65 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



and ingenious division of endeavour, there cannot 

 fail to be a supreme and governing intelligence to 

 allot the part that each must play. This story of 

 a queen — of a single bee, larger than all the rest, 

 to whom all pay allegiance, and who spends her 

 whole life in the dim labyrinth of the hive, like the 

 Pope in the Vatican— is it a truth, or only a fig- 

 ment of the ignorant, bucolic brain ? If this queen 

 exist, if every hive have indeed its absolute 

 monarch, who directs the whole complex life and 

 policy of the bee-city, where in the scale of reason- 

 ing creatures must she be placed ? 



And then, if he be wise, the student will learn at 

 last to give the picturesque old bee-garden its true 

 appraisement. Ancient things conserve their 

 beauty, and win the love of the right kind of 

 lovers, more and more with every century that 

 glides by. Only their usefulness, their import in 

 the tide of human knowledge and progress, has 

 gone with the years. It is so with the bee-garden 

 under its May tide robe of green leaves and rain- 

 bow blossoms. It is beautiful in its glad appear- 

 ances, its echo of old voices, its odour of the sanc- 

 tity in ancient ways and days. But it can tell us 

 nothing of all we want to know. It can only ask 

 us riddles to which we have no answers. For 

 these we must set aside old fanciful scruples ; turn 

 our backs, once for all, on its enchantment and its 

 sweetness ; bend our steps unswervingly towards 

 the great modern bee- farm on the hill. 



