You makes but one change to denote case. For which case does it change?

The old-fashioned words thou, thy or thine, thee, are still used in prayer and in poetry; and by the Friends or Quakers in their familiar conversation and writing.

THIRD PERSON

You will remember that it is only in the third person that the personal pronouns show masculine, feminine, and neuter gender. Of what gender are the pronouns of first and second person?

Which of these personal pronouns of the third person show by their form whether they are to be used as subjects or objects ? Of what gender are these? Which is changed only to denote possession? Of what gender is this pronoun?

66

THE MAKING OF A HONEYCOMB

In order to begin at the beginning of the story, let us suppose that we go into a country garden one fine morning in May when the sun is shining brightly overhead, and that we see hanging from the bough of an old apple 5 tree a black object which looks very much like a large plum pudding. On approaching it, however, we see that it is a large cluster or swarm of bees clinging to each other

by their legs; each bee with its two fore legs clinging to the two hinder legs of the one above it. In this way as many as twenty thousand bees may be clinging together, and yet they hang so freely that a bee, even from quite the center of the swarm, can disengage herself from her 5 neighbors and pass through to the outside of the cluster whenever she wishes.

If these bees were left to themselves, they would find a home after a time in a hollow tree, or under the roof of a house, or in some other cavity, and begin to build their 10 honeycomb there. But as we do not wish to lose their honey we will bring a hive, and, holding it under the swarm, shake the bough gently so that the bees fall into it, and cling to the sides as we turn it over on a piece of clean linen, on the stand where the hive is to be.

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And now let us suppose that we are able to watch what is going on in the hive. Before five minutes are over the industrious little insects have begun to disperse and to make arrangements in their new home. A number (perhaps about two thousand) of large, lumbering bees of 20 a darker color than the rest, will, it is true, wander aimlessly about the hive, and wait for the others to feed them and house them; but these are the drones, or male bees, who never do any work except during one or two days in their whole lives. But the smaller working bees begin to 25 be busy at once. Some fly off in search of honey. Others walk carefully all round the inside of the hive to see if

there are any cracks in it; and if there are, they go off to the horse-chestnut trees, poplars, hollyhocks, or other plants which have sticky buds, and gather a kind of gum with which they cement the cracks and make them air5 tight. Others again cluster round one bee blacker than the rest and having a longer body and shorter wings; for this is the queen bee, the mother of the hive, and she must be watched and tended.

But the largest number begin to hang in a cluster 10 from the roof just as they did from the bough of the apple

tree. What are they doing there? Watch for a little while and you will soon see one bee come out from among its companions and settle on the top of the inside of the hive, turning herself round and round, so as to push the 15 other bees back, and to make a space in which she can

work. Then she will begin to pick at the under part of her body with her fore legs, and will bring a scale of wax from a curious sort of pocket under her abdomen. Holding this wax in her claws, she will bite it with her hard, 20 pointed upper jaws, which move to and fro sideways like a pair of pincers; then, moistening it with her tongue into a kind of paste, she will draw it out like a ribbon and plaster it on the top of the hive.

After that she will take another piece; for she has 25 eight of these little wax pockets, and she will go on till they are all exhausted. Then she will fly away out of the hive, leaving a small wax-lump on the hive ceiling or

on the bar stretched across it; then her place will be taken by another bee, who will go through the same movements. This bee will be followed by another, and another, till a large wall of wax has been built, hanging from the bar of the hive.

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Meanwhile the bees which have been gathering honey out of doors begin to come back laden. But they cannot store their honey, for there are no cells made yet to put it in; neither can they build combs with the rest, for they have no wax in their wax pockets. So they just hang 10 quietly on the other bees, and there they remain for twenty-four hours, during which time they digest the honey they have gathered, and part of it forms wax and oozes out from the scales under their body. Then they are prepared to join the others and plaster wax on to the 15 hive.

And now, as soon as a rough lump of wax is ready, another set of bees come to do their work. These are called the nursing bees, because they prepare the cells and feed the young ones. One of these bees, standing on the 20 roof of the hive, begins to force her head into the wax, biting with her jaws and moving her head to and fro. Soon she has made the beginning of a round hollow, and then she passes on to make another, while a second bee takes her place and enlarges the first one. As many as twenty 25 bees will be employed in this way, one after another, upon each hole, before it is large enough for the base of a cell.

Meanwhile another set of nursing bees have been working in just the same way on the other side of the wax, and so a series of hollows are made back to back all over the comb. Then the bees form the walls of the cells, 5 and soon a number of six-sided tubes, about half an inch deep, stand all along each side of the comb ready to receive honey or bee eggs.

As soon as one comb is finished, the bees begin another by the side of it, leaving a narrow lane between, 10 just broad enough for two bees to pass back to back as they crawl along, and so the work goes on till the hive is full of combs.

As soon, however, as a length of about five or six inches of the first comb has been made into cells, the 15 bees which are bringing home honey no longer hang to make it into wax, but begin to store it in the cells. We all know where the bees go to fetch their honey, and how, when a bee settles on a flower, she thrusts into it her small tonguelike proboscis, which is really a lengthened 20 underlip, and sucks out the drop of honey.

This she swallows, passing it down her throat into a honey-bag or first stomach, and when she gets back into the hive, she can empty this bag and pass the honey back through her mouth again into the honey cells.

25 But, if you watch bees carefully, especially in the springtime, you will find that they carry off something else besides honey. Early in the morning, when the dew