the Great Giver of Good. There is, too, in this study, a useful lesson of humility and kindness. He who contemplates the wondrous effects of mere instinct, will scarcely boast of his own intelligence; and he who knows that there is not only understanding, but affection and sentiment, in even the meanest thing that lives, will be less disposed to sport with the feelings, or to wantonly disturb the enjoyments of the animals which have been given to him for his use. In the curious history of the beaver, we learn the value of the united labour of many individuals, directed to a common end, and experience a particular pleasure in its perusal, because of both the rareness of such associated exertion, and its nearer relation to our own social state. Few general readers, even in well instructed classes of society, are aware, that, among insects, are found many societies approaching to a much closer resemblance to those of human institution, than is presented by the larger kinds of animals. In the societies of ants, bees, and wasps, we discover phenomena so curious and so wonderful, as to place, even in the shade, all that is related respecting any gregarious quadrupeds. In this minute and neglected class, are societies formed for almost every ordinary end of human communities. Some congregate to propagate the species, some for purposes of war and plunder, some for the accumulation and defence of property, and some for every purpose of attack and defence, of labour and hoarding, of protecting and instructing their offspring. "Desire appears to stimulate them-love to allure them-fear to alarm them." They construct a habitation and store up food in it. They acknowledge the distinctions of rank and power, and know the value of the subdivision of labour.-They make slaves of one another, and carry on war for that purpose. They even capture and imprison insects of different kinds, to enjoy the benefit of their labour, or to reap the fruits of their savoury secretions. Thus the ants of certain families, obey a sovereign, and acknowledge an hereditary lord. Some of them are of the class of labourers, whilst others are devoted to war: some collect the supplies for their curiously constructed granaries, whilst others execute the functions of careful and patient nurses: and finally, there are those, who are never in action, save on the field of battle, and who afterwards depend entirely on the labour of the slaves, taken in war; and perish of hunger, if abandoned by their prisoners, rather than make the slightest exertion to procure a subsistence for themselves. Thus the societies of white ants or termites consist of five different descriptions of individuals—"workers or larvæ-nymphs or pupa-neuters or soldiers-males and females." The workers are the most active and useful members of the community, constructing their complex edifices, collecting provi sions, waiting on the female, conveying her eggs to the nurseries, and feeding the young. The neuters, of large dimensions, and few in number, armed with tremendous forceps, are the soldiers and sentinels of the formicary. In each society, though consisting of thousands of individuals, there is but one male and one female, and they are of that privileged class, which knows no call to labour, and lives on the productive exertion of others. They are the parents of the race, devoted to pleasure, receiving unasked for homage, and supplied with food, beyond their most extravagant appetite. But, like their royal brother of China, they purchase pre-eminence by the loss of liberty; for, immediately after their election, the workers enclose them in an apartment, with apertures too small for the escape of the large and stately king and his spouse, though yielding easy entrance to the civil and military subjects of the tribe. In this apartment, which is gradually enlarged by the workers, and which is steadily guarded by the sentinels, the queen acquires a size equal to that of twenty or thirty thousand workers.* Wasps form themselves into societies, which consist of females, males, and workers. All but a few females, perish on the approach of winter. Each female, happy enough to survive the rigours of the season, becomes the founder of a colony, erects a habitation, deposits the eggs, and performs, for the first brood, all the duties of protector, provider, and nurse. "At length she receives the reward of her perseverance and labour; and from being a solitary unconnected individual, is enabled to rival the queen of the beehive, in the number of her children and subjects, and in the edifices which they inhabit the number of cells in a vespiary, sometimes amounting to more than sixteen-thousand, almost all of which, contain either an egg, a grub, or a pupa, and each cell serving for three generations in a year."t In time, other females are produced, and, with the original mother, assist the workers and males in the duties of the community. If, by any accident, she perish before other females appear, the neuters cease their labours, lose their instincts, and die. While the workers are assisted by every member of the community in their habitation, none but they sally out in quest of food, which, on their return, they distribute with great impartiality. Intermediate between the wasp and the honey-bee, the humblebee is placed; for, unlike the wasp, it collects wax and honey, but does not construct cells of such matchless perfection as those of Our friend Dr. Say, a high entomological authority, confirms, after a patient examination, much that is written by Europeans respecting the habits of ants. One of our most respected friends, was an accidental witness of a very generad and very destructive battle among these militant insects. Kirby and Spence the wasp and honey-bee. The humble-bees consist of large females, small females, males, and workers. The large females plant the colonies, and produce all the females and neuters, or workers, while the small females are the mothers solely of males or drones. Like the mother wasp, the female humble-bee is the sole surviver of the winter, and is therefore compelled to undergo all the labour of nursing and feeding the first brood of the spring. That brood consists chiefly of labourers, who, after they are matured, perform all out-door labour, though the males assist in repairing and extending the common habitation. On a subject familiar to few general readers, this summary history of other gregarious insects seems necessary, as an introduction to that of the honey-bee. Without such a view, much that is to be stated, would appear incredible, though supported by numerous and unexceptionable witnesses. But when we find different persons, without concert, and at different periods, detecting analogical facts in various classes of insects, we feel less indisposed to admit such novel and startling assertions. Although much has been said of the knowledge of bees, possessed by the ancients, it is certain, that until Maraldi, in 1712, invented glass hives, very little could be known of the in-door habits of these insect societies. What was stated by Aristotle, embellished by Virgil, repeated by Columella and