82 THE BROOD. 



disbelieve the alleged fact, and must, in accordance 

 with the truth, withhold from our favourites the un- 

 merited eulogiums they have received on this head. 

 They are, in fact, in this particular, harsh and unfeel- 

 ing in the extreme. In hundreds of instances have 

 we seen and pitied the infant insect, when after having 

 long struggled to get out of its cradle, it has at last 

 succeeded so far as to extrude the head ; and when 

 labouring with the most eager impatience, and on the 

 very point of extricating the shoulders also, which 

 would at once secure its exit, a dozen or two of 

 workers, in following their avocations, trample with- 

 out ceremony over the struggling creature, which is 

 then forced, for the safety of its head, to pop quickly 

 down into its cell, and wait till the unfeeling crowd 

 pass on, before it can renew its efforts to escape. 

 Again and again are the same impatient exertions re- 

 peated by the same individual, and with similar mor- 

 tifying interruptions, before it succeeds in obtaining 

 its freedom. Not the slightest attention or sympathy 

 is observable on the part of the workers in these cir- 

 cumstances ; nor did we ever, in a single instance, 

 witness the kind parental cares which seem to owe 

 their existence to the fancy of the writers alluded to. 

 During the larva-stage, as we have shewn, the soli^ 

 citude of the workers about the welfare and nourish- 

 ment of their infant charge is extreme ; but from the 

 moment they have sealed up the cell, and while the 

 larva is undergoing its transformation, they seem to 

 cease from every thing like individual attention ; and. 

 though when a brood-comb is meddled with, their 



