X THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



on brazen pans to keep the sound of his infant 

 lamentations from the ears of his -ravening sire. 

 Thenceforward the bees took over the charge of 

 him, bringing him daily rations of honey until he 

 grew up and was able to hold his own in the 

 Olympian theogony . I n either case J upiter showed 

 his gratitude towards his preservers in true celestial, 

 fashion. It was a very ancient belief among the 

 earliest writers that, in the single instance of the 

 honey-bee, the ordinary male-and-female principle 

 was abrogated, and that the propagation of the 

 species took place by miraculous means. In ex- 

 planation of this, we are told it was a special gift 

 from Jupiter in acknowledgment of the unique 

 service rendered him. In one version of the fable, 

 and in the words of a famous bee-master who 

 wrote in 1657, "Jupiter, for so great a benefit, 

 bestowed on his nurses for a reward that they 

 should have young ones, and continue their kind, 

 without wasting themselves in venery." In the 

 other, and probably much older form of the legend, 

 Melissa, the beautiful Princess of Crete, was her- 

 self changed by the god into a bee, with the like 

 immaculate propensities ; and thenceforward the 

 work of collecting honey for the food of man — 

 that honey which, down to a very few centuries 

 from the present time, was universally believed to 



