In a work called “Ephemerides des curieux de la nature,”
is an observation apparently relative to this family of
insects, which, if true, would be very extraordinary indeed.
It is there said, that in the town of Czierck and its environs,
there were seen in 1679 some unknown winged insects which,
with their stings, mortally wounded both men and beasts.
They fell abruptly upon men without provocation, and attached
themselves to the naked parts of the body: the sting
was immediately followed by a hard tumor, and if care was
not taken of the wound within the first three hours, by hastily
extracting the poison from it, the patient died in a few days
after. These insects killed five and thirty men in this diocese,
and a great number of oxen and horses. Toward the
end of September, the winds brought some of them into a
small town on the confines of Silesia and Poland; but they
were so feeble on account of the cold, that they did but little
mischief there. Eight days after, they all disappeared.
These animals have all of them four wings, six feet, and
carry under the belly a long sting provided with a sheath,
which opens and separates in two. They make a very sharp
noise in attacking men. Some of them are ornamented with
yellow circles (Sirex gigas, or S. fusicornis? M. Latreille),
and others are similar to them in all respects, but they have
the back altogether black, and their stings are more venomous
(S. spectrum or juvencus?). The author of these observations
gives an extended description of the species with the
yellow circles, which he accompanies with figures, in which
the character of Sirex may be clearly distinguished.477
In the spring of 1694, some Galls hung down like chains
upon the oaks in Germany, and the common people, who
had never observed them before, imagined them to be magical
knots.478
A very old and common superstition is, that every oak-apple
contains either a maggot, a fly, or a spider: the first
foretelling famine, the second war, and the third, the spider,
pestilence. Matthiolus gravely affirms this conceit to be
true;479 and the learned Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia
Epidemica, has thought it worth his while, with much
gravity, to explode it. He, however, while combating one
popular error, falls himself into another, for want of that
philosophical knowledge of insects which later times have
succeeded in obtaining. We pass this by, and hurry to his
conclusion: “We confess the opinion may hold some verity
in analogy, or emblematical phancy; for pestilence is properly
signified by the spider, whereof some kinds are of a
very venomous nature: famine by maggots, which destroy
the fruits of the earth; and war not improperly by the fly, if
we rest in the phancy of Homer, who compares the valiant
Grecian unto a fly. Some verity it may also have in itself, as
truly declaring the corruptive constitution in the present
sap and nutrimental juice of the tree; and may consequently
discover the disposition of the year according to
the plenty or kinds of those productions; for if the putrefying
juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots,
they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare
that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the
great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do
also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of
higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are
confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals
of higher mischief according to the advance and higher
strain of corruption.”480
Moufet says: “In oak acorns and spongy apples sometimes
worms breed, and astrologers presage that year to be
likely to produce a great famine and dearth.… It is
strange that Ringelbergius writes, lib. de experiment, that
these worms may be fed to be as big as a serpent, with
sheep’s milk; yet Cardanus confirms the same, and shewes the
way to feed them, Lib. de rer. varietat.”481
There is a very curious operation performed at the present
day in the Levant with one of these Gall-flies, which is
termed caprification. The object of it is to hasten the maturity
of figs; and the species employed for that purpose is
the Cynips ficus caricæ, or Cynips psenes of Linnæus; it
consists in placing on a fig-tree, which does not produce
flowers or early figs, some of these last strung together with
a thread. The insects which issue from them, full of fecundating
dust, introduce themselves through the eye into the
interior of the second figs, fecundate by this means all the
grains, and provoke the ripening of the fruit.
This operation, of which some authors have spoken with
admiration, appeared to Hasselquist and Olivier, both competent
observers, who have been on the spot, to be of no
advantage whatsoever in fertilizing the fig;482 and scientific
men of the present day generally hold that it cannot be of
any utility, for each fig contains some small flowers toward
the eye, capable of fecundating all the female flowers in the
interior, and moreover this fruit will grow, ripen, and become
excellent to eat even when the grains are not fecundated.483
A curious kind of gall, produced on the rose-trees by the
Cynips rosæ, which is known by the name of Bedeguar,
has been placed among the remedies which may be successfully
employed against diarrhœa and dysentery, and useful
in cases of scurvy, stone, and worms.484
The galls of commerce, commonly called Nut-galls, are
found on the Quercus infectoria, a species of oak growing
in the Levant, and are produced by the Cynips Gallæ
tinctorum. When gathered before the insects quit them,
the nut-galls contain more astringent matter, and are then
known as Black, Blue, or Green-galls. When the insects
have escaped, they are less astringent, and are called White-galls.
They are of great importance in the arts, being very
extensively used in dyeing and in the manufacture of ink
and leather. They are the most powerful of all the vegetable
astringents, and are sometimes used, both internally and
externally, with great effect in medicine. Those imported
from Syria are the most esteemed, and, of these, those
found in the neighborhood of Moussoul are considered the
best.485
The gall of the field cirsium formerly enjoyed a very
great reputation, for it was considered, when carried simply
in the pocket, as a sovereign remedy against hemorrhages.
It, no doubt, owed this virtue to its resemblance to the principal
sign of this disease, the swelling of the vein.486
The galls of the ground-ivy, produced by the Cynips
glecome, have been eaten as food in France; they have an
agreeable taste, and to a high degree the odor of the plant
which bears them. Reaumur, however, is doubtful whether
they will ever rank with good fruits.487
The galls of the sage (Salvia pomifera, S. triloba, and
S. officinalis), which are very juicy, like apples, and crowned
with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit,
are gathered every year, as an article of food, by the inhabitants
of the Island of Crete. This is the statement
of Poumefort. Olivier confirms it, and adds: They are
esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavor,
especially when prepared with honey and sugar, and form a
considerable article of commerce from Scio to Constantinople,
where they are regularly exposed in the market.488
The celebrated “Dead Sea Fruits,” often called Poma
insana, or Mad-apples, Mala Sodomitica, etc., which have
given rise to great controversy among Oriental scholars and
Biblical commentators, are produced by the Cynips insana
on the low oaks (Quercus infectoria) growing on
the borders of the Dead Sea.489
Herodotus, who wrote in the fifth century before the birth
of Christ, tells the following fabulous story without the
slightest trace of diffidence or disbelief: There are other
Indians bordering on the City of Caspatyrus and the country
of Pactyica, settled northward of the other Indians, whose
mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the
most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are
sent to procure the gold; for near this part is a desert by
reason of the sand. In this desert then, and in the sand,
there are Ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but
larger than foxes. Some of them are in the possession of
the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These
Ants, forming their habitations under ground, heap up the
sand as the Ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and
they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped
up is mixed with gold. The Indians, therefore, go to the
desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on
either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a
female in the middle; this last the man mounts himself, having
taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her
young as recently as possible; for camels are not inferior to
horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens.…
The Indians then, adopting such a plan and
such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having
before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder
during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat
the Ants hide themselves under ground.… When the
Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they
fill these with the sand, and return with all possible expedition;
for the Ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering
them by the smell, pursue them, and they are equaled
in swiftness by no other animal, so that if the Indians did
not get the start of them while the Ants were assembling,
not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels
(for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their
pace, dragging on, not both equally; but the females, mindful
of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace.
Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest
part of their gold.490
Concerning these remarkable Ants, Strabo and Arrian
have preserved the statement of Megasthenes, who traveled
in India about two centuries later than the time of Herodotus.
As given by Strabo, who is somewhat more particular
in his story than Arrian, it is as follows: Megasthenes,
speaking of the Myrmeces (or Ants), says, among the Derdæ,
a populous nation of the Indians, living toward the East
and among the mountains, there was a mountain plain of
about 3000 stadia in circumference; that below this plain
were mines containing gold, which the Myrmeces, in size
not less than foxes, dig up. They are excessively fleet, and
subsist on what they catch. In winter they dig holes and
pile up the earth in heaps, like moles, at the mouths of the
openings. The gold dust which they obtain requires little
preparation by fire. The neighboring people go after it by
stealth with beasts of burden; for if it is done openly, the
Myrmeces fight furiously, pursuing those that run away, and,
if they seize them, kill them and the beasts. In order to
prevent discovery, they place in various parts pieces of the
flesh of wild beasts, and when the Myrmeces are dispersed
in various directions, they take away the gold dust, and, not
being acquainted with the mode of smelting it, dispose of
it in its rude state at any price to merchants.491
Nearchus says he has himself seen several of the skins of
these Ants, which were as large as the skins of leopards.
They were brought by the Macedonian soldiers into Alexander’s
camp.492
Pliny, as a matter of course, believed this marvelous
story, and has inserted it in brief in his compilation of natural
history. He adds, too, that in his time there were suspended
in the temple of Hercules, at Erythræ, this Ant’s
horns, which were looked upon as quite miraculous for
their size. He also informs us it was of the color of a cat.493
Strabo and Arrian, from the manner in which they refer
to the statements of Megasthenes and Nearchus, no doubt
disbelieved them;494 not so, however, Pomponius Mela.495
M. de Veltheim thinks this animal, which, as Pliny says,
“has the color of a cat, and is in size as large as an Egyptian
wolf,” is nothing more than, and really is, the Canis
corsac, the small fox of India, and that by some mistake it
was represented by travelers as an ant. It is not improbable,
Cuvier says, that some quadruped, in making holes
in the ground, may have occasionally thrown up some
grains of the precious metal. Another interpretation of
this story has also been suggested. We find some remarks
of Mr. Wilson, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society,
on the Mahabharata, a Sanscrit poem, that various tribes
on the mountains Meru and Mandara (supposed to lie between
Hindostan and Thibet) used to sell grains of gold,
which they called paippilaka, or Ant-gold, which, they said,
was thrown up by Ants, in Sanscrit called pippilaka. In
traveling westward, this story (in itself, no doubt, untrue)
may very probably have been magnified to its present dimensions.496
The laborious life and foresight of the Ant have been
celebrated throughout all antiquity, and from the wise Solomon
down to the amiable La Fontaine, the sluggard has
been referred to this insect to “learn her ways and be wise.”497
The Arabians held the wisdom of these animals in such estimation,
that they used to place one of them in the hands of
a newly-born infant, repeating these words: “May the boy
turn out clever and skillful.”498 But their wisdom is magnified
by all, and in the panegyrics of their providence we always
find the following curious notion. Plutarch, in his Land and
Water Creatures Compared, thus mentions it: “But that
which surpasseth all other prudence, policy, and wit, is their
(the Ants’) caution and prevention which they use, that their
wheat and other corn may not spurt and grow. For this
is certain, that dry it cannot continue alwayes, nor sound and
uncorrupt, but in time will wax soft, resolve into a milky
juice, when it turneth and beginneth to swell and chit;
for fear, therefore, that it become not a generative seed, and
so by growing, loose the nature and property of food for
their nourishment, they gnaw that end thereof or head
where it is wont to spurt and bud forth.”499
The ancients, observing the Ants carry their pupæ, which
in shape, size, and color very much resemble a grain of
corn, and the ends of which they sometimes pull open to let
out the inclosed insect, no doubt mistook the one for the
other, and this action for depriving the grain of the embryo
of the plant.
Some modern writers, as Addison500 and Pluche,501 it is curious
to observe, have fallen into this ancient error; so ancient,
in fact, it is that some have supposed the Hebrew name
of the Ant to be derived from it.502 Among the poets, Prior
asks:
Tell me, why the Ant
In summer’s plenty thinks of winter’s want?
By constant journey careful to prepare
Her stores, and bringing home the corny ear,
By what instruction does she bite the grain?
Lest, hid in earth, and taking root again,
It might elude the foresight of her care.
503
Thus Watts, also:
They don’t wear their time out in sleeping or play;
But gather up corn in a sunshiny day,
And for winter they lay up their stores:
They manage their work in such regular forms,
One would think they foresaw all the frosts and the storms,
And so
brought their food within doors.
504
And Smart:
The sage, industrious Ant, the wisest insect,
And best economist of all the field:
For when as yet the favorable sun
Gives to the genial earth th’ enlivening ray,
——All her subterranean avenues,
And storm-proof cells, with management most meet,
And unexampled housewif’ry, she frames;
Then to the field she hies, and on her back
Burden immense! brings home the cumbrous corn:
Then, many a weary step, and many a strain,
And many a grievous groan subdued, at length
Up the huge hill she hardly heaves it home;
Nor rests she here her providence, but nips
With subtle tooth the grain, lest from her garner,
In mischievous fertility, it steal,
And back to daylight vegetate its way.
505
Milton also entertained this erroneous opinion:
First crept
The parsimonious Emmet, provident
Of future, in small room large heart inclos’d;
Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, join’d in her popular tribes
And also Dr. Johnson:
Turn on the prudent Ant thy heedless eyes,
Observe her labors, sluggard! and be wise.
No stern command, no monitory voice,
Prescribes her duties or directs her choice;
Yet timely provident she hastes away,
To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day;
When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain,
She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain.
507
There is an old Eastern proverb, that “what the Ant collects
in a year the monks eat up in a night,” which seems to
be founded on the supposition that the Ants provide themselves
with stores of food. Juvenal, also, observes, in his
Sixth Satire, that “after the example of the Ant, some
have learned to provide against cold and hunger.”508
“Since, therefore,” says Moufet, “(to winde up all in a few
words) they (the Ants) are so exemplary for their great piety,
prudence, justice, valour, temperance, modesty, charity, friendship,
frugality, perseverance, industry and art; it is no wonder
that Plato, in Phædone, hath determined, that they who
without the help of philosophy have lead a civill life by custom
or from their own diligence, they had their souls from
Ants, and when they die they are turned to Ants again.
To this may be added the fable of the Myrmidons, who being
a people of Ægina, applied themselves to diligent labour in
tilling the ground, continual digging, hard toiling, and constant
sparing, joyned with virtue, and they grew thereby so
rich, that they passed the common condition and ingenuity of
men, and Theogonis knew not how to compare them better
than to Pismires, that they were originally descended from
them, or were transformed into them, and as Strabo reports
they were therefore called Myrmidons. The Greeks relate
the history otherwise than other men do; namely, that
Jupiter was changed into a Pismire, and so deflowered
Eurymedusa, the mother of the Graces, as if he could no
otherwise deceive the best woman, then in the shape of the
best creature. Hence ever after was he called Pismire Jupiter,
or, Jupiter, King of Pismires.…
“They do better, in my opinion, who observe the Pismire,
and grow rich by following his manners in labor, industry,
rest, and study. We read of Midas that he was the richest
King of all the West, and when he was a boy, the Pismires
carryed grains of wheat into his mouth while he slept, and
so foreshowed without doubt that he should be endowed
with the Pismire’s prudence, and should by his labour and
frugality, gain so much riches, that he should be called the
Golden boy of fortune, and the Darling of prosperity.
Ælianus. And when the Ants did devour and eat up the
live serpent of Tiberius Cæsar, which he so dearly loved,
did they not thereby give him sufficient warning that he
should take heed to himself for fear of the multitude, by
whom he was afterwards cruelly murthered? Suetonius.”509
Of the wars and battles of the Ants, now so familiar from
the writings of Huber and others, one of the oldest records
is that given by Æneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope
Pius II., of an engagement contested with obstinacy by a
great and a small species, on the trunk of a pear-tree.
