HISTORIC SKETCH. 



thee houses in the mountains and in the trees, and of 

 those materials wherewith men build hives for thee ; 

 then eat of every kind of fruit, and walk in the beaten 

 paths of thy Lord.' There proceedeth from their 

 bellies a liquor of various colours, wherein is a 

 medicine for men. Verily, herein is a sign unto 

 people who consider." 



The ancient Egyptians must have known much of 

 the domestic economy of the hive, for they took the 

 figure of the insect to symbolise a people governed 

 by a sovereign, and this so far back as the twelfth 

 dynasty, or 2080 1920 B.C. 



It has been argued on etymological grounds that 

 in a much remoter period still, the human race had 

 domesticated the bee ; for in Sanskrit ma means 

 honey, madhupa honey drinker, and madhukara 

 honey maker. Madhu is evidently the origin of our 

 word mead. Again, mih or mat, in Chinese, signifies 

 honey ; and it can hardly be a mere coincidence which 

 has brought about so close a resemblance between the 

 Turanian and the Indo-European terms above men- 

 tioned. We have rather the indication of the survival 

 of a name in two branches of a still older language 

 than either of the Asiatic tongues, from which so 

 large a proportion of modern speech has flowed, thus 

 carrying us back to an enormously remote period in 

 the history of man. The Latin mel, and French miel, 

 both meaning honey, are, of course, the offspring of 

 the Greek ; and all the above words, according to 

 some authorities, point to the circumstance of the 

 constructive power of the insect having impressed 

 the minds of men emphatically. 



In the Teutonic languages biene, bee, &c., are 



