xiv THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



as a common and expected incident in a day's 

 foraging, and the systematic preservation and 

 tending of beehives as a source of daily food. 

 While it is reasonable to assume that the first men 

 used honey as an article of diet, it is probable 

 that they were a wandering race, never halting 

 for long in the same locality, and therefore un- 

 likely to be bee-keepers in the accepted sense of 

 the word. They depended, no doubt, on the wild 

 honey-stores which they happened to find in their 

 entourage for the time being. But the first sign 

 of civilisation must have been the gradual lessen- 

 ing of this nomadic instinct. Tribes would come 

 to take permanent possession of districts rich in 

 the game, as well as the fruits and tubers, necessary 

 for their daily food. At the same time the haunts 

 of the wild bees would be discovered, their enemies 

 kept down or driven away, the places where the 

 swarms pitched annually noted, and thus the first 

 apiary would have been founded, probably long 

 before any attempt at cultivation of the soil or 

 domestication of the wild creatures for food was 

 made. 



Biologists generally regard hunting as the oldest 

 human enterprise under the sun ; but, adopting 

 their well-known method of deductive reasoning, 

 it seems possible to make out a rather better case 



