6 AUSTRALASIAN 



In the earliest history of the Russian people, in the ninth 

 and tenth centuries, we find mentioned among the chief articles 

 of their trade, " the spoils of their bee-hives and the hides of 

 their cattle," and " their native commodities of furs, wax, and 

 hydromel ;" and a Greek historian, describing the state of 

 Britain at the time of the visit of the Greek Emperor M anuel 

 (about 1400), says : " The land is overspread with towns and 

 villages ; though destitute of vines, and not abounding in 

 fruit trees, it is fertile in wheat and barley, in honey and 

 wool." 



The true history of the rise and progress of the art of bee- 

 keeping amongst the Greeks and Romans, and its extension 

 over Europe during the middle ages, is as yet unwritten, but 

 there can be no doubt that amongst the Northern nations the 

 use of honey became with time more and more a matter of 

 necessity, much of their fermented liquors being prepared 

 from it, and the more northern the positions, and the more 

 severe the winter seasons, the more essential it became to 

 domesticate the bees, or use artificial means for preserving 

 them during the winter months. 



The primitive system of bee-keeping adopted in the earliest 

 period of Greek civilisation seems to have been followed with 

 little change or improvement by the Romans and the nations 

 which rose upon the ruins of that empire, and to have been 

 handed down from father to son almost unaltered until the 

 close of the last century. In the first half of the present 

 century some important improvements were introduced into 

 England, especially by Thomas Nutt, a self-instructed apiarist, 

 who was one of the first to condemn and abolish the barbarous 

 custom of destroying the bees with sulphur, and to invent and 

 practice a more rational and humane method of taking the 

 surplus honey in separate boxes and bell-glasses. Since the 

 middle of the seventeenth century much attention had been 

 paid to the natural history of the bee and other insects by 

 Von Swammerdam in Holland, Maraldi in Italy, Reaumur, 

 Lepeletier and Latreille in France, Bonnet in Switzerland, 

 Linnseus in Sweden, and by Dr. John Hunter and Dr. Bevan 

 in England ; but it is to the researches and discoveries of 

 Huber and Dzierzon that we are indebted for that knowledge 

 of the physiology of the honey-bee which has led to those great 

 practical improvements which may be said to constitute the 



