132 HERCULEAN LABOURS. 



in preparing drawings and suitable explanations. 

 When it was summer time, his daily labour began 

 at six in the morning, when the sun afforded him 

 light enough to survey such minute objects ; and 

 from that hour till twelve, he continued without 

 interruption, all the while exposed in the open air 

 to the scorching heat of the sun, bareheaded, for 

 fear of interrupting the light, and his head thus 

 exposed to the full power of that luminary. " This 

 fatigue he submitted to for a whole month together, 

 without any interruption, merely to examine, de- 

 scribe, and represent the intestines of bees, besides 

 many months more bestowed upon the other parts, 

 during which time he spent whole days in making 

 observations, as long as there was sufficient light ; 

 and whole nights in registering his observations, till 

 at last he brought his work to the wished-for per- 

 fection. The better to accomplish his vast un- 

 limited views, he often wished for a year of per- 

 petual light and heat to perfect his experiments, 

 with a polar night, to reap all the advantages 

 of them by proper drawings and descriptions. In 

 his essay on the Hemorobion, or Day-fly, he in- 

 genuously confesses that his ' Treatise on Bees ' was 

 formed amid a thousand doubts and self-reproaches; 

 for, on the one hand, his genius urged him to 

 examine the miracles of the great Creator in His 

 natural productions, whilst, on the other, the love 