“This action,” he states, “was fought in the pontificate of
Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis,
an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of
the battle with the greatest fidelity.” Another engagement
of the same description is recorded by Olaus Magnus, as
having happened previous to the expulsion of Christiern
the Second, of Sweden, and the smallest species, having
been victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their
own soldiers that had been killed, while they left those of
their adversaries a prey to the birds.510
Alexander Ross, in his Appendix to the Arcana Microcosmi,
p. 219, tells us: “That the cruel battels between the
Venetians and Insubrians, and that also between the Liegeois
and the Burgundians, in which about thirty thousand men
were slain, were presignified by a great combat between two
swarms of Emmets (Ants).”511
Ants were used in divination by the Greeks, and generally
foretold good.512 They were also considered an attribute
of Ceres.513
The following extract is from an English North-Country
chap-book, entitled the Royal Dream Book: “To dream of
Ants or Bees denotes that you will live in a great town or
city, or in a large family, and that you will be industrious,
happy, well married, and have a large family.”514 The Ant
and the Bee are common figures to express these predictions.
I heard a mother once say to her child, “Never destroy
Ants, for they are fairies, and will so bewitch our cows that
they will give no milk.” This superstition prevails in particular
about Washington and in Virginia.
Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, in an interesting article on the
Ants of India, remarks that she has often witnessed the
Hindoos, male and female, depositing small portions of
sugar near Ants’ nests as acts of charity to commence the
day with.
With the natives of India, this lady also tells us, it is a
common opinion that wherever the Red-ants colonize, prosperity
attends the owner of that house.515
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims, that “the natives of
Cambaia and Malabar will go out of the path if they light
on an Ant-hill, lest they might happily treade on some of
them.”516
Other insects, as will be noticed in the course of this
volume, are looked upon by these people with the same
respect.
Moufet says: “In Isthmus the priests sacrificed Pismires
to the sun, either because they thought the sun the most
beautiful, and therefore they would offer unto him the most
beautiful creature, or the most wise, as seeing all things,
and therefore they offered unto him the wisest creature.”517
In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Koran, which was
revealed at Mecca, and entitled the Ant, we find, among
other strange things, an odd story of the Ant, which has
therefore given name to the chapter. It is as follows: “And
his armies were gathered together unto Solomon, consisting
of genii, and men, and birds; and they were led in distant
bands, until they came to the valley of Ants.518 And an Ant,
seeing the hosts approaching, said, O Ants, enter ye into
your habitations, lest Solomon and his army tread you under
foot, and perceive it not. And Solomon smiled, laughing
at her words, and said, O Lord, excite me that I may be
thankful for thy favour, wherewith thou hast favoured me,
and my parents; and that I may do that which is right, and
well pleasing unto thee: and introduce me, through thy
mercy, into paradise, among my servants, the righteous.”519
Thevenot mentions “Solomon’s Ant” among the “Beasts
that shall enter into Paradise” in the belief of the Turks,
and gives the following reason: “Solomon was the greatest
king that ever was, for all creatures obey’d him, and brought
him presents, amongst others, an Ant brought him a Locust,
which it had dragged along by main force: Solomon, perceiving
that the Ant had brought a thing bigger than itself,
accepted the present, and preferred it before all other creatures.”520
Plutarch, speaking of the Ant, says: “Aratus in his prognostics
setteth this down for a rain toward, when they bring
forth their seeds and grains (pupæ), and lay them abroad to
take the air:
‘When Ants make haste with all their eggs aload,
Forth of their holes to carry them abroad.’”
521
In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, it is
also asserted that “when Ants walk the thickest, and more
than in vsuall numbers, meeting together confusedly, it is a
manifest signe of raine.”522
It is related of the celebrated Timour, that being once
forced to take shelter from his enemies in a ruined building,
he sat alone many hours; and, desirous of diverting his mind
from his hopeless condition, at length fixed his observation
upon an Ant which was carrying a grain of corn (probably
a pupa) larger than itself, up a high wall. Numbering the
efforts it made to accomplish this object, he found that the
grain fell sixty-nine times to the ground; but the seventieth
time it reached the top of the wall. “This sight,” said
Timour, “gave me courage at the moment, and I have never
forgotten the lesson it conveyed.”523
Plutarch, in his comparison between land and water creatures,
narrates the following anecdote: “Gleanthus the
Philosopher, although he maintaineth not that beasts have
any use of reason, made report nevertheless that he was
present at the sight of such a spectacle and occurrent as
this. There were (quoth he) a number of Ants which went
toward another Ant’s hole, that was not their own, carrying
with them the corpse of a dead Ant; out of which hole,
there came certain other Ants to meet them on the way (as
it were) to parl with them, and within a while returned back
and went down again; after this they came forth a second,
yea a third time, and retired accordingly until in the end
they brought up from beneath (as it were a ransom for the
dead body) a grub or little worm; which the others received
and took upon their shoulders, and after they had delivered
in exchange the aforesaid corpse, departed home.”524
Of the ingenuity of the Ant in removing obstacles, the
following anecdote is a very appropriate illustration: A
gentleman of Cambridge one day observed an Ant dragging
along what, with respect to the creature’s size, might be denominated
a log of wood. Others were severally employed,
each in its own way. Presently the Ant in question came
to an ascent, where the weight of the wood seemed for a
while to overpower him: he did not remain long perplexed
with it; for three or four others, observing his dilemma,
came behind and pushed it up. As soon, however, as he
got it on level ground, they left it to his care, and went to
their own work. The piece he was drawing happened to
be considerably thicker at one end than the other. This
soon threw the poor fellow into a fresh difficulty; he unluckily
dragged it between two bits of wood. After several
fruitless efforts, finding it would not go through, he adopted
the only mode that even a man in similar circumstances
would have taken: he came behind it, pulled it back again,
and turned it on its edge; when, running again to the other
end, it passed through without the slightest difficulty.525
Franklin was much inclined to believe Ants could communicate
their thoughts or desires to one another, and confirmed
his opinion by several experiments. Observing that
when an Ant finds some sugar, it runs immediately under
ground to its hole, where, having stayed a little while, a
whole army comes out, unites and marches to the place
where the sugar is, and carry it off by pieces; and that if
an Ant meets with a dead fly, which it cannot carry alone,
it immediately hastens home, and soon after some more come
out, creep to the fly, and carry it away; observing this, he
put a little earthen pot, containing some treacle, into a
closet, into which a number of Ants collected, and devoured
the treacle very quickly. He then shook them out, and
tied the pot with a thin string to a nail which he had fastened
in the ceiling, so that it hung down by the string. A
single Ant by chance remained in the pot, and when it had
gorged itself upon the treacle, and wanted to get off, it was
under great concern to find a way, and kept running about
the bottom of the pot, but in vain. At last it found, after
many attempts, the way to the ceiling, by going along the
string. After it was come there, it ran to the wall, and
thence to the ground. It had scarcely been away half an
hour, when a great swarm of Ants came out, got up to the
ceiling, and crept along the string into the pot, and began
to eat again. This they continued till the treacle was all
eaten; in the mean time one swarm running down the string,
and the other up.526
It has been suggested, that in such instances as the preceding,
the Ants may have been led by the scent or trace of
treacle likely to be left by the solitary prisoner; and the
following case, related by Bradley, is quoted to favor the
opinion: “A nest of Ants in a nobleman’s garden discovered
a closet, many yards within the house, in which
conserves were kept, which they constantly attended till the
nest was destroyed. Some, in their rambles, must have first
discovered this depot of sweets, and informed the rest of it.
It is remarkable that they always went to it by the same
track, scarcely varying an inch from it, though they had to
pass through two apartments; nor could the sweeping and
cleaning of the rooms discomfit them, or cause them to pursue
a different route.”527
Dionisio Carli, of Piacenza, a missionary in Congo, lying
sick at that place, was awakened one night by his monkey
leaping on his head, and almost at the same time by his
Blacks crying out, much to his surprise, “Out! Out!
Father!” Thoroughly awake now, Carli asked them what
was the matter? “The Ants,” they cried, “are broke out,
and there is no time to be lost!” Not being able to stir,
he bid them carry him into the garden, which they did, four
of them lifting him upon his straw bed; and yet though
very quick about it, the Ants had already commenced crawling
up his legs. After shaking them off their master, the
Blacks took straw and fired it on the floor of four rooms,
where these insects by this time were over half a foot thick.
The pests being thus destroyed, Carli was conveyed back to
his chamber, where he found the stench so great from the
burnt bodies, that he was forced, he says, to hold his monkey
close to his nose!
These Ants, Carli relates, ate up every living object within
their reach; and of one cow, which was accidentally left over
night in the stable through which they passed, nothing but
the bones were found the next morning.528 We need not
wonder at this, if we believe what Bosman has said of the
Black-ants of Guinea, which were so surprisingly rapacious
that no animal could stand before them. He relates an instance
where they reduced for him one of his live sheep in
one night to a perfect skeleton, and that so nicely that it
surpassed the skill of the best anatomists.529 Du Chaillu
says the elephant and gorilla fly before the attack of the
Bashikouay-ants, and the black men run for their lives.
Many a time has he himself, he says, been awakened out of
a sleep, and obliged to rush out of his hut and into the
water to save his life!530 The Driver-ants531 of Western Africa,
A. nomma arcens, have been known to kill the Python natalensis,
the largest serpent of that part of the world.532
Col. St. Clair, after a visit by a species of small Red-ants,
makes mention of the following instance, among others, of
their singular destructiveness: “I next discovered that a
little pet deer, which I had purchased from a negro, was
extremely ill. I could not discover the cause of its malady,
until, placing it on its legs, I observed that it would not let
one foot touch the ground, and, on examining it, I found, to
my grief, that the Red-ants had absolutely eaten a hole into
the bone. The poor little animal pined all that day and
died in the evening.”533
Capt. Stedman relates that the Fire-ants of Surinam
caused a whole company of soldiers to start and jump about
as if scalded with boiling water; and its nests were so
numerous that it was not easy to avoid them.534 And Knox,
in his account of Ceylon, mentions a black Ant, called by
the natives Coddia or Kaddiya,535 which, he says, “bites
desperately, as bad as if a man were burnt by a coal of fire;
but they are of a noble nature, and will not begin unless you
disturb them.” The reason the Singhalese assign for the
horrible pain occasioned by their bite is curious, and is thus
related by Knox: “Formerly these Ants went to ask a wife
of the Noya, a venomous and noble kind of snake;536 and because
they had such a high spirit to dare to offer to be related
to such a generous creature, they had this virtue bestowed
upon them, that they should sting after this manner.
And if they had obtained a wife of the Noya, they should have
had the privilege to sting full as bad as he.”537 Capt. Stedman
has a story of a large Ant that stripped the trees of their
leaves, to feed, as was supposed by the natives of Surinam, a
blind serpent under ground,538 which is somewhat akin to this:
as is also another, related to Kirby and Spence by a friend,
of a species of Mantis, taken in one of the Indian islands,
which, according to the received opinion among the natives,
was the parent of all their serpents.539 But, the reverse:
Among the harmless snakes of Mexico is a beautiful one
about a foot in length, and of the thickness of the little
finger, which appears to take pleasure in the society of
Ants, insomuch that it will accompany these insects upon
their expeditions, and return with them to their usual nest.
From this peculiarity it is called by the Spaniards and
Mexicans the “Mother of the Ants.”540
When in Africa, Du Chaillu was told by the natives that
criminals in former times were exposed to the path of the
Bashikouay-ants, as the most cruel way of putting them to
death.541 This dreadful manner of torturing was at one time
also practiced by the Singhalese, and I have heard that several
British soldiers have thus met their fate. The Termites
have been referred to before as having been employed for a
similar purpose.
To check the ravages of the Coffee-bug, Lecanium coffea,
Walker, which for several years was devastating some of the
plantations of Ceylon, the experiment was made of introducing
the Red-ants, Formica smaragdina, Fab., which
feed greedily on the Coccus.542 But the remedy threatened
to be attended with some inconvenience, for, says Tennent,
the Malabar coolies, with bare and oiled skins, were so frequently
and fiercely assaulted by the Ants as to endanger
their stay on the estates.
The pupæ or cocoons of the Ants, during the day, are
placed near the surface of the Ant-hills to obtain heat, which
is indispensable to the growth of the inclosed insects. This
is taken advantage of in Europe to collect the cocoons in
large quantities as food for nightingales and larks. The
cocoons of a species of Wood-ant, Formica rufa, are the
only kind chosen. In most of the towns of Germany, one or
more individuals make a living during summer by this business
alone. “In 1832,” says a contributor to the Penny
Encyclopedia, “we visited an old woman at Dottendorf, near
Bern, who had collected for fourteen years. She went to
the woods in the morning, and collected in a bag the surfaces
of a number of Ant-hills where the cocoons were deposited,
taking Ants and all home to her cottage, near which
she had a small tiled shed covering a circular area, hollowed
out in the center, with a trench full of water around it. After
covering the hollow in the center with leafy boughs of walnut
or hazel, she strewed the contents of her bag on the level
part of the area within the trench, when the Nurse-ants immediately
seized the cocoons, and carried them into a hollow
under the boughs. The cocoons were thus brought into one
place, and after being from time to time removed, and black
ones separated by a boy who spread them out on a table,
and swept off what were bad with a strong feather, they
were ready for market, being sold for about 4d. or 6d. a
quart. Considerable quantities of these cocoons are dried
for winter food of birds, and are sold in the shops.”543
Ants not only furnish food to man for his birds, but also
food for himself, in both the pupa and imago states. Nicoli
Conti, who traveled in India in the early part of the fifteenth
century, says the Siamese eat a species of Red-ant, of the
size of a small crab, which they consider a great delicacy
seasoned with pepper.544 At the present day, the pupæ of a
species of Ants are a costly luxury with these people. They
are not much larger than grains of sand, and are sent to
table curried, or rolled in green leaves, mingled with shreds
or very fine slices of fat pork.545 And in the province of
Michuacan, Mexico, is a singular species of Ant, which
carries on its abdomen “a little bagful of a sweet substance,
of which the children are very fond: the Mexicans suppose
this to be a kind of honey collected by the insect; but
Clavigero thinks it rather its eggs.”546
Piso, De Laet, Marcgrave, and other writers mention
their being an article of food in different parts of South
America. Piso speaks of yellow Ants called Cupia inhabiting
Brazil, the abdomen of which many used for food, as
well as a large species under the name of Tama-joura:
“Alia præterea datur grandis species Tama-ioura dicta
digiti articulum adæquans. Quarum etiam clunes dessicantur
et friguntur pro bono alimento.”547 Says De Laet: “Denique
formicæ hic visuntur grandissimæ, quas indigenæ vulgo
comedunt; et in foris venales habent.”548 And again: “Formicis
vescebantur, easquæ studiose ad victum educabant.”549
Lucas Fernandes Piedrahita, in his Historia General de
las Conquistas del Nuevo Regno de Granada, states that
cakes of Cazave and Ants were eaten in that country:
“Al tiempo de tostarlas para este efecto, dan el mismo olor
que los quesillos, que se labran para comer asados.”550 Herrera
says, the natives of New Granada made their main food
of Ants, which they kept and reared in their yards.551 Sloane
confirms this, and says they are publicly sold in the markets.552
Abbeville de Noromba tells us these great Ants are fricasseed.553
Schomburgk, in his journey to the sources of the Essequibo,
one evening saw all the boys of a village out shouting and
chasing with sticks and palm leaves a large species of winged
Ant, which they collected in great numbers in their calabashes
for food. When roasted or boiled, he says, the natives
considered these insects a great delicacy.554 Humboldt
informs us that Ants are eaten by the Marivatanos and
Margueritares, mixed with resin for sauce.555
Mr. Consett, in his Travels in Sweden, makes mention of
a young Swede who ate live Ants with the greatest relish imaginable.556
This author states also, that in some parts of
Sweden Ants are distilled along with rye, to give a flavor
to the inferior kinds of brandy.557
The inhabitants of the Tonga Group have a superstitious
belief that when their kings, and matabooles, or inferior
chiefs, die, they are wafted to Bulotu—“the island of the
blessed,” but the spirits of the lower class remain in the
world, and feed on Ants and lizards.558
Ants also furnish us with an acid, called by the chemists
Formic, which is said to answer the same purposes as the
acetous acid. It is obtained in two modes: 1st. By distillation;
the insects are introduced into a glass retort, distilled
by a gentle heat, and the acid is found in the recipient. 2d.
