a U B E E. 



THE Naturalist whose researches have been specially 

 directed to the instinct and operations of the domestic 

 Honey- Bee, will be strongly disposed to regard the 

 subject of this memoir as at the very head of Apiarian 

 science., and his writings as forming the safest and 

 most useful text-book. Multitudes have written on 

 this interesting department of Natural History, and 

 have added more or less to our knowledge of what 

 has been a subject of investigation for ages. But 

 none, either in ancient or modern times, have dis- 

 played so much sagacity of research as Francis Huber, 

 nor so much patient perseverance and accuracy of 

 experiment, even admitting some errors of minor 

 importance detected by succeeding observers. His 

 success in discovery, notwithstanding the singular 

 difficulty he had to struggle with, was proportioned 

 to his intelligence and acuteness ; and this difficulty 

 arose, not from what some of his advocates have, in 

 their zeal in his defence against the sneers of the 

 sceptical, termed "imperfect vision," but from total 

 blindness. For, from the period when he first applied 

 B 



