fundamental principle. Thus to the soldier ecclesiastical differences are of no practical importance; what does matter is the great fact of Divine compassion and sacrifice, of moral strength and moral courage, the eternal love which survives the ordeal of battle and the tragedy of human suffering.

This is borne out in a public statement made by a chaplain who was active from first to last through the recent War:

'The men did not want to listen to eloquence. It was very difficult to get them to come to hear great preachers, but it was never difficult for them to listen when they were talked to quietly about Jesus Christ. I shall never forget the power of some of those services held in France under strange conditions, sometimes with a feeling of responsibility so great as to take away the words from the lips. I remember one service in particular in the salient. It was just before action, and it was known that the loss was bound to be great. We celebrated Holy Communion, the whole battalion gathering under the pine trees, and lying rank on rank among the bluebells. Overhead were the shriek of shells. Occasionally in the tree tops there would be a sound like the crack of a whiplash as a bullet struck. We could not sing, we were too near the enemy, only two hundred yards away. So we read the hymns we knew, and read also some portions of that service which is the heritage of all British men, not of one section only. When I was put up to speak, I had a clear notion of what I was going to say, but I never said it, the words were taken from me. And although there was the noise of battle around us, a strange thing happened. It seemed as though in that wood there was a silence—a silence that was almost pain. Half an hour afterwards I could not have told what words I had spoken, but I knew that God spoke through me. A few hours later I was called upon to bury every officer (except one) who had been at that service, and one-third of the men. I still had the consciousness that the words spoken by me had not been in vain.'

This gives an indication of the spirit of the soldier. A battalion of such determination that it can endure most heavy losses, and still carry on,' has the devotion that is unconquerable and priceless.

GEORGE K. SCOTT MONCRIEFF.

Art. 3.—THE BEE IN LITERATURE.

The Honey Bee. Murray, 1852.

WHEREVER the honey bee has made a home, philosophers and poets have delighted to pay her honour; indeed, it may be doubted whether any bird or beast has received attention in the like measure. The nightingale's place in poetry is assured, but a very conventional view has been adopted, and the Greek legend has set the tone of countless utterances; indeed, it was left to Coleridge, who had little feeling for Nature, to administer a corrective that is too often forgotten. In the case of the honey bee there have been misunderstandings enough, but they have not been persistent. If he knows anything of the habits of bees, the most devout reader of the Bible, even though he were living, say, in British East Africa where lions abound, would not look to find a colony in the carcase of a dead beast, for he would know they have the greatest possible aversion from carrion of any kind. Yet the story of Samson served Whittier for some charming lines:

'In the old Hebrew myth the lion's frame

So terribly alive

Bleached by the desert's sun and wind became

The wandering wild bee's hive,

And he who naked-handed tore

Those jaws of death apart,

In after time drew forth their honeyed store,
To strengthen his strong heart.'

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Again, the humblest skeppist' in an English village would shake his sides with laughter if one would translate for him some of the passages from the Fourth Book of the Georgics, say, for example, the one beginning:

'Tum trepidæ inter se coëunt, pennisque coruscant,
Spiculaque exacuunt rostris, aptantque lacertos,
Et circa regem atque ipsa ad prætoria densæ
Miscentur, magnisque vocant clamoribus hostem.'
Or the passage:

'Post, ubi jam thalamis se composuere, siletur
In noctem, fessosque sopor suus occupat artus.'

Or

'Præterea regem non sic Ægyptus, et ingens

Lydia, nec populi Parthorum, aut Medus Hydaspes
Observant.'

The truth is that, while the nature and the true habits of bees have been studied carefully for less than two hundred years, the main lines of their work and industry have appealed to reflective minds since the earliest times. The bee has pointed countless morals, adorned innumerable tales, and been gifted with all manner of qualities to which it can advance no rightful claim. The views that great authors have expressed are often a more clear indication of the nature of the writer than of the nature of the hive. There is a passage in a work written, I think, long before the bee entered the realms of literature, that justifies this contention. It is found in the Seventeenth Section of the Bhagavad-Gîta, and the following is Sir Edwin Arnold's translation. Krishna is addressing Arjuua.

'The faith of each believer, Indian Prince!
Conforms itself to what he truly is.

Where thou shalt see a worshipper, that one
To what he worships lives assimilate,

As is the Shrine, so is the Votary.'

