BUTLER 91 



we have unwisely dropped)^ are thought to be due to 

 the fact that bees have six feet. He notes some of the 

 advantages of the six-sided prism, though not its 

 strength nor its economy. He describes the pyramidal 

 ends, and the way in which every cell adjoins three cells 

 of the opposed layer. 



Bee-bread, such as the workers bring home on their 

 hind feet, was then popularly believed to be some kind 

 of wax ; Butler, however, calls it " gross honey," or 

 "gross leg-honey," and explains that it has a sweet 

 taste, while it does not melt with heat.^ Nothing was 

 then known of the use of bee-bread in feeding the 

 larvse. Liquid honey, he rightly explains, the bees 

 collect with their tongues, and "let it down into their 

 bottels." Virgil (who in this follows Aristotle) misleads 

 Butler on one point, making him say that the purest 

 nectar comes from above (" aera mellis cselestia dona "). 

 This aerial honey is of course honey-dew, concerning 

 which naturalists knew nothing accurately until E^aumur 

 enlightened them. 



When he comes to treat of the collecting habits of 

 bees, Butler furnishes some details which show close 

 observation: — "They gather," he says, "on the flowers 

 of the maple a whole month together, and somewhat on 

 the flower of vetch, when his time is, but the greatest 

 .store of honey is drawn out of the black spot of the 

 little picked (piked, or pointed) leaf (stipule) of the vetch, 

 which groweth on each side of the two or three upper- 

 most joints. These they ply continually : I never saw 

 vetches, how far soever from hives, that for three months 

 together (if the weather served) were not full of bees. 



^ The same usage lasted through the eighteenth century. Wesley's Journal 

 makes mention of rooms or buildings which were thret-equare, eight-aqtiai'c &nd 

 twdve-nqtmre. 



2 P. 106. 



