xiv THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
as a common and expected incident in a day's 
foraging, and the systematic preservation and 
tending of beehives as a source of daily food. 
While it is reasonable to assume that the first men 
used honey as an article of diet, it is probable 
that they were a wandering race, never halting 
for long in the same locality, and therefore un- 
likely to be bee-keepers in the accepted sense of 
the word. They depended, no doubt, on the wild 
honey-stores which they happened to find in their 
entourage for the time being. But the first sign 
of civilisation must have been the gradual lessen- 
ing of this nomadic instinct. Tribes would come 
to take permanent possession of districts rich in 
the game, as well as the fruits and tubers, necessary 
for their daily food. At the same time the haunts 
of the wild bees would be discovered, their enemies 
kept down or driven away, the places where the 
swarms pitched annually noted, and thus the first 
apiary would have been founded, probably long 
before any attempt at cultivation of the soil or 
domestication of the wild creatures for food was 
made. 
Biologists generally regard hunting as the oldest 
human enterprise under the sun; but, adopting 
their well-known method of deductive reasoning, 
it seems possible to make out a rather better case 
