GOVERNMENT OF WASPS AND BEES. 313 



when they appeared to withdraw from each other, 

 and opened their ranks to allow them to fight. The 

 cluster around the reigning queen having allowed 

 her a little freedom, when she advanced all receded 

 till she came in sight of the stranger, upon whom she 

 precipitately rushed, and seizing her by the wing 

 near its origin, plunged her sting in her body*." 



A queen appearing thus to be indispensable in a 

 hive, the question may be asked, what are they to do, 

 if they are by accident deprived of her? The social 

 wasps, in such circumstances, are said to become rest- 

 less and idle, wandering away from their nest, and never 

 returning. But though the loss of a queen spreads 

 temporary consternation through a hive of bees, the 

 population do not abandon themselves to despair ; 

 but make all haste to supply their loss by means of 

 an expedient, which is, perhaps, one of the greatest 

 singularities in insect history, since they can actually, 

 it would appear, form a queen out of the grub of a 

 worker, by feeding it in a particular manner, and by 

 enlarging its cell. This circumstance is said to have 

 been known to the Greeks and Italians from time 

 immemorial, and even acted upon in practice, parti- 

 cularly in the little Sicilian island of Favignana ; but 

 it does not appear to have been at least published 

 before the appearance of Schirach's celebrated work. 

 It is but right to state, however, that the doctrine 

 was far from being universally received. Needham, 

 though an advocate for the absurd doctrine of the 

 transformation of plants into animals f, attacked the 

 opinion with violence J ; and even John Hunter pub- 

 lished some sarcastic strictures upon it ; while a 

 more practical, though less profound man, Keys, 



* Huber on Bees, page 99. 

 f See Insect Transformations, p. 129. 



$ Bonnet, (Euvres, ix. 128, note. Phil. Trans, for 1792. 



2 E 



