SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF FRANCIS HUBER. 489 



Huber retained his faculties to the last. He wrote to one of his 

 friends on the 20th of December, 1832, and two days later he sank to 

 rest, without a pang, in the arms of his daughter, Madame de Molin, 

 in the eighty-second year of his age. 



The work, in his own department, which he has left behind him, is 

 marvelous in its accuracy and its fullness. Facts which had eluded 

 observers from the days of Aristomachus of Soli down to those of 

 Bonnet, yielded to the patience, tact, and ingenuity of Huber. It is 

 hard to decide which is most admirable in him his life-long devotion 

 to one purpose ; the patience and caution with which he questioned 

 and cross-questioned Nature by experiment ; or the lucidity and pict- 

 uresqueness of his descriptions of his work. The latter quality, it is 

 probable, was the direct result of his deprivation. It was necessary 

 for him, out of the disjointed answers and remarks of his observers, 

 to form a perfect, rounded mental conception of the facts in them- 

 selves and in their relations. This perfect comprehension in great 

 measure insures a luminous style ; obscurity of style being much 

 more frequently a result of confusion of ideas than of a mere awk- 

 wardness in the use of words. 



Huber's work was first recorded in the form of a series of letters 

 addressed to M. Bonnet, and called " Nouvelles Observations sur les 

 Abeilles," 1792. Afterward, in the later editions, several papers on 

 the " Origin of Wax," the " Sphinx Atropos," " Bee Architecture," 

 and other topics, were incorporated into the same volume. Many 

 of his experiments and observations were made at the suggestion of 

 Bonnet, and it was upon his recommendation that Huber constructed 

 his " single-leaf " and " book "- observing hives. The first of these 

 was made to contain a single comb, but, fearing that the bees, who are 

 taught by Nature to build several parallel combs, might manifest 

 change of habit or modification of instinct under new conditions, he 

 also caused to be made another hive, by which he could correct the 

 observations made upon the first. This second hive was so arranged 

 that each frame could be turned back, like a door, upon hinges. 



The first observations which Huber i*ecords are those upon the 

 fertilization of the queen. Many theories had been advanced upon 

 this subject, by Swammerdam, Debraw, Hattorf, and others, supported 

 by experiments which, to most minds, would have seemed conclusive ; 

 but Huber was not satisfied till he again and again repeated, with 

 every precaution and under every condition, the experiments made by 

 his predecessors. These experiments, made by himself and others, he 

 describes with his usual clearness, and from them he deduces the fol- 

 lowing singular facts, which have been a thousand times confirmed: 



The queen-bee, which is the only perfect female in the hive, is fe- 

 cundated on the wing, and this oue fecundation suffices to fertilize the 

 hundreds of thousands of worker-eggs which she lavs during: her life, 

 of from three to five years. If the impregnation of the queen be de- 



