INTRODUCTION xiii 
the limit of man’s life on the earth, probably the 
development of other living creatures, as well as 
most forms of vegetable life, took place immeasur- 
ably earlier. The chances are that the world of 
trees and flowering-plants, in which aboriginal 
man moved, differed in no great degree from the 
world of green things surrounding human life to- 
day. It is certain that the apple, pear, raspberry, 
blackberry, and plum were common fruits of the 
country-side in the later Stone Age, for seeds of 
all these have been found in conjunction with 
neolithic remains. Evidence of the existence of 
the beech and elm—the latter a famous pollen- 
yielder—has been discovered at a very much 
earlier time. All the conditions favourable to 
insect-life must have been present in the world 
ages before man appeared in it; and insect-life 
undoubtedly existed then in a high state of de- 
velopment. It would be as unreasonable, there- 
fore, not to infer that the honey-bee was ready on 
the earth with her stores of sweet-food for man, 
as that man did not speedily discover that store, 
and make it an object of his daily search, just as 
he went forth daily to hunt and kill four-footed 
game. 
There is, of course, a great deal of difference 
between a chance discovery of a wild-bee’s nest, 
