THE ISLE OF HONEY ar 
Phoenician traders are certain to have prospected 
the coast much farther eastward than is recorded, 
and thus to have materially hastened British 
advance in civilisation—at least, as far as the 
southern tribes were concerned. 
It has been claimed—on what evidence it is diffi- 
cult to determine—that the Romans, besides teach- 
ing the Britons all other arts of manufacture and 
husbandry, introduced the practice of bee-culture 
into the conquered isles. But Pliny, giving an 
account of the voyages of Pytheas, which are sup- 
posed to have been undertaken some three hundred 
years before Cesar ever set foot here, mentions 
the Geographer of Marseilles as landing in Britain, 
and finding the people brewing a drink from 
wheat and honey. There is, however, another 
source of testimony on this point, of infinitely 
greater antiquity than any yet enumerated. Long 
before the Phcenician sailors discovered their tin- 
country, there were bards in Eilenban-——the White 
Island—hymning the prowess of their Celtic 
heroes and the traditional doings of their race. 
These old wild songs were handed down from 
singer to singer through the ages, and many of 
them, still extant among the records of the Welsh 
bards, must be of unfathomable antiquity. These 
profess to describe the state of Britain from the 
very earliest beginnings of the human race. And 
in some of them, which are seemingly among the 
oldest, Britain is called the Isle of Honey, because 
