294 The Poets and Nature. 



day, in the prosecution of his suit, that is to say, when 

 chasing her across country, as appears to have been the 

 fashion of love-making in those days, the lady was so 

 stung by his bees that she died. Orpheus thereupon 

 appealed to the gods, who in response swept all the bees 

 off the face of Greece. Aristaeus complained to his mother, 

 who in turn appealed to her father, Proteus, who showed 

 the youth how to get back his beloved insects. He 

 sacrificed a number of fat kine to the ghost of Eurydice, and 

 from their carcases issued swarms of bees. 

 Hence Butler's lines : 



" The learned write, an insect 'breeze' 

 Is but a mongrel sort of bees, 

 That fall before a storm on cows, 

 And sting the founders of their house, 

 From whose corrupted flesh that breed 

 Of vermin did at first proceed." 



That bees ballasted themselves with pebbles and other 

 make-weights when flying against the wind is an artifice 

 of which they share the credit with cranes. " Bees that 

 are employed in carrying off honey choose always to have 

 the wind with them if they can. If haply there do arise 

 a storm while they be abroad, they catch up some little 

 stony grit, to balance and poise themselves against the 

 wind. (Some say that they take it and lay it upon their 

 shoulders). And withal they fly low by the ground under 

 the wind when it is against them, and keep along the 

 bushes, to break the force thereof" all of which, except 

 the line in brackets, is an excellent description enough of 

 the flight of some of the carnivorous bees as they come 

 home laden with the numbed honey-bees, spiders, or cater- 

 pillars, with which they store their egg-cells, as food for 

 their grubs when hatched. 



Once upon a time there was in France an Order of 

 the Mouche a Miel, and the oath taken by knights when 



