558 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



botanist who first found the red-colored Protococcus nivalis (whatever 

 may be decided as to its being a plant or an animalcule) in a similar situa- 

 tion ; or, as may be added, that of M. Lefebvre on first observing the 

 Mantis (^Eremiophila) , meiU'ioned in a former letter, living in an absolute 

 solitude in the desert of Africa. 



The common hive-bee, too, is probably never, strictly speaking, torpid, 

 though with regard to the precise state in which it passes the winter a 

 considerable ditlerence of opinion has obtained. 



Many authors have conceived that it is the most natural state of bees 

 in winter to be perfectly torpid at a certain degree of cold, and that their 

 partial reviviscency, and consequent need of food in our climate, are owing 

 to its variableness and often comparative mildness in winter; whence they 

 have advised placing bees during this season in an ice-house, or on the 

 north side of a wall, where the degree of cold being more uniform, and 

 thus their torpidity undisturbed, they imagine no food would be required. 

 So far, however, do these suppositions and conclusions seem from being 

 warranted, that Huber expressly affirms that, instead of being torpid in 

 winter, the heat in a well-peopled hive continues -j- 24° or 25° of Reau- 

 mur (86° or 88° Fahrenheit), when it is several degrees below zero in the 

 open air; that they then cluster together and keep themselves in motion 

 in order to preserve their heat^ ; and that in the depth of winter they do 

 cease to ventilate the hive by the singular process of agitating their wings 

 before described.^ He asserts also that, like Reaumur, he has in winter 

 found in the combs brood of all ages ; which, too, the observant Bonnet 

 says he has witnessed^; and which is confirmed by Swammerdam, who 

 expressly states that bees tend and feed their young even in the midst of 

 winter.^ To all these weighty authorities may be added that of John 

 Hunter, who, as before noticed, found a hive to grow lighter in a cold 

 than in a warm week of winter; and that a hive from November 10th to 

 February 9th lost more than four pounds in weight^; whence the conclu- 

 sion seems inevitable, that bees do eat in winter. 



On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, perhaps, has in great 

 measure given birth to) the more commonly received notion, that bees in 

 a certain degree of cold are torpid and consume no food. These are' his 

 words : — " It has been established with a wisdom which we cannot but 

 admire, — with that wisdom with which every thing in nature has been 

 made and ordained, — that during the greater part of the time in which 

 the country furnishes nothing to bees, they have no longer need to eat. 

 The cold which arrests the vegetation of plants, which deprives our fields 

 and meadows of their flowers, throws the bees into a state in which nour- 

 ishment ceases to be necessary to them : it keeps them in a sort of tor- 

 pidity (en^oMr^/issemeni!), in which no transpiration from them takes place; 

 or, at least, during which the quantity of that which transpires is so incon- 

 siderable that it cannot be restored by aliment without their lives being 

 endangered. In winter, while it freezes, one may observe without fear 

 the interior of hives that are not of glass ; for we may lay them on their 

 sides, and even turn them bottom upwards, without putting any bee into 

 motion. We see the bees crowded and closely pressed one against the 



> Huber, i. 134. « Ibid. ii. 344. 358. 3 Bonnet, On Bees, 104. 



* Huber, i. 354. * Phil. Trans. 1790, 161. 