Pliny, is but a tissue of erroneous conjecture. No sooner were glass hives invented, than the bee became the subject of patient and accurate investigation. Among the most prominent writers on bees, stands the great naturalist Reaumur, to whom the genus Apis is under greater obligations than to any entomologist either of ancient or modern times." By him, and his industrious contemporaries, it was ascertained, that a society of honey-bees is divided into three classes of individuals-females or queens— males or drones, and workers, called neuters. The queen was supposed to be the sole mother of the hive, the parent of queens, drones, and neuters. At this period, a new interest in the subject was created by a singular discovery made by Schirach, secretary of the Apiarian Society in Upper Lusatia, and vicar of Little Bautzen. He announced that bees, when deprived of their queen, have the power of selecting one or more grubs of workers or neuters, and, by an enlargement of cells and a change of food, of converting them into veritable females, having the authority, and performing the duties of queen-mothers of the hive. Such a declaration, so little in accordance with previous knowledge, was of course stoutly assailed by the ablest entomologists of the time; but the opinion of Schirach, founded on experiments often repeated, and by many persons, in various places, has been successfully sustained. At least it is certain, that larvæ in the cells of workers, may be so treated as to become queens. It is possible that the grubs thus selected may be misplaced queens, known to be such by the workers, and selected accordingly. But it is not necessary to make such an admission, since minute dissections, by Mademoiselle Jurine, have revealed, even in the neuters, ovaries and oviducts; but so slightly developed as to scarcely admit of demonstration. Some of the neuters, as they were called, have been detected in the act of depositing eggs, a faculty possessed by very few of them. Such eggs always produced males. As these workers have all the ordinary characters of their class, it is highly probable that Schirach and Huber have not been deceived in their well-devised and oft-repeated experiments. If we experience difficulty in admitting, that, by any means, grubs of neuters may be converted into queens, having a structure, instincts, and faculties, entirely different from those of workers, are we not constrained to encounter as great a difficulty, in yielding assent to what is demonstrable, that workers, with all the external characters and ordinary instincts of that class, sometimes fertile, assume the most important duty of the queen, and become mothers of a portion of the hive. They have the basket, the hollowed thigh, and the rectilinear sting of the worker, and the ovaries, ducts, and maternal functions of the queen. They labour, and, by their fellows of the swarm, are held in no particular reverence; yet their issue partake of the fruits of the general industry, and are nurtured until they come forth to enjoy the easy life of drones. It remained for the patient and ingenious Huber, to point out another distinction among the individuals of a hive. He discovered that the workers are divided into two classes, one destined to act as nurses of the young, and as collectors of the food of the hive, the other, co-operating partially in the out-door labour, but engaged chiefly in converting honey into wax, and hence called by him the wax-workers." In 1809, Huber called the attention of the Apiarian to another kind of bee, which appears to be only a casual inmate of the hive, and which is driven forth to starve, or is killed in conflict. The bee referred to, is less hairy, and of a much darker hue, than the ordinary workers; but, in other respects, closely resembles them. Its colour obtained for it the name of black bee. A careful examination of such bees by Mlle. Jurine, lea to the discovery of their ovaries, and afterwards those of common workers, thus establishing a particular resemblance in every thing save colour. Huber supposes them to be defective bees. Kirby and Spence, with many others, conjecture that they are teil-worn, superannuated workers, of no farther use, and therefore sacrificed, because burdensome to a community which tole rates no unnecessary inmates. As, however, black bees are exactly alike, and appear in great numbers, in some seasons, and not at all in others, probably they owe their peculiarities to some congenital accident, such as varies the colour of other domesticated animals. The workers of the hive, are so familiarly known as to scarcely merit a particular description. Four large, and comparatively strong wings, give them uncommon buoyancy and fleetness. The trunk is long and flexible; and the tongue, by means of which it laps its liquid food from the nectaries of flowers, is proportionally larger than that of any other insect. The hindermost of its six legs are hollowed out so as to afford a receptacle for the farina of flowers, and the resinous cement which the little labourers convey to their treasury. The stomach consists of two parts, connected by a tube, somewhat like the crop and gizzard of the gallinaceous animals. In the first apartment, the nectar of flowers is elaborated into honey, which, in due time, is disgorged into the cells of the comb; in the second, a portion of honey undergoes the action of the digestive powers, and is converted to the use of the labourer. The only other part worthy of attention, is the sting with its appendages, the venom-bag and sheath. "This curiously complex apparatus, which, in the bee, is used as a weapon both of defence and offence, is a hollow horny tube, or scabbard, enclosing two bearded darts, which can be thrust a short way beyond the sheath, though the whole apparatus appears to the naked eye like the solid point of the minutest needle." "This apparatus is moved by muscles, which, though invisible to the eye, arc yet strong enough to force the sting to the depth of one-twelfth of an inch, through the thick cuticle of a man's hand. It is articulated by thirteen scales to the lower end of the insect's body; and at its root are situated two glands or ducts, from which the poison is secreted: these glands, uniting in one duct, eject the venomous liquid along the groove formed by the junction of the two piercers. There are four beards on the outside of each piercer: when the insect is prepared to sting, one of these piercers, having its point a little longer, or more in advance than the other, first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their hooks, and then follows the sheath, entering and conveying the poison into the wound." "In consequence of the barbed form of its sting, the bee can seldom disengage itself without leaving behind it the whole apparatus, and even part of its intestines; so that her life is usually sacrificed to her passion."* "Illis ira modum supra est, læsæque venenum VIRG. The poison injected into the wound, together with the irritation arising from the presence of the sting, which is left behind, renders an injury of this kind very severe, and in some cases |