HYMENOPTERA. — APID&. 279 
habits, the circumstances of the larve being fed from time to time 
by the worker bees, and the cells being generally of an hexagonal 
form, they are also distinguished by their peculiar habit of secreting 
wax for the manufacture of the cells of their nests. In these insects, 
the outside of the posterior dilated tibiz is smooth, and hollowed in 
the neuters into a shining plate, for the reception and carrying of 
pollen, which has been accumulated by means of the pollen-brushes 
upon the basal joint of the tarsi of this pair of legs. The maxillary 
palpi are minute and exarticulate. These bees have the body covered 
with thick hairs. Some Brazilian species (genus Euglossa) are naked, 
and of very brilliant colours; their economy is unknown, but their 
legs are provided with large pollen-plates : some of them, however, as 
the Aglae cerulea St. Farg. (figured in Griffith’s Animal Kingdom), are 
destitute of these organs, and are consequently supposed to be parasitic. 
The same remark also applies to certain British species of humble 
sex should alone be permitted to arrive at perfection, the immense number of 
50,000 individuals of that sex being rendered imperfect by a process which prevents 
them from acquiring their normally perfect state, we cannot but be surprised that 
the physiological peculiarities connected with the development of the workers, to such 
a far less perfect extent than that of the true females, have not been yet sufficiently 
investigated. To assert that it is merely owing to the diminished size of the cell, its 
horizontal direction, or the quality of the food of the workers, that their sexual 
organs are rendered abortive, the shape of their tongue, sting, mandibles, and legs, 
altered, and the abdomen deprived of its wax-pockets, is not sufficient: the process 
by which all this is effected, and the instincts of the creature changed, requires to be 
investigated. (See Treviranus, in Zeitschrift fiir Physiologie, tom. iii. cap. 2. p. 200., 
and Bull. Ferussac, April 1830; and in Ditto, October 1830; and Espargnet, in 
Actes Soc. Bourdeaux, No. 32., May 1833; and Ditto, in Bull. Oct. 1830.) In 
like manner, the physiological peculiarities whereby, even amongst the imperfect 
females, or workers, a modification of form is effected, is equally worthy of research ; 
for it must evidently be owing to a principle analogous to that which produces the 
differences between the female and the ordinary workers, that the latter are still further 
modified. Thus, in the hive bee, Huber and others have proved that the workers are 
divided into two classes, namely, the nurse bees and wax workers, differing in size 
and instincts. Again, some of the workers, differing in shape from the rest, are 
occasionally fertile, depositing eggs, but which only produce males. (Bevan, p. 26. 
2d edition.) There are also occasionally observed in the hive other kinds of 
workers, known to apiarians under the names of captains and black bees. In the 
humble bee, also, the early-born females, as well as the males, differ in size from their 
parents, the former, as it appears, only producing male eggs > and Mr. Newport has 
ascertained that a diversity also exists in the working humble bees. The production 
of these different kinds of individuals must originate in the peculiarities connected 
with their treatment by the workers, whilst in the early stages of their existence. 
T 4 
