THE HONEY-BEE. 81 



of bees to which it has been the birth-place.* The 

 Bee, thus stripped of its silken envelope, and having 

 all its parts unfolded by degrees, and changed through 

 a succession of colours, from a dull white to black, 

 arrives at the state of a perfect insect on the 20th 

 day, counting from the moment the egg is laid. She 

 then eagerly commences the operation of cutting 

 through, with her mandibles, the cover of her cell, 

 and in half an hour succeeds in escaping from her 

 prison. On quitting her cradle she appears, for a 

 few seconds, drowsy and listless, but soon assumes 

 the agility natural to the race and on the same day 

 on which she has emerged from her prison, sets out 

 with her seniors to engage in the labours of the field. 

 Some of the ancient Bee-masters enlarge on the 

 attention paid by the seniors to the young worker on 

 emerging from her prison, describing them as licking 

 her body, supplying her with food, and seeming to 

 instruct her in what is necessary to render her a use- 

 ful member of the community. These descriptions 

 have been repeated by succeeding writers on the sub- 

 ject ; and the existence of these amiable traits in the 

 kind nurses of the young, is taken for granted as an 

 indubitable fact in their natural history. We have 

 reason, in consequence of repeated observations, to 



* The late Dr. Barclay of Edinburgh, imagined he had 

 discovered that the partitions of the bee-cells are double, and 

 regarded this circumstance as an additional instance of the 

 wonderful architectural powers of the Bee. It is not impro- 

 bable that what he considered to be separate laminae of wax. 

 are but the silken linings of the cells. 



