12 The Honey-Makers 



The bee lends itself so readily to fun that at the present 

 time it is treated as a joke almost as frequently as a sober 

 subject for scientific research. In the present book the 

 natural history of the bee is treated and the latest scientific 

 results on the subject are given, yet, feeling that the general 

 reader will enjoy the quaint and curious opinions of earlier 

 generations, even as the present writer did, they too are set 

 before him, not to discredit the gravity of so serious a 

 subject, but rather as it were to warm the cold facts of 

 science with a human glow and make them smile a little. 

 Hence Aristotle and Pliny, Moffett and Butler, appear with 

 their testimony concerning the structure of wings, tongue, 

 or sting, alongside the modern scientists, instead of being 

 kept strictly to their own side of the fence in the part 

 entitled the Literature and History of the Bee. 



In the second part of the book the bee is set up to be 

 looked at in the light of mythology, the legend, poetry, 

 history, and literature ; and an astonishing insect it has 

 proved to be under this examination. The writers of In- 

 dian literature have used it constantly, as have also the 

 Greek and Latin writers from the earliest times to the later 

 ones. Plato in philosophy and Plutarch in history have 

 set it in their pages. 



In mediaeval times the church drew some of its most 

 useful illustrations and lessons from the habits of the bee, 

 and everywhere its wax has been used in magic and necro- 

 mancy as well as in religious observances. 



The northern nations owe it a debt so great that we can 

 scarcely see how they could have fought and sung without 

 it ; certainly they could not have mingled the draught that 

 created the saga or brewed the mead that pledged the hero, 

 without the cloying honey. 



The poetry of the present is so rich in its use of the bee 

 that it has been necessary to pass it almost without pausing, 



