Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions Part 19

Mungo Park and his party were twice seriously attacked by large swarms of Bees. The first attack is mentioned in the account of his first journey; the second in the account of his second. The latter singular accident befell them in 1805, and is thus narrated in his journal: The coffle had halted at a creek, and the a.s.ses had just been unloaded, when some of his guide Isaaca's people, being in search of honey, unfortunately disturbed a large swarm of Bees near their resting-place.

The Bees came out in immense numbers, and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily, most of the a.s.ses were loose, and galloped up the valley; but the horses and people were very much stung, and obliged to scamper off in all directions. The fire which had been kindled for cooking, being deserted, spread, and set fire to the bamboos, and the baggage had like to have been burned. In fact, for half an hour the Bees seemed to have completely put an end to the journey. In the evening when they became less troublesome, and the cattle could be collected, it was found that many of them were very much stung, and swollen about the head. Three a.s.ses were missing; one died in the course of the evening, and one next morning, and they were forced to leave one behind the next day. Altogether six were lost, besides which, the guide lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung about the face and hands.[704]

But in the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we find the following: "Anthenor, writing of the Isle of Crete (with whom also ioyneth aelia.n.u.s) saith, that a great mult.i.tude of Bees chased al the dwellers out of a City, and vsed their Houses instead of Hives."[705]

Montaigne mentions the following singular a.s.sistance rendered by Bees to the inhabitants of Tamly: The Portuguese having besieged the City of Tamly, in the territory of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the place brought a great many hives, of which there are great plenty in that place, upon the wall; and with fire drove the Bees so furiously upon the enemy that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand their attacks and endure their stings: and so the citizens, by this new sort of relief, gained liberty and the victory with so wonderful a fortune, that at the return of their defenders from the battle they found they had not lost so much as one.[706]

Lesser tells us that in 1525, during the confusion occasioned by a time of war, a mob a.s.sembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to plunder the house of the minister of Elende; who having spoken to them with no effect, as a last resort ordered his domestics to bring his Beehives, and throw them in the midst of the furious mob. The desired effect was instantaneous, for the mob dispersed immediately.[707]

Bees have also been employed as an article of food. Knox tells us that the natives of Ceylon, when they meet with a swarm of Bees hanging on a tree, hold burning torches under them to make them drop; and so catch and carry them home, where they boil and eat them, in their estimation, as excellent food.[708]

Peter Martyr, speaking of the Caribbean Islands, says: "The Inhabitantes willingly eate the young Bees, rawe, roasted, and sometimes sodden."[709]

Bancroft tells us that when the negroes of Guiana are stung by Bees, they in revenge eat as many as they can catch.[710]

The following account of the Bee-eater of Selborne, England, is by the Reverend, and very accurate naturalist, Gilbert White: "We had in this village," says he, "more than twenty years ago (about 1765), an idiot boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to Bees: they were his food, his amus.e.m.e.nt, his sole object; and as people of this cast have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dozed away his time, within his father's house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, Humble-bees, and Wasps were his prey, wherever he found them: he had no apprehensions from their stings, but would seize _nudis manibus_, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and search their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his s.h.i.+rt and his skin with a number of these captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very _Merops apiaster_, or Bee-bird, and very injurious to men that kept Bees; for he would slide into their Bee-gardens, and, sitting down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the Bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was pa.s.sionately fond. Where metheglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called _Bee-wine_. As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing of Bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favorite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding."[711]

There is a peculiar substance formed by a species of Bee in the Orinoco country, which, says Captain Stedman, the roosting tribes burn incessantly in their habitations, and which effectually protects them from all winged insects. They call it _Comejou_; Gumilla says it is neither earth nor wax.[712]

Concerning the medicinal virtues of Bees, Dr. James says: "Their salts are very volatile, and highly exalted; for this reason, when dry'd, powder'd, and taken internally, they are diuretic and diaph.o.r.etic. If this powder is mixed in unguents, with which the head is anointed, it is said to cure the Alopecia, and to contribute to the growth of hair upon bald places."[713]

Another, an old writer, says: "If Bees, when dead, are dried to powder, and given to either man or beast, this medicine will often give immediate ease in the most excruciating pain, and remove a stoppage in the body when all other means have failed." A tea made by pouring boiling water upon Bees has recently been prescribed, by high medical authority, for violent strangury; while the poison of the Bee, under the name of _apis_, is a great h.o.m.opathic remedy.[714]

Concerning wax, Dr. James says: "All wax is heating, mollifying, and moderately incarning. It is mixed in sorbile liquors as a remedy for dysentery; and ten bits, of the size of a grain of millet, swallowed, prevent the curdling of milk in the breast of nurses."[715]

[If we might credit the history of former times, says Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, sub. _Walx_, iv. 642-3, there must have been a considerable demand for this article (wax) for the purpose of witchcraft. It was generally found necessary, it would seem, as the medium of inflicting pain on the bodies of men.

