APID.i: — BEES. 1 95 



•which at the time when Bees swarm, are to be found in 

 great numbers, would help to consume the carcass, and 

 leave perhaps in a short time little else than a skeleton.^ 



An instance of Bees tenanting a dead body is found in 

 the following passage from the writings of Herodotus: 

 " Now the Amathusians, having cut off the head of Onesilus, 

 because he had besieged them, took it to Araatheus, and 

 suspended it over the gates ; and when the head was sus- 

 pended, and had become hollow, a swarm of Bees entered 

 it, and filled it with honey-comb. When this happened, the 

 Amathusians consulted the oracle respecting it, and an 

 answer was given them, 'that they should take down the 

 head and bury it, and sacrifice annually to Onesilus, as to a 

 hero ; and if they did so, it would turn out better for them.' 

 The Amathusians did accordingly, and continued to do so 

 until my time."^ 



Another singular instance is mentioned by Napier in his 

 Excursions on the shores of the ^Mediterranean : "Among 

 this pretty collection of natural curiosities (in the cemetery 

 of Algesiras), one in particular attracted our attention ; 

 this was the contents of a small uncovered cofiQn in which 

 lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and tenanted by 

 an industrious colony of Bees. The comb was rapidly pro- 

 gressing, and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet, 

 they were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the 

 violet."^ 



Butler, in his Feminine Monarchic, narrates the following 

 curious story : "Paulus Jovius affirmeth that in Muscoma, 

 there are found in the woods & wildernesses great lakes of 

 honey, which the Bees have forsaken, in the hollow truncks 

 of marvelous huge trees. In so much that hony & waxe 

 are the most certaine commodities of that countrie. Where, 

 by that occasion, he setteth down the storie reported by 

 Demetrius a Muscovite ambassador sent to Rome. A 

 neighbor of mine (saith he) searching in the woods for hony 

 slipt downe into a great hollow tree, and there sunk into a 

 lake of hony vp to his brest : where when he had stucke 

 faste two dales calling and crying out in vaine for belpe, be- 



1 Cf. Swammerdam, Hist, of Ins,, Pt. I. p. 227, and Smith's Diet, 

 of the Bible. 



2 Herod., v. 114-5. 

 ^ Excursions, i. 127. 



