With regard to the ancient literature of our subject, the first treatise on the bee now extant is that of Aristotle in his _History of Animals_, written about 330 B.C. Observations of a scientific kind had, however, been made with regard to these insects by a philosopher of Asia Minor, who is said to have devoted a long lifetime to watching their habits. Unfortunately, the records of his studies in this department of entomology have not survived to our day. We have also to regret that later ages lost the benefit of the labours of Philiscus of Thasos, who is said to have abandoned the abodes of men for a forest life, that he might learn all that was possible of the nature and work of these creatures, which seemed to him so marvellous in their structure and their doings. It is Pliny the Elder--the well-known Roman man of science, who lived near the beginning of the Christian era--to whom we are indebted for notices of the workers in natural history just mentioned, while he himself devotes some considerable space in his own book to a description of the bee. Nearly a century earlier, Vergil, the poet of rural life, as well as of loftier themes, wrote a charming book--his _Fourth Georgic_--on the subject of these our winged friends. We may smile at his wondrous plan for securing a prodigious swarm, and modern methods may claim far more reasonableness and success than those he advocates in apiculture; but we may rejoice to see how bewitching was the pursuit of bee-keeping nearly two millenniums ago, and how true it has been through all the centuries, as the French writer Gelieu says, "_Beaucoup de gens aiment les abeilles; je n'ai vu personne qui les aima médiocrement: on se passionne pour elles._" The orator Cicero makes frequent reference to them in his charming treatise on _Old Age_, and other classical writers allude not unfrequently to these insects. Columella, who lived in the first century of the Christian era, gave, in his work _De re rusticâ_, many directions for apiarians; and though, of course, abounding, like Vergil's work, in errors on certain points, his book shows a decided advance beyond the knowledge of preceding writers. We might speak of Theophrastus, Celsus, and Varro as contributing to the literature of bee-lore, but it would be beyond the scope of our design to detail what they have written on the subject. Coming, however, down to much more recent times, and to our own country, we cannot resist the temptation to quote the well-known lines of our most marvellous poet Shakespeare, whose comprehensive intellect almost rivalled that of Solomon, for "he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts and of fowl and of creeping things and of fishes." The passage to which we now especially refer is to be found in his play of Henry F., act i. sc. 2:--