By the process called lixiviation; the Ants are washed in
cold water, spread out upon a linen cloth, and boiling water
poured over them, which becomes charged with the acid
part.559
Formic acid is shed so sensibly by the wood Ant, Formica
rufa, when an Ant-hill is stirred, that it can occasion an
inflammation. If a living frog, it is asserted, be fixed upon
an Ant-hill which is deranged, the animal will die in less
than five minutes, even without having been bitten by the
Ants.560
We read in Purchas’s Pilgrims that the large Ant of the
West Indies is “so poysonfull that herewith the Indians
infect their arrowes so remedilesse, that not foure of an
hundred which are wounded escape.”561
The medicinal virtues of the Ant are as follows: “Ants,
Formica minor of Schroder, heat and dry, and incite to
venery; their acid smell mightily refreshes the vital spirits.
They are said to cure the Flora, Lepra, and Lentigo. The
eggs (pupæ) are effectual against deafness, and correct the
hairiness of the cheeks of children being rubbed thereon.”
The Horse-ant, Formica major, Schrod., “provokes to
venery, and the oil thereof, by infusion, is good for the gout
and palsy.”562
Sloane tells us the Spaniards in the West Indies have a
very highly valued medicated earth called “Makimaki,”
which he thinks is made of the nests of Ants.563
There is a species of Ant in Cayenne, Formica bispinosa,
which collects from the bombax and silk-cotton trees a sort
of lint which the natives value much as a styptic in cases of
hemorrhage.564
The magicians, as mentioned by Pliny, recommended that
the parings of all the finger-nails should be thrown at the
entrance of Ant-holes, and the first Ant to be taken which
should attempt to draw one into the hole; for if this, they
asserted, be attached to the neck of a patient, he will experience
a speedy cure.565
The two following remarkable cures effected by Ants of
themselves are worthy of being noticed: Schuman, a missionary
among the negroes of Surinam, relates in one of
his letters, that after a most dangerous attack of the acclimating
fever, his body was covered with boils and painful
sores. He lay in his cot as helpless as a child, and had no
one to administer any relief or food but a poor old negro
woman, who sometimes was obliged to follow the rest to the
plantations in the woods. One morning while she was absent,
after spending a most restless and painful night, he observed
at sunrise an immense host of Ants entering through the roof,
and spread themselves over the inside of his chamber; and
expecting little else than that they would make a meal of
him, he commended his soul to God, and hoped thus to be
released from all suffering. They presently covered his bed,
and entering his sores caused him the most tormenting pain.
However, they soon quitted him, and continued their march,
and from that time he gradually recovered his health.566
The second is a case of stiffness in the knee effectually
cured: In 1798, Mrs. Jane Crabley, aged 56 years, began
to complain of a most torturing pain, and considerable enlargement
of the knee-pan, which she described as, and
which her neighbors believed to be, a smart paroxysm of
gout. Early in February, 1799, the inflammation and pain
entirely ceased, but the swelling continued, and rather increased.
The joint of the knee, from disuse, became perfectly
stiff, and, owing to the particular form and size of
her breasts, no relief could be gained by the use of crutches.
However, toward the end of May, the Ants became so
strangely troublesome to her, that she was sometimes obliged
to avail herself of the help of travelers to assist her in
changing her station. Still, however, they followed her, and
seemed entirely attracted by her now useless knee. She
was at first considerably annoyed by these little torments,
but, in a few days, became not only reconciled to their
intrusion, but was desirous of having her chair placed
where she imagined them most to abound, even giving them
freer access to her knee by turning down her stocking; for,
she said, “the cold numbness she suffered just around the
patella was eased and relieved by their bite; and that it was
even pleasurable;” and, strange to say, these insects bit her
nowhere else. The skin at first was pale and sallow, but
began now to assume a lively red color; a clear and subtile
liquid oozed from every puncture the Ants had left; the
swelling and stiffness of the joint gradually abated; and,
on the 25th of July, she walked home with the help of a
stick, and before winter perfectly recovered the use of her
limb.567
Says Plutarch, as translated by Holland: “The bear finding
herself upon fulness given to loth and distaste for food,
she goes to find out Ants’ nests, where she sits her down,
lilling out her tongue, which is glib and soft with a kind of
sweet and slimy humour, until it be full of Ants and their
egges, then draweth it she in again, swalloweth them down,
and thereby cureth her lothing stomack.”568
Also, in the Treasurie of Avncient and Moderne Times,
we find: “The Bear, being poysoned by the Hearbe named
Mandragoras, or Mandrake, doth purge his bodie by the
eating of Ants or Pismires.”569
M. Huber, initiated in the mysteries of the life of these
insects, and whose observations can be most relied on, has
made us acquainted with two of their maladies: one is a
species of vertigo, occasioned, as he thinks, by a too great
heat of the sun, and which transforms them for two or three
minutes into a sort of bacchantes; the other malady, much
more severe, causes them to lose the faculty of directing
themselves in a right line. These Ants turn in a very narrow
circle, and always in the same direction. A virgin
female, inclosed in a sand-box, and attacked by this mania,
made a thousand turns by the hour, describing a circle of
about an inch in diameter; it continued this operation for
seven days, and even during the night.570
Immense swarms of winged Ants are occasionally met
with, and some have been recorded of such prodigious density
and magnitude as to darken the air like a thick cloud,
and to cover the ground or water for a considerable extent
where they settled. We find in the memoirs of the Berlin
Academy a description of a remarkable swarm, observed by
M. Gleditch, which from afar produced an effect somewhat
similar to that of an Aurora Borealis, when, from the edge
of the cloud, shoot forth by jets many columns of flame and
vapor, many rays like lightning, but without its brilliancy.
Columns of Ants were coming and going here and there,
but always rising upward, with inconceivable rapidity. They
appeared to raise themselves above the clouds, to thicken
there, and become more and more obscure. Other columns
followed the preceding, raised themselves in like manner,
shooting forth many times with equal swiftness, or mounting
one after the other. Each column resembled a very slender
net-work, and exhibited a tremulous, undulating, and serpentine
motion. It was composed of an innumerable multitude
of little winged insects, altogether black, which were
continually ascending and descending in an irregular manner.571
A similar kind of Ants is spoken of by Mr. Accolutte,
a clergyman of Breslau, which resembled columns of
smoke, and which fell on the churches and tops of the
houses, where they could be gathered by handfuls. In the
German Ephemerides, Dr. Chas. Rayger gives an account
of a large swarm which crossed over the town of Posen, and
was directing its course toward the Danube. The whole
town was strewed with Ants, so that it was impossible to
walk without crushing thirty or forty at every step. And
more recently, Mr. Dorthes, in the Journal de Physique for
1790, relates the appearance of a similar phenomenon at
Montpellier. The shoals moved about in different directions,
having a singular intestine motion in each column,
and also a general motion of rotation. About sunset all
fell to the ground, and, on examining them, they were found
to belong to the Formica nigra of Linnæus.572
“In September, 1814,” says Dr. Bromley, surgeon of
the Clorinde, in a letter to Mr. MacLeay, “being on the deck
of the hulk to the Clorinde (then in the river Medway), my
attention was drawn to the water by the first lieutenant observing
there was something black floating down the tide.
On looking with a glass, I discovered they were insects.
The boat was sent, and brought a bucketful of them on
board; they proved to be a large species of Ant, and extended
from the upper part of Salt-pan Reach out toward
the Great Nore, a distance of five or six miles. The column
appeared to be in breadth eight or ten feet, and in height
about six inches, which I suppose must have been from their
resting one upon another.”573 Purchas seems to have witnessed
a similar phenomenon on shore. “Other sorts of
Ants,” says he, “there are many, of which some become
winged, and fill the air with swarms, which sometimes happens
in England. On Bartholomew, 1613, I was in the
island of Foulness, on our Essex shore, where were such
clouds of these flying pismires, that we could nowhere flee
from them, but they filled our clothes; yea, the floors of
some houses where they fell were in a manner covered with
a black carpet of creeping Ants, which they say drown
themselves about that time of the year in the sea.”574
When Colonel Sir Augustus Frazer, of the British horse-artillery,
was surveying, on the 6th of October, 1813, the
scene of the battle of the Pyrenees from the summit of the
mountain called Pena de Aya, or Les Quartres Couronnes,
he and his friends were enveloped by a swarm of Ants, so numerous
as entirely to intercept their view, so that they were
obliged to remove to another station in order to get rid of
them.575
“Not long since,” says Josselyn in his Voyage to New
England, London, 1674, “winged Ants were poured down
upon the Lands out of the clouds in a storm betwixt Blackpoint
and Saco, where the passenger might have walkt up
to the Ancles in them.”576
Wingless Ants, in swarms or armies, also migrate at particular
seasons; but for what purpose is not clear, except
to obtain better forage. In Guiana, Mr. Waterton says he
has met with a colony of a species of small Ant marching
in order, each having in its mouth a leaf; and the army extended
three miles in length, and was six feet broad.577
It is recorded by Oviedo and Herrera, that the whole
island of Hispaniola was almost abandoned in consequence
of the Sugar-Ant, Formica omnivora of Linnæus, which,
in 1518 and the two succeeding years, overran in such countless
myriads that island, devouring all vegetation, and causing
a famine which nearly depopulated the Spanish colony.
A tradition, says Schomburgk, prevails in Jamaica that the
town of Sevilla Nueva, which was founded by Esquivel in
the beginning of the sixteenth century, was entirely deserted
for a similar reason. Herrera relates that, in order
to get rid of this fearful scourge in Hispaniola, the priests
caused great processions and vows to be made in honor of
their patron saint, St. Saturnin, and that the day of this
saint was celebrated with great solemnities, and the Ants in
consequence began to disappear. How this saint was chosen,
we read in Purchas’s Pilgrims: “This miserie (caused by the
Ants) so perplexed the Spaniards, that they sought as strange
a remedie as was the disease, which was to chuse some Saint
for their Patron against the Antes. Alexander Giraldine,
the Bishop, having sung a solemne and Pontifical Masse,
after the consecration and Eleuation of the Sacrament, and
devout prayers made by him and the people, opened a
Booke in which was a Catalogue of the Saints, by lot to
chuse some he or she Saint, whom God should please to
appoint their Advocate against the Calamitie. And the
Lot fell vpon Saint Saturnine, whose Feast is on the nine
and twentieth of Nouember; after which the Ant damage
became more tolerable, and by little and little diminished,
by God’s mercie and intercession of that Saint.”578
These devouring Ants showed themselves about the year
1760 in Barbados, and caused such devastations that, in
the words of Dr. Coke, “it was deliberated whether that
island, formerly so flourishing, should not be deserted.” In
1763, Martinique was visited by these devastating hordes;
and about the year 1770 they made their appearance in the
island of Granada. Barbados, Granada, and Martinique
suffered more than any other islands from this plague.
Granada especially was reduced to a state of the most deplorable
desolation; for, it is said, their numbers there
were so immense that they covered the roads for many
miles together; and so crowded were they in many places
that the impressions made by the feet of horses, which traveled
over them, would remain visible but for a moment or
two, for they were almost instantly filled up by the surrounding
swarms. Mr. Schomburgk assures us that calves,
pigs, and chickens, when in a helpless state, were attacked
by such large numbers of these Ants that they perished, and
were soon reduced to skeletons when not timely assisted.
It is asserted by Dr. Coke that the greatest precaution was
requisite to prevent their attacks on men who were afflicted
with sores, on women who were confined, and on children
that were unable to assist themselves. Mr. Castle, from his
own observation, states that even burning coals laid in their
way, were extinguished by the amazing numbers which
rushed upon them.
Notwithstanding the myriads that were destroyed by fire,
water, poison, and other means, the devastations continued
to such an alarming extent, that in 1776 the government of
Martinique offered a reward of a million of their currency
for a remedy against this plague; and the legislature of
Granada offered £20,000 for the same object; but all attempts
proved ineffectual until the hurricane in 1780 effected
what human power had been unable to accomplish.
In 1814, the Ants again made their appearance in the
island of Barbados, doing considerable injury; but happily
they did not continue long.579
Malouet, in visiting the forests of Guiana, of which he
has spoken in his travels into that part of the globe, perceived
in the midst of a level savanna, as far as the eye
could reach, a hillock which he would have attributed to
the hand of man, if M. de Prefontaine, who accompanied
him, had not informed him that, in spite of its gigantic construction,
it was the work of black Ants of the largest species
(most probably of the genus Ponera). He proposed
to conduct him, not to the Ant-hill, where both of them
would infallibly have been devoured, but to the road of the
workers. M. Malouet did not approach within more than
forty paces of the habitation of these insects. It had the
form of a pyramid truncated at one-third of its height, and
he estimated that its elevation might be about fifteen or
twenty feet, on a basis of from thirty to forty. M. de Prefontaine
told him that the cultivators were obliged to abandon
a new establishment, when they had the misfortune to meet
with one of these fortresses, unless they had sufficient
strength to form a regular siege. This even occurred to
M. de Prefontaine himself on his first encampment at
Kourva. He was desirous of forming a second a little farther
on, and perceived upon the soil a mound of earth similar
to that which we have just described. He caused a circular
trench to be hollowed, which he filled with a great
quantity of dry wood, and, after having set fire to it in
every point of its circumference, he attacked the Ant-hill
with a train of artillery. Thus every issue was closed to
the hostile army, which, to escape from the invasion of the
flames and the shaking and plowing of the ground by the
cannon-balls, was obliged to traverse, in its retreat, a trench
filled with fire, where it was entirely cut off.580
The Portuguese found such prodigious numbers of Ants
upon their first landing at Brazil, that they called them Rey
de Brazil, King of Brazil, a name which they now there
bear.581
Mr. Southey states, on the authority of Manoel Felix, that
the Red-ants devoured the cloths of the altar in the Convent
of S. Antonio, or S. Luiz (Maranham, Brazil), and also
brought up into the church pieces of shrouds from the
graves; whereupon the friars prosecuted them according to
due form of ecclesiastical law. What the sentence was in
this case, we are unable to learn. A similar case, however,
the historian informs us, had occurred in the Franciscan
Convent at Avignon, where the Ants did so much mischief
that a suit was instituted against them, and they were excommunicated,
and ordered by the friars, in pursuance of
their sentence, to remove within three days to a place assigned
them in the center of the earth. The Canonical
account gravely adds, that the Ants obeyed, and carried
away all their young, and all their stores.582
Annius writes, that an ancient city situate near the Volscian
Lake, and called Contenebra, was in times past overthrown
by Ants, and that the place was thereupon commonly
called to his day, “the camp of the Ants.”583
Ctesias makes mention “of a horse-pismire (i.e. the bigger
kind of them in hollow trees) which was fed by the Magi,
till hee grew to such a vast bulke as to devour two pound
of flesh a daye.”584
Martial has written the following beautiful epigram on
an Ant inclosed in amber: “While an Ant was wandering
under the shade of the tree of Phaeton, a drop of amber
enveloped the tiny insect; thus she, who in life was disregarded,
became precious by death.
