enough to kill the tree have no power to injure the silkworm.

The insect never proceeds from the egg till Nature has provided it a sufficient supply, and till the bud ding leaves are furnished in sufficient abundance for its support. When the leaves are put forth the worins seem to feel the genial summons, and, bursting from their little eggs, crawl upon the leaves, where they feed with a most voracious appetite. Thus they become larger by degrees; and after some months' feeding they lay upon every leaf small bundles or cones of silk, which appear like so many golden apples painted on a fine green ground. Such is the method of breeding them in the East and without doubt it is the best for the worms, and least trouble for the feeder of them. But it is other wise in our colder European climates: the frequent changes of the weather, and the heavy dews of our evenings, render the keeping them all night exposed subject to so many inconveniences as to admit of no remedy. It is true that, by the assistance of nets, they may be preserved from the insults of birds; but the severe cold weather, which often succeeds the first heats of summer, as well as the rain and high winds, will destroy them all; and therefore, to breed them in Europe, they must be sheltered and protected from every external injury.

For this purpose a room is chosen with a south aspect; and the windows are so well glazed as not to admit the least air; the walls are well built, and the planks of the floor exceedingly close so as to admit neither birds nor mice, nor even so much as an insect. In the middle there should be four pillars erected, or four wooden posts, so placed as to form a pretty large square. Between this are different stories made with osier hur dles; and under each hurdle there should be a floor, with an upright border all round. These hurdles and floors must hang upon pullies, so as to be placed or taken down at pleasure.

When the worms are hatched some tender mulberry leaves are provided, and placed in the cloth or paperbox in which the eggs were laid, and which is large enough to hold a great number. When they have acquired some strength, they must be distributed on beds of mulberry-leaves in the different stories of the square in the middle of the room, round which a person may freely pass on every side. They will fix themselves to the leaves, afterwards to the sticks of the hurdles when the leaves are devoured. They have then a thread, by which they can suspend themselves on occasion to prevent any shock by a fall; but this is by no means to be considered as the silk which they spin afterwards in such abundance. Care must be taken that fresh leaves be brought every morning, which must be strewed very gently and equally over them; upon which the silk-worms will forsake the remainder of the old leaves, which must be carefully taken away, and everything kept very clean; for nothing hurts these insects so much as moisture and uncleanliness. For this reason their leaves must be gathered when the weather is dry, and kept in a dry place, if it be necessary to lay in a store. As these animals have but a short time to live they make use of every moment, and almost continually are spinning, except at those intervals when they change their skins. If mulberry-leaves be difficult to be obtained the leaves of lettuce or holyoak will sustain them; but they do not thrive so well upon their new diet, and their silk will neither be so copious nor of so good a quality.

Though the judicious choice and careful management of their diet is absolutely necessary, yet there is another precaution of equal importance, which is to give them air, and open their chamber windows at such times as the sun shines warmest. The place also must be kept as clean as possible-not only the several floors that are laid to receive their ordure, but the whole apart

ments in general. These things well observed contribute greatly to their health and increase.

The worm at the time it bursts the shell is extremely small, and of a black colour; but the head is of a more shining black than the rest of the body: some days after they begin to turn whitish, or of an ash-coloured grey. After the skin begins to grow too rigid, or the animal is stinted within it, the insect throws it off, and appears clothed anew; it then becomes larger and much whiter, though it has a greenish cast: after some days, which are more or less according to the different heat of the climate or to the quality of the food, it leaves off eating, and seems to sleep for two days together: then it begins to stir and put itself into violent motions, till the skin falls off the second time, and is thrown aside by the animal's feet. All these changes are made in three weeks or a month's time; after which it begins to feed once more, still in its caterpillar form, but a good deal differing from itself before its change. In a few days' time it seems to sleep again; and when it awakes it again changes its clothing, and continues feeding as before. When it has thus taken a sufficiency of food, and its parts are disposed for assuming the aurelia form, the animal forsakes for the last time all food and society, and prepares itself a retreat to defend it from external injuries, while it seem deprived of life and motion.

