18 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



size. If the miller were to take the toll of the 

 grist he grinds by gathering the particles of flour 

 from his coat and hat, as he moved rapidly about, 

 or catching them in his pockets, he would be doing 

 pretty nearly what the bee does. The little miller 

 dusts herself with the pollen of the flower, and 

 then, while on the wing, brushes it off with the 

 fine brush on certain of her feet, and by some jug- 

 glery or other catches it in her pollen basket. One 

 needs to look long and intently to see through the 

 trick. Pliny says they fill their baskets with their 

 fore feet, and that they fill their fore feet with 

 their trunks, but it is a much more subtle operation 

 than this. I have seen the bees come to a meal 

 barrel in early spring, and to a pile of hardwood 

 sawdust before there was yet anything in nature for 

 them to work upon, and, having dusted their coats 

 with the finer particles of the meal or the sawdust, 

 hover on the wing above the mass till the little 

 legerdemain feat is performed. Nature fills her 

 baskets by the same sleight-of-hand, and the ob- 

 server must be on the alert who would possess her 

 secret. If the ancients had looked a little closer 

 and sharper, would they ever have believed in spon- 

 taneous generation in the superficial way in which 

 they did; that maggots, for instance, were gener- 

 ated spontaneously in putrid flesh? Could they 

 not see the spawn of the blow-flies ? Or, if Virgil 

 had been a real observer of the bees, would he ever 

 have credited, as he certainly appears to do, the 

 fable of bees originating from the carcass of a steer 1 



