On others’ labors cheer their worthless souls.[681]
It may be surprising to many to know that Bees were not originally natives of this country. But such is the case; the first planters never saw any. The English first introduced them into Boston, and in 1670, they were carried over the Alleghany Mountains by a hurricane.[682] Since that time, it has been remarked they betray an invariable tendency for migrating southward.[683]
Bees for a long time were known to our Indians by the name of “English Flies;”[684] and they consider them, says Irving, as the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man, and say that in proportion as the Bee advances, the Indian and the buffalo retire.[685]
Longfellow, in his Song of Hiawatha, in describing the advent of the European to the New World, makes his Indian warrior say of the Bee and the white clover:
Wheresoe’er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the Bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White Man’s Foot in blossom.