This retreat is no other than its cone, or ball of silk, which Nature has taught it to compose with great art, and within which it buries itself till it assumes its winged form. This cone or ball is spun from two little longish kinds of bags that lie above the intestines, and are filled with a gummy fluid of a marigold colour. This is the substance of which the threads are formed; and the little animal is furnished with a surprising apparatus for spinning it to the degree of fineness which its occasions may require. This instrument in some measure resembles a wire-drawer's machine, in which gold or silver threads are drawn to any degree of minuteness: and through this the animal draws its thread with great assiduity. As every thread proceeds from two gum-bags, it is probable that each supplies its own-which, however, are united, as they proceed from the animal's body. If we examine the thread with a microscope, it will be found that it is flatted on one side and grooved along its length; from hence we may infer that it is doubled just upon leaving the body, and that the two threads stick to each other by that gummy quality of which they are possessed. Previous to spinning its web the silkworm seeks out some convenient place to erect its cell without any obstruction. When it has found a leaf or a chink fitted to its purpose, it begins to wreathe its head in every direction, and fastens its thread on every side to the sides of its retreat. Though all its first essays seem perfectly confused, yet they are not altogether without design; there appears, indeed, no order or contrivance in the disposal of its first threads; they are by no means laid artfully over each other, but are thrown out at random, to serve as an external shelter against rain; for Nature having appointed the animal to work upon trees in the open air, its habits remain, though it is brought up in a warm apartment.

Malpighi pretends to have observed six different layers in a single cone of silk; but what may easily be observed is, that it is composed externally of a kind of rough cotton-like substance, which is called floss; within the thread is more distinct and even; and next the body of the aurelia the apartment seemed lined with a substance of the hardness of paper, but of a much stronger consistence. It must not be supposed that the thread which goes to compose the cone is rolled on as we roll a bobbin; on the contrary, it lies upon it in a very irregular manner, and winds off now from one side of the cone and then from the other. This whole thread, if measured, will be found about three hundred yards long; and so very fine, that eight or ten of them are

generally rolled off into one by the manufacturers. The cone when completed is in form like a pigeon's egg, and more pointed at one end than the other; at the smaller end the head of the aurelia is generally found; and this is the place that the insect when converted into a moth is generally seen to burst through.

It is generally a fortnight or three weeks before the aurelia is changed into a moth; but no sooner is the winged insect completely formed than, having divested itself of its aurelia skin, it prepares to burst through its cone or outward prison: for this purpose it extends its head towards the point of the cone, butts with its eyes, which are rough, against the lining of its cell, wears it away, and at last pushes forward through a passage which is small at first, but which enlarges as the animal increases its efforts for emancipation, while the tattered -remnants of its aurelia skin lie in confusion within the cone like a bundle of dirty linen.

The animal, when thus set free from its double confinement, appears exhausted with fatigue, and seems produced for no other purpose but to transmit a future brood. It neither flies nor eats the male only seeking the female, whose eggs he impregnates; and their union continues for four days without interruption. The male dies immediately after separation from his mate; and she survives him only till she has laid her eggs, which are not hatched into worms till the ensuing spring. However, there are few of these animals suffered to come to a state of maturity; for as their bursting through the cone destroys the silk, the manufacturers take care to kill the aurelia by exposing it to the sun before the moth comes to perfection. This done, they take off the floss and throw the cones into warm water, stirring them till the first thread offers them a clue for winding all off. They generally take eight of the silken threads together the cones still kept under water till a proper quantity of the silk is wound off; however, they do not take all; for the latter part grows weak, and are of a bad colour. As to the paper-like substance which remains, some stain it with a variety of colours to make artificial flowers, others let it lie in the water till the glutinous matter which cements it is all dissolved; it is then carded like wool, spun with a wheel, and converted into silk stuff's of an inferior kind.

BOOK IV.-CHAP. I.

OF THE FOURTH ORDER OF INSECTS IN GENERAL.

In the foregoing part we treated of caterpillars changing into butter ies: in the present will be given the history of grubs changing into their corresponding winged animals. These, like the former, undergo their transformation, and appear as grubs or maggots, as aurelias, and at last as winged insects. Like the former, they are bred from eggs; they feed in their reptile state; they continue motionless and lifeless as aurelias, and fly and propagate when furnished with wings. But they differ in many respects; the grub or maggot wants the number of feet which the caterpillar is seen to have; the aurelia is not so totally wrapped up but that its feet and its wings appear. The perfect animal when eman cipated also has its wings either cased or transparent, like gauze-not coloured with that beautiful painted dust which adorns the wings of the butterfly.

