched.^ 

 In summer only " they suffer their drones among them 

 for a season, by whose masculine virtue they strangely 

 conceive and breed for the preservation of their sweet 

 kind." Proof that the drones are males was of course 

 unattainable as yet. No anatomical investigation of 

 the different inmates of the hive had been made, and 



1 Jerome Cortes {Lihro y Tratado de los Animales, 8vo. Valencia, 1613, 

 p. 452) practised the same flattery before Butler, as did Joseph Warder 

 {The True Amazons, or the Monarchy of Bees, 12mo. Lond. 1712) after 

 him. 



^Moufet, who died in 1599, had also maintained that the small bees 

 are females, and the drones males {Theatrum, p. 13). 



I 