"To some others at these times he teacheth, how to make _pictures of waxe_ or clay, that by the wasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sickenesse." K. James's Daemonologie, B. II. c. 5.

In order to cause acute pain in the patient, pins, we are told, were stuck in that part of the body of the image, in which they wished the person to suffer.

The same plan was adopted for inspiring another with the ardor of love.

Then mould her form of fairest _wax_, With adder's eyes and feet of horn; Place this small scroll within its breast, Which I, your friend, have hither borne.

Then make a blaze of alder wood, Before your fire make this to stand; And the last night of every moon The bonny May's at your command.

_Hogg's Mountain Bard_, p. 35.

Then it follows:

With fire and steel to urge her weel, See that you neither stint nor spare; For if the c.o.c.k be heard to crow, The charm will vanish into air.

The wounds given to the image were supposed to be productive of similar _stounds_ of love in the tender heart of the maiden whom it represented.

A female form, of melting _wax_, Mess John surveyed with steady eye, Which ever an anon he _pierced_, And forced the lady loud to cry.--P. 84.

The same horrid rites were observed on the continent. For Grilland (de Sortilegiis) says: Quidam solent apponere _imaginem cerae_ juxta ignem ardentem, completis sacrificiis, de quibus supra, & adhibere quasdam preces nefarias, & turpia verba, ut quemadmodum imago illa igne consumitur & liquescit, eodem modo cor mulieris amoris calore talis viri feruenter ardeat, etc. Malleus Malefic. T. H., p. 232.

It cannot be doubted that these rites have been transmitted from heathenism. Theocritus mentions them as practiced by the Greeks in his time. For he introduces Samoetha as using similar enchantments, partly for punis.h.i.+ng, and partly for regaining her faithless lover.

But strew the _salt_, and say in angry tones, "I scatter Delphid's, perjured Delphid's bones."

--First Delphid injured me, he raised my flame, And now I burn this bough in Delphid's name; As this doth blaze, and break away in fume, How soon it takes, let Delphid's flesh consume, Iynx, restore my false, my perjured swain, And force him back into my arms again.-- As this devoted _wax_ melts o'er the fire, Let Mindian Delphy melt in warm desire!

_Idylliums_, p. 12, 13.

Samoetha burns the bough in the name of her false lover, and terms the wax _devoted_. With this the more modern ritual of witchcraft corresponded. The name of the person, represented by the image, was invoked. For according to the narrative given concerning the witches of Pollock-shaws, having bound the image on a spit, they "turned it before the fire,--saying, as they turned it, _Sir George Maxwell, Sir George Maxwell_; and that this was expressed by all of them." Glanvil's Sadducismus, p. 391.

According to Grilland, the image was baptized in the name of Beelzebub.

Malleus, ut. sup., p. 229.

There is nothing a.n.a.logous to the Grecian rite, mentioned by Theocritus, of strewing _salt_. For Grilland a.s.serts that, in the festivals of the witches, salt was never presented. Ibid., p. 215. It was perhaps excluded from their infernal rites as having been so much used as a sacred symbol.]

The following are among the twenty-eight "singular vertues" attributed by Butler to Honey: "... It breedeth good blood, it prolongeth old age ... yea the bodies of the dead being embalmed with honey have been thereby preserved from putrefaction. And _Athenaeus_ doth witness it to be as effectual for the living, writing out of Lycus, that the Cyrneans, or inhabitants of Corsica, were therefore long-lived, because they did dailie vse to feed on honey, whereof they had abundance: and no marvaile: seeing it is so soveraigne a thing, and so many waies available for man's health, as well being outwardly as inwardly applied.

It is drunke against the bite of a serpent or mad dogs: and it is good for them having eaten mushrooms, or drunke popy, etc."[716]

In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times,[717] there are two chapters devoted to the "Vertues of Honey."

