PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 429 



any portion of the group, the ventilation ceases there, while it continues 

 in the part which feels the heat of the sun. The same cause produces a 

 similar effect upon humble-bees, wasps, and hornets. 



Amongst the bees, however, it is remarkable that ventilation goes on 

 even in the depth of winter, when it cannot be occasioned by excess of 

 heat. This, therefore, can only be regarded as a secondary cause of the 

 phenomenon. Fi'om other experiments, which, having already detained 

 you too long, I shall not here detail, it appears that penetrating and disa- 

 greeable odors produce the same effect.^ Perhaps, though Huber does 

 not say this, the odor produced by the congregated myriads of the hive 

 may be amongst the principal motives that impel its inhabitants to this 

 necessary action. 



Whatever be the proximate cause, it is, I trust, now evident to you 

 that the Author of nature, having assigned to these insects a habitation 

 into which the air cannot easily penetrate, has gifted them with the means 

 of preventing the fatal effects which would result from corrupted air. An 

 indirect effect of ventilation is the elevated temperature which these 

 animals maintain, without any effort, in their hive : — but upon this I shall 

 enlarge hereafter. 



Bees are extremely neat in their persons and habitations, and remove 

 all nuisances with great assiduity, at least as far as their powers enable 

 them. Sometimes slugs or snails will creep into a hive, which with all 

 their address they cannot readily expel or carry out. But here their 

 instinct is at no loss ; for they kill them, and afterwards embalm them with 

 propolis, so as to prevent any offensive odors from incommoding them. 

 An unhappy snail, that had traveled up the sides of a glazed hive, and 

 which they could not come at with their stings, they fixed, a monument of 

 their vengeance and dexterity, by laying this substance all around the 

 mouth of its shell." When they expel their excrements they go apart, 

 that they may not defile their companions ; and in winter, when prevented 

 by extreme cold, or the injudicious practice of wholly closing the door of 

 the hiv'e, from going out for this purpose, their bodies sometimes become 

 so swelled from the accumulation of fceces in the intestines, that when at 

 last able to get out they can no longer fly, so that falling to the ground in 

 the attempt, they perish with cold, the sacrifice of personal neatness."^ 

 When a bee is disclosed from the pupa and has left its cell, a worker comes, 

 and taking out its envelop carries it from the hive; another removes the 

 exuviae of the larva ; and a third any filth or ordure that may remain, or 

 any pieces of wax that may have fallen in when the nascent imago broke 

 from its confinement. But they never attempt to remove the internal 

 lining of silk that covers the walls, spun by the larva previous to its meta- 

 morphosis ; because, instead of being a nuisance, it renders the cell more 

 solid.'* 



Having now described to you the usual employments of my little favor- 

 ites both within doors and without, I shall next enlarge a little upon their 

 language, memory, tempers, manners, and some other parts of their 

 history. 



> Huber, ii. 359. 2 Reaum. v. 442. ^ Bonner On Bees, 102. 



* Reaum. ubi swpr. 580 — 600. 