In this class of insects, therefore, we may place a various tribe, that are at first laid as eggs, then are excluded as maggots or grubs, then change into aurelias, with their legs and wings not wrapped up, but appear ing; and, lastly, assuming wings, in which state they propagate their kind. Some of these have four transparent wings, as bees; some have two membraneous cases to their wings, as beetles; and some have two wings,

which are transparent, as ants. Here, therefore, we will place the bee, the wasp, the humble-bee, the ichneumonfly, the gnat, the tipula or longlegs, the beetle, the maybug, the glow-worm, and the ant. The transformations which all these undergo are pretty nearly similar, and though very different animals in form, are yet produced nearly in the same manner.

CHAP. II.

OF THE BEE.

To give a complete description of this insect in a few pages, which some have devoted volumes in describing, and whose nature and properties still continue in dispute, is impossible. It will be sufficient to give a general idea of the animal's operations, which, though they have been studied for more than two thousand years, are still but incompletely known. The account given us by Reaumur is sufficiently minute, and, if true, sufficiently wonderful; but I find many of the facts which he relates doubted by those who are most conversant with bees; and some of them actually declared not to have a real existence in Nature.

It is unhappy, therefore, for those whose method demands a history of bees that they are unfurnished with those materials which have induced so many observers to contradict so great a naturalist. His life was spent in the contemplation; and it requires an equal share of attention to prove the errors of his discoveries. Without entering, therefore, into the dispute, I will take him for my guide; and just mention as I go along those particulars in which succeeding observers have begun to think him erroneous. Which of the two are right time can only discover; for my part I have only heard one side, for as yet none have been so bold as openly to oppose Reaumur's delightful researches.

There are three different kinds of bees in every hive. First, the labouring bees, which make up the far greatest number, and are thought to be neither male nor female, but merely born for the purposes of labour, and continuing the breed by supplying the young with provision while yet in their helpless state. The second sort are the drones; they are of a darker colour, longer, and more thick by one-third than the former; they are supposed to be the males, and there is not above a hundred of them in the hive of seven or eight thousand bees. The third sort is much larger than either of the former, and still fewer in number: some assert that there is not above one in every swarm; but this later observers affirm not to be true, there being sometimes five or six in the same hive. These are called queen-bees, and are said to lay all the eggs from which the whole swarm is hatched in a season.

In examining the structure of the common working bee, the first remarkable part that offers is the trunk which serves to extract the honey from the flowers. It is not formed like that of other flies, in the manner of a tube, by which the fluid is to be sucked up; but like a besom, to sweep, or a tongue, to lick it away. The animal is furnished also with teeth, which serve it in making wax. This substance is gathered from flowers, like honey; it consists of that dust or farina which contributes to the fecundation of plants, and is moulded into wax by the little animal at leisure. Every bee when it leaves the hive to collect this precious store enters into the cup of the flower, particularly such as seemed charged with the greatest quantity of this yellow farina. As the animal's body is covered over with hair, it rolls itself within the flower and soon becomes quite covered with the dust, which it soon after brushes off with its two hind-legs, and kneeds it into two little balls. In the thighs of the hind-legs there are two

cavities, edged with hair, and into these, as into a basket, the animal sticks its pellets. Thus employed, the bee flies from flower to flower, increasing its store, and adding to its stock of wax; until the ball upon each thigh becomes as big as a grain of pepper; by this time, having got a sufficient load, it returns, making the best of its way to the hive.

