AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 379 



them becomes too small, and in their exertions to be 

 more at ease they split its thin sides. To fill up these 

 breaches as fast as they occur with a patch of wax, is the 

 office of the workers, who are constantly on the watch 

 to discover when their services are Avanted; and thus 

 the cells daily increase in size, in a way which to an ob- 

 server ignorant of the process seems very extraordinary. 



The last duty of these affectionate foster-parents is 

 to assist the young bees in cutting open the cocoons 

 which have inclosed them in the state of pttpce. A 

 previous labour however must not be omitted. The 

 workers adopt similar measures with the hive-bee for 

 maintaining the young pupae concealed in these cocoons 

 in a genial temperature. In cold weather and at night 

 they get upon them and impart the necessary warmth 

 by brooding over them in clusters. Connected Avith 

 this part of their domestic economy, M. P. Huber, a 

 worthy scion of a celebrated stock, and an inheritor of 

 the science and merits of the great Huber as well as of 

 his name, in his excellent paper on these insects in the 

 sixth volume of the Linnean Transactions, from which 

 most of these facts are drawn, relates a singularly cu- 

 rious anecdote. 



In the course of his ingenious and numerous expe- 

 riments, M. Huber put under a bell-glass about a dozen 

 humble-bees without any store of wax, along with a 

 comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height 

 that it w as impossible the mass should stand firmly. Its 

 unsteadiness disquieted the humble-bees extremely. 

 Their affection for their young led them to mount upon 

 the cocoons for the sake of imparting warmth to the in-; 

 closed little ones, but in attempting this the comb tot- 



