xvi THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



glades of primaeval forests as zealously as any 

 bee-keeper of the present day. 



Speculation of this kind is necessarily far-fetched 

 and fantastic, and can be but half seriously under- 

 taken with so small and inconsiderable a creature 

 as the honey-bee. But it is interesting from one 

 special, and not often adopted, point of view. 

 There is no more fascinating study than that of 

 the ancient civilisations of the world. Egypt 

 10,000 years ago, Babylon probably still earlier, 

 China that seems to have stopped at finite perfec- 

 tion in all ways that matter little, ages before the 

 time of Abraham. But all these are of mushroom 

 growth compared with the antiquity of bee-civilisa- 

 tion. It is only a tale of Lilliput, of a microscopic 

 people living and moving on a mimic stage. Yet, 

 perhaps tens of thousands of years before man had 

 made fire, or chipped a flint into an axe-head, these 

 winged nations had evolved a perfect plan of life, 

 and solved social problems such as are only just 

 beginning to cloud the horizon of human existence 

 in the twentieth century. And they, and their 

 intricate communal polity, have not passed away 

 into dust, as the great human nations of bygone 

 ages have done, and as those of the present day 

 may be destined to do, for all we can tell. 



Will a time come when we must learn from the 