“A drop of amber from the weeping plant,
Fell unexpected and embalmed an Ant;
The little insect we so much contemn
Is, from a worthless Ant, become a gem.”
585
It has been said, remarks Mr. Southey, and regarded as a
vulgar error, that Ants cannot pass over a line of chalk: the
fact, however, is certain. Mr. Coleridge tried the experiment
at Malta, he continues, and immediately discovered
the cause: The formic acid is so powerful, that it acts upon
the chalk, and the legs of the insect are burnt by the instantaneous
effervescence!586
Paxamus says, that if you take some Ants and burn them,
you will drive away the others, as experience has taught us.
Ants also, he continues, will not touch a vessel with honey,
although the vessel may happen to be without its cover, if
you wrap it in white wool, or if you scatter white earth or
ruddle round it. If a person, continues Paxamus, takes a
grain of wheat carried by an Ant with the thumb of his left
hand, and lays it in a skin of Phœnician dye, and ties it
round the head of his wife, it will prove to be the cause of
abortion in a state of gestation.587
Pliny says the proper remedy for the venom of the Solipuga
or Solpuga Ant, and for that of all kinds of Ants, is a
bat’s heart.588
Callicrates used to make Ants, and other such little creatures,
out of ivory, with so much skill and ingenuity that
other men could not discern the counterfeits from the originals
even with the help of glasses.589
Concerning the generation of the Wasp, Topsel and Moufet
have the following: “Isidore affirms that Wasps come out
of the putrefied carkasses of asses, although he may be mistaken,
for all agree that the Scarabees are procreated from
them: rather am I of opinion with Pliny, 1. ii. c. 20, and
the Greek authors, that they are sprung from the dead
bodies of horses, for the horse is a valiant and warlike
creature, hence is that verse frequently and commonly used
among the Greeks:
Wasps come from horses, Bees from bulls are bred.
And indeed their more than ordinary swiftnesse and their
eagernesse in fight, are sufficient arguments that they can
take their original from no other creature (much less from
an asse, hart, or oxe) since that Nature never granted to
any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness and valour.
And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb
of Aristotle,
Hail the daughters of the wing-footed steed:
this would I suppose fit to be spoken in way of jest and
scorn to scolding women, which do imitate the hastiness and
froward disposition of the Wasp. Other sorts of them are
produced out of the putrid corps of the Crocodiles, if Horus
and the Ægyptians be to be believed, for which reason when
they mean a Wasp, they set it forth by an horse or crocodile.
Nicander gives them the name lukosnoadon, because
they sometimes come from the dead carkasses of wolves.
Bellenacensis and Vicentius say, that Wasps come out of
the putrefaction of an old deer’s head, flying sometimes out
of the eyes, sometimes out of the nostrils.… There are
those also that affirm that Wasps are begotten of the earth
and rottenness of some kind of fruits, as Albertus and the
Arabick scholiast.”
Of the Hornet, likewise, these writers tell the following
fabulous stories: “The Latins call the Hornets Crabrones,
perchance from the village Crabra in the countrey of Tusculum
(where there are great store of them), or from the
word Caballus, i.e. a horse, who is said to be their father.
According to that of Ovid, Met. 15:
The warlike horse if buried under ground,
Shortly a brood of Hornets will be found.
Albertus calls it a yellow Bee. Cardanus will needs have
them to arise from the dead mule. Plutarch, in the life of
Cleomedes, saith they come out of horse flesh, as the Bees
do out of the oxe his paunch. Virgil saith they are produced
of the asse.… I conceive that those are produced
of the harder flesh of the horse, and the Wasps of the more
tender flesh.”590
The Hornet (but whether or not it was the common
species, Vespa crabro, Linn., is uncertain), we learn from
Scriptures was employed by Providence to drive out the
impious inhabitants of Canaan, and subdue them under the
hand of the Israelites.—“And I sent the Hornet before you,
which drave them out before you, even the two kings of the
Amorites.”591
In the second volume of Lieutenant Holman’s Travels,
the following anecdote is related: “Eight miles from Grandie——,
the muleteers suddenly called out ‘Marambundas!
Marambundas!’ which indicated the approach of Wasps.
In a moment all the animals, whether loaded or otherwise,
lay down on their backs, kicking most violently; while the
blacks, and all persons not already attacked, ran away in
different directions, all being careful, by a wide sweep, to
avoid the swarms of tormentors that came forward like a
cloud. I never witnessed a panic so sudden and complete,
and really believe that the bursting of a water-spout could
hardly have produced more commotion. However, it must
be confessed that the alarm was not without good reason,
for so severe is the torture inflicted by these pigmy assailants,
that the bravest travelers are not ashamed to fly, the
instant they perceive the host approaching, which is of common
occurrence on the Campos.”592
Dr. Fairfax, in the Philosophical Transactions, mentions
a lady, who had such a horror of Wasps, that during the
season in which they abound in houses, she always confined
herself to her apartment.593
Dr. James tells us: “The combs (of the Hornet) are
recommended in a drench for that disorder in horses, which
Vigetius, L. 2, c. 23, calls scrofula, meaning, I believe, what
we call the strangles.”594
Hornets’-nest is smoked under horses’ noses for distemper,
cold in the head, and such like diseases. It is also given to
horses in their feed for thick-windedness.
The nests of Hornets are gathered by the country people
to clean spectacles.
Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents,
has the following prognostications of the weather from the
appearances of Hornets: “They serve instead of good
almanacks to countrey people, to foretel tempests and
change of weather, as hail, rain, and snow: for if they flie
about in greater numbers, and be oftner seen about any
place, then usually they are wont, it is a signe of heat and
fair weather the next day. But if about twilight they are
observed to enter often their nests, as though they would
hide themselves, you must the next day expect rain, winde,
or some stormy, troublesome or boysterous season: whereupon
Avienus hath these verses:
So if the buzzing troups of Hornets hoarse to flie,
In spacious air ’bout Autumn’s end you see,
When Virgil star the evening lamp espie,
Then from the sea some stormy tempest sure shall be.”
595
“In the year 190, before the birth of Christ,” say Moufet
and Topsel, “as Julius witnesseth, an infinite multitude of
Wasps flew into the market at Capua, and sate in the temple
of Mars, they were with great diligence taken and burnt
solemnly, yet they did foreshew the coming of the enemy
and the burning of the city.”596
The first Wasp seen in the season should always be killed.
By so doing, you secure to yourself good luck and freedom
from enemies throughout the year.597 This is an English
superstition, and it prevails in parts of America. We have
one, also, directly opposed to it, namely, that the first Wasp
seen in the season should not be killed if you wish to secure
to yourself good luck. Many of our people, too, will kill a
Wasp at no time, for, if killed, they say, it will bring upon
them bad luck.
If a Wasp stings you, our superstitious think that your
foes will get the advantage of you.
If the first Wasp seen in the season be seen in your house,
it is a sign that you will form an unpleasant acquaintance.
If the first Bee seen in the season be seen in your house, it
is a sign you will form a pleasant and useful acquaintance.
This arose doubtless from the apparent uselessness of the
former, and worth of the latter insect.
Wasps building in a house foretell the coming to want of
the family occupying it. Likewise arose from the unthriftiness
of this insect.
If Hornets build high, the winter will be dry and mild;
if low, cold and stormy. This is firmly believed in Virginia;
and the idea seems to be, that if the nest is built high it will
be more exposed to the wind than if built low.
That a person may not be stung by Wasps, Paxamus says:
“Let the person be rubbed with the juice of wild-mallow,
and he will not be stung.”598
The Creoles of Mauritius eat the larvæ of Wasps, which
they roast in the combs. In taking the nests, they drive off
the Wasps by means of a burning rag fastened to the end of
a stick. The combs are sold at the bazaar of Port Louis.599
The following story, of the cunning of the fox in killing
the Wasps to obtain their combs, is told by Ælian: “The
fox (a subtile creature) is said to prey upon the Wasp in
this manner: he puts his tail into the Wasps’ nest so long
till it be all covered with Wasps, which he espying, pulls it
out and beats them against the next stone or tree he meets
withall till they be all dead, this being done again and again
till all the Wasps be destroyed, he sets upon their combs
and devours them.”600
The Chinese Herbal contains a singular notion, prevalent
also in India, concerning the generation of the Sphex, or
solitary Wasp. When the female lays her eggs in the
clayey nidus she makes in houses, she incloses the dead
body of a caterpillar in it for the subsistence of the worms
when they are hatched. Those who observed her entombing
the caterpillar did not look for the eggs, and immediately
concluded that the Sphex took the worm for the progeny,
and say, that as she plastered up the hole of the nest, she
hummed a constant song over it, saying, “Class with me!
class with me!”—and the transformation gradually took
place, and was perfected in its silent grave by the next
spring, when a winged Wasp emerged, to continue its posterity
the coming autumn in the same mysterious way.601
Concerning the piety of Bees, we find the following
legends:
“A certaine simple woman having some stals of Bees which
yeelded not vnto her hir desired profit, but did consume and
die of the murraine; made her mone to another woman more
simple than hir selfe: who gave her councel to get a consecrated
host or round Godamighty and put it among them.
According to whose advice she went to the priest to receive
the host; which when she had done, she kept it in hir month,
and being come home againe she tooke it out and put it into
one of hir hives. Wherevpon the murraine ceased, and the
honey abounded. The woman therefore lifting vp the hive
at the due time to take out the honie, sawe there (most
strange to be seene) a chapel built by the Bees with an altar
in it, the wals adorned by marvelous skil of architecture with
windowes conveniently set in their places: also a dore and a
steeple with bels. And the host being laid vpon the altar,
the Bees making a sweet noise flew round about it.”602
Mr. Hawker’s legend is to this effect: A Cornish woman,
one summer, finding her Bees refused to leave their “cloistered
home” and had “ceased to play around the cottage flowers,”
concealed a portion of the Holy Eucharist which she obtained
at church:
She bore it to her distant home,
She laid it by the hive
To lure the wanderers forth to roam,
That so her store might thrive;—
’Twas a wild wish, a thought unblest,
Some evil legend of the west.
But lo! at morning-tide a sign
For wondering eyes to trace,
They found above that Bread, a shrine
Rear’d by the harmless race!
They brought their walls from bud and flower,
They built bright roof and beamy tower!
Was it a dream? or did they hear
Float from those golden cells
A sound, as of a psaltery near,
Or soft and silvery bells?
A low sweet psalm, that grieved within
In mournful memory of the sin!
603
The following passage, from Howell’s Parley of Beasts,
furnishes a similar legend of the piety of Bees. Bee
speaks:
“Know, sir, that we have also a religion as well as you, and
so exact a government among us here; our hummings you
speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature;
and there is a miraculous example in Cæsarius Cisterniensis,
of some of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a meadow by
a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body; a
swarm of Bees hard-by took It up, and in a solemn kind of
procession carried It to their hive, and their erected an
altar of the purest wax for it, where it was found in that
form, and untouched.”604
Butler, quoting Thomas Bozius, tells us the following:
“Certaine theeves (thieves) having stolen the silver boxe
wherein the wafer-Gods vse to lie, and finding one of them
there being loath, belike, that he should lie abroad all night,
did not cast him away, but laid him under a hive: whom the
Bees acknowledging advanced to a high roome in the hive,
and there insteade of his silver boxe made him another of
the whitest wax: and when they had so done, in worshippe
of him, and set howres they sang most sweetly beyond all
measure about it: yea the owner of them took them at it at
midnight with a light and al. Wherewith the bishop being
made acquainted, came thither with many others: and lifting
vp the hive he sawe there neere the top a most fine boxe,
wherein the host was laid, and the quires of Bees singing
about it, and keeping watch in the night, as monkes do in
their cloisters. The bishop therefore taking the host, carried
it with the greater honour into the church: whether
many resorting were cured of innumerable diseases.”605
Another legend, from the School of the Eucharist, is as
follows:
“A peasant swayed by a covetous mind, being communicated
on Easter-Day, received the Host in his mouth, and
afterwards laid it among his bees, believing that all the Bees
of the neighborhood would come thither to work their wax
and honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not wholly
disappointed of his hopes; for all his neighbors’ Bees came
indeed to his hives, but not to make honey, but to render
there the honours due to the Creator. The issue of their
arrival was that they melodiously sang to Him songs of
praise as they were able; after that they built a little church
with their wax from the foundations to the roof, divided into
three rooms, sustained by pillars, with their bases and chapiters.
They had there also an Altar, upon which they had
laid the precious Body of our Lord, and flew round about
it, continuing their musick. The peasant … coming nigh
that hive where he had put the H. Sacrament, the Bees issued
out furiously by troops, and surrounding him on all
sides, revenged the irreverence done to their Creator, and
stung him so severely that they left him in a sad case. This
punishment made this miserable wretch come to himself, who,
acknowledging his error, went to find out the parish priest to
confess his fault to him.…” etc.606
We quote also another from the School of the Eucharist:
“A certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France,
perceiving that his Bees were likely to die, to prevent this
misfortune, was advised, after he had received the communion,
to reserve the Host, and to blow it into one of the
hives. As he tried to do it, the Host fell on the ground.
