314 THE INSECT WOELD. 



" His quibus signis atque base exempla secuti, 

 Esse apibus partem divinae mentis, et haustus 

 .ZEtbereos dixere." .... 



Let us hasten to say, however, that all which the ancients, 

 naturalists or poets, Greek or Latin, relate on the subject of bees, 

 is a mixture of truth and error, and rests generally on mere 

 suppositions. Aristotle knew well the three sorts of insects which 

 are comprised under the title of bees, and some other principal 

 facts relating to their history ; but these facts are not stated 

 accurately and precisely in his account of them, and they are, above 

 all, misinterpreted. The Greek philosopher understood insects in 

 general very badly. He made them spring from the leaves of 

 trees, and brought forward a multitude of errors about them, which 

 the most simple observation would have sufficed to dissipate. 

 Pliny tells us that Aristomachus of Soles consecrated fifty-eight 

 years to the observation of the habits of the bee, and that Philiscus 

 of Thrace passed, for the same motive, all his life in the forests. 

 But this devotion to one object does not appear to have produced 

 much result, if one compares the discoveries of our own age with 

 the errors which Pliny, Aristotle, and Columella have chronicled 

 respecting them. Pliny says that bees occupy the first rank among 

 insects, and that they were created for man, for whom their 

 work procures honey and wax. He adds that they form political 

 associations, that they have councils, chiefs, and even a code of 

 morality and principles. 



One sees by this opinion of the Roman naturalist in what high 

 esteem the ancients held bees. But they had the most singular 

 ideas on the reproduction of these little beings, and as no one 

 had ever seen 'their generation, they invented fable after fable 

 to explain their origin. Some pretended that bees sprang from an 

 ox recently killed, and buried in manure. Others added that they 

 only sprang into existence from the chest of a young ox killed 

 with violence. The most courageous bees' came from the belly of 

 a lion in a state of putrefaction. It was from the head of this 

 same animal, in a state of corruption, that the kings (i. e. the 

 queens] were formed. The carcases of cows furnished the mild and 

 tractable bees ; a calf could only furnish small and weak ones. 

 Other naturalists, or rather other dreamers, made these insects 



