e so much of our
knowledge of the bee, but it may be noted that Pliny (_H.N._ XXI, 47)
mentions hives of "lapis specularis," some sort of talc, contrived for
the purpose of observing bees at work. The great advance in bee hives
is, however, the sectional construction attributed to Langstroth and
developed in America by Root.]

[Footnote 211: Columella, (IX, 14) referring to the myth of the
generation of bees in the carcase of an ox (out of which Virgil made
the fable of the pastor Aristaeus in the Fourth Georgic), explains
the practice mentioned in the text with the statement "hic enim quasi
quadam cognatione generis maxime est apibus aptus." The plastering
of wicker hives with ox dung persisted and is recommended in the
seventeenth century editions of the _Maison Rustique_.]

[Footnote 212: Reading _seditiosum_.]

[Footnote 213: This is a mistake upon which Aristotle could have
corrected Varro.]

[Footnote 214: After studying the commentators on this obscure passage,
I have elected to follow the emendation of Ursinus, which, although
Keil sneers at its license, has the advantage of making sense.]

[Footnote 215: _Sinapis arvensis_, Linn.]

[Footnote 216: _Sium sisarum_, Linn.]

[Footnote 217: The philosophy of the bee is not as selfish as that human
principle which Varro attributes to them. The hive does not send forth
its "youth" to found a colony, but, on the contrary, abandons its home
and its accumulated store of wealth to its youth and itself ventures
forth under the leadership of the old queen to face the uncertainties
of the future, leaving only a small band of old bees to guard the
hive and rear the young until the new queen shall have supplied a new
population.]

[Footnote 218: Reading _imbecilliores_.]

[Footnote 219: Pliny (_H.N_. IX, 81) relates that this loan was made to
supply the banquet on the occasion of one of the triumphs of Caesar
the dictator, but Pliny puts the loan at six thousand fishes.]

[Footnote 220: It is impossible to translate this pun into English,
_dulcis_ being the equivalent of both "fresh" and "agreeable," and
_amara_ of "salt" and "disagreeable." A French translator would have
at his command _doux_ and _amer_.]

[Footnote 221: Cf. Pliny (_H.N_. II, 96): "In Lydia the islands called
Calaminae are not only driven about by the wind, but may even be
pushed at pleasure from place to place, by which means many people
saved themselves in the Mithridatic war. There are some sm