32 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



■of the abundance of wild bees everywhere in the 

 primaeval woods. There would be little profit, 

 and no little folly, in seeking to invest these old 

 traditions with any more than their due signifi- 

 cance. But there is much in a name. And it may 

 be conjectured that if Britain was known among 

 the early Druidical bards as the Isle of Honey 

 the natural conditions giving rise to the name 

 were still prevalent, and reflected immemorially in 

 the life of the people, when Caesar first saw them 

 crowding the white cliffs above him, a huge-limbed, 

 ruddy-locked, war-like race. He records that 

 they possessed their herds of tame cattle and their 

 cultivated fields ; and it is reasonable to suppose 

 that the hives of wattled osier that Virgil wrote of 

 a century later had their ancient counterpart of 

 woven basket hives in the British villages of the 

 day. 



No doubt the Romans, during their second and 

 permanent occupation, which did not take place 

 until a hundred years after, taught the Britons 

 their own methods of bee-management, and im- 

 proved in numberless ways on the practice of the 

 craft, which, among the British, was probably a 

 very simple and rough-and-ready affair. But it 

 was not until the Romans had gone, and the 

 Anglo-Saxon rule was fairly established in the 

 Island, that bee-keeping seems to have become 

 one of the recognised national industries. The 

 records bearing on the social life of the people at 



