and courage, whilst the males take no part whatever in the labours of the community, but are idle, cowardly, and inactive, and possess not the offensive weapon of their species.

Immunis que sedens aliena ad pabula fucus.-Virgil.

It has been imagined that the drone sets upon the eggs as the queen lays them. The opinion, however, is probably founded in a mistake. Mr. Morris, of Isleworth, says, that he has often seen them sit in a formal manner on the combs when the brood is hatching. But Dr. Bevan suspects that Mr. Morris mistook sleeping for brooding, and that the drones were only taking a nap. Fabricius says that insects never sit on their eggs. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, however, have observed that the female ear-wig does so; they also make one other exception in favour of the field-bug. De Guer has given, says Dr. Bevan, a very interesting account of both these insects. The female of the ear-wig assiduously sits upon her eggs as if to hatch them, and after they are hatched, broods over the young as a hen over young chickens. And when the eggs of the fieldbug are hatched, she also goes about with the brood, consisting of thirty or forty in number, and never leaves them; they cluster round her when she is still, and follow her closely wherever she moves (interesting family-Mrs. Bug and the forty Miss Bugs!)

It is the duty of the queen bee to lay eggs, which she deposits in cells constructed for their reception by the working bees. Mr. Dunbar gives a peculiarly edifying description of the manner in which the queen disposes her royal person in the performance of this high office.

The Rev. W. Dunbar, minister of Applegath, who has recently added some important particulars to our general stock of knowledge respecting bees, states that when the queen is about to lay, she puts her head into a cell, and remains in that position for a second or two, probably to ascertain its fitness for the deposit which she is about to make. She then withdraws her head, and curving her body downwards, inserts her tail into the cell: in a few seconds she turns half round upon herself and withdraws, leaving an egg behind her. When she lays a considerable number, she does it equally on each side of the comb, those on the one side being as exactly opposite to those on the other, as the relative position of the cells will admit. The effect of this is to produce a concentration and œconomy of heat for developing the various changes of the brood.

In four days the egg becomes a grub, and in five or six days more the grub nearly fills the whole of its cell. The nursing bees then seal it up with a light brown cover. It is no sooner perfectly inclosed, than it begins to labour, alternately extending and shortening its body, whilst it lines the cell by spinning round itself a whitish silky film, or cocoon, by which it is encased. It is now a nymph or pupa. The working bee-nymph spins its cocoon in thirty-six hours. When it has reached the twenty-first day of its existence, counting from the moment the egg is laid, it quits the exuvia of the pupa state, and comes forth a perfect winged insect.

The royal bee passes three days in the egg, and is five a worm; the workers then close her cell, and she immediately begins spinning the cocoon, which occupies her twenty-four hours; on the tenth and eleventh, as if exhausted by her labour, she remains in complete repose, and even sixteen hours of the twelfth. Then she passes four days and one-third as a nymph. It is on the sixteenth day, therefore, that the perfect state of queen is attained.

The drone passes three days in the egg, six and a half as a worm, and is metamorphosed into a fly on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day after the egg is laid.

The young bees break through the envelope which imprisons them in their cell, with their teeth: the moment they are out, the nursing bees proceed to lick them clean; and when by this aid, and their own efforts, the operation of cleansing is performed, they instantly take wing, and in a few minutes are gathering provision in the fields. Maraldi says he has seen bees loaded with two balls of wax (he should have said pollen) returning to the hive the same day they become bees. As soon as the young insect has been licked clean, and regaled with a little honey by its companions, they clean out the cell, preparatory to its being re-occupied by a new tenant, or with honey.

A curious circumstance occurs with respect to the hatching of the queen bee. She is assisted by the workers, who pare away a part of the envelope, and when she is ready to fly, they keep her a prisoner for some time, lest probably she should be subject to any failure in her first attempt to fly, or lest she should immediately proceed to destroy the other queen nymphs not yet hatched; for such is the instinctive enmity against her rivals in power, that the instant she is left alone she proceeds with full intent to slaughter all the young princesses of the blood royal.

