PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 131 



former opinion, and embraced it. And, to mention no 

 more, the great Aristomachus of modern times, M. Hu- 

 ber, by experiments repeated for ten years, was fully 

 convinced of the truth of Schirach's position*. 



The fact in question, though the public attention was 

 first called to it by the latter gentleman, had indeed been 

 practically known long before he wrote. M. Vogel, in 

 a letter to Wilhelmi, asserts that numerous experiments 

 confirming this extraordinary fact had been made by 

 more than a hundred different persons, in the course of 

 more than a hundred years ; and that he himself had 

 known old cultivators of bees who had unanimously de- 

 clared to him,' that, when proper precautions were taken, 

 in a practice of more than fifty years, the experiment 

 had never failed^. Signor Monticelli, the Neapolitan 

 professor before mentioned, informs us that the Greeks 

 and Turks of the Ionian Islands know how to make ar- 

 tificial swarms ; and that the art of producing queens at 

 will has been practised by the inhabitants of a little Si- 

 cilian island called Favignana, from very remote anti- 

 quity ; and he even brings arguments to prove that it 

 was no secret to the Greeks and Romans '^, though had 

 the practice been common it would surely have been no- 

 ticed by Aristotle and Pliny. 



Bonner, a British apiarist, asserts that he has had 

 successful recourse to the Lusatian experiment "* ; and 

 Mr. Payne of Shipdam in Norfolk (who for many years 

 has been engaged in the culture of bees, and has paid 

 particular attention to their proceedings) relates that he 

 well remembers that the bees of one of his hives, which 



=• Huber, i. 132. " Schirach, 121. 



' Huber, ii. 45.3. '^ Bonner On Bees, 56. 



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