178 THE BEE-DRESS. 



The smart quick strokes of the wings, when 

 bees are angry and prepared to sting, give a sound 

 very different from their usual buz. " Instead," 

 says Mr. Hunter, " of that soft contented noise 

 made by the bee when coming home loaded on 

 a fine evening, when a bee meditates an attack 

 with its sting, it makes a very different one." 

 There is a piercing shrillness in the sound, as the 

 author and some of his friends have often expe- 

 rienced. 



Messrs. Kirby and Spence, after quoting a 

 passage from Mr. White's Natural History, rela- 

 tive to the feigned attacks of some wild bees 

 near Lewes in Sussex, which " with a sharp and 

 hostile sound dash and strike round the heads and 

 faces of intruders," make the following observa- 

 tions. " The hive-bee will sometimes have re- 

 course to the same expedient, when her hive is 

 approached too near, and thus give you notice 

 what you may expect, if you do not take her 

 warning and retire. Humble-bees when dis- 

 turbed, whether out of the nest or in it, assume 

 some very grotesque and at the same time threaten- 

 ing attitudes. If you put your finger to them, 

 they will either successively or simultaneously 

 lift up the three legs of one side ; turn themselves 

 upon their back, bend up their anus and show 

 their sting accompanied by a drop of poison. 

 Sometimes they will even spirt out that liquor." 



