NATURE AND CHARACTER. 285 



respect, superior even to the boasted reason of man, 

 enabling it to construct its habitations and needful 

 offices, in the full exactitude of pure mathematics, 

 independently of the aid of either rule, line, or com- 

 pass. Our Shakspeare, the prince of poets, and the 

 industrious bee for collecting all the sweets of poesy, 

 has beautifully, and with true practical correctness, 

 described the bee of nature. 



It is to be observed that the principal bee, of which 

 every community of these insects has only one, was 

 formerly styled the king; which modern discoveries 

 proving to be a female, have metamorphosed into a 

 QUEEN. The bee is one of those creatures destined 

 by nature to congregate, like the human race, and 

 live in communities under the guidance of an inferior 

 kind of reason, denominated instinct. Thus qualified, 

 the bee wears out its extremely limited term of ex- 

 istence in unremitting labour, not for its own indivi- 

 dual, but for the common benefit. According to the 

 continued observations of studious and curious apia- 

 rians, these insects are actuated by those leading 

 passions which sway the human breast, and endowed 

 with that degree of apprehension and discrimination, 

 which enables them to know the persons of their 

 attendants. The simple consideration of a close fellow- 

 feeling, in all respects, of suffering and enjoyment, 

 between brute animals and man, should teach him the 

 great and bounden duty of compassion and of mercy 

 towards them. 



The BEE, or honey-fly, according to naturalists, 

 is of the fourth order of Insects, and has four wings ; 