Behold now a wonder! On a sudden all the Bees came
forth out of their hives, and ranging themselves in good order,
lifted the Host from the ground, and carrying it in
upon their wings, placed it among the combes. After this
the man went out about his business, and at his return found
that this advice had succeeded ill, for all his Bees were
dead.…”607
We will close this series of legends with one from the
Lives of the Saints:
“When a thief by night had stolen St. Medard’s Bees,
they, in their master’s quarrel, leaving their hive, set upon
the malefactor, and eagerly pursuing him which way soever
he ran, would not cease stinging of him until they had made
him (whether he would or no) to go back again to their
master’s house; and there, falling prostrate at his feet, submissly
to cry him mercy for the crime committed. Which
being done, so soon as the Saint extended unto him the
hand of benediction, the Bees, like obedient servants, did
forthwith stay from persecuting him, and evidently yielded
themselves to the ancient possession and custody of their
master.”608
By the Greeks, Bees were accounted an omen of future
eloquence;609 the soothsayers of the Romans, however, deemed
them always of evil augury.610 They afforded also to the
Romans presages of public interest, “clustering, as they
do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; presages,
in fact, that are often accounted for by great events.”611
The instances of happy omens afforded by swarms of Bees
are the following:
“It is said of Pindar,” we read in Pausanias’ History of
Greece, “that when he was a young man, as he was going
to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and
in the height of summer, he fell asleep at a small distance
from the public road; and that Bees, as he was asleep, flew
to him and wrought their honey on his lips. This circumstance
first induced Pindar to compose verses.”612
A similar incident is mentioned in the life of Plato:
“Whilst Plato was yet an infant carried in the arms of
his mother Perictione, Aristo his father went to Hymettus
(a mountain in Attica eminent for abundance of Bees and
Honey) to sacrifice to the Muses or Nymphs, taking his
Wife and Child along with him; as they were busied in the
Divine Rites, she laid the Child in a Thicket of Myrtles hard
by; to whom, as he slept (in cunis dormienti) came a
Swarm of Bees, Artists of Hymettian Honey, flying and
buzzing about him, and (as it is reported) made a Honeycomb
in his mouth. This was taken for a presage of the
singular sweetness of his discourse; his future Eloquence
foreseen in his infancy.”613
From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we have the following:
“The birth of St. Ambrose happened about the year 340
B.C., and whilst the child lay asleep in one of the courts of
his father’s palace, a swarm of Bees flew about his cradle,
and some of them even crept in and out at his mouth, which
was open; and at last mounted up into the air so high, that
they quite vanished out of sight. This,” concludes the
Reverend Alban, “was esteemed a presage of future greatness
and eloquence.”614
Another instance is mentioned in the Feminine Monarchie,
printed at Oxford in 1634, p. 22.
“When Ludovicus Vives was sent by Cardinal Wolsey
to Oxford, there to be a public professor of Rhetoric, being
placed in the College of Bees, he was welcomed thither by a
swarm of Bees; which sweet creatures, to signifie the incomparable
sweetnesse of his eloquence, settled themselves over
his head, under the leads of his study, where they have continued
to this day.… How sweetly did all things then
accord, when in this neat μουσαῖον newly consecrated to the
Muses, the Muses’ sweetest favorite was thus honoured by
the Muses’ birds.”615
Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, and Topsel, in almost
the same words in his History of Four-footed Beasts and
Serpents, gives the following list of remarkable omens
drawn from Bees:
“Whereas the most high God did create all other creatures
for our use; so especially the Bees, not only that as
mistresses they might hold forth to us a patern of politick
and œconomic vertues, and inform our understanding; but
that they might be able as extraordinary foretellers, to foreshew
the success and event of things to come; for in the
years 90, 98, 113, 208, before the birth of Christ, when as
mighty huge swarms of Bees did settle in the chief market-place,
and in the beast-market upon private citizens’ houses,
and on the temple of Mars, there were at that time stratagems
of enemies against Rome, wherewith the whole state
was like to be surprised and destroyed. In the reign of
Severus, the Bees made combes in his military ensigns, and
especially in the camp of Niger. Divers wars upon this
ensued between both the parties of Severus and Niger, and
battels of doubtful event, while at length the Severian faction
prevailed. The statues also of Antonius Pius placed
here and there all over Hetruria, were all covered with
swarms of Bees; and after that settled in the camp of
Cassius; what great commotions after followed Julius
Capitolinus relates in his history. At what time also,
through the treachery of the Germans in Germany, there
was a mighty slaughter and overthrow of the Romans. P.
Fabius, and Q. Elius being consuls in the camp of Drusus
in the tent of Hostilius Rutilus, a swarm of Bees is reported
to have sate so thick, that they covered the rope and
the spear that held up the tent. M. Lepidus, and Munat.
Plancus being consuls, as also in the consulship of L. Paulus,
and C. Metellus, swarms of Bees flying to Rome (as the
augurs very well conjectured) did foretell the near approach
of the enemy. Pompey likewise making war against Cæsar,
when he had called his allies together, he set his army in
order as he went out of Dyrrachium, Bees met him and sate
so thick upon his ensigns that they could not be seen what
they were. Philistus and Ælian relate, that while Dionysius
the tyrant did in vain spur his horse that stuck in the
mire, and there at length left him, the horse quitting himself
by his own strength, did follow after his master the same
way he went with a swarm of Bees sticking on his mane;
intimating by that prodigy that tyrannical government which
Dionysius affected over the Galeotæ. In the Helvetian
History we read, that in the year 1385, when Leopoldus of
Austria began to march towards Sempachum with his army,
a swarm of Bees flew to the town and there sate upon the
tyles; whereby the common people rightly foretold that
some forain force was marching towards them. So Virgil,
in 7 Æneid:
The Bees flew buzzing through the liquid air:
And pitcht upon the top o’ th’ laurel tree;
When the Soothsayers saw this sight full rare,
They did foretell th’ approach of th’ enemie.
That which Herodotus, Pausanias, Dio Cassius, Plutarch,
Julius Cæsar, Julius Capitolinus, and other historians with
greater observation then reason have confirmed. Saon
Acrephniensis, when he could by no means finde the oracle
Trophonius; Pausanias in his œticks saith he was lead
thither by a swarm of Bees. Moreover, Plutarch, Pausanias,
Ælian, Alex. Alexandrinus, Theocritus and Textor are
authors that Jupiter Melitæus, Hiero of Syracuse, Plato,
Pindar, Apius Comatus, Xenophon, and last of all Ambrose,
when their nurses were absent, had honey dropt into their
mouths by Bees, and so were preserved.”616
In East Norfolk, England, if Bees swarm on rotten wood,
it is considered portentous of a death in the family.617 This
superstition is as old at least as the time of Gay, for, among
the signs that foreshadowed the death of Blonzelind, it is
mentioned:
Swarmed on a rotten stick the Bees I spy’d
Which erst I saw when Goody Dobson dy’d.
618
In Ireland, the mere swarming of Bees is looked upon as
prognosticating a death in the family of the owner.
In parts of England it is believed, that if a swarm of
Bees come to a house, and are not claimed by their owner,
there will be a death in the family that hives them.619
It is a very ancient superstition that Bees, by their acute
sense of smell, quickly detect an unchaste woman, and strive
to make her infamy known by stinging her immediately. In
a pastoral of Theocritus, the shepherd in a pleasant mood
tells Venus to go away to Anchises to be well stung by Bees
for her lewd behavior.
Now go thy way to Ida mount—
Go to Anchises now,
Where mighty oaks, where banks along
Of square Cypirus grow,
Where hives and hollow trunks of trees,
With honey sweet abound,
Where all the place with humming noise
Of busie Bees resound.
Incontinence in men, as well as unchastity in women, was
thought to be punished by these little insects. Thus in the
lines of Pindarus:
Thou painful Bee, thou pretty creature,
Who honey-combs six angled, as the be,
With feet doest frame, false Phœcus and impure,
With sting has prickt for his lewd villany.
620
Pliny says: “Certain it is, that if a menstruous woman do
no more but touch a Bee-hive, all the Bees will be gone and
never more come to it again.”621
In Western Pennsylvania, it is believed that Bees will invariably
sting red-haired persons as soon as they approach
the hives.
It is a common opinion that Bees in rough and boisterous
weather, and particularly in a violent storm, carry a stone
in their legs, in order to preserve themselves by its weight
against the power of the wind. Its antiquity is also great,
for in the writings of Plutarch we find an instance of this
remarkable wisdom. “The Bees of Candi,” says this philosopher,
“being about to double a point or cape lying into
the sea, which is much exposed to the winds, they ballase
(ballast) themselves with small grit or petty stones, for to
be able to endure the weather, and not be carried away
against their wills with the winds through their lightness
otherwise.”622
Virgil, too, about a century earlier, mentions this curious
notion in the following lines:
And as when empty barks on billows float,
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat;
So Bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight
Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight.
623
Swammerdam, who has noticed this belief of the ancients,
makes the following remarks: “But this, as Clutius justly
observes, has not been hitherto remarked by any Bee-keeper,
nor indeed have I myself ever seen it. Yet I should think
that there may be some truth in this matter, and probably
a certain observation, which I shall presently mention, has
given rise to the story. There is a species of wild Bees not
unlike the smallest kind of the Humble-Bee, which, as they
are accustomed to build their nests near stone walls, and
construct their habitations of stone and clay, sometimes carry
such large stones that it is scarcely credible by what means
so tender insects can sustain so great a load, and that even
flying while they are obliged also to support their own body.
Their nest by this means is often so heavy as to weigh one
or two pounds.”624
It was the general opinion of antiquity that Bees were
produced from the putrid bodies of cattle. Varro says they
are called Βουγόναι by the Greeks, because they arise from
petrified bullocks. In another place he mentions their
rising from these putrid animals, and quotes the authority
of Archelaus, who says Bees proceed from bullocks, and
wasps from horses.625 Virgil, however, is much more satisfactory,
for he gives us the recipe in all its details for producing
these insects:
First, in a place, by nature close, they build
A narrow flooring, gutter’d, wall’d, and til’d.
In this, four windows are contriv’d, that strike
To the four winds oppos’d, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose head
Now first with burnished horns begins to spread:
They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain
To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain.
Knock’d down, he dies: his bowels bruis’d within,
Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.
Extended thus, in his obscene abode,
They leave the beast; but first sweet flowers are strow’d
Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing Cassia, just renew’d in prime.
This must be done, ere spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play;
Ere painted meads produce their flowery crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and thro’ the bones ferment.
Then wond’rous to behold, new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;
Till shooting out with legs, and imp’d with wings,
The grubs proceed to Bees with pointed stings:
And more and more affecting air, they try
Their tender pinions and begin to fly.
626
This absurd notion was also promulgated by the great
English chronicler, Hollingshed; for, says this author,
“Hornets, waspes, Bees, and such like, whereof we have
great store, and of which an opinion is conceived, that the
first doo breed of the corruption of dead horses, the second
of pears and apples corrupted, and the last of kine and
oxen; which may be true, especiallie the first and latter in
some parts of the beast, and not their whole substances, as
also in the second, sith we never have waspes but when our
fruit beginneth to wax ripe.”627
To conclude the history of this belief, the following remarks
of the learned Swammerdam will not be inappropriate.
He says: “It is probable that the not rightly understanding
Samson’s adventure of the Lion, gave rise to the
popular opinion of Bees springing from dead Lions, Oxen,
and Horses; and this opinion may have been considerably
strengthened, and indeed in a manner confirmed, by the
great number of Worms that are often found during the
summer months in the carcasses of such animals, especially
as these Worms somewhat resemble those produced from
the eggs of Bees. However ridiculous this opinion must
appear, many great men have not been ashamed to adopt
and defend it. The industrious Goedaert has ventured to
ascribe the origin of Bees to certain dunghill Worms, and
the learned de Mei joins with him in this opinion; though
neither of them had any observation to ground their belief
upon, but that of the external resemblance between the Bee
and a certain kind of Fly produced from these Worms.”628
The opinion that stolen Bees will not thrive, but pine away
and die, is almost universal.629 It is, too, of reverend antiquity,
for Pliny mentions it: “It is a common received
opinion, that Rue will grow the better if it be filched out of
another man’s garden; and it is as ordinarie a saying that
stolen Bees will thrive worst.”630
In South Northamptonshire, England, there is a superstition
that Bees will not thrive in a quarrelsome family.631
It might be well to promulgate this and the next preceding
superstition. This prevails among us.
In Hampshire, England, it is a common saying that Bees
are idle or unfortunate at their work whenever there are
wars. A very curious observer and fancier says that this
has been the case from the time of the movements in France,
Prussia, and Hungary, up to the present time.632
In Bishopsbourne, England, there prevails the singular
superstition of informing the Bees of any great public event
that takes place, else they will not thrive so well.633
In Monmouthshire, England, the peasantry entertain so
great a veneration for their Bees, that, says Bucke, some
years since, they were accustomed to go to their hives on
Christmas eve at twelve o’clock, in order to listen to their
humming; which elicited, as they believed, a much more
agreeable music than at any other period; since, at that
time, they celebrated, in the best manner they could, the
morning of Christ’s nativity.634
Sampson, in his Statistical Survey of the County of Londonderry,
1802, p. 436, says that there “Bees must not be
given away, but sold; otherwise neither the giver nor the
taker will have luck.”635
A clergyman in Devonshire, England, informs us that
when any Devonian makes a purchase of Bees, the payment
is never made in money, but in things (corn, for instance)
to the value of the sum agreed upon; and the Bees are
never removed but on a Good Friday.636 In western Pennsylvania,
it is thought by some of the old farmers that the
vender of the Bees must be away from home when the hive
is taken away, else the Bees will not thrive.
Another superstition is that if a swarm of Bees be met
with in an open field away from any house, it is useless to
hive them, for they will never do a bit of good.
In many parts of England, a popular opinion is that
when Bees remove or go away from their hives, the owner
of them will die soon after.637
It is commonly believed among us that if Bees come to a
house, it forebodes good luck and prosperity; and, on the
contrary, if they go away, bad luck.
A North German custom and superstition is, that if the
master of the house dies, a person must go to the Beehive,
knock, and repeat these words: “The master is dead, the
master is dead,” else the Bees will fly away.638 This superstition
prevails also in England, Lithuania, and in France.639
[Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenæum,
quoted by Brande, a gentleman at a dinner table
happened to mention that he was surprised, on the death of
a relative, by his servant inquiring “whether his master
would inform the Bees of the event, or whether he should
do so.” On asking the meaning of so strange a question,
the servant assured him that Bees ought always to be informed
of a death in a family, or they would resent the
neglect by deserting the hive. This gentleman resides in
the Isle of Ely, and the anecdote was told in Suffolk; and
one of the party present, a few days afterward, took the
opportunity of testing the prevalence of this strange notion
by inquiring of a cottager who had lately lost a relative,
and happened to complain of the loss of her Bees, “whether
she had told them all she ought to do?” She immediately
replied, “Oh, yes; when my aunt died I told every skep
(i.e. hive) myself, and put them.…
“Into mourning.” I have since ascertained the existence
of the same superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire (where I
have seen black crape put round the hive, or on a small
black stick by its side), and Yorkshire. It probably exists
in every part of the kingdom.… The mode of
communicating is by whispering the fact to each hive separately.…
In Oxford I was told that if a man and wife
quarreled, the Bees would leave them.]640
“In some parts of Suffolk,” says Bucke, “the peasants
believe, when any member of their family dies, that, unless
the Bees are put in mourning by placing a piece of black
cloth, cotton or silk, on the top of the hives, the Bees will
either die or fly away.
