134 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



evidence in favour of it, at last gave up his former 

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

 the oreat Aristomachus of modern times, M. Huber, 

 by experiments repeated for ten years, was fully con- 

 vinced 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 in- 

 deed been practically known long before he wrote. 

 M. Vogel, in a letter to Wilhelmi, asserts that nume- 

 rous experiments confirming this extraordinary fact 

 had been made by more than a hundred different per- 

 sons, in the course of more than a hundred years ; and 

 that he himself had known old cultivators of bees who 

 had unanimously declared to him, that, when proper 

 precautions were taken, in a practice of more than fifty 

 years, the experiment had never failed ''. Signor Mon- 

 ticelli, the Neapolitan professor before mentioned, 

 informs us that the Greeks and Turks of the Ionian 

 Islands know how to make artificial swarms ; and that 

 the art of producing queens at will has been practised 

 by the inhabitants of a little Sicilian island called 

 Favignana, from very remote antiquity ; 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 noticed by Ari- 

 stotle 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 



" " Huber, i. 132. " Schiracli, 121. *= Iluber, ii. 453. 



■* Uonnci" o« Bccs.^ 56. 



