While all in vain concurrent numbers strive

To heave the slime-girt giant from the hive—

Sure not alone by force instinctive swayed,

But blest with reason’s soul-directing aid,

Alike in man or bee, they haste to pour,

Thick, hard’ning as it falls, the flaky shower;

Embalmed in shroud of glue the mummy lies,

No worms invade, no foul miasmas rise.

Evans.[723]

Xenophon tells us that all the soldiers, who ate of the honey-combs, found in the villages on the mountains of the