There is a story, that a man once came to Mohammed, and told him that his brother was afflicted with a violent pain in his belly; upon which the prophet bade him give him some honey. The fellow took his advice; but soon after coming again, told him that the medicine had done his brother no manner of service: Mohammed answered, "Go and give him more honey, for G.o.d speaks truth, and thy brother's belly lies." And the dose being repeated, the man, by G.o.d's mercy, was immediately cured.[718]

In the sixteenth chapter of the Koran, Mohammed has likewise mentioned honey as a medicine for men.[719]

Athenaeus tells us that Democritus, the philosopher of Abdera, after he had determined to rid himself of life on account of his extreme old age, and when he had begun to diminish his food day by day, when the day of the Thesmophonian festival came round, and the women of his household besought him not to die during the festival, in order that they might not be debarred from their share of the festivities, was persuaded and ordered a vessel full of honey to be set near him: and in this way he lived many days with no other support than honey; and then some days after, when the honey had been taken away, he died. But Democritus, Athenaeus adds, had always been fond of honey; and he once answered a man, who had asked him how he could live in the enjoyment of the best health, that he might do so if he constantly moistened his inward parts with honey and his outward man with oil. Bread and honey was the chief food of the Pythagoreans, according to the statement of Aristoxenus, who says that those who ate this for breakfast were free from disease all their lives.[720]

"The gall of a vulture," says Moufet, quoting Galen, in Euporist, "mingled with the juice of h.o.r.ehound (twice as much in weight as the gall is) and two parts of honey cures the suffusion of the eyes.

Otherwise he mingles one part of the gall of the sea-tortoise, and four times as much honey, and anoints the eyes with it. Serenus prescribes such a receipt to cause one to be quick-sighted:

Mingle Hyblaean honey with the gall Of Goats, 'tis good to make one see withall."[721]

We are told in the German Ephemerides, that a young country girl, having eaten a great deal of honey, became so inebriated with it, that she slept the whole day, and talked foolishly the day following.[722]

Bevan, in his work on the Honey-Bee, mentions the following instances of a curious use to which propolis is sometimes put by the Bees: A snail, says he, having crept into one of Mr. Reaumur's hives early in the morning, after crawling about for some time, adhered, by means of its own slime, to one of the gla.s.s panes. The Bees, having discovered the snail, surrounded it, and formed a border of propolis round the verge of its sh.e.l.l, and fastened it so securely to the gla.s.s that it became immovable.

Forever closed the impenetrable door; It naught avails that in its torpid veins Year after year, life's loitering spark remains.

EVANS.

Maraldi, another eminent Apiarian, states that a snail without a sh.e.l.l having entered one of his hives, the Bees, as soon as they observed it, stung it to death; after which, being unable to dislodge it, they covered it all over with an impervious coat of propolis.

For soon in fearless ire, their wonder lost, Spring fiercely from the comb the indignant host, Lay the pierced monster breathless on the ground, And clap in joy their victor pinions round: 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 Colchians, lost their senses, and were seized with such violent vomiting and purging, that none of them were able to stand upon their legs: that those who ate but little, were like men very drunk, and those who ate much, like madmen, and some like dying persons. In this condition, this writer adds, great numbers lay upon the ground, as if there had been a defeat, and a general sorrow prevailed. The next day, they all recovered their senses, about the same hour they were seized; and, on the third and fourth days, they got up as if they had taken physic.[724]

Pliny accounts for this accident by saying there is found in that country a kind of honey, called from its effects, Thaenomenon, that is, that those who eat it are seized with madness. He adds, that the common opinion is that this honey is gathered from the flowers of a plant called _Rhododendros_, which is very common in those parts. Tournefort thinks the modern _Laurocerasus_ is the Rhododendros of Pliny, from the fact that the people of that country, at the present day, believe the honey that is gathered from its flowers will produce the effects described by Xenophon.[725]

The missionary Moffat in South Africa found some poisonous honey, which he unknowingly ate, but with no serious consequences. It was several days, however, before he got rid of a most unpleasant sensation in his head and throat. The plant from which the honey had been gathered was an Euphorbia.[726]

"In Podolia," says the chronicler Hollingshed, "which is now subject to the King of Poland, their hives (of Bees) and combes are so abundant, that huge bores, overturning and falling into them, are drowned in the honie, before they can recover & find the meanes to come out."[727]