2 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
chastest poet and royalest that to the memory of 
man is known.” And yet, if the question were 
asked, What book should first be placed in the 
hands of the beginner in apiculture to-day? no 
wiser choice than this fourth book of the Georgics 
could be made. 
For Virgil goes direct to the great heart of the 
matter, which is the same to-day as it was two 
thousand years ago. The bee-keeper must be 
first of all a bee-lover, or he will never succeed ; 
and Virgil’s love for his bees shines through his 
book from beginning to end. Of course, in a 
writer so deeply under the spell of Grecian influ- 
ences, it is to be expected that such a work would 
faithfully reproduce most of the errors immortalised 
by Aristotle some three hundred years before. 
But these only serve to bring the real value of the 
book into stronger relief. Through the rich in- 
crustation of poetic fancy, and the fragrant mytho- 
logical garniture, we cannot fail to see the true 
bee-lover writing directly out of his own know- 
ledge, gathered at first hand among his own bees. 
Virgil knew, and lovingly recorded, all that eyes 
and ears could tell him about bee-life; and it is 
only within the last two hundred years or so that 
any new fact has been added to Virgil’s store. All 
the writers on apiculture, from the earliest times 
down to the eighteenth century, have done little 
else than pass from hand to hand the fantastic 
errors of the ancient ‘‘ bee-fathers,” adding gener- 