“In Lithuania, when the master or mistress dies, one of
the first duties performed is that of giving notice to the
Bees, by rattling the keys of the house at the doors of their
hives. Unless this be done, the Lithuanians imagine the
cattle will die; the Bees themselves perish, and the trees
wither.”641
At Bradfield, if Bees are not invited to funerals, it is believed
they will die.642
In the Living Librarie, Englished by John Molle, 1621,
p. 283, we read: “Who would beleeve without superstition
(if experience did not make it credible), that most commonly
all the Bees die in their hives, if the master or mistress of
the house chance to die, except the hives be presently removed
into some other place? And yet I know this hath
hapned to folke no way stained with superstition.”643
A similar superstition is, that Beehives belonging to deceased
persons should be turned over the moment when the
corpse is taken out of the house.644 No consequence is given
for the non-performance of this rite.
The following item is clipped from the Argus, a London
newspaper, printed Sept. 13, 1790: “A superstitious custom
prevails at every funeral in Devonshire, of turning round the
Bee-hives that belonged to the deceased, if he had any, and
that at the moment the corpse is carrying out of the house.
At a funeral some time since, at Columpton, of a rich old
farmer, a laughable circumstance of this sort occurred: for,
just as the corpse was placed in the hearse, and the horsemen,
to a large number, were drawn in order for the procession
of the funeral, a person called out, ‘Turn the Bees,’
when a servant who had no knowledge of such a custom,
instead of turning the hives about, lifted them up, and then
laid them down on their sides. The Bees, thus hastily invaded,
instantly attacked and fastened on the horses and
their riders. It was in vain they galloped off, the Bees as
precipitately followed, and left their stings as marks of indignation.
A general confusion took place, attended with
loss of hats, wigs, etc., and the corpse during the conflict
was left unattended; nor was it till after a considerable
time that the funeral attendants could be rallied, in order to
proceed to the interment of their deceased friend.”645
After the death of a member of a family, it has frequently
been asserted that the Bees sometimes take their
loss so much to heart as to alight upon the coffin whenever
it is exposed. A clergyman told Langstroth, that he attended
a funeral, where, as soon as the coffin was brought
from the house, the Bees gathered upon it so as to excite
much alarm. Some years after this occurrence, being engaged
in varnishing a table, the Bees alighted upon it in
such numbers as to convince the reverend gentleman that
love of varnish, rather than sorrow or respect for the dead,
was the occasion of their conduct at the funeral.646
The following is an extract from a Tour through Brittany,
published in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, vol. ii.
p. 215: “If there are Bees kept at the house where a marriage
feast is celebrated, care is always taken to dress up
their hives in red, which is done by placing upon them
pieces of scarlet cloth, or one of some such bright color;
the Bretons imagining that the Bees would forsake their
dwellings if they were not made to participate in the rejoicings
of their owners: in like manner they are all put
into mourning when a death occurs in a family.”647
In the Magazine of Natural History we find the following
instance of singing psalms to Bees to make them thrive:
“When in Bedfordshire lately, we were informed of an old
man who sang a psalm last year in front of some hives
which were not doing well, but which, he said, would thrive
in consequence of that ceremony. Our informant could not
state whether this was a local or individual superstition.”648
It is commonly said that if you sing to your Bees before
they swarm, it will prevent their leaving your premises
when they do swarm.
Peter Rotharmel, a western Pennsylvanian, had a singular
notion that no man could have at one time a hundred
hives of Bees. He declared he had often as many as ninety-nine,
but could never add another to them.649 I have since
learned that this is not an individual superstition, but one
that pretty generally prevails.
The Apiarians of Bedfordshire, England, have a custom
of, as they call it, ringing their swarms with the door-key and
the frying-pan; and if a swarm settles on another’s premises,
it is irrecoverable by the owner, unless he can prove the
ringing, but it becomes the property of that person upon
whose premises it settles.650
The practice of beating pans, and making a great noise
to induce a swarm of Bees to settle, is, at least, as old as
the time of Virgil. He thus mentions it:
But when thou seest a swarming cloud arise,
That sweeps aloft, and darkens all the skies:
The motions of their hasty flight attend;
And know to floods, or woods, their airy march they bend.
Then melfoil beat, and honey-suckles pound,
With these alluring savors strew the ground,
And mix with tinkling brass the cymbal’s drowning sound.
651
But concerning this practice, Langstroth says: “It is probably
not a whit more efficacious than the hideous noises of
some savage tribes, who, imagining that the sun, in an
eclipse, has been swallowed by an enormous dragon, resort
to such means to compel his snakeship to disgorge their
favorite luminary.”652
Dr. Toner, the author of that very interesting little work,
“Maternal Instinct or Love,” informs me that when a boy
he witnessed a mode of alluring a swarm of Bees to settle,
performed by a German man and his wife, which struck him
at the time as being remarkable, and which was as follows:
Having first put some pig-manure upon the hive into which
they wished the Bees to go, they ran to and fro under the
swarm, singing a monotonous German hymn; and this they
continued till the Bees were settled and hived.
Another strange mode of alluring Bees into a new hive is
practiced near Gloucester, England, but only when all the
usual ways of preparing hives fail; it is this: When a swarm
is to be hived, instead of moistening the inside of the hive
with honey, or sugar and water, the Bee-master throws into
it, inverted, about a pint of beans, which he causes a sow to
devour, and immediately then, it is said, will the Bees take
to it.653
Pliny, as follows, incidentally mentions another curious
mode of preparing the hives to best suit the Bees: “Touching
Baulme, which the Greeks call Melittis or Melissophyllon:
if Bee-hives be rubbed all over and besmeared with the
juice thereof, the Bees will never go away; for there is
not a flower whereof they be more desirous and faine than
of it.”654
Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 168, tells us of
another strange practice in the hiving of Bees. He says:
“The Cornish, to this day, invoke the spirit of Browny,
when their Bees swarm; and they think that their crying
Browny, Browny, will prevent them from returning into
the former hive, and make them pitch and form a new
colony.”655
The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., has devised
an amusing plan, by which he says he can, at all times, prevent
a swarm of Bees from leaving his premises. Before his
stocks swarm, he collects a number of dead Bees, and, stringing
them with a needle and thread, as worms are strung for
catching eels, makes of them a ball about the size of an egg,
leaving a few strands loose. By carrying—fastened to a
pole—this “Bee-bob” about his Apiary, when the Bees are
swarming, or by placing it in some central position, he invariably
secures every swarm.656
The barbarous practice of killing Bees for their honey,
not yet entirely abolished, did not exist in the time of Aristotle,
Varro, Columella, and Pliny. The old cultivators
took only what their Bees could spare, killing no stocks except
such as were feeble or diseased. The following epitaph,
taken from a German work, might well be placed over every
pit of these brimstoned insects:
Here Rests,
CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR,
A COLONY OF
INDUSTRIOUS BEES,
BASELY MURDERED
BY ITS
UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT
OWNER.
To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson’s verses:
Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit,
Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched,
Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,
And fixed o’er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill,
The happy people, in their waxen cells,
Sat tending public cares.
Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends,
And, used to milder scents, the tender race,
By thousands, tumble from their honied dome
Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame!
657
It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes,
to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially
as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter,
they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot,
who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned
with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he
persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined
him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his
corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the
stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very
gently. For some time much less than usual came into the
sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length
he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was
carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he
found it contained only his flour, and no honey. This robbery
made him resolve to destroy no more Bees when their
honey was taken, considering their conduct in robbing him
of his property as a just punishment to him for his cruelty.
The gentleman who related this story, Mr. Campbell says,
was a witness to the Bees robbing the mill.658
An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of
Bees, is,—
A swarm of Bees in May,
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of Bees in June,
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of Bees in July,
In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under
the month of May, are these lines:
Take heed to thy Bees, that are ready to swarme,
The losse thereof now is a crown’s worth of harme.
On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus,
1744, p. 62: “The tinkling after them with a warming-pan,
frying-pan, kettle, is of good use to let the neighbors
know you have a swarm in the air, which you claim wherever
it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to the reclaiming
of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but
their own.”
Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees,—a common saying.
This, doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness
of these insects.
That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or
workshops, may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus
says: “Dig in the hoof of the right side of a sable ass under
the threshold of the door, and pour on some liquid
pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium,
cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of
crimson wool, the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy
torches; and lay on some amaranthus every month, and lay
on the mould; and, having scattered seeds of different kinds,
let them remain.”660
To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies:
“Rue,” says Pliny, “is an hearbe as medicinable as the best
… and is available against the stings of Bees, Hornets,
and Wasps, and against the poison of the Cantharides and
Salamanders.661
“Yea, and it is an excellent thing for them that be stung,
to take the very Bees in drinke; for it is an approved
cure.662
“Baulme is a most present remedy not only against their
stings, but also of Wespes, Spiders, and Scorpions.663
“The Laurell, both leafe, barke, and berrie, is by nature
hot; and applied as a liniment, be singular good for the
pricke or sting of Wasps, Hornets, and Bees.664
“For the sting of Bees, Wasps, and Hornets, the Howlat
(owlet) is counted a soveraigne thing, by a certaine antipathie
in nature.665
“Moreover, as many as have about them the bill of a
Woodspeck (Woodpecker) when they come to take honey
out of the hive, shall not be stung by Bees.”666
It is said that if a man suffers himself to be stung by Bees,
he will find that the poison will produce less and less effect
upon his system, till, finally, like Mithridates of old, he will
appear to almost thrive upon poison itself. When Langstroth
first became interested in Bees, according to his statement,
a sting was quite a formidable thing, the pain being
often intense, and the wound swelling so as sometimes to
obstruct his sight. But, at length, however, the pain was
usually slight, and, if the sting was quickly extracted, no
unpleasant consequences ensued, even if no remedies were
used. Huish speaks of seeing the bald head of Bonner, a
celebrated practical Apiarian, covered with stings, which
seemed to produce upon him no unpleasant effects. The
Rev. Mr. Kleine advises beginners to suffer themselves to be
stung frequently, assuring them that, in two seasons, their
systems will become accustomed to the poison. An old
English Apiarian advises a person who has been stung, to
catch as speedily as possible another Bee, and make it sting
on the same spot.667
It is generally believed among our boys that if the part
stung by a Bee be rubbed with the leaves of three different
plants at the same time, the pain will be relieved.
Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 134, says: “Bees,
in fair weather, not wandering far from their hives, presage
the approach of some stormy weather.… Wasps, Hornets,
and Gnats, biting more eagerly than they used to do, is a
sign of rainy weather.”668
The prognostication drawn from a flight of Bees, in which
there is doubtless much truth, appears from the following
lines to have been known to Virgil:
Nor dare they stay,
When rain is promised, or a stormy day:
But near the city walls their watering take,
Nor forage far, but short excursions make.
669
Bees were employed as the symbol of Epeses; they are
common also on coins of Elyrus, Julis, and Præsus.670
One of the most remarkable facts in the history of Bees
is that passage in the Bible671 about the swarm of these insects
and honey in the carcass of the lion slain by Samson.
Some look upon it as a paradox, others as altogether incredible;
but it admits of easy explanation. The lion had
been dead some little time before the Bees had taken up
their abode in the carcass, for it is expressly stated that
“after a time,” Samson returned and saw the Bees and
honey in the carcass, so that “if,” as Oedman has well observed,
“any one here represents to himself a corrupt and
putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true similitude,
for it is well known in these countries, at certain seasons
of the year, the heat will in twenty-four hours so completely
dry up the moisture of dead animals, and that without
their undergoing decomposition, that their bodies long
remain, like mummies, unaltered, and entirely free from
offensive odor.” To the foregoing quotation we may add
that very probably the larvæ of flies, ants, and other insects,
which at the time when Bees swarm, are to be found in
great numbers, would help to consume the carcass, and
leave perhaps in a short time little else than a skeleton.672
An instance of Bees tenanting a dead body is found in
the following passage from the writings of Herodotus:
“Now the Amathusians, having cut off the head of Onesilus,
because he had besieged them, took it to Amatheus, and
suspended it over the gates; and when the head was suspended,
and had become hollow, a swarm of Bees entered
it, and filled it with honey-comb. When this happened, the
Amathusians consulted the oracle respecting it, and an
answer was given them, ‘that they should take down the
head and bury it, and sacrifice annually to Onesilus, as to a
hero; and if they did so, it would turn out better for them.’
The Amathusians did accordingly, and continued to do so
until my time.”673
Another singular instance is mentioned by Napier in his
Excursions on the shores of the Mediterranean: “Among
this pretty collection of natural curiosities (in the cemetery
of Algesiras), one in particular attracted our attention;
this was the contents of a small uncovered coffin in which
lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and tenanted by
an industrious colony of Bees. The comb was rapidly progressing,
and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet,
they were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the
violet.”674
Butler, in his Feminine Monarchie, narrates the following
curious story: “Paulus Jovius affirmeth that in Muscovia,
there are found in the woods & wildernesses great lakes of
honey, which the Bees have forsaken, in the hollow truncks
of marvelous huge trees. In so much that hony & waxe
are the most certaine commodities of that countrie. Where,
by that occasion, he setteth down the storie reported by
Demetrius a Muscovite ambassador sent to Rome. A
neighbor of mine (saith he) searching in the woods for hony
slipt downe into a great hollow tree, and there sunk into a
lake of hony vp to his brest: where when he had stucke
faste two daies calling and crying out in vaine for helpe, because
no bodie in the meane while came nigh that solitarie
place; at length when he was out of all hope of life, hee
was strangely delivered by the means of a great beare:
which coming thither about the same businesse that he did,
and smelling the hony stirred with his striving, clambered
vp to the top of the tree, & thence began to let himselfe
downe backward into it. The man bethinking himself, and
knowing the worst was but death, which in that place he
was sure of, beclipt the beare fast with both his hands aboit
the loines, and withall made an outcry as lowd as he could.
The beare being thus sodainely affrighted, what with the
handling, & what with the noise, made vp againe withal
speed possible: the man held, & the beare pulled, vntil with
main force he had drawne Dun out of the mire: & then
being let go, away he trots more afeard than hurt, leaving
the smeered swaine in a joyful feare.”675
By the Chinese writers, the composition of the characters
for the Bee, Ant, and Mosquito, respectively, denote the
awl insect, the righteous insect, and the lettered insect;
referring thereby to the sting of the first, the orderly marching
and subordination of the second, and the letter-like
markings on the wings of the last.676
In May, 1653, the remains of Childeric, King of the
Franks, who died A.D. 481, and was buried at Tournay,
were discovered; and among the medals, coins, and books,
which were found in his tomb, were also found above three
hundred figures of, as Chiflet says, Bees, all of gold. Some
of these figures were toads, crescents, lilies, spear-heads, and
such like, but Chiflet, after much labor and research, was
fully convinced they were Bees; and, more than that, determines
them to be the source whence the Fleur de lis in
the Arms of France were afterward derived. Montfaucon,
however, did not hesitate to say they were nothing more
than ornaments of the horse-furniture.677
Napoleon I. and II. are said to have had their imperial
robes embroidered with golden Bees, as claiming official
descent from Carolus Magnus, who is said to have worn
them on his coat of arms.678
On a Continental forty-five dollar bill, issued on the 14th
of January, 1779, is represented an Apiary in which two
Beehives are visible, and Bees are seen swarming about.
