of external appearance, to our favourite insect; its flower, having a spot in its breast resembling a bee, sipping its honey. On this account it is called the bee-flower. Langhorne alludes to it, in his fables of Flora. See on that flower's velvet breast, How close the busy vagrant lies! His thin wrought plume, his downy breast, His limbs; we'll set the captive free: And found the picture of a bee. The astronomers have also imagined its shape in the heavens; hence it has the honour of forming one of the southern constellations: between 16° 20′ 41′′ and 22° 22' 15" long. and 55° 11′ 10′′ and 58° 47′ 43′′. VII. The poets are ever happy to avail themselves of the Apian republic, in order to illustrate and embellish their subjects. Bees, therefore, are frequently important personages, in the odes of Anacreon, the Idyls of Theocritus, and the poems of Moschus and Bion1. Statius 2 has as fine a simile of bees, robbed of their honey, as any in Virgil. The Indian poets compare them to the quiver of 1 Achilles Tatius affords the ground-work of an elegant poem." Fortasse fortuna pridie ejus diei, circiter meridiem, Leucippe Citharam pulsabat, aderam vero et ipse, Clioque illi assidebat. Ibi dum me deambulante, apicula quædam, aliunde improviso advolans, Clionis manum papugit, &c. &c. lib. ii. c. 5. Herrick has a poem, entitled the "Captive Bee," almost worthy the pen of Anacreon. 2 Theb. X. the god of love'; and Euripides celebrates one of the valleys of Greece, because it was a haunt, sacred to "the murmuring bees." It is curious, that the first simile, in the Iliad, should refer to these insects: a passage successively imitated by Virgil, Tasso, and Milton. The ancient fathers, particularly St. Augustine, drew frequently from them; and Milton gathers honey from the same vineyard: one of his amusements, before he laboured under a gutta serena, being to mark How nature paints her colours, how the bee Sits on the bloom, extracting liquid sweet., Howel compared the republic of Lucca (in 1621) to a hive; and the Marquis of Lansdowne's motto induces a connexion between bees and geometry: while Shakespeare, who left neither the depths of the heart nor the secrets of nature unexplored, nor unexamined, compares them, after the example of Virgil, to a free and well 1 NAGACESARA "To the botanical descriptions of this delightful plant, I need only add, that the tree is one of the most beautiful on earth, and that the delicious odour of its blossoms justly gives them a place in the quiver of Camadéva. In the poem, called Naishadha, there is a wild, but elegant, couplet, where the poet compares the white of the Nagacesara, from which the bees were scattering the pollen of the numerous gold-coloured anthers, to an alabaster wheel, on which Càma was whetting his arrows, while sparks of fire were dispersed in every direction.”—Jones's Botanical Observations on Select Indian Plants. A Javanese poet †, describing the beauty of the wife of the king of Kurawa, says, "She is said to be exquisitely beautiful; even exceeding the beauties of Heaven; and containing more sweetness than a sea of honey." Warburton says, that bees were considered emblems of chastity in the Eleusinian mysteries. Vid. Divine Legation of Moses, vol. i. p. 235. *The Indian God of Love. + Hist. Java, p. i. 428. directed government': and in the Persian anthology there is an apologue, showing how the imperial Jamshid borrowed several of his institutions from them. Pantænus called one of his friends, "the Sicilian bee,” because he selected sweets from various writers 2; Macrobius, in his preface to the Saturnalia, compared himself to the insect, which imbibes the best juices of flowers, and works them into forms and orders, by a mixture of its own essence: while Boethius compares the stings of bees to those, which illegitimate pleasures leave behind them. Honey's flowery sweets delight ;- Ah! they yield a fraudful joy; Soon they pall, and quick they fly; Quick they fly,—but leave a smart, With what feeling does Thomson lament the destructive mode of obtaining the treasures of these intellectual and unfortunate insects! And-as I know the nobility of your 1 Marcus Antoninus illustrates the subject of legislation, by observing, with admirable precision, that what is not for the interest of the whole swarm, is not for the essential interest of a single bee, b. vi. c. liv. Shakespeare has illustrations, ii. Henry VI. act iii. sc. 2. Romeo and Juliet, ii. sc. 6. Troilus and Cressida, act v. sc. 11. epilogue. 