322 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
demonstrations of the noble author have left little 
more to be desired in the particular department to 
which he devoted the energies of his powerful mind. 
With his summary of the progress of apiarian 
knowledge, we may not inappropriately close the 
“‘ BEE-KEEPER’S Manuva.” 
“The attention,” says Lord Brougham,* “ which 
has been paid at various times to the structure and 
habits of the bee is one of the most remarkable 
circumstances in the history of science. The ancients 
studied it with unusual minuteness, although, being, 
generally speaking, indifferent observers of fact, they 
made but little progress in discovering the singular 
economy of this insect. Of the observations of 
Aristomachus, who spent sixty years, it is said, in 
studying the subject, we know nothing; nor of those 
which were made by Philissus,t who passed his life 
in the woods for the purpose of examining this 
insect’s habits; but Pliny informs us that both of 
them wrote works upon it. Aristotle’s three chap- 
ters on bees and waspst contain little more than 
the ordinary observations, mixed up with an unusual 
portion of vulgar and even gross errors. How much 
he attended to the subject is, however, manifest 
from the extent of the first of these chapters, which 
is of great length. Some mathematical writers, 
particularly Pappus, studied the form of the cells, 
and established one or two of the fundamental 
propositions respecting the economy of labour and 
wax resulting from the plan of the structure. The 
* Vol. i. pp. 333-36. + Called also Philiscu: 
+ Hist. An. lib, ix. capp. 40, 41, 42. ‘ ae 
