Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/19

On the Threshold of the Hive kindred matter I know only Michelet's chapter at the end of his book "The Insect," and Ludwig Büchner's essay in his "Mind in Animals." Michelet merely hovers on the fringe of his subject; Büchner's treatise is comprehensive enough, but contains so many hazardous statements, so much long-discarded gossip and hearsay, that I suspect him of never having left his library, never having set forth himself to question his heroines, or opened one of the many hundreds of rustling, wing-lit hives which we must profane before our instinct can be attuned to their secret, before we can perceive the spirit and atmosphere, perfume and mystery, of these virgin daughters of toil. The book smells not of the bee, or its honey; and has the defects of many a learned work, whose conclusions often are preconceived, and whose scientific attainment is composed of a vast array of 7