XXXVI. WHY WILL BEES SOONER STING THOSE WHO NEWLY BEFORE HAVE COMMITTED WHOREDOM? Is it not because it is a creature that wonderfully delighteth in purity, cleanliness, and elegancy, and withal hath a marvellous quick sense of smelling? Because therefore such unclean dealings between man and woman are wont to leave behind much filthiness and impurity, the bees both sooner find them out and also conceive the greater hatred against them. Hereupon it is that in Theocritus the shepherd pleasantly sendeth Venus away unto Anchises to be well stung with bees for her adultery: Now to mount Ida, to Anchises go, Where mighty oaks and cypresses do grow; Where hives and trees with honey sweet abound, And both with humming noise of bees resound. Theoc . I. 105. And Pindar saith: Thou little creature, who honey-combs dost frame, and with thy sting hast pricked false impure Rhoecus for his lewd villanies. XXXVII. WHY DO DOGS FOLLOW AFTER A STONE THAT IS THROWN AT THEM AND BITE IT, LETTING THE MAN ALONE WHO FLUNG IT? Is it because he can comprehend nothing by imagination nor call a thing to mind, which are gifts and virtues proper to man alone; and therefore, seeing he cannot discern the party that offered him injury, he supposeth that to be his enemy which seemeth in his eye to threaten him, and of it he goes about to be revenged? Or is it that he thinks the stone, while it runs along the ground, to be some wild beast, and according to his nature he intendeth to catch it first; but afterwards, when he seeth himself deceived and put besides his reckoning, he setteth upon the man? Or rather, doth he not hate the man and the stone both alike, but pursueth that only which is next unto him? XXXVIII. WHY AT A CERTAIN TIME OF THE YEAR DO ALL SHE-WOLVES WHELP WITHIN THE COMPASS OF TWELVE DAYS? ANTIPATER in his History of Animals affirms, that shewolves exclude forth their young ones about the time that mast trees shed their blossoms, for upon the taste thereof their wombs open; but if there be none of such blooms to be had, then their young die within the body and never come to light. Moreover, he saith, those countries which bring not forth oaks and mast are never troubled nor spoiled with wolves. Some attribute all this to a tale that goes of Latona; who being with child, and finding no abiding place of rest and safety by reason of Juno for the space of twelve days, went to Delos, and, being transmuted by Jupiter into a wolf, obtained at his hands that all wolves for ever after might within that time be delivered of their young. XXXIX. HOW COMETH IT THAT WATER, SEEMING WHITE ALOFT, SHOWETH TO BE BLACK IN THE BOTTOM? Is it because depth is the mother of darkness, so that it doth dim and mar the sunbeams before they can descend so low as it? As for the uppermost superficies of the water, because it is immediately affected by the sun, it must needs receive the white brightness of the light; the which Empedocles verily approveth in these verses: A river in the bottom seems By shade of color black; The like is seen in caves and holes, By depth, where light they lack. Or, since the bottom of the sea and of great rivers is often full of mud, doth it by reflection of the sunbeams represent the like color that the said mud hath? Or is it more probable that the water toward the bottom is not pure and sincere, but corrupted with an earthy quality,— as continually carrying with it somewhat of that by which it runneth and wherewith it is stirred,—and the same settling once to the bottom causeth it to be more troubled and less transparent?