THE PASTORAL BEES. «Y 



in the Seventh Idyl — and comparisons in which 

 comb-honey is the standard of the most delectabh 

 this world's goods. His goatherds can think of no 

 greater bliss than that the mouth be filled with honey- 

 combs, or to be inclosed in a chest like Daphnis and 

 fed on the combs of bees ; and among the delectablea 

 with which Arsinoe cherishes Adonis are " honey*' 

 cakes," and other tid-bits made of "sweet honey." In 

 the country of Theocritus this custom is said still to 

 prevail: when a couple are married the attendants 

 place honey in their mouths, by which they would sym- 

 bolize the hope that their love may be as sweet to 

 their souls as honey to the palate. 



It was fabled that Homer was suckled by a priestess 

 whose breasts distilled honey; and that once when 

 Pindar lay asleep the bees dropped honey upon his lips. 

 In the Old Testament the food of the promised Im- 

 manuel was to be butter and honey (there is much 

 doubt about the butter in the original), that he might 

 know good from evil ; and Jonathan's eyes were en- 

 lightened, by partaking of some wood or wild honey ; 

 " See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlight- 

 ened, because I tasted a little of this honey." So far 

 as this part of his diet was concerned, therefore, John 

 the Baptist, during his sojourn in the wilderness, his 

 divinity school-days in the mountains and plains of 

 Judea, fared extremely well. About the other part, 

 the locusts, or, not to put too fine a point on it, the 

 grasshoppers, as much cannot be said, though they 

 were among the creeping and leaping tilings the chil 

 dren of Israel were permitted to eat. They were prob- 

 ably not eaten raw, but roasted in that most primitive 

 of ovens, a hole in the ground made hot by building 

 a fire in it. The locusts and honey may have been 