We know that, whatever they say, whether we hear Theocritus singing of his Sicilian shepherds or Gilbert White hymning Selborne, we shall have real Nature lovers for company.

Those of us who have kept bees for many years-my own passion for them led me to maintain an intensive hive in the Inner Temple-have their own views of the honey bee's qualities and intelligence, and if we turn eagerly to find what our favourite writers have had to say, it is less because we hope to know more about bees than because we hope to know more about the writers. The man who allows his imagination to travel with him, who translates the hard prose of the hive into poetry, wins our admiration even while we deny our belief. Surely the just observer must admit that the true romance of the hive lies outside its boundaries. It will be found in the blossoming orchards, the herbaceous borders of early summer, the fields of clover and sainfoin, Vol. 241.-No. 479.

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the vast expanses of the heather lands; and the final chapter will be told when the gardens are ablaze with autumn colouring and the late-blooming ivy is aflower on walls that look to the south. So much joy of life as may come from the pursuit of nectar in a world of delicate forms, wonderful colouring, intoxicating perfume, is given to the worker bee, but only for a little while. A couple of months of tireless summer labour and the last remains of strength are sometimes used to travel to some ditch or hedgerow, there to await the reward of death, though many failing bees fall victims to birds and bad weather. We might have much sympathy for such a life, but the worker-bee invites none. She is cruel, she is not intelligent. Move her home only a few yards from its accustomed place, and, though it lies open to her return, she will die of exposure. The plight of the drone is the more pitiable because he is quite harmless. He alone enjoys the fine weather with complete detachment from care, leaving the hive when the day is wellwarmed, returning before the light can fail. He plays in the meadows like a healthy, helpless child, sometimes he goes in pursuit of a virgin queen, happy if he be left behind in the race, since the embrace that will recreate the hive is his death knell. With the end of summer, even before the end, he is mutilated and left to die.

Old-time writers thought the queen was a king; comparatively modern ones thought that she was the ruler of the hive; we know, or think we know, that she is its slave. From the time when her mother deposited her as an egg in a cell of special dimensions and she received the allowance of special food denied to the workers, she was formed for a purpose. So, too, were others; the hive leaves nothing to chance. She is protected from the murderous intentions of her mother that she may fly abroad when the swarm has gone. Should she fail to return fertilised, another queen is waiting to take her place; should her journey be successful, one of her first tasks is to kill those sisters who are still imprisoned in their cells. Thereafter she is the hive's slave, fed and directed while eggs are required, and less cared for during the winter, though in a hive that starves she is kept alive to the end. In the following summer she may lead a swarm and populate a new home; but, when her

powers fail, there is no consideration to be expected from her children. Just as they ringed her round to guide her over the cells, so now they close the ring and suffocate her. When we look at these hard facts of the hive it becomes necessary to revise some at least of the old conceptions. We must recognise in the hive a wonderfully arranged factory for the production of food, of which the producers themselves may have no more than will enable them to live at their labours for a few weeks, or to maintain the warmth of the hive during the winter months and assist in the raising of the young brood. Endurance, frugality, ingenuity, all these virtues may be conceded, but there are few others; and yet the fascination of the hive holds even those of us who know it for what it is. On a fine warm day in spring we find ourselves sitting quietly by the alighting board to watch the arrival of the foragers with their pollen-baskets tightly packed, to learn from the colour of the pollen where the stores were gathered. In the summer we watch to see the nectar-laden worker stagger to the alighting board, wait to regain strength, pass within, and then suddenly shoot out and up again, as though propelled from a catapult. We look for signs of swarming which we endeavour, usually in vain, to arrest; we sample the honey as the season advances, gathering the origin of the nectar from colour, flavour, and scent. We deal faithfully by the hives, removing no more than the surplus, and should death come to the bee-master, some of us still tell the bees,' going so far as to pin a piece of crape to the hive and explain, as though the bees spoke our language, that their new owner will take as much care of them as the old one. In the past three years I have seen this simple ceremony-set out with much charm by J. G. Whittier in his poem 'Telling the Bees'— carried out in a remote Essex village. The old belief is that, unless the bees were so advised, they would leave their hives. In winter we watch over the well-being of the stocks, making the entrance from the alighting board sufficiently narrow to exclude field mice, tempting titmice away by the aid of a cocoa nut tied to a branchthey prefer this form of food-replenishing the stocks, scraping comb that granulation has hardened. It is not for purely material ends that we work; many years