APIS. 361 



the eight scales of it upon the ventral plates, for they 

 cannot convey more up when they hang themselves in 

 the festoons to secern it. But it is impossible to know 

 what addition this liquid from their mouths makes to it 

 when they manipulate it into its plastic state, other bees 

 often undertaking this task, which may apply themselves 

 to it with a larger stock than the wax-secreters possess, 

 they being perhaps already exhausted by their labours. 

 It is a singular fact that wax is more rapidly and largely 

 made by feeding the bees with dissolved sugar than from 

 the honey they collect themselves, the sugar thus evi- 

 dently containing more of its productive elements. 



Some of the labours within the hive are apparently 

 continued at night, or the bees may be then revelling, 

 after the day's toils, in social enjoyment, or otherwise 

 more worthily employed ; for, to use the words of the 

 benevolent apiarian, the Rev. Wm. Chas. Cotton, "If 

 you listen by a hive about nine o'clock, you will hear 

 an oratorio sweeter than any at Exeter Hall. Treble, 

 tenor, and bass are blended in the richest harmony. 

 Sometimes the sound is like the distant hum of a great 

 city, and sometimes it is like a peal of hallelujahs." 



This is the history of the hive and its inhabitants. 

 Modifications may occasionally occur, but nothing of 

 sufficient consequence seriously to affect or neutralize this 

 ordinary routine. It would occupy space already too 

 largely encroached upon to go into these minute parti- 

 culars, which, although parts of their general history, 

 where treated of in special detail, are not necessarily the 

 province of a work which speaks of them as but one 

 member of the family of which it collectively discourses. 

 As the space occupied by what was really essential to be 

 known about them, has exceeded the due dimensions of 



