6 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
the hurtful nature of burnt crab-shells ; and tells 
us that in windy weather bees will carry about 
little pebbles as counterpoises, “as ships take in 
sand-ballast when they roll deep in the tossing 
surge.” 
He was a firm believer in the Divine origin of 
bees. To all the ancients the honey-bee was a 
perpetual miracle, as much a sign and token of an 
omnipotent Will, set in the flowery meadows, as 
is the rainbow, to modern pietists, set in the sky. 
While all other creatures in the universe were 
seen to produce their kind by coition of the sexes, 
these mysterious winged people seemed to be 
exempt from the common law. Virgil, copying 
from much older writers, says, ‘they neither 
rejoice in bodily union, nor waste themselves in 
love’s languors, nor bring forth their young by 
pain of birth; but alone from the leaves and 
sweet-scented herbage they gather their children 
in their mouths, thus sustaining their strength of 
tiny citizens.” 
Just as marvellous, however—at least to the 
modern entomologist—will appear the belief, wide- 
spread among the ancients, and shared by Virgil, 
that swarms of bees can be spontaneously gener- 
ated from the decaying carcass of an ox. Virgil 
professes to derive his account of the matter from 
an old Egyptian legend, and he gives careful 
directions to bee-keepers of what he seems never 
to doubt is an excellent method for stocking an 
