which emits a nauseous effluvia, subsists principally on honey. It is called the ratel. The honey-guide cuckoo directs him to the hive of the bee, which being frequently in a part of the tree the ratel cannot reach, he signifies his rage by biting its roots and trunk; and this being observed by the Hottentots, they know by it that the tree contains honey. The hide of this animal is so tough that the sting of the bee cannot penetrate it. Several persons have rendered themselves remarkable by their power over this little insect. The first account we have of this art occurs in Brue's Voyage. When that writer was at Senegal in 1698, he saw a man there who styled himself" the king of the bees." Nor was it without some reason that he did so; for he had acquired the art of attracting them to such perfection, that he could make them accompany him wherever he pleased, not only singly, but by thousands. The same art has been practised by several persons in England and in Germany. In Warder's Monarchy is a curious account of the affection which the queen bee and her subjects have for each other. Reaumur gives a description of their architecture; while Smart, in his poem on the immensity of the Supreme Being, calls upon Vitruvius or Palladio to build, if they can, a cave for an ant, or a mansion for a bee. A good hive contains a population of six thousand. Swammerdam gives the following account of a hive he had the curiosity to open. It contained 1 female, 33 males, 5635 working bees, 45 eggs, and 150 worms. To accommodate this population there were 3392 wax cells for the use of the working bees, 62 cells containing bee's bread, and 236 cells in which honey had been laid up: whole number of cells, 3690; population, 5864. Bees bear an analogy to beavers, and to the genus in ornithology called crotophaga, which unite to form one nest, and labour for the general benefit of the whole tribe. One species of the orchis bears a striking similitude, in point 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; and Langhorne thus 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, And found the picture of a bee. The astronomers have also imagined its shape in the heavens, and hence it has the honour of forming one of the southern constellations. Bees are fabled to have distilled honey on the lips of Plato; and Pausanias relates that Pindar, on his way to Thesbia, fell asleep near the road, when bees flew to him as he lay, and dropped honey on his lips. The poets have ever been happy to avail themselves of the Apian republic 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 Bion. The Indian poets compare them to the quiver of the god of love; and Euripides celebrates one of the valleys of Greece, because it was a haunt sacred to "the murmuring bees." The ancient fathers, particularly St. Augustine, drew frequently from them; and Milton gathers honey from the same source, one of his favourite amusements, before he was blind, having been to mark How Nature paints her colours; how the bee Howel compared the republic of Lucca, in 1621, to a hive; while Shakspeare, who left none of the secrets of Nature unexplored, compares them, after the example of Virgil, to a free and well-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;* Macrobius, in his preface to the Saturnalia, compares 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 associates the stings of bees with those which forbidden pleasures leave behind : Honey's flowery sweets delight; 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 Homer,† Plato, * Of this Rollin furnishes both precept and example. "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, art ii., p. 2. Homer, says Alexander Paphius, was suckled by a priestess of Isis, whose breasts distilled 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. Menander, and Simonides ;* well might Sophocles glory in the title which the sweetness of his diction procured for him; and well might the Athenians take pleasure in perpetuating the appellation, by erecting a beehive of marble over his grave. The Greeks not unfrequently chose the form of a beehive 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 NewCaledonia, in the Isle of Carniobar, and in Seal Island. The Druids formed their houses, and not unfrequently their temples, in a similar manner. Sepulchres in Italy, too, are sometimes of an analogous shape. 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 to their hives at twelve o'clock on Christmas eve in order to listen to their humming, which afforded, as they believed, a much more agreeable music than at any other period, as at that time they celebrated, in the best manner they could, the morning of Christ's nativity.† What a beautiful picture is that presented by Virgil in the Corycian swain! "I remember," says he, an old Corycian, who lived under the lofty turrets of Obelai, on the banks of the Galesus. He 66 *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. †The music of bees has been reduced to a scale; vid. Butler's Treatise, 1645, c. 5. cultivated a few acres of land, which, till they came into his possession, had been waste and neglected. The soil was too poor for the plough, not adapted to the keeping of flocks, nor was it well situated for the culture of vines. Yet there, in a cottage standing among bushes, he cultivated herbs, lilies, vervain, and poppies. He was the first to pluck the rose in spring, the first to gather fruits in autumn. In winter he employed the principal part of the day in attending to the shrubs and flowers which were to furnish honey for his bees. In spring he fed them, in summer he watched their swarming, and in autumn gathered their honey. This was his sole employment from year to year; and in this occupation," continues Virgil, "being contented and happy, he was essentially richer than all the kings of the earth." ANTS. WITH bees we may associate ANTS, so variously treated of by Lewenhoek, Swammerdam, Linnæus, Geoffrey de Geer, Bonnet, Latreille, and Huber. Ants, like bees, are divided into males, females, and neuter. Like those of bees, the males and females of ants seem to have no other duties than just to live and to keep up their race. The barren ones provide food, construct the habitations, nurture the young, and guard the citadel. Both the In building they exhibit much ingenuity, every one seeming "to follow his own fancy." male and the female have wings; and when the heat has arisen to a certain height, they issue from their habitations, escorted by the labourers, who offer them food during the first stage of their emigration. Then the males and females take flight, during which the act of fecundation takes place. After this the males are left to themselves, and, being unprovided |