The belly of the bee is divided into six rings, which sometimes shorten the body by slipping one over the other. It contains within it, beside the intestines, the honey-bag, the venom-bag, and the sting. The honey bag is as transparent as crystal, containing the honey that the bee has brushed from the flowers, of which the greatest part is carried to the hive, and poured into the cells of the honey-comb, while the remainder serves for the bee's own nourishment; for during summer it never touches what has been laid up for the winter. The sting, which serves to defend this little animal from its enemies, is composed of three parts-the sheath and two darts, which are extremely small and penetrating. Both the darts have several small points or barbs, like those of a fish-hook, which render the sting more painful, and makes the dart rankle in the wound. Still, however, this instrument would be very slight did not the bee poison the wound. The sheath, which has a sharp point, makes the first impression; which is followed by that of the darts, and then the venomous liquor is poured in. The sheath sometimes sticks so fast in the wound that the animal is obliged to leave it behind, by which the bee soon after dies, and the wound is considerably inflamed. It might at first appear well for mankind if the bee were without its skin; but upon recollection it will be found that the little animal would have then too many rivals in sharing its labours. A hundred other lazy animals, fond of honey and hating labour, would intrude upon the sweets of the hive, and the treasure would be carried off for want of armed guardians to protect it.

From examining the bee singly, we now come to consider it in society, as an animal not only subject to laws, but active, vigilant, laborious, and disinterested. All its provisions are laid up for the community, and all its arts in building a cell designed for the benefit of posterity. The substance with which bees build their cells is wax, which is fashioned into convenient apartments for themselves and their young. When they begin to work in their hives they divide themselves into four companies --one of which roves in the fields in search of materials; another employs itself in laying out the bottoms and partitions of their cells; a third is employed in making the inside smooth from the corners and angles; and the fourth company bring food for the rest, or relieve those who return with their respective burthens. But they are not kept constant to one employment; they often change the tasks assigned to them-those that have been at work being permitted to go abroad, and those that have been in the fields already take their places. They seem even to have signs by which they understand each other; for when any of them wants food it bends down its trunk to the bee from whom it is expected, which then opens its honey-bag and lets some drops fall into the other's mouth, which is at that time open to receive it. Their diligence and labour is so great, that in a day's time they are able to make cells which lie upon each other, numerous enough to contain three thousand bees. If we examine their cells, they will be found formed in the most exact proportion. It was said by Papus, an ancient geometrician, that of all other figures hexagons were the most convenient; for when placed touching each other the most convenient room would be given and the smallest lost. The cells of the bees are perfect hexagons; these in every honeycomb are double, opening on either side and closed at the bottom. The bottoms are composed of little triangular panes, which, when united together, terminate in a point, and lie ex

actly upon the extremities of other panes of the same shape in opposite cells. These lodgings have spaces like streets between them, large enough to give the bees a free passage in and out, and yet narrow enough to preserve the necessary heat. The mouth of every cell is defended by a border, which makes the door a little less than the inside of the cell, and which serves to strengthen the whole. These cells serve for different purposes-for laying up their young; for their wax, which in winter becomes a part of their food; and for their honey, which makes their principal subsistence. It is well known that the habitation of bees ought to be very close; and what their hives want from the negli gence or unskilfulness of man these animals supply by their own industry; so that it is their principal care when first hived to stop up all the crannies. For this purpose they make use of a resinous gum, which is more. tenacious than wax, and differs greatly from it. This the ancients called "propolis;" it will grow considerably hard in June—though it will in some measure soften by heat, and is often found different in consistence, colour, and smell. It has generally an agreeable aromatic odour when it is warmed; and by some it is considered as a most grateful perfume. When the bees begin to work with it it is soft, but it acquires a firmer consistence every day; till at length it assumes a brown colour, and becomes much harder than wax. The bees carry it on their hinder legs; and some think it is met with on the birch, the willow, and poplar. However it is procured, it is certain that they plaster the inside of their hives with this composition,

If

If examined through a glass hive, from the hurry the whole swarm is in the whole appears at first like anarchy and confusion; but the spectator soon finds every animal diligently employed, and following one pursuit with a settled purpose. Their teeth are the instruments by which they model and fashion their various buildings, and give them such symmetry and perfection. They begin at the top of the hive; and several of them work at a time at the cells which have two faces. they are stinted with regard to time they give the new cells but half the depth which they ought to have, leaving them imperfect till they have stretched out the number of cells necessary for the present occasion. The construction of their combs costs them a great deal of labour: they are made by insensible additions, and not cast at once in a mould, as some are apt to imagine. There seems no end of their shaping, finishing, and turning them neatly up. The cells for their young are most carefully formed; those designed for lodging the drones are larger than the rest; and that for the queen-bee the largest of all. The cells in which the young brood are lodged serve at different times for containing honey; and this proceeds from an obvious cause: every worm, before it is transformed into an aurelia, hangs its old skin on the partitions of its cell; and thus, while it strengthens the wall, diminishes the capacity of its late apartment. The same cell in a single summer is often tenanted by three or four worms in succession, and thẹ next season by three or four more. Each worm takes particular care to fortify the pannels of its cell by hanging up its spoils there: thus, the partitious being lined six or eight deep, become at last too narrow for a new brood, and are converted into store-houses for honey. Those cells where nothing but honey is deposited are much deeper than the rest. When the harvest of honey is so plentiful that they have not sufficient room for it, they either lengthen their combs or build more, which are much longer than the former. Sometimes they work at three combs at a time; for when there are three workhouses, more bees may be thus employed without embarrassing each other.

