Structure, Habits, and Products 1 1 



century informs us that a sort of concrete honey, called 

 sugar, is found upon canes which grow in India and 

 Arabia Felix. 



This sugar, we are told, was in consistence like salt, being, 

 like it, brittle between the teeth. 



" Sugar " came to be a synonym for everything that had 

 a sweet taste, hence the acetate of lead is called " sugar of 

 lead." 



It was not until about the seventeenth century that sugar 

 became an article of common use in Europe. Up to that 

 time it was used chiefly as a medicine, or by the rich as a 

 delicacy at feasts upon very special occasions. 



At the present time sugar has superseded honey as an 

 article of every-day use. Honey has lost most of its im- 

 portance in the family life ; but not so the bee, for we now 

 know that it does inestimable service in perfecting the 

 fruits of the earth, and that without it our orchards would 

 be lean and our gardens barren. 



This knowledge makes a scientific study of the bee as 

 fascinating as is the story of honey and its maker in rela- 

 tion to the individual life of the races of men that have 

 preceded us. 



Since the bee existed before literature and history, the 

 true sequence in treating it is, first, its structure and habits, 

 and then its place in song and homily. 



Its structure and habits were partly known and partly 

 guessed by the ancients, who from Hesiod down wrote 

 about it. Aristotle gives the best summary of Greek knowl- 

 edge upon the subject, and from him succeeding authors 

 down to near the present time drew their materials, ampli- 

 fying the fables and absurdities, until the earliest English 

 books upon the bee, although written in perfect seriousness, 

 in the light of what we know to-day, read like humorous 

 compositions. 



