PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 141 



fury upon the first with whicli she meets ; by means of 

 lier jaws slie gnaws a hole large enough to introduce the 

 end of her abdomen, and with her sting, before the in- 

 cluded female is in a condition to defend herself or re- 

 sist her attack, she gives her a mortal wound. The 

 workers, who remain passive spectators of this assassina- 

 tion, after she quits the victim of her jealousy, enlarge 

 the breach that she has made, and drag forth the car- 

 case of a queen just emerged from the thin membrane 

 that envelopes the pupa. If the object of her attack be 

 still in the pupa state, she is stimulated by a less violent 

 degree of rage, and contents herself with making a breach 

 in the cell : when this happens, the death of the inclosed 

 insect is equally certain, for the workers enlarge the 

 breach, pull it out, and it perishes *. If it happens, as 

 it sometimes does, that two queens are disclosed at the 

 same time, the care of Providence to prevent the hive 

 from being wholly despoiled of a governor is singularly 

 manifested by a remarkable trait in their instinct, which, 

 when mutual destruction seems inevitable, makes them 

 separate fi'om each other as if panic-struck. " Two young 

 queens," says M. Huber, " left their cells one day, 

 almost at the same monent ; — as soon as they came with- 

 in sight, they darted upon each other, as if inflamed by 

 the most ungovernable anger, and placed themselves in 

 such an attitude, that the antennae of each were held by 

 the jaws of its antagonist ; head was opposed to head, 

 trunk to trunk, abdomen to abdomen ; and they had only 

 to bend the extremity of the latter, and they would have 

 fallen reciprocal victims to each other's sting." But na- 



'■' Huber, i. 171— • 



