INSECTA. 241 



queen or fertile female, and perhaps a thousand attendant neuters. 

 Thus the association, which is annually dissolved and recommenced 

 by the wasps, is permanent in the honey-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 days ; is then shut up by the workers, spins itself 

 a cocoon in thirty-six hours, remaining a passive pupa eight days ; 

 then breaks through the lid and emerges in its perfect state. Thus 

 tl*e whole period of development from the exclusion of the ovum is 

 twenty days ; this, however, relates to the neuter. The male or drone 

 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. 



In these preparations (Nos. 3117. to 3123. inclusive) are shown the 

 irregular subelliptical cells with the larvae and perfect insects of the 

 humble bees (^Bomhi terrestris and laindarius.) The societies of this 

 genus, which consist of about sixty, and occasionally of two hundred 

 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 

 fifth volume of the Physiological Catalogue. 



The larvae of the Coleoptera are active, although some, as the nut- 

 grub, are apodal, like the larvae of the bee. In most of the herbivo- 

 rous species the thoracic legs are represented by fleshy tubercles ; but 

 the larvae of the carnivorous beetles have the thoracic legs more com- 

 pletely developed before quitting the ovum. The head is horny, and 

 the trophi are well developed in all : the jaws frequently resemble 

 those of the perfect insect, as in the Carabidce, the larvae of which 

 likewise have antennae. 



The circumstance of most physiological interest in the development 

 of the Coleopterous order of insects is the great length of time during 

 which the species actively exist in the vermiform or larval stage of 

 tiieir development. The larvae of the cockchafer typify the earth- 



