XX 



BEE-CULTURE AT PRESENT 



From the time of Pliny in the second century of our era 

 to that of Swammerdan) in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century nothing of importance was written upon the natural 

 history of bees. Then come Reaumur, Linnaeus, De Geer, 

 Bonnet, and at the close of the eighteenth century Latreille 

 and Lamarck, and a little later Cuvier. These with a few 

 others did the important original work necessary to the 

 elucidation of the world of nature and incidentally of bees. 

 But there were popular writers and practical bee-keepers 

 who from the seventeenth century to the present time have 

 added their contributions, more or less valuable, to the 

 literature of natural science. 



In the time of Bonnet lived a unique figure, the Gene- 

 vese, Francis Huber, who devoted much of his time to 

 the study of the bee and made several discoveries, so 

 remarkable that they exposed him to the ridicule of many 

 in his own time, but which since have been proven and 

 accepted by the scientific world. 



Ruber's story is the most romantic in the annals of the 

 naturalists, for, born of good and talented parents and 

 pursuing too arduously the delightful paths of knowledge 

 open to him, at an early age he became blind. Since his 

 interest was mainly in the world of nature this would have 

 seemed to many an insurmountable affliction. Not so to 

 Huber. Possessed of a particularly genial and childlike 

 nature, he was able not only to overcome the drawbacks inci- 



