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ORDER VI.—VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 275 
feet are used in the capacity of hands, with which they 
collect the pollen, brush it from the head, move it along to 
the second pair of legs, and thence to the hind legs, which 
are much longer than the others, and upon each of which 
is a small triangular cavity, shaped something like a spoon, 
and hence called a fossa, which is destined to receive the 
pollen of flowers, which they thus carry to their hives, for 
the purpose of furnishing food for themselves and the 
drones, and for the manufacture of wax. Humble-bees 
have similar baskets, or fossz, in their hind legs. 
it was formerly supposed by many, even by some dis- 
tinguished naturalists, that the bees were blind; but so ab- 
surd an idea can easily be proved erroneous by covering 
their eyes with thick varnish, when, being unable to fly 
around, they rise perpendicularly in the air and disappear, 
in the same manner as does a crow, to which a bait be- 
smeared with bird-lime has become fastened on its head. 
Notwithstanding the ingenious Francis Huber, of Geneva, 
tried, by several experiments, to prove that the wax pro- 
ceeds from the honey, and not from pollen, still the previ- 
ous experiments of Reaumure, as well as those of some of 
the most experienced apiarians since, have distinctly de- 
monstrated the contrary, as is also stated in the “ Treatise 
on Bees, by Robert Huish, London, 1815.” Reaumure says 
that the bees collect the substance of wax only from flow- 
ers, filling their fossze or leg-cavities with farina, and lick- 
ing from the bottom of the blossoms the nectar, or sweet 
substance, which they swallow, and afterward disgorge it 
into the cells. But in the same manner they also gather 
from other vegetables a viscous substance, which they carry 
home in their fosse, and with this gluey matter, collected 
from the poplar, birch, willow, fir, and other trees, and the 
farina they compose a glutinous aromatic substance called 
propolis, which is similar to wax, but different in its fabrica- 
tion ; in fact it is wax, but coarser in its constitution. The 
