27 



Septemher ith, 1873. 



Queen-bees. — Major Munn brought no less than two dozen 

 queen-bees, and showed their fights when two were put together 

 in a bottle, and the structure and use made by them of their stings. 

 That these are quite powerless to penetrate and so sting even the 

 softest human hand was proved by ladies and others handling these 

 insects with perfect impunity, though they resented this by pro- 

 truding their stings and ejecting the poison, but could not pierce 

 the skin of the offending person. The queens in their combats 

 with each other inflict quickly fatal injury by injecting the sting- 

 poison into the respiratory apparatus. The comparative structure 

 shows why the worker-bee so easily stings its enemies, which the 

 queen cannot do. As is shown by Mr. George Guiliver's dissec- 

 tions, the sting of the former is quite straight, thin, extremely 

 sharp-pointed, and furnished with Irom eight to ten barbs ; while 

 the queen's sting is curved, bluntish at the point, and possessed of 

 only from two to four barbs. All these facts were shown by ex- 

 temporaneous dissections under the microscope. At the same time 

 were explained the tricks of the famous bee-master, Thomas Wild- 

 man, who flourished in the latter part of the last century, and was 

 60 much the wonder for his surprising command over bees that he 

 ■was wont to to exhibit, surrounded by them, to the king and 

 nobUity, by whom he was off'ered a hundi'ed guineas for his secret, 

 which he refused to part with, and which Major Munn declared 

 was simply using only queen-bees. 



Pebbles and Flints. — Colonel Cox showed many specimens of 

 beautiful coanites, landscape, and other pebbles, from Dover and 

 Hastings, proving that the coast there is richer than is commonly 

 supposed in those pebbles, and that their structure, with the in- 

 cluded organic remains, especially of sponges, is most interesting 

 for microscopic examination. 



Mrs. Cole brought a large fiint, which had been fractured at 

 some remote time, and the fragments since reunited by a deposit 

 of sUiceous earth — a fact considered interesting as regards the still 

 vexed question of the formation of flint-nodules. 

 October 2nd, 1878. 



Crystals in Leguminous Plants. — The Hon. Sec. exhibited draw- 

 ings and preparations, and gave practical demonstrations in the 

 fresh plants, of the crystals of oxalate of lime which he had dis- 

 covered in the leaves, pods, liber, and other parts of Leguminosae, 

 since illustrated by a plate in the December number, 1873, of the 

 'Monthly Microscopical Journal.' These crystals, mostly belong- 

 ing to one or the other of the prismatic systems, he calls short pris- 

 matic crystals, thus distinguising them from raphides. sphseraphides, 

 long crystal prisms, or other forms of plant-crystals. The short 

 prismatic crystals resemble those in the testa of the elm, described 

 iftnd figured in last July number of the 'Quarterly Journal of 



