ion might be cited, but they are too well known to call for to quotation here; indeed, Shakespeare did not pay much be attention to the hive though we may meet the honey bee in the Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'Henry Vand elsewhere. In his lines To Cupid,' Michael Drayton sings:

st to be

w to in liter

rence t

er Bo

ence m

that d

swee

this

'Now in the Spring

He proveth his wing
The field is his bower,
And as the small bee

About flyeth he

From flower to flower.'

It is surprising that no writer of lyrics has set this delightful poem to music. Again, in his 'Birth of Moses' be writes:

'As we behold a swarming cast of bees

In a swoln cluster to some branch to cleave;
Thus do they hang in branches on the trees

Pressing each plant and loading every greave.' Drayton was either ill-informed or the bee-master's terms have changed, for to-day we call the first company that leaves the hive a swarm and the following ones are called casts; in some parts indeed the name of the first, second, and third casts varies, and we know that in places where it has been necessary to find additional names for mistakes that should not occur, the standard of beekeeping has not been high. One suspects Michael Drayton, for in his 'Quest of Cynthia' he tells us:

'Yet where there haps a honey fall

We'll lick the syruped leaves

And tell the bees that their's is gall

To this upon the greaves.'

The bee-master would pay a reward, did his means permit, to those who would lick every 'syruped leaf,' for honeydew is his bane. If Drayton did not know this he was not a bee-master, and, consequently, we may quote him as a poet but not as an authority. Hakluyt is more observant. In the first volume of his Voyages' we read:

'As the waspe sucketh honie fro the bee

So minisheth our commoditee.'

Now the wasp plagues the hives in autumn, and if stock be weak it is necessary to protect it by narro-ing the entrance from the alighting board to the bro chamber. Should this be done the bees will join bat with the intruders, neither thief nor guardian hesitati to use his weapons; but the advantage is with t defenders because they can be reinforced from with and they know their hive, while the hungry wa attracted by the scent of the honey, fights haphazard.

Samuel Purchas, in his 'Theatre of Politicall Flyi Insects,' uses the hive to enforce moral lessons, wheth with effect the reader can judge.

'Hony,' he writes, 'is the symbol of Death, as Gall is Life, wherefore the ancients offered honey in Sacrifice to t infernal Deities, for because of Pleasure, Death creeps

on us.

He goes farther-and fares worse.

'The Queen Bee (for it is an Amazonian Commonweal transcends in greatness and beauty of body, but which most praiseworthy in a commander, in mildness and gent ness; therefore though they have stings they never them. The Laws by which this Commonwealth is order are natural, not written in letters but engraven in th manners and so studious are they of Peace that neith willingly nor unwillingly do they offer injury to any of th subjects.'

It is true that the queen bee does not attack dron or workers; but she will murder her possible rivals, ev though they are her daughters or her sisters. It is f them she reserves the sting. A strong hive will rob weak one in most approved bandit fashion.

Bacon has invoked the aid of bees in his Essay Suspicion. He tells us :

'Suspicions that the mind of itself gathers are b buzzes; suspicions that are artificially nourished and p into men's heads by the tales and whisperings of othe have stings.'

Another great essayist, Montaigne, asks:

'Can there be a more formal or better ordered policy divide into so several charges and officers more constantly enter tained or better maintained than that of Bees?'

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There is a fine passage in Paradise Lost,' in which Milton preludes the assembling of Satan's hosts to the gathering at which the downfall of Adam and Eve is planned:

'As bees

In springtime, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews of flowers
Fly to and fro or on the smoothed plank

The suburb of their straw-built citadel

New rubb'd with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs.'

are

Even to-day the old-fashioned skeppist, before housing Gaswarm rubs the inside of the new skep with sweetSerie cented herbs. Thyme, balsam, lemon-verbena th among his choice, for he believes that the fragrance will make the household better contented with their quarters, more ready to undertake the heavy work that the modern bar-frame hive with its wax foundation sheets has rendered unnecessary. Clearly the bee-master of Milton's time went further than the skeppists, that Vanishing generation of delightful companions, and when he cleaned his alighting board in spring sweetened it too-a pleasant custom even though it be held useless. In another part of his masterpiece Milton refers to the Creation, and here, unfortunately, his lack of knowledge is immortalised,

but

and

With honey stored.'

