ON BEES AND MONEY. 153 



the oriental and Biblical name, Deborah, she that speaketii," 

 and her speech is like Deborah's, both sweet and wise. Un- 

 like most insects, they have been brought under successful cul- 

 tivation and have been made, like the Bombyx Mori, the Silk 

 Worm, of service toman, yielding to him those delicious sweets 

 of the flowers, of the forests and of the fields, which no oth- 

 er means can supply, and the supply of which never exhausts 

 nor impoverishes the fountains that yield them. Seme have 

 even contended that the bee is inspired. Saith the Koran, p. 

 219— " The Lord spake by inspiration unto the bee, saying 

 "Provide thee houses in the mountains and in the trees, then 

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

 thy Lord," 



In the Arabic Zoological Dictionary, called Hayat Alhay^ 

 AN. or " Life of Animals," written by Kemalolin Mohammed 

 Aldamisi, who died A. D. 1405, we find this passage : 

 " I have already said, in what goes before in the chapter on 

 Flies, that the Prophet Mohammed, on whom may God'>^ 

 benediction and peace rest, has declared that " all flies go to 

 hell ^except beesP The Holy Prophet of the Turks, proba- 

 bly uttered this wise saying, on a sticky, muggy, hot dog- 

 .day in August, with special and spiteful reference to some per-^ 

 tinacious " Musca Domestica," that resolutely and provoking- 

 ly buzzed about and titillated his holy nose. It shows, how- 

 ever, conclusively, that even if under that great provocation, a 

 provocation that is in the words of Dogberry, " very tolerable and 

 not to be borne," the high character which the bee had inherited 

 from a distinguished ancestry, and which he had faithfully 

 preserved in that day, elfectually protected him from the 

 Anathema Maranatha, which in the judgment of the great 

 Prophet of the Turks, consigned all other flies to so tepid a 

 locality. Your Committee are not disposed to enter into ar^ 

 gument with the Holy Mussulman, as to the correctness of his 

 assertion of the future destiny of flies. They rather prefet 

 to acquiesce in the decision, so far as it goes, especially in re- 

 lation to those murderers of morning naps, and after-dinner 

 snoozes — the house flies — thanking the prophet for setting so 

 high a value on the bee as to save him from a similar doom. 

 20 



