THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 3 
ally still more fantastic speculations of their own. 
And until Schirach got together his little band of 
patient investigators of hive-life about a hundred 
years ago, Virgil’s fourth Georgic—considered as 
a practical guide to bee-keeping—was still very 
nearly as well-informed and up-to-date as any. 
It is not, however, for its technical worth that 
the book is to be recommended to the apiarian 
tiro of to-day. All that has become hopelessly 
old-fashioned with the passing of the ancient straw- 
skep in the last generation. The intrinsic value 
of Virgil’s writings lies in their atmosphere of 
poetry and romance, which ought to be held in- 
separable, now as ever, from a craft which is prob- 
ably the most ancient in the world. Almost alone 
among country occupations to-day, bee-keeping 
can retain much of its entrancing old-world flavour, 
and yet live and thrive. But if the modern tend- 
ency to make the usual unlovely transatlantic 
thing of British honey-farming is to be checked, 
nothing will do more to that end than an early 
instillation of Virgil’s beautiful philosophy. 
Dipping into this fascinating poem—with its 
delightful blend of carefully told fact, and rich 
‘fancy, and quaint garnerings from records then 
extant, but now lost in the ages—we can recon- 
struct for ourselves a picture of Virgil’s country 
retreat near ‘sweet Parthenope,” where he 
loitered, and mused, and wrought the faultless 
hexameters of the Georgics with so much care 
I—2 
