‘ THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
on brazen pans to keep the sound of his infant 
lamentations from the ears of his ravening sire. 
Thenceforward the bees took over the charge of 
him, bringing him daily rations of honey until he 
grew up and was able to hold his own in the 
Olympian theogony. In either case Jupiter showed 
his gratitude towards his preservers in true celestial 
fashion. It was a very ancient belief among the 
earliest writers that, in the single instance of the 
honey-bee, the ordinary male-and-female principle 
was abrogated, and that the propagation of the 
species took place by miraculous means. In ex- 
planation of this, we are told it was a special gift 
from Jupiter in acknowledgment of the unique 
service rendered him. In one version of the fable, 
and in the words of a famous bee-master who 
wrote in 1657, “Jupiter, for so great a benefit, 
bestowed on his nurses for a reward that they 
should have young ones, and continue their kind, 
without wasting themselves in venery.” In the 
other, and probably much older form of the legend, 
Melissa, the beautiful Princess of Crete, was her- 
self changed by the god into a bee, with the like 
immaculate propensities; and thenceforward the 
work of collecting honey for the food of man— 
that honey which, down to a very few centuries 
from the present time, was universally believed to 
