CHAP. XI. BEES. 81 



the houses of the ancient Egyptians ; and to the 

 garden department belonged the care of the bees, 

 which were kept in hives similar to our own.* 

 In Egypt, bees require great attention ; and so 

 few are the plants at the present day, that the 

 owners of hives often take them in boats to va- 

 rious spots upon the Nile, in quest of flowers. 

 They are a much smaller species than our own; 

 and though I have met with them wild in many 

 parts of Egypt, I never saw them in any num- 

 bers; but wasps, hornets, and ichneumons abound 

 throughout the valley of the Nile. The wild bees 

 hive mostly under stones, or in clefts of the rock, 

 as in many other countries ; and the expression 

 of Moses and of the Psalmist, " honey out of the 

 rock t," shows that in Palestine their habits were 

 the same. Virgil t mentions a mode of reple- 

 nishing the stock of bees, practised in Egypt, by 

 means of the carcase of a bull, which, as M. de 

 Pauw supposes, is probably a story derived from 

 the custom of raising young swarms in the warmth 

 of a stable § : but neither this, nor any other secret 

 respecting their management, can be looked for 

 in tlie sculptures of the tombs; and whatever skill 

 the Egyptians possessed in these, as in many otlier 

 matters, must continue unknown to us ; though, 

 from the great importance ll they attached to honey 



* I remember to have seen them so represented in a tomb at Thebes, 

 but have no copy of the subject. 



•j- Dent, xxxii. l.'i. Ps. Ixxxi. IG. 



X Virg. Georg. iv. 299. Plin. xi. 20. 



§ lie thinks of the sacred bulls ; but there is no necessity that they 

 should have been sacred. Vol, i. p. 1 70. 



II riut. de Is. s. Ixxxi. GS. 



VOL. I. — Second Series. G 



