BEE TRUMPETER. 



237 



poetical apostrophe to the effect that he must have been ad- 

 mitted into the counsels of the hive. 



We are not called upon certainly to give implicit credence 

 to all that this initiate in bee language has imparted of its 

 meaning, nor shall we positively assert, with Godart, that 

 there is in every nest of humble bees a trumpeter, who at 

 early morn, ascending to its summit, sounds a reveille with its 

 vibratory wings of a quarter of an hour's duration. But we 

 have plenty of common evidence, plain even to our common 

 perceptions, that insects can make audible their anger and 

 their fears. These we may hear intermingled in the sharp, 

 impatient scold of the first humble-bee we may venture to 

 imprison for a moment in the hollow of our closed hand ; and 

 we may listen to the fly's expression of intense terror, in the 

 peculiar screaming buzz which she utters, when and only 

 when in the grasp of her arch-enemy the spider. 



iiir (-'u-iuut, tin- 