When the pupa or nymph is about to change into the perfect insect, the bees render the cover of the cell thinner, by gnawing away part of the wax; and with so much nicety do they perform this operation that the cover at last becomes pellucid, owing to its extreme thinness, thus facilitating the exit of the fly. After the transformation is complete, the young queens would, in common course, immediately emerge from their cells, as workers and drones do; but the former always keep the royal infants prisoners for some days, supplying them in the mean time with honey for food, a small hole being made in the door of each cell, through which the confined bee extends its proboscis to receive it. The royal prisoners continually utter a kind of song, the modulations of which are said to vary. Huber heard a young princess in her cell emit a very distinct sound or clacking, consisting of several monotonous notes in rapid succession, and he supposes the working bees to ascertain, by the loudness of these tones, the ripeness of their queens. Huber has suggested that the cause of this temporary imprisonment may possibly be to enable the young queens to fly away at the instant they are liberated.

The queen is a good deal harassed by the other bees on her liberation. This has been attributed to their wishing to impel her to go off with a swarm as soon as possible, but this notion is probably erroneous; it certainly is so, if Huber be correct, in saying that the swarms are always accompanied by the older queens. The queen has the power of instantly putting a stop to their worrying, by uttering a peculiar noise, which has been called the voice of sovereignty. Bonner however declares that he never could observe in the queen any thing like an exercise of sovereignty. But Huber's statement was not founded upon a solitary instance; he heard the sound on various occasions, and witnessed the striking effect which it always produced. On one occasion, a queen having escaped the vigilance of her guards and sprung from the cell, was on her approach to the royal embryos, pulled, bitten, and chased by the other bees. But standing with her thorax against a comb and crossing her wings upon her back, keeping them in motion but not unfolding them, she emitted a particular sound, when the bees became, as it were, paralysed, and remained motionless. Taking advantage of this dread, she rushed to the royal cells; but the sound having ceased as she prepared to ascend, the guardians of the cells instantly took courage, and fairly drove her away. This voice of sovereignty, as it has been called, resembles that which is made by young queens before they are liberated from their cells; it is a very distinct kind of clicking, composed of many notes in the same key, which follow each other rapidly. The sound accompanied by the attitude just described, always produces a paralysing effect upon the bees.

It is a singular thing that bees, when deprived by accident of their queen, create a substitute. One of the working grubs is elevated to the throne, but not without an extraordinary education, which fits them to perform the duties of sovereignty. Nature takes especial care that no ambitious subject shall destroy the peace of the commonwealth, by thrusting the monarch from her throne, and usurping her throne. There can be no bee-Cromwell or bee-Napoleon, for the moment the intruder found himself in the royal palace, he would perceive himself entirely deficient in the organs of reigning. What bloodshed and confusion would it have prevented in the world had it been necessary for a monarch not only to wield the sceptre, but to lay a peculiar egg. This is a test which can admit of no doubt. A usurper might be instantly called to account. Lay your egg, sir, or madam; prove your legitimacy, or vacate the place for the occupation of one who can perform the royal functions.

Bees, when deprived of their queen, have the power of selecting one or more grubs of workers, and converting them into queens. To effect this, each of the promoted grubs has a royal cell or cradle formed for it, by having three contiguous common cells thrown into one; two of the three grubs that occupy those cells are sacrificed, and the remaining one is liberally fed with royal jelly. This royal jelly is a pungent food prepared by the working bees, exclusively for the purpose of feeding such of the larvæ as are destined to become candidates for the honours of royalty, whether it be their lot to assume them or not. It is more stimulating than the food of ordinary bees, has not the same mawkish taste, and is evidently acescent. The royal larvæ are supplied with it rather profusely, and there is always some of it left in the cell, after their tranformation. Schirach, who was secretary to the Apiarian Society in Upper Lusatia, and vicar of Little Bautzen, may be regarded as the discoverer, or rather as the promulgator of this fact; and his experiments, which were also frequently repeated by other members of the Lusatian Society, have been amply confirmed by those of Huber and Bonner.