But honey, as was before observed, is not the only food upon which these animals subsist. The meal of flowers, of which their wax is formed, is one of their

most favourite repasts. This is a diet which they live upon during the summer, and of which they lay up a large winter provision. The wax of which their combs are made is no more than this nieal digested and wrought into a paste. When the flowers upon which bees gene rally feed are not fully blown, and this meal or dust is not offered in sufficient quantities, the bees pinch the tops of the stamina in which it is contained with their teeth, and thus anticipate the progress of vegetation. In April and May the bees are busy from morning to evening in gathering this meal; but when the weather be comes too hot in the midst of summer they work only in the morning.

The bee is furnished with a stomach for its wax as well as its honey. In the former of the two their powder is altered, digested, and concocted into real wax, and is thus ejected by the same passage by which it is swallowed. Every comb newly made is white; but it becomes yellow as it grows old, and almost black when kept too long in the hive. Beside the wax thus digested, there is a large portion of the powder kneaded up for food in every hive, and kept in separate cells for winter provision. This is called by the country people beebread, and contributes to the health and strength of the animal during the winter. Those who rear bees may rob them of their honey, and feed them during the winter with treacle but no proper substitute has yet been found for the bee-bread, and without it the animals become consumptive and die.

As for the honey, it is extracted from that part of the flower called the nectareum. From the mouth this delicious fluid passes into the gullet, and then into the first stomach or honey-bag, which, when filled, appears like an oblong bladder. Children that live in country places are well acquainted with this bladder, and destroy many bees to come at their store of honey. When a bee has sufficiently filled its first stomach it returns back to the hive, where it disgorges the honey into one of the cells. It often happens the bee delivers its store to some others at the mouth of the hive, and flies off for a fresh supply. Some honey-combs are always left open for common use; but many others are stopped up till there is a necessity of opening them. Each of these are covered carefully with wax, so close, that the covers seem to be made at the very instant the fluid is deposited within them.

Having thus given a cursory description of the insect, individually considered, and of the habitation it forms, we next come to its social habits and institutions: and, in considering this little animal attentively, after the necessary precautions for the immediate preservation of the community, its second care is turned to the continuance of posterity. How numerous soever the multitude of bees may appear in one swarm, yet they all owe their origin to a single parent, which is called the queenbee. It is indeed surprising that a single insect shall in one summer give birth to above twenty thousand young; but upon opening her body the wonder will cease, as the number of eggs appearing at one time amounts to five thousand. This animal, whose existence is of such importance to her subjects, may easily be distinguished from the rest by her size and the shape of her body. On her safety depends the whole welfare of the commonwealth; and the attention paid her by all the rest of the swarm evidently show the dependence her subjects have upon her security. If this insect be carefully observed, she will be seen at times attended with a numerous retinue, marching from cell to cell, plunging the extremity of her body into many of them, and leaving a small egg in each.

secret retreats of the hive, where she most usually resides. Upon the union of these two kinds depends all expectations of a future progeny; for the working bees are of no sex, and only labour for another offspring: yet such is their attention to their queen, that if she happens to die they will leave off working, and take no further care of posterity. If, however, another queen is in this state of universal despair presented them, they immediately acknowledge her for their sovereign, and once more diligently apply to their labour. It must be observed. however, that all this fertility of the queen-bee, and the great attentions paid to her by the rest, are controverted by more recent observers. They assert that the common bees are parents themselves; that they deposit their eggs in the cells which they have prepared; that the females are impregnated by the males, and bring forth a progeny which is wholly their own.

