Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/175

Rh necessary or even usual consequence of this chance coming together. He tells us, too,

 To the old falls the care of the towns, And the guarding of the combs, and the fashioning of the cunningly wrought homes. The younger ones return wearied late at night, Their legs loaded with thyme; they feed on the wild strawberries, The blue-gray willows, the cinnamon, the glowing saffron-flower, The rich linden-tree, and the iron-colored hyacinth.

Nowadays we know that, broadly speaking, it is just the other way—that the older bees gather the nectar, propolis and pollen, and the younger ones stay within the hive to feed the brood and perform there the other necessary duties. His naïve, yet not unnatural supposition that at nightfall the bees laid themselves to rest in the cells of the honey-comb, whereupon sleep seized their weary frames, we know to be unfounded. Whenever it is too chilly or too windy for them to fly out, they may be seen clustering over the surfaces of the combs, in order to incubate the unhatched brood and to enjoy the comfortable sensation of the animal heat thus generated. Moreover, any one who is familiar with the interior of the hive knows that in summer every cell in every comb is needed in a fairly strong colony for storing the incoming harvest and for raising the young bees, while during the height of the honey-flow it is questionable whether the bees can be said to sleep at all. Many beekeepers believe that unless the nights are so cold as to chill them, they work unceasingly from dusk to dawn, as well as from dawn to dusk, during this brief period.

We can see, by the brighter light of modern knowledge, how Virgil was wrong in these and in many smaller particulars, how he incorporated into his work the errors that were prevalent in his day, and endorsed the methods then in vogue, superstitious and unavailing as they too often were. But if he sometimes went astray as to his facts, traveling, as he did, over a country with but few landmarks to guide him, he retrieved himself in other fields. We approach the bees armed with facts that explain their habits and throw light upon their moods, but he was forced to solve his problem just the other way. He must observe their disposition and their ways, and then deduce his facts as best he could. It follows as a matter of course that he should speak more wisely of the things that he saw for himself than of those that he knew only by inference.

The somewhat unusual habits of the bees he read with remarkable insight. But what he understood best of all about these strange little insects, perhaps because in contemplating them he brought to bear upon them the subtle comprehension that is born of sympathy, was their character, their temperament. In this respect he speaks as a master,