Although the sovereign bee has nothing to fear from ambitious subjects, yet the moment she arrives at her queen's estate she becomes conscious that there are rivals near the throne, and proceeding in the spirit of an oriental despot, she determines upon securing the peace of her reign in the surest manner. She will suffer no bee nurtured with the royal jelly, and thus qualified for sovereignty, to exist. Her first thought, on emerging from her cell, is to put to death all the indwellers of the royal cradles. Of the manner in which this instinctive animosity displays itself, we find a curious description by Mr. Dunbar :

In July, when the hive had become filled with comb and bees, and well stored with honey; and when the queen was very fertile, laying a hundred eggs a-day, Mr. Dunbar opened the hive and took her majesty away. [Oh! treason!] The bees laboured for eighteen hours before they appeared to miss her; but no sooner was the loss discovered than all was agitation and tumult; [what loyalty!] and they rushed in crowds to the door, as if swarming. [Unhappy subjects!] On the following morning he observed that they had founded five queen cells, in the usual way under such circumstances; and in the course of the same afternoon, four more were founded, in a part of the comb where there were only eggs a day or two old. On the fourteenth day from the old queen's removal, a young queen emerged and proceeded towards the other royal cells, evidently with a murderous intent. She was immediately pulled away by the workers, with violence, and this conduct on their part was repeated as often as the queen renewed her destructive purpose. At every repulse she appeared sulky, and cried peep peep, one of the unhatched queens responding, but in a somewhat hoarser tone. This circumstance affords an explanation of the two different sounds which are heard prior to the issuing of second swarms. On the afternoon of the same day, a second queen was hatched; she immediately buried herself in a cluster of bees. Next morning Mr. D. observed a hot pur

suit of the younger queen by the elder, but being called away, on his return half an hour afterwards, the former was dying on the floor, no doubt the victim of the other. [Here is a tragedy !] Huber has stated that these artificial queens are mute; but the circumstance noticed by Mr. Dunbar of the two queens, just referred to, having answered each other, disproves that statement. Contrary also to the experience of Huber, Mr. D. found that the cells of artificial queens were surrounded by a guard. I have just adverted to the protection which they afforded to the royal cells, when assailed by the first hatched queen.

We have stated that the working bees are females. It is proved in two ways; first, by the fact of their having laid eggs, and next, by its being the eggs in the cells of working bees which are chosen for the purpose of being educated into future queens, the general egglayers. The fertility of these workers in all probability arises from their having accidentally partaken of the royal jelly, for they are observed always to issue from cells adjoining those inhabited by grubs, that have been raised from the plebeian to the royal rank. The food reserved for the infants of the blood is so virtuous, that even an accidental drop falling on a lowly subject elevates him in part to the distinctions of sovereignty. Such is the happiness of living even next door to royalty. But it is remarkable that these fertile workers, although they lay eggs, only lay the eggs of drones.

It has been seen that the queen bee lays the eggs of the hive. The number laid by one bee is extraordinary. According to Huber, the queen ordinarily lays about 12,000 eggs in two months. It is not to be supposed that she lays this number every two months, but she does so at the principal laying in April and May: there is also another great laying in August.

Reaumur states the number of eggs laid by a queen in two months at double the amount of Huber's calculation; viz. 200 a day, on an average. This variation may have arisen from variety of climate, season, or other circumstances. A moderate swarm has been calculated to consist of from 12,000 to 20,000, which is about a two months' laying. Schirach says that a single queen will lay from 70,000 to 100,000 eggs in a season. This sounds like a great number; but it is greatly exceeded by some other insects. The female of the white ant extrudes not less than 60 eggs in a minute, which gives 3600 in an hour, 86,400 in a day, 2,419,200 in a lunar month, and the enormous number of 211,449,600 in a year. Though she does not lay all the year probably, yet, setting the period as low as possible, her eggs will exceed the number produced by any other known animal in creation.

The impregnation of the eggs is a difficult and disputed point. Several hypotheses have been broached on the subject; but it seems to be settled that the queen is fecundated during an aerial excursion, and that the agent is the drone.

In the course of his experiments, Huber found that the queens were never impreg nated, so long as they remained in the interior of the hive; but that impregnation always takes place in the open air, at a time when the heat has induced the drones to issue from the hive; on which occasions, the queen soars high in the air, love being the motive for the only distant journey she ever takes. "The rencontre and copulation of the queen with the drone take place exterior to the hive," says Lombard, "and whilst they are on the wing." They are similarly constituted with the whole family of flies. A corresponding circumstance may also be noticed with respect to the queenant; and Bonnet, in his Contemplations de la Nature, has observed that she is always impregnated whilst she is on the wing. The dragon-flies copulate as they fly through the air, in which state they have the appearance of a double animal.

