THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 3 



ally still more fantastic speculations of their own. 

 And until Schirach got together his little band of 

 patient investigators of hive-life about a hundred 

 years ago, Virgil's fourth Georgic — considered as 

 a practical guide to bee-keeping — was still very 

 nearly as well-informed and up-to-date as any. 



It is not, however, for its technical worth that 

 the book is to be recommended to the apiarian 

 tiro of to-day. All that has become hopelessly 

 old-fashioned with the passing of the ancient straw- 

 skep in the last generation. The intrinsic value 

 of Virgil's writings lies in their atmosphere of 

 poetry and romance, which ought to be held in- 

 separable, now as ever, from a craft which is prob- 

 ably the most ancient in the world. Almost alone 

 among country occupations to-day, bee-keeping 

 can retain much of its entrancing old-world flavour, 

 and yet live and thrive. But if the modern tend- 

 ency to make the usual unlovely transatlantic 

 thing of British honey-farming is to be checked, 

 nothing will do more to that end than an early 

 instillation of Virgil's beautiful philosophy. 



Dipping into this fascinating poem — with its 

 delightful blend of carefully told fact, and rich 

 fancy, and quaint garnerings from records then 

 extant, but now lost in the ages — we can recon- 

 struct for ourselves a picture of Virgil's country 

 retreat near " sweet Parthenope," where he 

 loitered, and mused, and wrought the faultless 

 hexameters of the Georgics with so much care 



