6 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



beginning, this strange little creature, which lived in a society 

 under complicated laws and executed prodigious labours in 

 the darkness, attracted the notice of men. Aristotle, Cato, 

 Varro, Pliny, Columella, Palladius, all studied the bees ; to 

 say nothing of Aristomachus, who, according to Pliny, watched 

 them for fifty-eight years, and of Phyliscus, whose writings 

 are lost. But these dealt rather with the legend of the bee ; 

 and all that we can gather therefrom — which indeed is exceed- 

 ingly little — we may find condensed in the fourth book of 

 Virgil's " Georgics." 



The real history of the bee begins in the seventeenth 

 century, with the discoveries of the great Dutch savant, Swam- 

 merdam. It is well, however, to add this detail, but little 

 known : before Swammerdam a Flemish naturalist named 

 Clutius had arrived at certain important truths, such as the 

 sole maternity of the queen and her possession of the attributes 

 of both sexes, but he had left these unproved. Swammerdam 

 founded the true methods of scientific investigation ; he in- 

 vented the microscope, contrived injections to ward off decay, 

 was the first to dissect the bees, and by the discovery of the 

 ovaries and the oviduct definitely fixed the sex of the queen, 

 hitherto looked upon as a king, and threw the whole political 

 scheme of the hive into most unexpected light by basing it 

 upon maternity. Finally he produced woodcuts and engrav- 

 ings so perfect that to this day they serve to illustrate many 

 books on apiculture. He lived in the turbulent, restless 

 Amsterdam of those days, regretting, he said, the " sweet life 

 of the country," and died, worn-out with work, at the age 

 of forty-three. He wrote in a pious, formal style, with beauti- 

 ful, simple outbursts of a faith that, fearful of falling away. 



