HYMENOPTERA. 315 
spring from the calices of sweet-scented flowers. Combined and 
separated in a certain manner, the flowers engendered bees. They 
said, further, that the bees sought on the blossoms of the olive 
trees and of the reed a seed which they rendered fit for the forma- 
tion of their larve. 
All these fables, which sprang from the imagination of the 
ancients, were developed by a writer of the Renaissance, a certain 
Alexander de Montfort, author of a work entitled ‘“‘ Printemps de 
VAbeille.”” If we were to believe him, the king of the bees is 
formed of the juice which the workers extract from plants. These 
latter are created from honey; and the tyrants, 7.e., the females, 
which do not manage to become sovereigns of a hive, are formed 
only of gum. It will be seen that he had profited only too well 
by what he had read in Greek and Roman authors. 
The bee was very much thought of in ancient Egypt, and is 
often represented on their monuments, above the sculptured orna- 
ments which contain proper names, with two semicircles and a 
sort of sheaf, or fasciculus. Champollion Figeac thinks that this 
group, taken together, represents a title added to a proper 
name. According to Hor-Apollon, another commentator on 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, the bee in the country of the Pharaohs 
was the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of 
its king. Nothing can be better than this comparison. It was 
for this reason, no doubt, that Napoleon I. sprinkled the sym- 
bolical bees over the imperial mantle which bears the arms of his 
dynasty. 
All the fables, all the hypotheses, spread about and cherished 
by the ancients respecting these industrious little insects, were 
dissipated in a moment when, by the invention of glass beehives, 
first made in the beginning of the last century by Maraldi, a 
mathematician of Nice, we were enabled to observe their opera- 
tions and habits. It is from this period only that our exact 
knowledge of the really wonderful life of these insects dates. 
Before Maraldi, the Dutch naturalist, Swammerdam, had written 
an excellent History of Bees. He died before he had published 
his work, and when, a long while after his death, it was at length 
printed, other investigators had already pushed on their observa- 
tions further than he had. Thanks to the invention of Maraldi, 
