iv INTRODUCTION. 



and six hundred ; and he quotes a few, such as Galen, 

 Aristeus, Aristomachus, Menus, Misald, Philistrius, So- 

 lin, John of Lebanon, &c. &c, whose works, however, 

 on that subject are wholly unknown to us. He, how- 

 ever, cites a few with whose works we are conversant, 

 viz. Aristotle, Columella, Varro, Moufet *, Aldrovan- 

 dus t> &c. &c. 



The writings of De Montfort are so far valuable, that 

 they unite the romantic reveries of the ancients with 

 some weak scintillations of modern knowledge. Some 

 of the ancients imagined that the bees were bred from 

 the purest juice which could be extracted from the 

 flowers in summer ; others conceived that they were 

 bred from putrid animals, an opinion entertained by 

 Virgil in his Georgics. They were acquainted with the 

 existence of one superior bee, whom they called the 

 king, and who was supposed to originate from a flower 

 or an animal more distinguished and noble than that 

 from which the common bees originated. They re- 

 garded the drones or males as lazy, idle flies, of no 

 particular use, and in some degree actually noxious, 

 and only fit to be exterminated. They called them 

 hornets, or flies of an ugly shape. When they saw two 

 queens in a swarm, they believed that one of them was 



* Thomas Moufet, an English physician, who died about 1600, 

 known by a work written in Latin, entitled, " Theatrum Insect- 

 orum." Londini, 1634, in fol. with plates. 



t A celebrated professor of physic at Bologna, one of the many 

 authors whose researches into natural history have been most 

 extensive. His works amount to thirty volumes in folio. They, 

 however, did not enrich him, for he died blind in the hospital at 

 Bologna at the age of eighty. 



