246 OUR OBLIGATIONS TO THE LOWER ANIMALS 



I do not remember to have heard how the ultra- 

 humanitarian regards bee-keeping. It is surely an 

 industry which, if he has any sense of consistency, he is 

 bound to denounce as sheer rapine. The principle that 

 entitles a man to the fruits of his personal labour lies 

 at the very root of civilisation, } 7 et we encourage the 

 honey-bee, the rival of the ant as a type of industry, 

 to labour incessantly for half the year, and then calmly 

 appropriate the contents of the hive. 



'Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes.' 



Have the advocates of the rights of wild animals no 

 qualms in partaking of honey at breakfast ? l 



' Friendship and justice,' said Aristotle, ' are out of 

 question towards any lifeless thing ' ; and, had he 

 stopped there, the sentence might be cited in support 

 of the old sweeping assertion that everything that is 

 not idiotic is Greek. But he did not stop there : nor 

 can we follow him when he goes on to affirm that ' the 

 same rule applies to a man's horse or ox.' Horses and 

 oxen, as auxiliaries to human enterprise, established 

 their claim, and were the first animals to have their 



1 At the risk of being accused of unpardonable irrelevancy, I must 

 relate an incident which occurred recently to a bee-keeping friend of 

 my own. He lives in a beautiful place by the side of a Scottish river, 

 on the opposite bank he has as a neighbour a certain gallant colonel, 

 who won much distinction in command of a battalion in the late war. 

 The said colonel being of a somewhat fiery temperament, tenacious of 

 his rights, wrote to his neighbour complaining that his bees were 

 crossing the river and spoiling the flowers in his the colonel's 

 garden. ' I wish to God you would keep them at home.' It is reported 

 that the other replied : ' I have had my bees carefully counted ; there 

 is only one missing, and I think that must be the one that has got 

 into your bonnet ! ' 



