BEE-PARK—BEE-HALL.
(Vol. v., pp. 322. 498.)
Enjoying as we do the advantages of the extension of scientific knowledge, and its application to our routine of daily wants, we are apt to forget that our forefathers were without many things we deem essentials. Your correspondents C. W. G. and B. B. have touched upon a curious feature of antiquity, which science and commerce have rendered obsolete. Yet, before the introduction of sugar, bees were important ministers to the luxuries of the great, as mentioned at the above-cited pages. I was struck with the following passage in the first forest charter of King Henry III.:
"Every freeman ... shall likewise have the honey which shall be found in his woods."
This, in a charter second only in importance, perhaps, to Magna Charta itself, sounds strange to our ideas; moderns would not think it a very royal boon. But the note with which Mr. R. Thomson (Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John, p. 352.) illustrates this passage is interesting, and, though rather long, may be worth insertion in your columns:
"The second part of this chapter secures to the woodland proprietor all the honey found in his woods; which was certainly a much more important gift than it would at first appear, since the Hon. Daines Barrington remarks, that perhaps there has been no lawsuit or question concerning it for the last three hundred years. In the middle ages, however, the use of honey was very extensive in England, as sugar was not brought hither until the fifteenth century; and it was not only a general substitute for it in preserving, but many of the more luxurious beverages were principally composed of it, as mead, metheglin, pigment, and morat, and these were famous from the Saxon days, down even to the time of the present charter (1217). In the old Danish and Swedish laws bees form a principal subject; and honey was a considerable article of rent in Poland, in which it was a custom to bind any one who stole it to the tree whence it was taken. The Baron de Mayerberg also relates, that when he travelled in Muscovy in 1661, he saw trees there expressly adapted to receive bees, which even those who felled their own wood were enjoined to take down in such a manner that they who prepared them should have the benefit of the honey. Nor was the wax of less importance to the woodland proprietors of England, since candles of tallow are said to have been first used only in 1290, and those of wax were so great a luxury, that in some places they were unknown: but a statute concerning wax-chandlers, passed in 1433 (the 11th of Henry VI. chap. 12.), states that wax was then used in great quantities for the images of saints. Only referring, however, to the well-known use of large wax tapers by King Alfred in the close of the ninth century, it may be observed that in the laws of Hoel Dha, king of South Wales, which are acknowledged as authentic historical documents, made about A.D. 940, of much older materials, is mentioned the right of the king's chamberlain to as much wax as he could bite from the end of a taper."—Coke; Manwood; Barrington; Statutes of the Realm.
Perhaps you will allow a few words more in illustration of B. B.'s Query (Vol. v., p. 498.). A recent correspondent, writing of some modern experiments on the venom of toads, suggests the propriety of contributing to a list of "vulgar errors" which have proved to be "vulgar truths." It would not much surprise me to learn that, after all, the popular belief in the efficacy of the rough music of the key and warming-pan might be added to his list. At all events the reason stated by B. B. to prove its uselessness, viz. that bees have no sense of hearing, must, I think, be abandoned, as a Query of Mr. Sydney Smirke (Vol. vii., p. 499.), and an answer (Vol. vii., p. 633.), will show. That all insects are possessed of hearing, naturalists seem now as well convinced of as that they have eyes; though some naturalists formerly considered they were not, as Linnæus and Bonnet; while Huber (his interesting observations on bees notwithstanding) seems to have been quite undecided on the point. Bees, as well as all other insects, hear through the medium of their antennæ, which in a subordinate degree are used as feelers; observing which, perhaps, Huber and others were indisposed to ascribe to them the sense in question.
In reference to Mr. Sydney Smirke's Query, so far from other naturalists confirming Huber's observations as to the effect produced by the sound emitted by the Sphynx atropos on the bees, besides Dr. Bevan (quoted Vol. vii., p. 633.), the intelligent entomologist, Mr. Duncan, author of the entomological portion of The Naturalist's Library (vol. xxxiv. pp. 53-55.), completely disproves them. He tells us that he has closely watched bees, and has seen the queen attack the larva cells; but the sentinels, notwithstanding the reiteration of the queenly sound, so far from remaining motionless, held their sovereign in check, and stubbornly persisted in the defence of their charge against the attacks of their queen and mother. Besides this disproval of the incapacitation of bees by the emission of a sound, another from the experiments of Huber himself may be mentioned. He introduced a Sphynx atropos into a hive in the daytime, and it was immediately attacked and killed by the workers. Query, Might not the explanation of the robbery of hives by this moth be, that the darkness of night incapacitates the bees, while it is the time nature has provided for the wanderings of the Sphynx?
Tee Bee.