1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



good translation of Huber, and myself believing 

 that it would be a valuable addition to our bee-liter- 

 ature, I venture to make the following proposition : 

 If you will consent to publish Huber in English, 1 

 will, with pleasure, translate it from the French in- 

 to the English, free of charge. As I am a Creole, the 

 French language is my mother-tongue; but I speak 

 and write both languages with fluency and correct- 

 ness. Hoping you will accept my services, T remain 

 Yours fraternally, Numa C. Ei-fert. 

 Tabadieville, Assumption, La., Feb. 7, 188-1. 



Does it not seem, friends, as if we were 

 going to have plenty of help in the matter V 

 May God bless you, my good friend, for your 

 kind offer. Here is something more in the 

 matter,from Mrs. Frank Benton, of Munich, 

 Germany. As the title-page and preface are 

 matters of great interest to us all, I presume 

 Mrs. Benton will excuse the liberty I take 

 in giving it here : 



I see by Juvenile for December, t&at you ask 

 about Ruber's work on bees. It may be interesting 

 to you to know that Mr. Benton is translating it. 

 He wrote to Paris last fall, and succeeded in procur- 

 ing a copy printed in 1796, and has since been de%-ot- 

 ing what spare time he could to it. As I know he 

 has not yet arranged for its publication, I would 

 suggest that perhaps this translation may be availa- 

 ble to you. Part of it is here, and I copy the title- 

 page and preface, that you may form some idea of 

 it. Yours respectfully, 



Mrs. Frank Benton. 



No. SGeorgenSt., Munich, Germany, Feb 7,1884. 



The following is the title-page alluded to 

 by Mrs. Benton: 



NEW OBSERVATtONS ON BEES, 



ADDRESSED TO 



MR. CHARLES BONNET, 



BY 



FRANCIS HUBER. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 



FRANK BENTON. 



PREFACE. 



In publishing my observations concerning bees, I 

 will not conceal the fact that it is not with my own 

 eyes that I have made them. Through a series of 

 sad accidents, I became blind in my early youth ; 

 but I loved science, and I did not lose my taste for it 

 with the loss of my sight. I had read to me the best 

 works on natural history. I had a servant (Francis 

 Burnens, born in Vaud) who interested himself sin- 

 gularly in all that he rend to me: I soon judged by 

 the reflections he made on our readings, and by the 

 inferences he drew from them, that he comprehend- 

 ed them as well as I, and that he was born with the 

 talents of an observer. This is not the flrst exam- 

 ple of a man who, without education, without for- 

 tune, and under the most unfavorable circumstanc- 

 es, has been called by nature alone to become a nat- 

 uralist. I resolved to cultivate this talent, and to 

 make use of it some day in the observations which I 

 was planning. With this aim in view, I had him re- 

 peat first some of the most simple experiments in 

 physics; he executed them with much skill and in- 

 telligence, and passed on then to more difBcult com- 

 binations. I did not possess then many instruments, 

 but he knew how to perfect them to apply them to 

 new usages; and when it became necessary he him- 



self constructed the machines which we needed. In 

 these diverse occupations the taste which he had 

 for science soon became a veritable passion, and I 

 did not hesitate longer to put all confidence in him, 

 perfectly assured that I would see well in seeing 

 through his eyes. 



The course of my reading having conducted me to 

 The beautiful memoirs of de Reaumur upon bees, I 

 found in this work such a fine plan of experiments, 

 observations made with so much art, and such a 

 wise logic, that I resolved to study this celebrated 

 author carefully, in order, in the difficult art of ob- 

 serving nature, to adapt ourselves (my reader and 

 myself) to his methods. We commenced our obser- 

 vations with bees in glass hives, and repeated all the 

 experiments of de Reaumur, obtaining exactly the 

 same results when we employed the same processes. 

 This agreement of our observations with his gave 

 me extreme pleasure, because it proved to me that 

 I could trust myself absolutely to the eyes of my 

 pupil. Embolaened by this first effort, we tried to 

 make with bees some entirelj' new experiments: 

 we conceived variously constructed hives that had 

 not yet been thought of, and which presented great 

 advantages, and we had the good fortune to discov- 

 er some remarkable facts which had escaped Swam- 

 merdam, Reaumur, and Bonnet. It is these facts 

 that I publish in this work. There is not one of them 

 that we have not seen and re-seen several times in 

 the course of the eight years during which we have 

 been occupied with investigations regarding bees. 



It is impossible to form a just idea of the patience 

 and of the skill with which my reader executed the 

 experiments which I am about to describe. It has 

 often happened that he has followed during twenty- 

 four houis, without permitting himself to be dis- 

 tracted in the least, without taking either repose or 

 mmrishment— that he has followed, I sav, workers 

 of our hives which we had reason to believe fecun- 

 dated, in order to observe them at the moment they 

 were laying eggs. At other times when it was of 

 importance to us to examine all the bees of a hive, 

 he did not resort to the operation of dipping them in 

 water, which is so simple and so easy, because he 

 noticed that the stay in the water disfigured the bees 

 to a certain degree, and no longer permitted him to 

 recognize the slight differences of conformation that 

 we wished to note; but he took between his fingers, 

 one by one, all the bees, and examined them care- 

 fully, without fearing their anger; it is true, that 

 he had acquired such dexterity that he evaded, or- 

 dinarily, their stings; but he was not always thus 

 fortunate; and even when he was stung he contin- 

 ued his examinations with the most perfect com- 

 posure. I reproached myself frequentlj' for having 

 put his courage and his patience to such a test; but 

 he took as deep an interest as I in the success of our 

 experiments, and, in the extreme desire he had to 

 know the results of them, he counted as nothing 

 the trouble, the fatigue, and the passing pains of 

 the stings. If, then, there is any merit in our dis- 

 coveries, it is my duty to divide the honor with him; 

 and it is a great satisfaction for me to assure him 

 of this recompense by publicly rendering him jus- 

 tice. Such is a faithful statement of the circum- 

 stances under which I find myself. I do not conceal 

 from myself that I have much to do in order to gain 

 the confidence of naturalists; but In order to be 

 more sure of obtaining it, I will allow myself to fol- 

 low here a slight impulse of vanity. I communicat- 

 ed successively my principal observations on bees to 