Her husband drone' marks the queen bee, but she does not feed her husband, the workers of some other hive do that; nor does she build her cells, the task being entrusted to her children. In 'Samson Agonistes,' the stricken warrior complains that he must

'sit idle on the household hearth

A burd'nous drone.'

And in 'Il Penseroso' we read:

There in close covert, by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,
Hide me from day's garish light

While the bee with honeyed thigh
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring

With such concert as they keep

Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.'

Few who have enjoyed the music of summer waters al the hum of insect life can fail to feel the beauty of the lines in which the bee serves as an instrument in bo Nature's and the Poet's orchestra.

That the ways of the hive were matter of wide co ment is hinted at by a passage in John Evelyn's Diar Under date Nov. 24, 1661, he writes, "This night E Majesty fell into discourse with me concerning bees.' C Marden, the diarist writes:

"This place is exceedingly sharp in winter by reason of t serpenting of the hills and it wants running water; but t solitude much pleased me. All the ground is so full of wi thyme, marjoram and other sweet plants that it cannot over-stocked with bees; I think he has near forty hives that industrious insect.'

This question of overstocking is worth a passin word, for the capacity of the bee to sustain itself is n generally recognised. In the Temple my bees supporte themselves throughout the summer, they could make r surplus but they lived unaided. Yet they must hav gone as far afield as St James's Park and into the fe squares of the City that boast flowers, and they mu have known their paths through the air. Close studen of the hive believe that this country does not tithe th possibilities of honey production; it may be that if w had the proper number of hives the bee would strike still more significant note in modern literature an poetry. Evelyn's hard prose is an effective break in the streams of moral maxims and poetry, and one is lef pondering a line in his Calendarium Hortense (April 'Open your beehives for now they hatch.' Let us hop that when he discoursed with the Merry Monarch he di not give such dangerous advice. One trembles to thinl of the chilled brood, and must hope that he mean nothing more than that the entrance from the alighting board should be enlarged. King Charles II was evidently interested in the hive; he had a bee-keeper, Moses Rusder by name, who has written at length.

ely

Addison recalls with pleasure the influence of the early Italian spring upon the hives. In his 'Remarks on Italy' we find, We were sometimes shivering on the top of a black mountain; and in a little while after baking in a warm valley covered with violets and salmond trees in blossom, the bees already swarming over utyd them, though but in the month of February.' The ment traveller among the Ligurian hills and valleys may repeat Addison's experience to-day, and he may have of occasion to note that the bees at least have retained Some of the traits associated with the Ligurians by the gold-time historians who preferred truth to flattery. The ngessayist must have been a lover of the Georgics, and he Would appear to have found in the golden cadences an excuse for the tangle of inaccuracies, false assumptions, and wrong deductions. He is surely right. There is no work that can appeal with equal force to the bee lover, and in passing reference may be made to Gaston Boissier's admirable book, 'The Country of Horace and Virgil,' for it helps us to reconstruct the scenes amid which the great Mantuan wrote of the scents, sights, and sounds that came nearest to his heart. Addison says:

reas

ater

so full

it

Corty

'Virgil seems nowhere so well pleased as when he is amongst his bees; nor will it be wondered at if we consider the various and interesting objects which they offer to our view. While the philosopher examines the law and governhment of the hive, the divisions of their labour, their almost human sagacity in providing for a season of dearth and necessity, the poet is delighted to observe them in the bright and genial days of summer roving from flower to flower, and to indulge his fancy in the many pleasing associations that Are suggested by their habits and pursuits.'

Let us pass to two honest men in difficulties and at a disadvantage, sad sight for the bee-master who cannot withhold respect from either. Samuel Butler in his 'Lucubratio Ebria' (Note-Books) says:

The mind grew because the body grew-more things were perceived-more things were handled and, being handled, became familiar. It is here that the bee, in spite of her wings, has failed. She has a high civilisation but it is one whose equilibrium appears to have been already attained, the appearance is a false one, for the bee changes, though