London: John W. Parker & Son, West Strand. * * * * * {167} _LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1854._ Notes. LEGENDS AND SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. The Vicar of Morwenstow, among the beautiful poems to be found in his _Echoes from Old Cornwall_, has one entitled "A Legend of the Hive:" it commences-- "Behold those winged images! Bound for their evening bowers; They are the nation of the bees, Born from the breath of flowers: Strange people are they; a mystic race In life, and food, and dwelling-place!" As another poet has sung: "His quidam signis, atque hæc exempla secuti, _Esse Apibus partem Divinæ mentis_ et haustus Ætherios dixere." Mr. Hawker's Legend is to this effect: A Cornish woman, one summer, finding her bees refused to leave their "cloistered home," and "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 some psaltery near, Or soft and silvery bells? A low sweet psalm, that griev'd within In mournful memory of the sin!" The following passage from Howell's _Parley of Beasts_, Lond. 1660, furnishes a similar legend of the piety of bees. Bee speaks: "Know, Sir, that we have also a religion as well as so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and ther is a miraculous example in _Cæsaries Cisterniensis_, how som of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a medow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body, a swarm of bees being hard by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and there erected an altar of the purest wax for It, where It was found in that form, and untouched."--P. 144. It is remarkable that, in the Septuagint version of Prov. vi. 8., the bee is introduced after the ant, and reference is made to [Greek: tên ergasian hôs semnên poieitai: ergas. sem.] St. Ambrose translates it _operationem venerabilem_; St. Jerome, _opus castum_; Castalio, _augustum opus_; Bochart prefers _opus pretiosum, aut mirabile_.[1] Pliny has much to say about bees. I shall give an extract or two in the Old English of Philemon Holland: