268 MEANS OF DEFENCE OF IxNSECTS. 



ings to circumstances. Can this be merely sensitive ? 

 When attacked by strange bees they have recourse to 

 a similar mancB'Jvre ; only in this case they make but 

 narrow apertures, sufficient for a single bee to pass 

 through. — Pliny affirms that a sick bear will provoke 

 a hive of bees to attack him in order to let him blood'. 

 What will you say if humble-bees have recourse to a si- 

 milar manoeuvre ? It is related to me by Dr. Leach, from 

 the communications of Mr. Daniel Bydder — an inde- 

 fatigable and well-informed collector of insects, and ob- 

 server of their proceedings — that Apis terrestris, when 

 labouring nndier A cariasis^ from the numbers of a small 

 mite {Gammasus Gi/mnopterorum, F.) that infest it, 

 will take its station in an ant-hill ; where beginning to 

 scratch, and kick, and make a disturbance, the ants im- 

 mediately come out to attack it, and falling foul of the 

 mites, they destroy or carry them all off; when the 

 bee, thus delivered from its enemies, takes its flight. 



In this long detail, the first idea that Avill, I should 

 hope, strike the mind of every thinking being, is the 

 truth of the Psalmist's observation — that the tender 

 mercies of God are over all his works. Not the least 

 and most insignificant of his creatures is, we see, de- 

 prived of his paternal care and attention ; none are 

 exiled from his all-directing providence. Why then 

 should man, the head of the visible creation, for whom 

 all the inferior animals were created and endowed ; for 

 whose well-being, in some sense, all these wonderful 

 creatures with their miraculous instincts, whose history 

 I am giving you, were put in action, — why should he 

 ever doubt, if he uses his powers and faculties rightly, 



» J list. Nat. I. viii. c. 36. " Vol. I. 2d Ed. 99— 



