FRANCIS HUBER. 223 



We are lingering still on the threshold of the hive; and here 

 there meets us a venerable shade who must detain us yet a 

 little longer. How can we enter the bee-hive without a tribute 

 of admiration and respect to him who for us and for thousands 

 had laid the secrets of the bee-hive open without a word as 

 well as thought of Francis Huber, the bees' best biographist? 

 the great, the good, the gifted, yet bereft the clear-sighted, 

 yet the sightless Huber. At this season, nearly a century ago, 

 did he first open on the summer sunshine those admiring and 

 inquiring eyes, which for only a brief portion of a long life were 

 permitted either to behold the glories of day, or to look into the 

 minuter wonders of the animate creation. Yet most marvel- 

 lously and kindly in his case, as in many others of similar 

 privation, was that privation balanced. Through the eyes 

 of others, aided by his own mental vision of surpassing clear- 

 ness, he was enabled to keep watch on the works and ways 

 of the little people of the hive, to throw a blaze of light on 

 their heretofore obscure history, and to become, for the wise 

 recreation of future generations, as well as for the amusement 

 of his own otherwise dark hours, their most interesting and 

 circumstantial chronicler. 



But besides being happy in his own energetic mind, Huber 

 was also happy in the providential blessing and possession of 

 friends friends who, in the grand pursuit of his darkened 

 but not gloomy life, were without a metaphor "eyes to the 

 blind" the blind object of their affectionate regard and ad- 

 miration. These were, in the first instance, Francis Burnens, 

 an uneducated peasant, yet his faithful friend and constant and 

 efficient assistant ; next, his wife ; and last, not least, his son, 

 P. Huber, afterwards celebrated for his own researches into 

 the history of ants. 



In the circumstances attendant on Huberts marriage we 

 meet with one of those pleasant romances of reality which 

 occasionally vary the monotony of every-day life. At an early 

 age, the sight of our persevering naturalist fell a sacrifice to 