The importance of this excursion is immense without it her majesty gives no heirs to the hive. It is also as efficient as it is important, for its virtue endures upon the eggs that are laid, for two years,

If the queen-bee be confined, though amid a seraglio of males, she continues barren. Prior to her flight, (which is preceded by the flight of the drones,) she reconnoitres the exterior of the hive, apparently for the purpose of recognition, and sometimes, after flying a few feet from it, returns to it again: finally she rises aloft in the air, describing in her flight horizontal circles of considerable diameter, till she is out of sight. She returns from her aerial excursion in about half an hour, with the most evident marks of fecundation. Excursions are sometimes made for a shorter period, but then she exhibits no sign of having been impregnated. It is curious that Bonner should have remarked those aerial excursions, without suspecting their object. I have often," says he, "seen the young queens taking an airing upon the second or third day of their age." Yet Huish says, "It is an acknowledged fact that the queen-bee never leaves the hive, on any account whatsoever." Perhaps Huish's observations were made upon first swarms; and these, according to Huber, are uniformly conducted by old queens. Swammerdam also made the same observation as to first swarms being always led off by old queens. Old queens have not the same occasion to quit the hives that young ones have,-viz. to have intercourse with the drones; for, according to Huber, one impregnation is sufficient to fertilize all the eggs that are laid for two years afterwards, at least. He thinks it sufficient to fertilize all that she lays during her whole life. This may appear to some an incredible period; and Huish inquires, admitting that a single act of coition be sufficient to fecundate all the eggs existing in the ovaria at the time, how those are fecundated which did not exist there? But when we consider that in the common spider, according to Audebert, the fertilizing effect continues for many years; and that the fecundation of the eggs of the female aphides or green lice, by the males of one generation, will continue for a year, passing, during that period, through nine or ten successive generations of females, the causes for doubt will, I think, he greatly diminished: at any rate we are not at liberty to reject the evidence of fact, because we cannot understand their modus operandi. With respect to the aphis, Bonnet says the influence of the male continues through five generations, but Lyonnet carried his experiments to a more extended period; and according to Messrs. Kirby and Spence, who give it " upon the authority of Mr. Wolnough of Hollesley (late of Boyton) in Suffolk, an intelligent agriculturist, and a most acute and accurate observer of nature, there may be twenty generations in a year." Reaumur has proved that in five generations one aphis may be the progenitor of 5,904,900,000 descendants. It may be objected to me here, that the aphis is a vivaporous insect, and that the experiments which prove what I have referred to, do not therefore bear upon the question. It has been ascertained, however, that they are strictly oviparous at the close of the year (one species is at all times so), at other times ovo-viviparous; and in either case the penetrating influence of the male sperm is surely still more remarkable where there has been no immediate commerce with the male, than in the direct case of the oviparous bee! It has been observed, however, that the further the female aphides are removed from the first mother, or that which had known the male, the less prolific do they become.

The absence of impregnation produces remarkable effects even upon the form of the bee; if it be retarded beyond the twentieth or twenty first day of the queen's life, she seems to be deprived of her usual intelligence. The order in which she lays her eggs is changed, and she disposes of them in improper places. She puts the drones where the workers should be, and the workers in the place of the drones. She has been known to blunder so egregiously as to profane even the royal cell, by depositing in it the egg of a drone. But Dr. Bevan shall tell all about it:

If the impregnation of a queen be by any means retarded beyond the 20th or 21st day of her life, a very extraordinary consequence ensues. Instead of first laying the eggs of workers, and those of drones, at the usual period afterwards, she begins from the forty-fifth hour to lay the latter, and lays no other kind during her whole life. It should seem as if the rudiments of the workers' eggs withered in the oviducts, but without obstructing the passage of the drones' eggs. The only known fact analogous to this is the state of certain vegetable seeds, which lose the faculty of germination from age, whatever care may have been taken to preserve them. This retardation seems to have a singular effect upon the whole animal œconomy of the queen. “The bodies of those queens," says Huber, “whose impregnation has been retarded,