12 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



Elder, who was born in a.d. 23. He, too, deals 

 with the ox-born bees ; but the reader's interest 

 will centre for the most part in Pliny's grave and 

 careful account of the life and customs of the 

 honey-bee, as commonly accepted among his con- 

 temporaries. Very few indeed of the facts he so 

 picturesquely details have any real foundation in 

 truth. Like nearly all the classic writers, he had 

 little more accurate knowledge of the life within 

 the hive than we have of the bottom of the Pacific 

 Ocean. But he made up for this deficiency, as 

 did all others of his time, by dipping largely into 

 the stores of his own fancy as well as those of 

 other people. 



His account of the origin and nature of honey 

 is quaintly pleasant reading. " Honey," he says, 

 " is engendered from the air, mostly at the rising 

 of the constellations, and more especially when 

 Sirius is shining; never, however, before the 

 rising of the Vergilise, and then just before day- 

 break. . . . Whether it is that this liquid is the 

 sweat of the heavens, or whether a saliva emanat- 

 ing from the stars, or a juice exuding from the 

 air while purifying itself— would that it had been, 

 when it comes to us, pure, limpid, and genuine, as 

 it was when first it took its downward descent. 

 But, as it is, falling from so vast a height, attract- 

 ing corruption in its passage, and tainted by the 

 exhalations of the earth as it meets them ; sucked, 

 too, as it is, from off the trees and the herbage of 



