Retrospective Criticism, 185 



his song is nearly ended, for his second note is very hoarse. He made 

 five or six efforts this morning to tell me his name, but he became, as it 

 were, vexed with his fruitless attempts, and flew away, muttering a lanV 

 guage which I could not understand/' 



With respect to the swift, I am very glad the circumstance has been 

 noticed, as it affords me the opportunity of correcting a typographical error, 

 I referred to my journal for October 27th, but found no notice of the 

 swift. On Sept. 27th, I found the following entry; — " Saw four swifts, 

 this morning, flying in an easterly direction, apparently taking their final 

 leave of us." N. B. " The last I saw this year," was added afterwards. 

 As I did not notice the last appearance of the main body in my journal, I 

 ought, for the cause of science, to have been more cautious in conveying a 

 single fact in such a manner as to be understood in a general sense. As I 

 am at all times anxious to promote the interests of science, I feel glad when 

 notices are made of such things as appear at variance with general facts, 

 as they have a tendency to produce accuracy of observation, as well as cor- 

 rectness in communication, while, at the same time they often elucidate 

 such facts as appear almost incredible. 



I beg also to thank your correspondent J. C. N. (Vol. III. p. 474.), foi* 

 his satisfactory solution of my questions on the migration and breeding of 

 swallows. By such communications much information is given, not only 

 to the person proposing the question, but to every other reader who may 

 be ignorant of such facts. — W. H. White. Bedford^ Jan. 8. 1831. 



Secretion of Wax by the Hive Bee. — Sir, I cannot but feel highly 

 honoured by the critique in your last Number on my little work on 

 Insect Architecture^ from the pen evidently of a writer both of sound 

 learning, and deeply conversant with nature. Perhaps you will spare me 

 half a page to set him right on the subject of wax, as he thinks I have 

 ** been misled hy Huber," in opposition to the opinion of " experienced 

 apiarians." " It is to be regretted," he adds, " that Mr. Rennie, too im- 

 plicitly adhering to the diction of an able though fallible experimenter, 

 should have been the means of widely propagating an error on a practical 

 point of natural history ; and that, too, under the sanction of a Society 

 for the Diffusion of knowledge." * 



I should have regretted this as much as your intelligent critic ; but in 

 revising the volume last summer for a second edition (13,000 copies of 

 the first having been sold in nine months), 1 did not feel myself called 

 upon to alter the statements in question, which, so far as I know, are 

 opposed solely by Huish ; whose knowledge of such subjects may be fairly 

 estimated from his denial of the existence of aphides in Britain : their 

 " not having been observed in this country," he says, "may proceed from 

 diversity of climate, which is not congenial to the growth of the insect !"f 

 So much for the entomological knowledge of "experienced apiarians." 

 Did Huish never hear of such an insect as the hop-fly (A'phis humuli)? 



I was neither led, nor " misled, by the great authority of Huber." The 

 first author who published the opinion that wax is secreted, not collected 

 by bees, was Hornbostel, a clergyman at Hamburgh, [f This was re- 

 published as his own discovery, by Reim, in 1769 § Without being aware. 

 It would appear, of the experiments of Hornbostel or Reim, our dis- 

 tinguished physiologist, John Hunter, published it as his own discovery in 

 1792 [| ; and the elder Huber, assisted by the clever daughter of Professor 



* Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. iv. p. 51. 

 + Huish on Bees, p. 201. 



4: Hamburgische vermischte Bibliothek, vol. ii. p. 45., for 1744 j and 

 Commer. Litter. Norimbergense for 1745. 

 § (Euvres do Bonnet, vol. i. p. iii. 4to edit, 

 jl Phil. Trans, for 1792, p; 143. 



