A noted beekeeper, Charles Butler was one of the first scholars to theorise that bees were led by a Queen rather than a King-bee as suggested by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. His book, the Feminine Monarchy, first published in 1609 with revised editions in 1623 and 1634, provides an excellent overview of beekeeping. It contains practical information about how to keep and protect bees, there is also a rather eccentric inclusion of a madrigal for four people imitating the sounds of bees at swarming time.
Butler was also an advocate of English spelling reform and proposed that written English ought to be written phonetically. The 1634 edition of the Feminine Monarchy, of which this book is a copy, was printed in his new phonetic approach to the English language.