AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 379 



that time to their maturity regularly feed them with either 

 honey or pollen, introduced in their proboscis through 

 a small hole in the cover of the cell opened for the oc- 

 casion and then carefully closed. 



They are equally assiduous in another operation. As 

 the grubs increase in size the cell which contained them 

 becomes too small, and in their exertions to be more at 

 ease they split its thin sides. To fill up these breaches 

 as fast as they occur with a patch of wax, is the office of 

 the workers, who are constantly on the watch to discover 

 when their services are wanted ; and thus the cells daily 

 increase in size, in a way which to an observer ignorant 

 of the process seems very extraordinary. 



The last duty of these affectionate foster-parents is to 

 assist the young bees in cutting open the cocoons which 

 have inclosed them in the state of pupa;. A previous la- 

 bour however must not be omitted. The workers adopt 

 similar measures with the hive-bee for maintaining the 

 young pupa3 concealed in these cocoons in a genial tem- 

 perature. In cold weather and at night they get upon 

 them and impart the necessary warmth by brooding over 

 them in clusters. Connected with this part of their 

 domestic economy, M. P. Huber, a worthy scion of a 

 celebrated stock, and an inheritor of the science and 

 merits of the great Huber as well as of his name, in his 

 excellent paper on these insects in the sixth volume of 

 the Linnean Transactions, from which most of these 

 facts are drawn, relates a singularly curious anecdote. 



In the course of his ingenious and numerous experi- 

 ments, M. Huber put under a bell-glass about a dozen 

 humble-bees without any store of wax, along with a 

 comb of about ten silken cocoons so unequal in height 



