HYMENOPTEEA. 315 



spring from the calices of sweet-scented flowers. Combined and 

 separated in a certain manner, the flowers engendered bees. They 

 said, further, that the bees sought on the blossoms of the olive trees 

 and of the reed a seed which they rendered fit for the formation 

 of their larvae. 



All these fables, which sprang from the imagination of the 

 ancients, were developed by a writer of the Renaissance, a certain 

 Alexander de Montfort, author of a work entitled " Printemps de 

 1'Abeille." If we were to believe him, the king of the bees is 

 formed of the juice which the workers extract from plants. These 

 latter are created from honey ; and the tyrants, i. e. the females, 

 which do not manage to become sovereigns of a hive, are formed 

 only of gum. It will be seen that he had profited only too well 

 by what he had read in Greek and Roman authors. 



The bee was very much thought of in ancient Egypt, and is 

 often represented on their monuments, above the sculptured orna- 

 ments which contain proper names, with two semicircles and a 

 sort of sheaf or fasciculus. Champollion Figeac thinks that this 

 group, taken together, represents a title added to a proper 

 name. According to Hor-Apollon, another commentator on 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics, the bee in the country of the Pharaohs 

 was the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of 

 its king. Nothing can be better than this comparison. It was 

 for this reason, no doubt, that Napoleon I. sprinkled the sym- 

 bolical bees over the imperial mantle which bears the arms of his 

 dynasty. 



All the fables, all the hypotheses, spread about and cherished 

 by the ancients respecting these industrious little insects, were 

 dissipated in a moment when, by the invention of glass beehives, 

 first made in the beginning of the last century by Maraldi, a 

 mathematician of Nice, we were enabled to observe their opera- 

 tions and habits. It is from this period only that our exact 

 knowledge of the really wonderful life of these insects dates. 

 Before Maraldi, the Dutch naturalist, Swammerdam, had written 

 an excellent History of Bees. He died before he had published 

 his work, and when, a long while after his death, it was at length 

 printed, other investigators had already pushed on their observa- 

 tions further than he had. Thanks to the invention of Maraldi, 



