Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 169 



nations, it is moft likely to have been pra<5Hfed in 

 England long before the Roman invafion. 



Ordinary wayfide plants and weeds, again, have 

 been largely reinforced by recruits from Rome. 

 Here, again, it is impoflible clearly to fettle which 

 plants entered England with the Romans, and 

 which came in after-days along with monkim 

 contributions to Britifh gardens ; but one fpecies 

 (if not three) of nettles is certainly to be attributed 

 to the earlier gardeners. Our red poppies, too, 

 and a vaft number of cornfield feeds, feem to have 

 immigrated from the Italian farms. That rare 

 Englifh plant, the aftrantia major, has been 

 afferted to be another Roman immigrant. It is 

 only found at prefent about Ludlow and Malvern. 

 Laftly may be added to the long lift of Italian 

 benefactions the knowledge of keeping bees in 

 hives. Wild man everywhere feeds on honey, but 

 to preferve the ftock near habitations, and at 

 ftated times to procure the produce of the fwarms, 

 is the teaching of civilization. Inftruction in bee- 

 keeping was a fitting gift from the nation which 

 has produced the beft poem on bees as yet known 

 to the world. 



There are no allufions, either in Homer or the 

 Bible, to the invention of hives. MefTrs. Green well 

 and Rollefton 1 " learn from ProfeiTor Weft wood 

 that, according to Spinola, our domeftic fpecies 

 apis mellifica rarely occurs in Liguria ; and he 

 fuggefts that this mews either that the Ligures 



1 " Britifh Barrows " (Appendix on the Flora and Fauna of 

 the Neolithic Period), Oxford, 1877, P- 



