MEXICAN BEES. 359 



cent hides. Of these one has been forwarded to M. Huber, 

 eminently distinguished for his highly interesting observations 

 on the manners of bees ; the other has been presented to the 

 Linnsean Society. The latter has been carefully divided longi- 

 tudinally, so as to expose its interior; a representation of 

 which is given on the opposite plate, one half of the natural 

 size. In this view nearly the whole of the interior is visible ; 

 scarcely a score of the cells, and very few of the honey sacs, 

 having been removed with the upper portion of the trunk. 

 It represents the comb as it would be seen in its natural 

 horizontal position, by an observer looking upon it from 

 above. 



The eye of an observer, accustomed to the regular dispo- 

 sition of the comb in the hive of the European bee, is at once 

 struck with the opposite directions assumed by it in different 

 parts of that of the Mexican. Instead of the parallel vertical 

 layers of comb, we have here layers, some of which assume a 

 vertical, while others are placed in a horizontal direction ; the 

 cells of the latter being the most numerous. The cells, of course, 

 vary in their direction, in the same manner as the comb which 

 they form : those of the horizontal layers of comb being 

 vertical, with their openings upwards, while the cells of the 

 vertical comb are placed in a horizontal direction. In the 

 horizontal cells the mouths are partly directed away from the 

 entrance to the hive, and partly towards it ; the former direc- 

 tion being given to those cells which occupy the middle layers 

 of comb, and the latter to the cells which are placed on the 

 side of the hive opposed to the opening. All the combs, both 

 vertical and horizontal, are composed of a single series of cells 

 applied laterally to each other, and not, as in the European 

 hive bee, of two series, the one applied against the extremities 

 of the other. The horizontal combs are much more regu- 

 larly formed than the vertical, the latter being broken, and 

 placed at uncertain distances, while the horizontal are pei- 

 fectly parallel with each other, forming uniform layers, and 

 placed at equal distances. Between these parallel combs are 

 processes of wax, partly supporting them, and passing from 

 the base of one cell to the junction of others in the next layer. 

 VOL. II. 2 B 