The motto is “Sic floret Respublica—Thus flourishes the
Republic.” It conveys the simple lesson that by industry
and frugality the Republic would prosper.679
Bees in the heroic ages it appears were not confined in
hives; for, whenever Homer describes them, it is either
where they are streaming forth from a rock,680 or settling in
bands and clusters on the spring flowers. Hesiod, however,
soon after makes mention of a hive where he is uncourteously
comparing women to drones:
As when within their well-roof’d hives the Bees
Maintain the mischief-working drones at ease,
Their task pursuing till the golden sun
Down to the western wave his course hath run,
Filling their shining combs, while snug within
Their fragrant cells, the drones, with idle din
As princes revel o’er their unpaid bowls,
On others’ labors cheer their worthless souls.
681
It may be surprising to many to know that Bees were not
originally natives of this country. But such is the case;
the first planters never saw any. The English first introduced
them into Boston, and in 1670, they were carried over
the Alleghany Mountains by a hurricane.682 Since that time,
it has been remarked they betray an invariable tendency for
migrating southward.683
Bees for a long time were known to our Indians by the
name of “English Flies;”684 and they consider them, says
Irving, as the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is
of the red man, and say that in proportion as the Bee advances,
the Indian and the buffalo retire.685
Longfellow, in his Song of Hiawatha, in describing the
advent of the European to the New World, makes his
Indian warrior say of the Bee and the white clover:
Wheresoe’er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the Bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White Man’s Foot in blossom.
Many Apiarians contend that newly-settled countries are
most favorable to the Bee; and an old German adage runs
thus:
Bells’ ding dong,
And choral song,
Deter the bee
From industry:
But hoot of owl,
And “wolf’s long howl”
Incite to moil
Hector St. John, in his Letters, gives the following curious
account of the method which he employed in discovering
Bees in our woods in early times: Provided with a blanket,
some provisions, wax, vermilion, honey, and a small pocket
compass, he proceeded to such woods as were at a considerable
distance from the settlements. Then examining if they
abounded with large trees, he kindled a small fire on some
flat stones, close by which putting some wax, and, on another
stone near by, dropping distinct drops of honey, which he
encircled with the vermilion. He then retired to carefully
watch if any Bees appeared. The smell of the burnt wax,
if there were any Bees in the neighborhood, would unavoidably
attract them; and, finding the honey, would necessarily
become tinged with the vermilion, in attempting to get at
it. Next, fixing his compass, he found out the direction of
the hives by the flight of the loaded Bees, which is invariably
straight when they are returning home. Then timing with
his watch the absence of the Bee till it would come back for
a second load, and recognizing it by the vermilion, he could
generally guess pretty closely to the distance traversed by it
in the given time. Knowing then the direction and the
probable distance, he seldom failed in going directly to the
right tree. In this way he sometimes found as many as
eleven swarms in one season.687
The shepherds of the Alps, as we learn from Sausure quoted
in the Insect Miscellanies, as soon as the snows are melted
on the sides of the mountains, transfer their flocks from the
valleys below to the fresh pasture revived by the summer
sun, in the natural parterres and patches of meadow-land
formed at the foot of crumbling rocks, and sheltered by them
from mountain storms; and so difficult sometimes is this
transfer to be accomplished, that the sheep have to be slung
by means of ropes from one cliff to another before they can
be stationed on the little grass-plot above.688 A similar
artificial migration (if we may use the term), continues the
author of the Miscellanies, is effected in some countries by
the proprietors of Beehives, who remove them from one
district to another, that they may find abundance of flowers,
and by this means prolong the summer. Sometimes this
transfer is performed by persons forming an ambulatory establishment,
like that of a gipsy horde, and encamping
wherever flowers are found plentiful. Bee-caravans of this
kind are reported to be not uncommon in some districts of
Germany;689 and in parts of Greece,690 Italy, and France,691 the
transportation of Bees was practiced from very early times.
But a more singular practice in such transportation was to
set the Beehives afloat in a canal or river, and we are informed
that, in France, one Bee-barge was built of capacity
enough for from sixty to one hundred hives, and by floating
gently down the river, the Bees had an opportunity of
gathering honey from the flowers along the banks.692
An instance of Bees being kept in this singular manner is
found in the following quotation from the London Times,
1830: “As a small vessel was proceeding up the Channel
from the coast of Cornwall, and running near the land, some
of the sailors observed a swarm of Bees on an island; they
steered for it, landed, and took the Bees on board; succeeded
in hiving them immediately, and proceeded on their voyage;
as they sailed along shore, the Bees constantly flew from the
vessel to the land, to collect honey, and returned again to
their moving hive; and this was continued all the way up
the Channel.”693
In Lower Egypt, observes M. Maillet in his Description
of Egypt, where the blossoming of flowers is about six weeks
later than in the upper districts, the practice of transporting
Beehives is much followed. The hives are collected from different
villages along the banks, each being marked and numbered
by individual proprietors, to prevent future mistakes.
They are then arranged in pyramidal piles upon the boats
prepared to receive them, which, floating gradually down the
river, and stopping at certain stages of their passage, remain
there a longer or a shorter time, according to the produce
afforded by the surrounding country within two or
three leagues. In this manner the Bee-boats sail for three
months; the Bees, having culled the honey of the orange-flowers
in the Said, and of the Arabian jasmine and other
flowers in the more northern parts, are brought back to the
places whence they had been carried. This procures for
the Egyptians delicious honey and abundance of wax. The
proprietors in return pay the boatmen a recompense proportioned
to the number of hives which have been thus carried
about from one extremity of Egypt to the other.694 The
celebrated traveler Niebuhr saw upon the Nile, between
Cairo and Damietta, a convoy of 4000 hives in their transit
from Upper Egypt to the coast of the Delta.695
In the Bienenzeitung for 1854, p. 83, appears the following
statements: “Mr. Kaden, of Mayence, thinks that the
range of the Bee’s flight does not usually extend more than
three miles in all directions. Several years ago, a vessel,
laden with sugar, anchored off Mayence, and was soon
visited by the Bees of the neighborhood, which continued to
pass to and from the vessel from dawn to dark. One morning,
when the Bees were in full flight, the vessel sailed up
the river. For a short time, the Bees continued to fly as
numerously as before; but gradually the number diminished,
and, in course of half an hour, all had ceased to follow the
vessel, which had, meanwhile, sailed more than four miles.”696
Aristomachus of Soli, says Pliny, made Bees his exclusive
study for a period of fifty-eight years; and Philiocus,
the Thracian, surnamed Agrius—“Wildman”—passed his
life in desert spots tending swarms of Bees.697
Schomburgk says he saw, in his journey to the sources
of the Takutu, an Indian, who was the conjuror or piaiman
of his tribe, merely approach a nest of the wild Wampang-bees
(Wampisiana camniba), and knocking with his fingers
against it, drive out all the Bees without a single one injuring
him. The piaiman, Schomburgk remarks, drew his fingers
under the pits of his arms before he knocked against the hive.698
Brue, in his first voyage to Siratic, in Africa, met with
what he called a “phenomenon” in a person entitling himself
the “King of the Bees.” His majesty accordingly came to
the boat of the traveler entirely covered with these insects,
and followed by thousands, over which he appeared to exercise
the most absolute authority. These Bees were never
known to injure either himself or those whom he took under
his protection.699
Mr. Wildman, the most celebrated Bee-tamer, frequently
asserted that armed with his friendly Bees he was defensible
against the fiercest mastiffs; and, it is said, he actually did,
at Salisbury, encounter three yard-dogs one after the other.
The conditions of the engagement were, that he should have
notice of the dog being set at him. Accordingly the first
mastiff was set loose; and as he approached the man, two
Bees were detached, which immediately stung him, the one
on the nose, the other on the flank; upon receiving the
wounds, the dog retired very much daunted. After this, the
second dog entered the lists, and was foiled with the same
expedition as the first. The third dog was at last brought
against the champion, but the animal observing the ill success
of his brethren, would not attempt to sustain a combat; so,
in a cowardly manner, he retired with his tail between his
legs.
Many other remarkable anecdotes are told of this gentleman,
illustrating his wonderful control over Bees. He could
also, indeed, tame wasps and hornets, with almost the same
ease as he could Bees, and an instance is mentioned of his
hiving a nest of hornets which hung at the top of the inside
of a high barn. He, however, was stung twice in this undertaking.
Mr. Wildman frequently exhibited himself with his head
and face almost covered with Bees, and with such a swarm
of them hanging down from his chin as to resemble a venerable
beard. In this extraordinary dress he was once brought
through the City of London sitting in a chair. Before Earl
Spencer, Mr. Wildman also made many wonderful performances.700
Says Dr. Evans:
Such was the spell, which round a Wildman’s arm
Twined in dark wreaths the fascinated swarm,
Bright o’er his breast the glittering legions led,
Or with a living garland bound his head.
His dexterous hand, with firm but hurtless hold,
Could seize the chief, known by her scales of gold,
Prune, ’mid the wondering throng, her filmy wing,
Or o’er her folds the silken fetter fling.
701
“Long experience has taught me,” says Mr. Wildman
himself, “that as soon as I turn up a hive, and give some
taps on the sides and bottom, the queen immediately appears.
Being accustomed to see her, I readily perceive her at the
first glance; and long practice has enabled me to seize her
instantly, with a tenderness that does not in the least endanger
her person. Being possessed of her, I can, without
exciting any resentment, slip her into my other hand, and
returning the hive to its place, hold her, till the Bees, missing
her, are all on the wing and in the utmost confusion.” It
was then, by placing the queen in view, he could make them
light wherever he pleased, from their great attachment to
her, and sometimes using a word of command to mystify the
spectators, he would cause them to settle on his head, and to
hang to his chin like a beard, from which he would order
them to his hand, or to an adjacent window. But, however
easy such feats may appear in theory, Mr. Wildman cautions
(probably with a view to deter rivals) those who are inexperienced
not to put themselves in danger of attempting to
imitate him. A liberated Roman slave, C. F. Cnesinus,
being accused before the tribunals of witchcraft, because his
crops were more abundant than those of his neighbors,
produced as his witnesses some superior implements of
husbandry, and well fed oxen, and pointing to them said:
“These, Romans! are my instruments of witchcraft; but I
cannot show you my toil, my perseverance, and my anxious
cares.” “So,” says Wildman, “may I say, These, Britons!
are my instruments of witchcraft; but I cannot show you
my hours of attention to this subject, my anxiety and care
for these useful insects; nor can I communicate to you my
experience acquired during a course of years.”702
Butler mentions two instances where the stings of Bees
have been fatal to “cattaile”:
“A horse,” he informs us, “in the heate of the day looking
over a hedge, on the other side whereof was a staule of
Bees, while hee stood nodding with his head, as his manner
is, because of the flies, the Bees fell vpon him and killed
him. Likewise I heard of a teeme that stretching against
a hedge overthrew a staule on the other side, and so two of
the horses were stung to death.”703
Mungo Park and his party were twice seriously attacked
by large swarms of Bees. The first attack is mentioned in
the account of his first journey; the second in the account
of his second. The latter singular accident befell them in
1805, and is thus narrated in his journal: The coffle had
halted at a creek, and the asses had just been unloaded,
when some of his guide Isaaca’s people, being in search of
honey, unfortunately disturbed a large swarm of Bees near
their resting-place. The Bees came out in immense numbers,
and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily,
most of the asses were loose, and galloped up the valley;
but the horses and people were very much stung, and
obliged to scamper off in all directions. The fire which had
been kindled for cooking, being deserted, spread, and set fire
to the bamboos, and the baggage had like to have been
burned. In fact, for half an hour the Bees seemed to have
completely put an end to the journey. In the evening when
they became less troublesome, and the cattle could be collected,
it was found that many of them were very much
stung, and swollen about the head. Three asses were missing;
one died in the course of the evening, and one next
morning, and they were forced to leave one behind the next
day. Altogether six were lost, besides which, the guide
lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung
about the face and hands.704
But in the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we
find the following: “Anthenor, writing of the Isle of Crete
(with whom also ioyneth Ælianus) saith, that a great multitude
of Bees chased al the dwellers out of a City, and vsed
their Houses instead of Hives.”705
Montaigne mentions the following singular assistance
rendered by Bees to the inhabitants of Tamly: The Portuguese
having besieged the City of Tamly, in the territory
of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the place brought a great
many hives, of which there are great plenty in that place,
upon the wall; and with fire drove the Bees so furiously
upon the enemy that they gave over the enterprise, not being
able to stand their attacks and endure their stings: and so
the citizens, by this new sort of relief, gained liberty and
the victory with so wonderful a fortune, that at the return
of their defenders from the battle they found they had not
lost so much as one.706
Lesser tells us that in 1525, during the confusion occasioned
by a time of war, a mob assembling in Hohnstein (in
Thuringia) attempted to plunder the house of the minister
of Elende; who having spoken to them with no effect, as a
last resort ordered his domestics to bring his Beehives, and
throw them in the midst of the furious mob. The desired
effect was instantaneous, for the mob dispersed immediately.707
Bees have also been employed as an article of food. Knox
tells us that the natives of Ceylon, when they meet with a
swarm of Bees hanging on a tree, hold burning torches
under them to make them drop; and so catch and carry
them home, where they boil and eat them, in their estimation,
as excellent food.708
Peter Martyr, speaking of the Caribbean Islands, says:
“The Inhabitantes willingly eate the young Bees, rawe,
roasted, and sometimes sodden.”709
Bancroft tells us that when the negroes of Guiana are
stung by Bees, they in revenge eat as many as they can
catch.710
The following account of the Bee-eater of Selborne, England,
is by the Reverend, and very accurate naturalist, Gilbert
White: “We had in this village,” says he, “more
than twenty years ago (about 1765), an idiot boy, whom I
well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity
to Bees: they were his food, his amusement, his sole
object; and as people of this cast have seldom more than
one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on
this one pursuit. In the winter he dozed away his time,
within his father’s house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid
state, seldom departing from the chimney corner; but in the
summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the
fields and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, Humble-bees, and
Wasps were his prey, wherever he found them: he had no
apprehensions from their stings, but would seize nudis
manibus, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and
search their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes
he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin
with a number of these captives; and sometimes would
confine them in bottles. He was a very Merops apiaster,
or Bee-bird, and very injurious to men that kept Bees; for
he would slide into their Bee-gardens, and, sitting down before
the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and
so take the Bees as they came out. He has been known to
overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was passionately
fond. Where metheglin was making, he would
linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of
what he called Bee-wine. As he ran about he used to
make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing
of Bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous
complexion; and, except in his favorite pursuit, in which
he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding.”711
There is a peculiar substance formed by a species of Bee
in the Orinoco country, which, says Captain Stedman, the
roosting tribes burn incessantly in their habitations, and
which effectually protects them from all winged insects.
