39 



Again — 



" Forward he darted, as a swift-winged hawk 

 That swoops amid the starlings and the daws." 



In his delightful " Works and Days/' Hesiod (750 B.C.), 

 writes : 



" When first the cuckoo from the oak you hear 

 In welcome sounds." 



And further : 



" When in the shady boughs, with quivering wings 

 The grasshopper all day continual sings." 



There is also a poem on the grasshopper by Anacreon, 

 who died in 478 B.C. Herodotus, born 484 B.C., also gives us 

 some glimpses of the natural history of Egypt, Mesopotamia, 

 and other countries. Speaking of the Babylonians, he says, 

 " They have palm trees growing all over the plain ; most of 

 these bear fruit from which they make bread, wine, and 

 honey. They also tie the fruit of that which the Grecians 

 call the male palm about those trees that bear dates, in 

 order that the fly entering the date may ripen it, lest other- 

 wise the fruit fall before maturity." Now I should like 

 to quote a few sentences from the " Bulletin of the Royal 

 Gardens, Kew," from a report by His Majesty's Consul at 

 Basra, "On the Cultivation of the Date Palm in Mesopo- 

 tamia." The report is dated March, 1908, at least 2300 

 years after Herodotus wrote his remarks on the same sub- 

 ject. It shows two things, I think : firstly, that these 

 remarks of Herodotus are wonderfully true, and, secondly, 

 that the cultivation of the date and the use made of its fruit 

 is still much the same as then. The following sentences 

 occur in the report : — " In some cases the juice is extracted. 

 It is collected in jars and used by the natives instead of 

 sugar." "A species of date called Zahdee is used for dis- 

 tilling arak or spirit." "The cultivator climbs the tree, 

 opens the bunch of female blossoms slightly and deposits in 

 it a few sprigs of the male blossom." " When, through 

 neglect or oversight, the female palm is not artificially ferti- 

 lised, the fruit it bears does not come to perfection." 



Before leaving Herodotus I should like to give one more 

 quotation. Speaking of the Gyzantes, a tribe of the Libyans, 

 he says, "Amongst them bees make a great quantity of 

 honey, and it is said that confectioners make much more." 



The greatest of the early writers on natural history whose 



