PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 383 



furnish themselves with three different materials : — the nectar of flowers, 

 from which they elaborate honey and wax ; the pollen or fertilising dust 

 of the anthers, of wiiich they make what is called bee-bread, serving as 

 ibod both to old and young ; and the resinous substance called by the an- 

 cients Propolis, Pissoccros, Sic, used in various ways in rendering the hive 

 secure and giving the finish to the combs. The first of these substances 

 is the pure fluid secreted in the nectaries of flowers, which the length of 

 their tongue enables them to reach in most blossoms. The tongue of a 

 bee, you are to observe, though so long, and sometimes so inflated ', is not 

 a tube through which the honey passes, nor a pump acting by suction, but 

 a real tongue, which laps or licks the honey, and passes it down on its 

 upper surface, as we do, to the mouth, which is at its base concealed by 

 the mandibles.- It is conveyed by this orifice through the oesophagus into 

 the first stomach, which we call the honey-bag, and which, from being 

 very small, is swelled when full of it to a considerable size. Honey is 

 never found in the second stomach (which is surrounded with muscular 

 rings, and resembles a cask covered with hoops from one end to the other), 

 but only in the first : in the latter and the intestines the bee-bread only is 

 discovered. How the wax is secreted, or what vessels are appropriated 

 to that purpose, is not yet ascertained. Huber suspects that a cellular 

 substance, consisting of hexagons, which lines the membrane of the wax- 

 pockets, may be concerned in this operation. This substance he also dis- 

 covered in humble-bees (which, though they make wax, have no wax- 

 pockets), occupying all the anterior part or base of the segments.^ If you 

 wish to see the wax-pockets in the hive-bee, you must press the abdomen 

 so as to cause it to extend itself; you will then find on each of the four 

 intermediate ventral segments, separated by the carina or elevated central 

 part, two trapeziform whitish pockets, of a soft membranaceous texture : 

 on these the laminae of wax are formed, and they are found upon them in 

 different states, so as to be more or less perceptible. I must here observe 

 that, besides Thorley, who seems to have been the first apiarist that ob- 

 served these laminae, Wildman was not ignorant of them, nor of the wa.x 

 being formed from honey * : we must not, therefore, permit foreigners to 

 appropriate to themselves the whole credit of discoveries that have been 

 made, or at least partially made, by our own countrymen. 



Long before Linne had discovered the nectary of flowers, our in- 

 dustrious creatures had made themselves intimate with every form and 

 variety of them ; and no botanist, even in this enlightened era of botanical 

 science, can compare with a bee in this respect. The station of these re- 



" Nature kind ! labourer wise ! 



That roam'st alonc^ the summer's raj', 

 Glean'st every bliss thy life supplies, 



And meet'st prepared thy wintry day ! 

 Go, envied go — with crowded gates 

 Tiie hive thy rich return awaits ; 

 Bear home thy store, in triumph gay. 

 And shame each idler of the day." 



J Reaum. v. t. xxviii. f. 1, 2. * Ibid. f. 7. o. 



« Huber, ii. 5. t. ii. f. 8. ■» Wildman, 43. 



