314 THE INSECT WORLD. 
“His quibus signis atque heec exempla secuti, 
Esse apibus partem divine mentis, et haustus 
Aithereos dixere.’ .... 
Let us hasten to say, however, that all which the ancients, 
naturalists or poets, Greek or Latin, relate on the subject of bees, 
is a mixture of truth and error, and rests generally on mere 
suppositions. Aristotle knew well the three sorts of individuals 
which are comprised under the title of bees, and some other prin- 
cipal facts relating to their history; but these facts are not stated 
accurately and precisely in his account of them, and they are, above 
all, misinterpreted. The Greek philosopher understood insects in 
general very badly. He made them spring from the leaves of 
trees, and brought forward a multitude of errors about them, which 
the most simple observation would have sufficed to dissipate. 
Pliny tells us that Aristomachus of Soles consecrated fifty-eight — 
years to the observation of the habits of the bee, and that Philiscus 
of Thrace passed, for the same motive, all his life in the forests. 
But this devotion to one object does not appear to have produced 
much result, if one compares the discoveries of our own age with 
the errors which Pliny, Aristotle, and Columella have chronicled 
respecting them. Pliny says that bees occupy the first rank among 
insects, and that they were created for man, for whom their work 
procures honey and wax. He adds that they form political asso- 
ciations, that they have councils, chiefs, and even a code of morality 
and principles. 
One sees by this opinion of the Roman naturalist in what high 
esteem the ancients held bees. But they had the most singular 
ideas on the reproduction of these little beings; and as no one 
had ever seen their generation, they invented fable after fable 
to explain their origin. Some pretended that bees sprang from an 
ox recently killed, and buried in manure. Others added that they 
only sprang into existence from the chest of a young ox killed 
with violence. The most courageous bees came from the belly of 
a lion in a state of putrefaction. It was from the head of this 
same animal, in a state of corruption, that the hings (i.e., the 
queens were formed. The carcasses of cows furnished the mild and 
tractable bees; a calf could only furnish small and weak ones. 
Other naturalists, or rather other dreamers, made these insects 