However, to go on with their history as delivered us by Mr. Reaumur-When the queen-bee has deposited the number of eggs necessary in the cells, the working bees undertake the care of the rising posterity. They are seen to leave off their usual employments, to construct proper receptacles for eggs, or to complete those that are already formed. They purposely build little cells, extremely solid, for the young, in which they employ a great deal of wax; those designed for lodging the males, as was already observed, are larger than the rest; and those for the queen bees the largest of all. There is usually but one egg deposited in every cell; but when the fecundity of the queen is such that it exceeds the number of cells already prepared, there are sometimes three or four eggs crowded together in the same apartment. But this is an inconvenience that the working bees will by no means suffer. They seem sensible that two young ones, stuffed up in the same cell, when they grow larger will but embarrass and at last destroy each other; they therefore take care to leave a cell to every egg, and remove or destroy the rest.

The single egg that is left remaining is fixed to the bottom of the cell, and touches it but in a single point. A day or two after it is deposited the worm is excluded from the shell of the egg, having the appearance of a maggot rolled up in a ring, and lying softly on a bed of a whitish coloured jelly; upon which also the little animal begins to feed. In the meantime, the instaut it appears the working bees attend it with the most anxious and parental tenderness; they furnish it every hour with a supply of this whitish substance, on which it feeds and lies, and watch the cell with unremitting care. There are nurses that have greater affection for the offspring of others than many parents have for their own children. They are constant in visiting each cell, and seeing that nothing is wanting-preparing the white mixture (which is nothing but a composition of honey and wax) in their own bowels, with which they feed them. Thus attended and plentifully fed, the worm in less than six days' time comes to its full growth, and no longer accepts the food offered it. When the bees perceive that it has no further occasion for feeding they perform the last offices of tenderness, and shut the little animal up in its cell, walling up the mouth of its apartment with wax; there they leave the worm to itself, having secured it from every external injury.

The worm is no sooner left enclosed, but from a state of inaction it begins to labour, extending and shortening its body, and by this means lining the walls of its apartment with a silken tapestry, which it spins in the manner of caterpillars before they undergo their last transformation. When their cell is thus prepared the animal is soon after transformed into an aurelia, but differing from that of the common caterpillar, as it exhibits not only the legs but the wings of the future bee in its present state of inactivity. Thus, in about twenty or one and twenty days after the egg is laid the bee is completely formed, and fitted to undergo the fatigues of

its state. When all its parts have acquired their proper strength and consistence, the young animal opens its prison by piercing with its teeth the waxen door that confines it. When just freed from its cell it is as yet moist, and incommoded with the spoils of its former situation; but the officious bees are soon seen to flock round it, and to lick it clean on all sides with their trunks; while another band, with equal assiduity, are observed to feed it with honey; others again begin immediately to cleanse the cell that has been just left, to carry the ordures out of the hive, and to fit the place for a new inhabitant. The young bee soon repays their care by its industry; for as soon as its external parts become dry it discovers its natural appetite for labour, and industriously begins the task, which it pursues unremittingly through life. The toil of man is irksome to him, and he earns his subsistence with pain; but this little animal seems happy in its pursuit, and finds delight in all its employment.

When just freed from the cell, and properly equipped by its fellow-bees for duty, it at once issues from the hive, and, instructed only by Nature, goes in quest of flowers, chooses only those that yield it a supply, rejects such as are barren of honey or have been already drained by other adventurers, and when loaded is never at a loss to find its way back to the common habitation After this first sally it begins to gather the mealy powder that lies on every flower, which is afterwards converted into wax; and with this, the very first day, it returns with two large balls stuck to its thighs.

When bees first begin to break their prisons there are generally above a hundred excluded in one day. Thus, in the space of a few weeks the number of the inhabitants in one hive of moderate size becomes so great, that there is no place to contain the new comers; and they are scarcely excluded from the cell when they are obliged by the old bees to sally forth in quest of new habitations. In other words the hive begins to swarm, and the new progeny prepares for exile.

