About the commencement of the Christian æra, Columella, who was a very accurate observer and exhibited considerable genius as a naturalist, made some curious and useful remarks upon bees in his Treatise De Re Rusticá: but Columella, like Virgil, appears to have acquiesced in and copied the errors of his predecessors.
After him the elder Pliny gave a sanction to the opinions which he found prevalent, and added to them others of his own. But Pliny, though a laborious compiler, occupied himself with too great a variety of pursuits to attain excellence in any. As a naturalist, however, he is happy in some of his descriptions. To him we are indebted for the transmission to us of all that was actually known, or supposed to be known, of natural history in his day. I say—supposed to be known, for many of the opinions and conjectures which he has put forth, have been shown by modern investigators to be ill-founded.
The notions of the ancients respecting natural philosophy rested on no rational foundation; ideas of charms and of planetary influence directed their most important pursuits, and led to the formation of very absurd theories. When the writer last named recommends that the dust in which a mule has rolled should be sprinkled on persons who are violently in love, as a sovereign remedy for amatory ardour, and gravely tells us that snakes are sometimes produced from the human medulla,—with much nonsensical stuff of the like kind; we may safely pronounce that he or his contemporaries or both were very credulous, and that the science of experimental philosophy was scarcely cultivated among them.
After the compilation of Pliny’s vast Compendium, nearly fourteen hundred years rolled away without anything being done for entomology or for natural history in general. The Arabians, who alone preserved a glimmer of science during those dark ages that succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, cultivated natural history only as a branch of medicine, and from their writings little can be gleaned in furtherance of our present object.
On the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, and after the discovery of the art of printing, various editions were published of the works on natural history, written by the Withers of that science. Sir Edward Wotton, Conrade Gesner, and others, produced conjointly a work on insects, the manuscripts of which came into the possession of Dr. Thomas Penry, an eminent physician and botanist in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. After devoting fifteen years to the improvement of the work, the Doctor died, and the unfinished manuscripts were purchased at a considerable price by Mouffet, a contemporary English physician of singular learning, who with great labour and at great expense arranged, enlarged, and completed the work. When nearly ready for the press, he also died; and the papers, after lying buried in dust and obscurity for several years, at last fell into the hands of Sir Theodore Mayerne (Baron d’Aubone), a court physician in the time of Charles the First, who gave them to the world in 1634. The arrangement of this work is defective; but for the period in which it was written, it is a very complete and respectable Treatise on Entomology. It was highly recommended by Haller; and as a storehouse of ancient entomological lore it has not yet lost its utility. Its pages are embellished with nearly 500 wood-cuts. An English translation of it was published in 1658.
According to Fabius Columma, Prince Frederic Cesi, president of the Roman Academy of Sciences, wrote a treatise upon bees; but the work has not been preserved, and we are unacquainted with its merits.
These authors were succeeded by Goedart, Swammerdam, Maraldi, Ray, Willughby and Lister, who by their indefatigable exertions, towards the close of the 17th century threw very considerable light upon every branch of natural knowledge. Goedart spent forty years of his life in attending to the proceedings of insects, “daily conversing with insects,” as he expresses it, and published in 1662 a work on their natural history; but the plates with which it is embellished form the best part of it. Swammerdam published his celebrated work, “A General History of Insects,” in 4to, in 1669: a more enlarged edition in two volumes folio, containing the history of bees, was afterwards published in 1737, under the auspices of Boerhaave, from the manuscript of Swammerdam. Those readers who have patience to wade through these tedious volumes, will find it rewarded by the attainment of much curious information. Maraldi published in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1712, his account of the manners, genius, and labours of the bee. He is said to have been the inventor of glass hives, and to that invention may be attributed the success of his inquiries. Swammerdam founded his system upon what has been called the metamorphotic basis; and Ray, in conjunction with his friend Willughby, whom he calls the profoundest of naturalists and the most amiable and virtuous of men, erected his superstructure on the same basis. In the Historia Insectorum of Ray, evidently the joint production of himself and Willughby, especial attention is paid to the Hymenoptera: it contains various interesting observations on their manners and characters; and the descriptions, in which he was assisted by the use of very powerful microscopes, are concise and well drawn. Dr. Martin Lister, in an appendix to Ray’s work, and in various other writings also, contributed materially to elucidate the science of entomology. Madame Merian likewise deserves well, for her industrious pursuit of this subject, particularly for her beautiful illustration of the metamorphoses of insects in Surinam.
The French natural historian Reaumur stands prominent among the students of entomology, for the unsurpassed enthusiasm and accuracy with which he has investigated some of its most intricate parts. To him the genus Apis is under greater obligations perhaps than to any entomologist either of ancient or modern times. See his immortal work, "Memoires pour servir à l’Histoire des Insectes," in 6 vols. 4to. 1732-1744.
About this period also flourished the great, the illustrious Linnæus, whose labours diffused light over every department of natural science, and have justly caused him to be regarded as one of its brightest ornaments. He has generally been considered as the founder of the artificial system of arrangement; but a very near approach to it was made by that brilliant constellation of naturalists whom I have enumerated as having flourished at the close of the 17th century, and who may probably be regarded as having paved the way, and prepared materials, for the formation of his more perfect system.