ORDER V. HYMENOPTERA. 3H 



hours at most, yield up their existence, and strew the 

 ground on each side of their parent stream. Yet, limited 

 as their duration is, they perform every office of nature, 

 propagate their kind, enjoy their pastime and their food, 

 and seem to live in as much felicity as the contracted 

 period of a few hours will admit. 



ORDER V HYMENOPTERA. 



NEUROPTEROUS and hymenopterous insects agree in 

 their characteristics, excepting that the latter are armed 

 with a sting. This distinctive mark, however, is confined 

 to the females and neuters ; for the males want it. This 

 order includes bees, wasps, ants, and similar insects, 

 whose history is highly interesting, in whatever view it 

 can be placed. On the subject of bees alone, as many 

 volumes have been written, from ancient times to the 

 present, as would fill a library ; yet, after all, we are but 

 imperfectly acquainted with some parts of their economy, 

 Reaumur, indeed, who spent a great part of his life in the 

 study of these wonderful animals, is sufficiently minute; 

 but, seduced by an unbounded enthusiasm for the subject 

 of his researches, he has ascribed the most extravagant 

 qualities and habitudes to this really curious race. 



It is certain, however, that every hive is composed of 

 three sorts of bees ; the labouring, which are most nume- 

 rous, and neither male nor female ; the drones, which are 

 larger, and idle, merely serving as males to propagate the 

 species ; and the queen-bees, which are supposed to lay all 

 the eggs from which the whole swarm is hatched. The 

 last are much larger than either of the former, and are 

 very few in number, though it does not appear (as was 

 once supposed) that each hive contains only one. 



The manner in which bees extract honey from flowers, 

 the instruments with which nature has furnished them for 