They call it Comejou; Gumilla says it is neither earth nor
wax.712
Concerning the medicinal virtues of Bees, Dr. James
says: “Their salts are very volatile, and highly exalted;
for this reason, when dry’d, powder’d, and taken internally,
they are diuretic and diaphoretic. If this powder is mixed
in unguents, with which the head is anointed, it is said to
cure the Alopecia, and to contribute to the growth of hair
upon bald places.”713
Another, an old writer, says: “If Bees, when dead, are
dried to powder, and given to either man or beast, this
medicine will often give immediate ease in the most excruciating
pain, and remove a stoppage in the body when all
other means have failed.” A tea made by pouring boiling
water upon Bees has recently been prescribed, by high medical
authority, for violent strangury; while the poison of the
Bee, under the name of apis, is a great homœopathic
remedy.714
Concerning wax, Dr. James says: “All wax is heating,
mollifying, and moderately incarning. It is mixed in sorbile
liquors as a remedy for dysentery; and ten bits, of the size
of a grain of millet, swallowed, prevent the curdling of milk
in the breast of nurses.”715
[If we might credit the history of former times, says Jamieson,
in his Scottish Dictionary, sub. Walx, iv. 642–3, there
must have been a considerable demand for this article (wax)
for the purpose of witchcraft. It was generally found necessary,
it would seem, as the medium of inflicting pain on the
bodies of men.
“To some others at these times he teacheth, how to make
pictures of waxe or clay, that by the wasting thereof, the
persons that they beare the name of, may be continually
melted or dried away by continuall sickenesse.” K. James’s
Dæmonologie, B. II. c. 5.
In order to cause acute pain in the patient, pins, we are
told, were stuck in that part of the body of the image, in
which they wished the person to suffer.
The same plan was adopted for inspiring another with
the ardor of love.
Then mould her form of fairest wax,
With adder’s eyes and feet of horn;
Place this small scroll within its breast,
Which I, your friend, have hither borne.
Then make a blaze of alder wood,
Before your fire make this to stand;
And the last night of every moon
The bonny May’s at your command.
Hogg’s Mountain Bard, p. 35.
Then it follows:
With fire and steel to urge her weel,
See that you neither stint nor spare;
For if the cock be heard to crow,
The charm will vanish into air.
The wounds given to the image were supposed to be productive
of similar stounds of love in the tender heart of the
maiden whom it represented.
A female form, of melting wax,
Mess John surveyed with steady eye,
Which ever an anon he pierced,
And forced the lady loud to cry.—P. 84.
The same horrid rites were observed on the continent.
For Grilland (de Sortilegiis) says: Quidam solent apponere
imaginem cerae juxta ignem ardentem, completis sacrificiis,
de quibus supra, & adhibere quasdam preces nefarias, &
turpia verba, ut quemadmodum imago illa igne consumitur
& liquescit, eodem modo cor mulieris amoris calore talis
viri feruenter ardeat, etc. Malleus Malefic. T. H., p. 232.
It cannot be doubted that these rites have been transmitted
from heathenism. Theocritus mentions them as
practiced by the Greeks in his time. For he introduces
Samoetha as using similar enchantments, partly for punishing,
and partly for regaining her faithless lover.
But strew the salt, and say in angry tones,
“I scatter Delphid’s, perjured Delphid’s bones.”
—First Delphid injured me, he raised my flame,
And now I burn this bough in Delphid’s name;
As this doth blaze, and break away in fume,
How soon it takes, let Delphid’s flesh consume,
Iynx, restore my false, my perjured swain,
And force him back into my arms again.—
As this devoted wax melts o’er the fire,
Let Mindian Delphy melt in warm desire!
Idylliums, p. 12, 13.
Samoetha burns the bough in the name of her false lover,
and terms the wax devoted. With this the more modern
ritual of witchcraft corresponded. The name of the person,
represented by the image, was invoked. For according to
the narrative given concerning the witches of Pollock-shaws,
having bound the image on a spit, they “turned it before
the fire,—saying, as they turned it, Sir George Maxwell,
Sir George Maxwell; and that this was expressed by all
of them.” Glanvil’s Sadducismus, p. 391.
According to Grilland, the image was baptized in the
name of Beelzebub. Malleus, ut. sup., p. 229.
There is nothing analogous to the Grecian rite, mentioned
by Theocritus, of strewing salt. For Grilland asserts that,
in the festivals of the witches, salt was never presented.
Ibid., p. 215. It was perhaps excluded from their infernal
rites as having been so much used as a sacred symbol.]
The following are among the twenty-eight “singular
vertues” attributed by Butler to Honey: “… It breedeth
good blood, it prolongeth old age … yea the bodies of
the dead being embalmed with honey have been thereby preserved
from putrefaction. And Athenæus doth witness it
to be as effectual for the living, writing out of Lycus, that
the Cyrneans, or inhabitants of Corsica, were therefore long-lived,
because they did dailie vse to feed on honey, whereof
they had abundance: and no marvaile: seeing it is so soveraigne
a thing, and so many waies available for man’s
health, as well being outwardly as inwardly applied. It is
drunke against the bite of a serpent or mad dogs: and it
is good for them having eaten mushrooms, or drunke popy,
etc.”716
In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times,717 there
are two chapters devoted to the “Vertues of Honey.”
There is a story, that a man once came to Mohammed,
and told him that his brother was afflicted with a violent
pain in his belly; upon which the prophet bade him give
him some honey. The fellow took his advice; but soon
after coming again, told him that the medicine had done his
brother no manner of service: Mohammed answered, “Go
and give him more honey, for God speaks truth, and thy
brother’s belly lies.” And the dose being repeated, the
man, by God’s mercy, was immediately cured.718
In the sixteenth chapter of the Koran, Mohammed has
likewise mentioned honey as a medicine for men.719
Athenæus tells us that Democritus, the philosopher of
Abdera, after he had determined to rid himself of life on
account of his extreme old age, and when he had begun to
diminish his food day by day, when the day of the Thesmophonian
festival came round, and the women of his household
besought him not to die during the festival, in order
that they might not be debarred from their share of the
festivities, was persuaded and ordered a vessel full of honey
to be set near him: and in this way he lived many days with
no other support than honey; and then some days after,
when the honey had been taken away, he died. But Democritus,
Athenæus adds, had always been fond of honey; and
he once answered a man, who had asked him how he could
live in the enjoyment of the best health, that he might do
so if he constantly moistened his inward parts with honey
and his outward man with oil. Bread and honey was the
chief food of the Pythagoreans, according to the statement
of Aristoxenus, who says that those who ate this for breakfast
were free from disease all their lives.720
“The gall of a vulture,” says Moufet, quoting Galen, in
Euporist, “mingled with the juice of horehound (twice as
much in weight as the gall is) and two parts of honey cures
the suffusion of the eyes. Otherwise he mingles one part
of the gall of the sea-tortoise, and four times as much honey,
and anoints the eyes with it. Serenus prescribes such a receipt
to cause one to be quick-sighted:
Mingle Hyblæan honey with the gall
Of Goats, ’tis good to make one see withall.”
721
We are told in the German Ephemerides, that a young
country girl, having eaten a great deal of honey, became so
inebriated with it, that she slept the whole day, and talked
foolishly the day following.722
Bevan, in his work on the Honey-Bee, mentions the following
instances of a curious use to which propolis is sometimes
put by the Bees: A snail, says he, having crept into
one of Mr. Reaumur’s hives early in the morning, after
crawling about for some time, adhered, by means of its own
slime, to one of the glass panes. The Bees, having discovered
the snail, surrounded it, and formed a border of
propolis round the verge of its shell, and fastened it so
securely to the glass that it became immovable.
Forever closed the impenetrable door;
It naught avails that in its torpid veins
Year after year, life’s loitering spark remains.
Evans.
Maraldi, another eminent Apiarian, states that a snail
without a shell having entered one of his hives, the Bees, as
soon as they observed it, stung it to death; after which,
being unable to dislodge it, they covered it all over with an
impervious coat of propolis.
For soon in fearless ire, their wonder lost,
Spring fiercely from the comb the indignant host,
Lay the pierced monster breathless on the ground,
And clap in joy their victor pinions round:
While all in vain concurrent numbers strive
To heave the slime-girt giant from the hive—
Sure not alone by force instinctive swayed,
But blest with reason’s soul-directing aid,
Alike in man or bee, they haste to pour,
Thick, hard’ning as it falls, the flaky shower;
Embalmed in shroud of glue the mummy lies,
No worms invade, no foul miasmas rise.
Xenophon tells us that all the soldiers, who ate of the
honey-combs, found in the villages on the mountains of the
Colchians, lost their senses, and were seized with such violent
vomiting and purging, that none of them were able to
stand upon their legs: that those who ate but little, were like
men very drunk, and those who ate much, like madmen, and
some like dying persons. In this condition, this writer adds,
great numbers lay upon the ground, as if there had been a
defeat, and a general sorrow prevailed. The next day, they
all recovered their senses, about the same hour they were
seized; and, on the third and fourth days, they got up as if
they had taken physic.724
Pliny accounts for this accident by saying there is found
in that country a kind of honey, called from its effects, Thænomenon,
that is, that those who eat it are seized with madness.
He adds, that the common opinion is that this honey
is gathered from the flowers of a plant called Rhododendros,
which is very common in those parts. Tournefort thinks
the modern Laurocerasus is the Rhododendros of Pliny,
from the fact that the people of that country, at the present
day, believe the honey that is gathered from its flowers will
produce the effects described by Xenophon.725
The missionary Moffat in South Africa found some poisonous
honey, which he unknowingly ate, but with no serious
consequences. It was several days, however, before he got
rid of a most unpleasant sensation in his head and throat.
The plant from which the honey had been gathered was an
Euphorbia.726
“In Podolia,” says the chronicler Hollingshed, “which is
now subject to the King of Poland, their hives (of Bees)
and combes are so abundant, that huge bores, overturning
and falling into them, are drowned in the honie, before they
can recover & find the meanes to come out.”727
Honey was offered up to the Sun by the ancient Peruvians.728
Dr. Sparrman has described a Hottentot dance, which he
calls the Bee-dance. It is in imitation of a swarm of Bees;
every performer as he jumps around making a buzzing noise.729
“To have a Bee in one’s bonnet” is a Scottish proverbial
phrase about equivalent to the English, “To have a maggot
in one’s head”—to be hair-brained. Kelly gives this with
an additional word: “There’s a Bee in your bonnet-case.”
In Scotland, too, it is said of a confused or stupefied man,
that his “head is in the Bees.”730 These proverbial expressions
were also in vogue in England.731
The following beautiful epigram, on a Bee inclosed in
amber, is from the pen of Martial: “The Bee is inclosed,
and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaëton, so
that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained
a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that
the Bee itself would have desired such a death.
The Bee inclosed, and through the amber shown,
Seems buried in the juice that was her own.
So honor’d was a life in labor spent:
Such might she wish to have her monument.”
732
The Septuagint has the following eulogium on the Bee in
Prov. vi. 8, which is not found in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Go
to the Bee, and learn how diligent she is, and what a noble
work she produces, whose labors kings and private men use
for their health; she is desired and honored by all, and
though weak in strength, yet since she values wisdom, she
prevails.”733
In Spain Bees are in great estimation; and this is evinced
by the ancient proverb:
Abeja y oveja,
Y piedra que traveja,
Y pendola trans oreja,
Y parte en la Igreja,
Desea a su hija, la vieja——
The best wishes of a Spanish mother to her son are,
Bees, sheep, millstones, a pen behind the ear, and a place
in the church.734
The following anecdote in the history of the Humble-bee
(Bombus) is from the account of Josselyn of his voyages to
New England, printed in 1674: “Near upon twenty years
since there lived an old planter near Blackpoint, who on a
Sunshine day about one of the clock lying upon a green bank
not far from his house, charged his Son, a lad of 12 years of
age, to awaken him when he had slept two hours; the old
man falls asleep, and lying upon his back gaped with his
mouth wide open enough for a Hawke to —— into it; after
a little while the lad sitting by spied a Humble-bee creeping
out of his Father’s mouth, which taking wing flew quite out
of sight, the hour as the lad guest being come to awaken his
Father, he jagged him and called aloud Father, Father, it is
two o’clock, but all would not rouse him, at last he sees the
Humble-bee returning, who lighted upon the sleeper’s lip
and walked down as the lad conceived into his belly, and
presently he awaked.”735
The following, on the different species of Humble-bees, is
one of the popular rhymes of Scotland:
The todler-tyke has a very gude byke,
And sae has the gairy Bee;
But weel’s me on the little red-doup,
The best o’ a’ the three.
736
When the Archbishop of St. Andrews was cruelly murdered
in 1679, “upon the opening of his tobacco box a living
humming bee flew out,” which was explained to be a familiar
or devil. A Scottish woman declared that a child was poisoned
by its grandmother, who, together with herself, were
“in the shape of bume-bees,” that the former carried the
poison “in her cleugh, wings, and mouth.” A great Bee
constantly resorted to another after receiving the Satanic
mark, and rested on it.737
An anecdote is related by M. Reaumur respecting the
thimble-shaped nest, formed of leaves, of the Carpenter-bee
(Apis centuncularis?), which is a striking instance of the
ridiculous superstition which prevails among the uneducated,
and which even sometimes has no slight influence on
those of better understandings. “In the beginning of July,
1736, the learned Abbé Nollet, then at Paris, was surprised
by a visit from an auditor of the chamber of accounts,
whose estate lay at a distant village on the borders of
the Seine, a few leagues from Rouen. This gentleman
came accompanied, among other domestics, by a gardener,
whose face had an air of much concern. He had come
to Paris in consequence of having found in his master’s
ground many rows of leaves, unaccountably disposed in
a mystical manner, and which he could not but believe
were there placed by witchcraft, for the secret destruction
of his lord and family. He had, after recovering
from his first consternation, shown them to the curate of the
parish, who was inclined to be of a similar opinion, and advised
him without delay to take a journey to Paris, and
make his lord acquainted with the circumstance. This gentleman,
though not quite so much alarmed as the honest
gardener, could not feel himself at perfect ease, and therefore
thought it advisable to consult his surgeon upon the
business, who, though a man eminent in his profession,
declared himself utterly unacquainted with the nature of
what was shown him, but took the liberty of advising that
the Abbé Nollet, as a philosopher, should be consulted,
whose well-known researches in natural knowledge might
perhaps enable him to elucidate the matter. It was in
consequence of this advice that the Abbé received the visit
above mentioned, and had the satisfaction of relieving all
parties from their embarrassment, by showing them several
nests formed on a similar plan by other insects, and assuring
them that those in their possession were the work of insects
also.”738
In an English paper, the Observer, of July 25, 1813,
there is an account of a “swarm of Bees resting themselves
on the inside of a lady’s parasol.” They were hived without
any serious injury to the lady.
In the Annual Register, 1767, p. 117, there was published
by M. Lippi, Licentiate in Physic of the army of Paris, an
account of a petrified Beehive, discovered on the mountains
of Siout, in Upper Egypt. Broken open it disclosed the
larvæ of Bees in the cells, hard and solid, and Bees themselves
dried up like mummies. Honey was also found in
the cells!739 The account is curious, but not entitled to much
credit.
In the Liverpool Advertiser, and Times, of Nov. 24,
1817, there is a lengthy account of three Bees being found
in a state of animation in a huge solid rock from the Western
Point Quarry. Scientific attention was attracted, and
as appears from the above-mentioned papers of Dec. 5, 1817,
the mystery was cleared up by discovering in the rock “a
sand hole” through which the insects had made their way.740