A SHARP LOOKOUT 19 



or that on windy days they carried little stones for 

 ballast? or that two hostile swarms fought each 

 other in the air? Indeed, the ignorance, or the 

 false science, of the ancient observers, with regard 

 to the whole subject of bees, is most remarkable; 

 not false science merely with regard to their more 

 hidden operations, but with regard to that which is 

 open and patent to all who have eyes in their heads, 

 and have ever had to do with them. And Pliny 

 names authors who had devoted their whole lives 

 to the study of the subject. 



But the ancients, like women and children, were 

 not accurate observers. Just at the critical moment 

 their eyes were unsteady, or their fancy, or their 

 credulity, or their impatience, got the better of 

 them, so that their science was half fact and half 

 fable. Thus, for instance, because the young cuckoo 

 at times appeared to take the head of its small fos- 

 ter mother quite into its mouth while receiving its 

 food, they believed that it finally devoured her. 

 Pliny, who embodied the science of his times in 

 his natural history, says of the wasp that it carries 

 spiders to its nest, and then sits upon them until it 

 hatches its young from them. A little careful 

 observation would have shown him that this was 

 only a half truth; that the whole truth was, that 

 the spiders were entombed with the egg of the wasp 

 to serve as food for the young when the egg shall 

 have hatched. 



What curious questions Plutarch discusses, as, 

 for instance, " What is the reason that a bucket of 