While there is room enough in the hive the bees remain quietly together; it is necessity alone that compels the separation. Sometimes, indeed, the young brood with graceless obstinacy refuse to depart, and even venture to resist their progenitors. The young ones are known by being browner than the old, with whiter hair: the old ones are of a lighter colour, with red hair. The two armies are therefore easily distinguishable, and dreadful battles are often seen to ensue. But the victory almost ever terminates with strict poetical justice in favour of the veterans, and the rebellious offspring are driven off, not without loss and mutilation.

In different countries the swarms make their appearance at different times of the year, and there are several signs previous to this intended migration. The night before, an unusual buzzing is heard in the hive; in the morning, though the weather be soft and inviting, they seem not to obey the call, being intent on more important meditations within. All labour is discontinued in the hive-every bee is either employed in forcing or reluctantly yielding a submission; at length, after some noise and tumult, a queen-bee is chosen to guard rather than conduct the young colony to other habitations, and then they are marshalled without any apparent conductor. In less than a minute they leave their native abode, and, forming a cloud round their protectress, they set off without seeming to know the place of destination" the world before them, where to choose their place of rest." The usual time of swarming is from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon, when the sun shines bright, and invites them to seek their for tunes. They flutter for a while in the air like flakes of snow, and sometimes undertake a distant journey, but more frequently are contented with some neigh bouring asylum-the branch of a tree, a chimney-pot, or some other exposed situation. It is, indeed, re

markable that all these animals, of whatever kind, that have long been under the protection of man seem to lose a part of their natural sagacity in providing for themselves. The rabbit when domesticated forgets to dig holes-the hen to build a nest-and the bee to seek a shelter that shall protect it from the inclemencies of winter. In those countries where the bees are wild and unprotected by man they are always sure to build their waxen cells in the hollow of a tree; but with us they seem improvident in their choice, and the first green branch that stops their flight seems to be thought sufficient for their abode through winter. However, it does not appear that the queen chooses the place where they are to alight, for many of the stragglers, who seem to be pleased with a particular branch, go and settle upon it; others are seen to succeed, and at last the queen herself, when she finds a sufficient number there before her, goes to make it the place of her head-quarters. When the queen is settled the rest of the swarm soon follow; and in about a quarter of an hour the whole body seem to be at ease. that there are two or three queens to a swarm, and the colony is formed into parties; but it most usually happens that one of these is more considerable than the other, and the bees by degrees desert the weakest to take shelter under the most powerful protector. The deserted queen does not long survive this defeat; she takes refuge under the new monarch, and is soon destroyed by her jealous rival. Till this cruel execution is performed the bees never go out to work; and if there should still be a queen-bee belonging to the new colony left in the old hive, she always undergoes the fate of the former. However, it must be observed that the bees never sacrifice any of their queens when the hive is full of wax and honey; for there is at that time no danger in maintaining a plurality of breeders.

It sometimes is found

When the swarm is thus conducted to a place of rest, and the policy of government is settled, the bees soon resume their former labours. The making cells, storing them with honey, impregnating the queen, making proper cells for the rising progeny, and protecting them from external danger, employ their unceasing industry. But soon after, and towards the latter end of summer, when the colony is sufficiently stored with inhabitants, a most cruel policy ensues. The drone bees, which are (as has been said) generally in the hive to the number of a hundred, are marked for slaughter. These which had hitherto led a life of indolence and pleasure, whose only employment was in impregnating the queen, and rioting upon the labours of the hive without aiding in the general toil-now share the fate of most voluptuaries, and fall a sacrifice to the general resentment of society.

The working bees in a body declare war against them; and in two or three days' time the ground all round the hive is covered with their dead bodies. Nay, the work ing bees will even kill such drones as are yet in the worm state in the cell, and eject their bodies from the hive among the general carnage.

When a hive sends out several swarms in the year, the first is always the best and the most numerous. These, having the whole summer before them, have the more time for making wax and honey, and consequently their labours are the most valuable to the proprietor. Although the swarm chiefly consists of the youngest bees, yet it is often found that bees of all ages compose the multitude of emigrants, and it often happens that bees of all ages are seen remaining behind. The number of them is more considerable than that of some cities, for sometimes upwards of forty thousand are found in a single hive. So large a body may well be supposed to work with great expedition; and in fact, in less than twenty-four hours they will make combs above twenty inches long and seven or eight broad. Sometimes they will half fill their hives with wax in less than five days. In the first