120 BEE-EATER. 



frequently so high in the air as scarcely to be perceived, their whistle 

 may be distinctly heard ; but in case the weather is showery, the 

 whole of the flight come down into the gardens, and recruit them- 

 selves with insects, more particularly bees, wasps, and other 

 Hymenoptera, and not unfrequently butterflies and grasshoppers, as 

 both of the last have been found whole in their stomachs ; but bees 

 seem to be their principal or most coveted food. Some of the names 

 of this bird appear to be derived from the circumstance. Virgil, in 

 his choice of a good situation for bees, says, among other enemies to 

 be avoided — 



" Ahsint 



meropesque aliaeque Volucres 



" Et manibus Procne pectus signata emends." 



Ceorg. 4. 1. 14. 



By these two enemies are meant, no doubt, the Bee-eater and Swal- 

 low. It can scarcely be denied that Virgil, by Meropes, meant the 

 Bee-eaters, now so called, but many of the translators of the passage 

 above referred to, have thought otherwise ; May & Trapp make them 

 Woodpeckers; Addison, Woodpeckers; Ogilby, the same; Dry- 

 den, the Titmouse, and the Peckers Hungry Brood;* but Martyn,in 

 his Translation gives it the true appellation of Bee-eater, which may 

 be also observed in other notes on the passage. 



In the neighbourhood of Gibraltar the whole country is stocked 

 with them by the end of May, when they make the nest in sandy 

 banks, in the manner of the Sand Martin, penetrating three feet 

 horizontally, and then turning at right angles three feet farther, 

 making a hole large enough to admit a man's arm, and widening at 

 the end to the size of the crown of the hat ; the female lays six or 

 seven white eggs, rather less than those of a Blackbird, on the bare 



* It is not to be denied, that Woodpeckers will destroy bees ; as the circumstance has 

 been mentioned, in respect to the Black Woodpecker, which abounds about the Caspian 



Sea, and its neighbourhood, and is very destructive to bees. See Vol. iii. p. 3S9. X>ec. 



Russ. iv. p. 9. 



