22 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
of the abundance of wild bees everywhere in the 
primeval woods. There would be little profit, 
and no little folly, in seeking to invest these old 
traditions with any more than their due signifi- 
cance. But there is much in a name. And it may 
be conjectured that if Britain was known among 
the early Druidical bards as the Isle of Honey, 
the natural conditions giving rise to the name 
were still prevalent, and reflected immemorially in 
the life of the people, when Cesar first saw them 
crowding the white cliffs above him, a huge-limbed, 
ruddy-locked, war-like race. He records that 
they possessed their herds of tame cattle and their 
cultivated fields; and it is reasonable to suppose 
that the hives of wattled osier that Virgil wrote of 
a century later had their ancient counterpart of 
woven basket hives in the British villages of the 
day. 
No doubt the Romans, during their second and 
permanent occupation, which did not take place 
until a hundred years after, taught the Britons 
their own methods of bee-management, and im- 
proved in numberless ways on the practice of the 
craft, which, among the British, was probably a 
very simple and rough-and-ready affair. But it 
was not until the Romans had gone, and the 
Anglo-Saxon rule was fairly established in the 
Island, that bee-keeping seems to have become 
one of the recognised national industries. The 
records bearing on the social life of the people at 