2 Seneca, too, Epist. 84. Of this Rollin has availed himself in precept and in practice. An author, says he, who draws honey from the nectarium of flowers, should convert the beauties, he finds in the ancient writers, into his own substance: thus making them his own, as bees do. Belles Lettres, part ii. p. 2. See also p. 275. Mathew of Westminster was styled Florilegus, because he collected "the flowers" of former historians. nature,-I do not anticipate a smile of derision, when I confess, that I esteem Colonna more entitled to the honours of a monument, for having introduced the practice of obtaining honey, without destroying the bees1, into the Vale of Ffestiniog, than Field-Marshal Turenne. Turenne destroyed his thousands; Colonna has preserved his tens of thousands. Turenne's monument is of marble: -let that of Colonna be formed of honey-comb! VIII. A curious custom prevails in Sicily. When a couple are married, the attendants place honey in the mouths of the bride and bridegroom; accompanied with an expression of hope, that their love may be as sweet, to their souls, as that honey is to their palate. Well might the ancients fable, that bees encompassed the cradles of Ho 'Bees are much attended to among the Himalayah Mountains. The natives keep them in earthen pots. When they rob them of honey, they drive them out by making a noise at the end; and taking the honey out at a back door, leave a little in the pots to recompense the bees, when they are permitted to return. Oid honest Fuller, in tracing the ruin of the Templars, alludes to the destruction of bees in a manner that proves, he knew nothing of the method of preserving them. "The chief cause of their ruin," says he, was their wealth. They were feared of many; envied of more; loved of As Naboth's vineyard was the chiefest ground for his blasphemy; and as in England Lord Fantope said, that not he, but his stately house at Ampthill in Bedfordshire, was guilty of high treason; so certainly their wealth was the principal evidence against them, and cause of their overthrow. It is quarrel and cause enough, to bring a sheep that is fat to the shambles. We may believe king Philip would never have taken their lives, if he might have taken their lands without putting them to death: but the mischief was, he could not get the honey, unless he burnt the bees*." none. Hist. Holy War, b. v. ch. 3. mer', Plato, Menander, and Simonides;-well might Sophocles glory in the title, which the sweetness of his diction had procured for him; and well might the Athenians take pleasure, in perpetuating the appellation, by erecting a bee-hive of marble over his grave! The Greeks, not unfrequently, chose the form of a bee-hive for many of their erections. There was a temple of Apollo at Delphos, said to have been built by bees; no doubt, in allusion to its external form. This mode of building prevails, also, in New Caledonia 3; in the Isle of Carniobar, and in Seal Island 5. The Druids formed their houses, and not unfrequently their temples, in a similar manner. Sepulchres in Italy, too, are sometimes of an analogous shape. 3 The ancient Romans admitted into the number of their deities, Mellona; whom they styled the Goddess of Honey; while the Thessalians and Acarnanians offered bullocks to several species of insects, which indicated superior intelligence; such as bees and ants. In Monmouthshire, the peasantry entertain so great a veneration for their bees, that, some years since, they were accustomed to go 1 Homer, says Alexander Paphius, was suckled by a priestess of Isis, whose breasts distilled with honey: the first sounds, he uttered, were the notes of nine separate birds and on the morning, after his birth, nine doves were found in his cradle, fondling and playing around him. 2 Even the Hebrew writers describe honey, as being the first food of a Son, born of a Virgin; his name Imanuel; that he may know how to refuse the evil, and to choose the good. Vide Isaiah, vii. 14. 3 Cook's Voy. vol. 4. 112. 5 Vancouv. Voy. vol. 1. 139. + Asiat. Researches, vol. 2. 7 Plin. Nat. Hist. ii. c. 2. 8 Vide Descrizione e disegno dell' Emissario del Lago Albano. Tav. xiii. &c. fol |