428 LECTURE XVllI. 



bee, and the fertile female, or queen, never shares with the neuters 

 the labours of the hive. 



The development of the bee is more speedy than that of the wasp ; 

 the larva is hatched in three days after the exclusion of the egg ; it 

 feeds and grows five or six days ; is then shut up by the workers, 

 spins itself a cocoon in thirty-six hours, remaining a passive pupa 

 eight or nine days, when it breaks through the lid and emerges in 

 its perfect state. Thus the whole period of development from the 

 exclusion of the ovum is from eighteen to twenty days; this, how- 

 ever, relates to the neuter. The male larva spends only twenty- 

 four hours in spinning its cocoon, and emerges on the sixteenth 

 day after its deposition as an egg. A young queen is perfected on 

 the twenty-fourth day. It is remarkable that the larva of the bee 

 and of the parasitic Hymenoptera have no anal outlet : no feeces - 

 are passed until the larva has acquired full growth, and has ceased 

 to feed, preparatory to the pupa-state : thus the fluids of insects 

 infested by the parasitic larva; are not contaminated by the excre- 

 ments of their parasites ; and the bee-cells are kept sweet and clean 

 during the active life of the larva. 



In the preparations Nos. 3117 to 3123 inclusive, are shown the 

 irregular subelliptical cells with the larvae and perfect insects of the 

 humble bees {Bombi terrestris and lapidarius). The societies of 

 this genus, which consist of from sixty to a hundred and more 

 individuals, continue, as in the wasp-tribe, only until the beginning 

 of winter, and the few impregnated females which survive the frosts 

 found fresh colonies at the commencement of the following spring. 

 The fertile female shares in the labours of the community which she 

 has originated, and she is provided, like the neuters, with the dense 

 fringe of hair surrounding the pollen plate of the hind legs, which 

 the queen of the hive-bee does not possess. The first progeny of the 

 humble-bee are neuters ; the males are not developed until autumn, 

 and they are the produce of a smaller kind of fertile female. The 

 whole economy of the humble-bee was very completely observed by 

 Hunter, whose MS. notes on this subject have been published in the 

 Catalogue of his Physiological Collection.* 



The neuropterous tropical Termites, commonly known as " white 

 ants," are social, like the above-described Hymenoptera ; and the 

 societies include difierent kinds of individuals. f The " workers " 

 (Prep. No. 3150, A) are wingless, with a larger head than the winged 

 females ; and, usually labouring in the dai'k, their eyes are more 

 feebly developed. Another kind of apterous non-breeder (Prep. 

 No. 3150, B) has the head still larger and stronger, with the man- 

 » X. vol. V. pp. 36—48. t CCLXVII. 



