T'HB m'mmMiGKm miSiW jooRifMiu. 



727 



AUXUMM- 



Now Ceres roams her laden leas 

 And sounds her KOlden horn, 



To be answered by the harvest bees 

 And laugh of tasseled corn. 



Over the red and yellow leaves 

 When smiles the silvery morn, 



Light she glides to her bearded sheaves, 

 By berry bush and thorn. 



And hills are lost in purple haze, 



While trees are talking low 

 About the mellow autumn days 



And nature's afterglow. 



COLOR AND BEES. 



Iiiitinct and the Color Sense in 

 Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY PBOF. A. J. COOK. 



I am sure I am in no wise peculiar 

 among bee-keepers, in my pleasure 

 ami .admiration in reading Mrs. Chad- 

 doek's articles. Her piquant style and 

 usual good sense, and accuracj-, al- 

 most always serve up a meal which 

 delights us all. But is she so happy 

 in her article on page 700 ? She says, 

 " Color is no guide to the insect 

 world." How does she know this ? 



I believe that color is an almost 

 universal guide to insects. Nay, more ; 

 I think that I know it. 



It is the almost universal opinion of 

 scientists, that the color of flowers was 

 developed especially to attract insects ; 

 this, of course, for the flowers' good. 

 Lubbock's experiments, moreover, 

 prove beyond a doubt, that bees are 

 guided by color. He placed honey on 

 slips of different color. A bee was 

 attracted to the honey on a yellow 

 strip. The bee loaded and left. While 

 away the great statesman changed the 

 place or positions of the slips. The 

 bee soon returned, and to the yellow, 

 though in a changed position. The 

 thing was tried over and over with the 

 same result. I have confirmed the 

 truth by similar experiments. 



Bees do visit flowers for the pollen 

 and nectar ; but they are attracted to 

 the flower by color and odor, which, I 

 believe, were developed especially to 

 attract the bees, for the good of the 

 flowers. 



Mrs. C. says, again, that bees work 

 entirely by instinct. She also saj's that 

 insects cannot reason. How does she 

 know this ? I believe that bees and 

 other insects do reason. I think that 

 they are intelligent, and can learn. I 

 think that I know this. As Mrs. C. 

 says, " We all know that insects do 

 not reason," the burden of proof rests 



with her. I know that habit is very 

 strong with insects ; I feel equally sure 

 that they do reason. 



Agricultural College, Mich. 



HISTORIC. 



Remarks upon the Origin of the 

 Hoyey-Bee. 



Written for the Dec-Keepers' Magazine 



BY C. J. ROBINSON. 



The date when honey-bees first ex- 

 isted is wholly unknown and past find- 

 ing out, and their first appearance on 

 the globe has not been explained in 

 historj-. No indications of the exis- 

 tence of bees have been found in the 

 rocks of the cretaceous period, nor has 

 the fossil remains of bees been dis- 

 covered in rock or earth deposits of 

 any period 



The busy bee seems to have claimed 

 greater interest from the ancients than 

 the}' acquired in modern times. It is 

 certain, however, that the great in- 

 terest taken in bees from the earliest 

 times is reviving among ns with no 

 common force since the publications of 

 John M. Weeks, Father Quinby, Mr. 

 King and others. The great interest 

 in bees has arisen chiefly from the 

 marked resemblance which their modes 

 of life seem to bear to those of man. 

 Remove everj' fanciful theory and en- 

 thusiastic reverie, and there still re- 

 mains an analogy far too curious to be 

 ratified with a passing glance. 



On the principle of nihil huniani a 

 me alienum, this approximation to 

 human nature has ever made the 

 favorites of their masters. And theirs 

 is no hideous mimicry of man's follies 

 and weaknesses, such as we see in the 

 monkey tribe. Their life is a serious 

 matter-of-fact business, a likeness to 

 the best and most rational of our man- 

 ners and government, set about with 

 motives so apparently identical with 

 our own, that man's pride has only 

 been able to escape from the ignominy 

 of allowing them a portion of his 

 monopolized reason, bj' assigning 

 them a separate quality under the 

 name of in.stinct. 



It was the equal of Solomon Virgil 

 who said: "The complicated and 

 wonderful economj' of bees can be re- 

 ferred to naught else than the direct 

 inspiration of the divine mind." But 

 we, from all that has been said by 

 eminent men, should not forget the 

 real services achieved in this as well 

 as in every other branch of knowledge 

 bj- the encyclopedist Aristotle, the 

 pupil of him who was distinguished as 

 the " Attic Bee ;" or the Life of Aristo- 

 machus, devoted to this pursuit, or the 

 enthusiasm of Hyginus ; who more 



than 1,800 years before the Rev. Mr. 

 Cotton collected all the bee-passages 

 which could be found scattered over 

 the pages of an earlier antiquitj'. 



Varro, Columella, Celsus and Pliny 

 have each given in their contributions 

 to the subject, and some notion may 

 be formed of the minuteness with 

 which they entered upon their re- 

 searches from a passage in Columella, 

 who, writing of the origin of bees, 

 mentioned that Euchemerus main- 

 tained that they were first produced in 

 the island of Coz, though Euthronious 

 asserted they originated in Mount 

 Hymettus and Hicander in Crete. Con- 

 sidering the obscurity of the subject, 

 and the discordant theories of modern 

 times, there is no branch of natural 

 history in which the ancients arrived 

 at so much truth. 



Concerning the antiquity of the Apis 

 Mellifica family, we are only able to 

 trace its existence through past his- 

 torical ages. The primitive natives of 

 Egypt did not record what transpired 

 or was known to them. The most an- 

 cient memorial matter that is known 

 was chronicled by the priests — lilerali 

 — who engraved certain characters 

 called " hieroglyphics," which indi- 

 cated certain meanings understood by 

 the priests. It was called skohia en 

 meter en ncter tur, picture writing, or 

 writing in sacred words. In the Egyp- 

 tian dialect the picture of a hive bee 

 represented Lower Egypt, restricted to 

 the island in the Nile at its confluence 

 with the Mediterrean Sea, and called 

 by the Greeks the Delta. 



This sj-mbolizing of the honey-bee 

 aflbrds us the remotest data of its ex- 

 istence, and points to the whereabout 

 of their origin or first appearance on 

 earth. I have made research, and 

 have become satisfied that priests of 

 primitive Egypt had knowledge of the 

 birth place of the original progenitors 

 of the honey-bee race equally as cer- 

 tain as the shepherds had of the place 

 called Bethlehem. 



With the ancient Egyptians the pic- 

 ture of a queen-bee was the emblem of 

 royalty ; this is evidence that Lower 

 Egypt, the Delta, was the sovereign 

 mother country, anterior to all Egypt, 

 becoming one kingdom under Seros- 

 tris. If, as is claimed by eminent his- 

 torians, Lower Egj'pt was the cradle 

 of the primitive Israelites who were the 

 uncles of the subseq\ient mighty na- 

 tion of Nineveh and Babylon, from 

 whose loins the world is peopled, may 

 we not logically conclude that the 

 orio'inal nursery of the hive-bee, though 

 called an iiisecl, living in common like 

 men, each one doing his part for the 

 o-ood of all, was in the Eden of the 

 Israelites, where the landscape is a 

 beautiful plain unadorned with "hills 

 and shrubs ?" 



