Life and Writings of Francis Huber. ‘121 
blanks in their history; but this kind of observation, required not 
only the use of such an instrument as the optician must — but 
an intelligent assistant, who alone could adjust it'to its use. He had 
then a servant named Francis Burnens, remarkable for his Sagacity 
and for the devotion which he bore for his master. - Huber 
him in the art of observation, directed him in his researches by ques- 
tions adroitly combined, and aided by the recollections of his youth 
and by the testimonials of his wife and friends, he rectified the as- 
sertions of his assistant, and became enabled to form in his own mind 
a true and perfect image of the minutest facts. Iam much more cer- 
tain, said he one day to me, smiling, of what I state, than you are, 
for you publish what your own eyes only have seen, while I take the 
mean among many witnesses. ‘This is doubtless very plausible rea- 
soning, but it will hardly render any one mistrustful of his own eyes! 
He discovered that the nuptials, so mysterious and so remarkably 
fruitful of the queen bee, the only mother of the tribe, never take 
place in the hive, but always in the open-air, and at such an eleva- 
tion as to escape ordinary observation, —but not the intelligence of a 
blind man, aided by a peasant. He gives a detailed a it the 
consequences of the early and the late periods of this aerial hyme 
He confirmed, by multiplied observations, the discovery of Schirieh, 
until then disputed, that bees can transform, at pleasure, the eggs of 
working bees into queens, by appropriate food ; or, to speak more 
precisely, neuters into females ; he showed also how Sértaicr Work- 
ing bees are able to lay fertile eggs. He described with much care 
_ the combats of queen bees with each other, the massacre of drones 
and all the singular occurrences which take place in a hive when a 
strange pees is introduced as a substitute for the natural queen. 
He showed the » influence which the dimensions of the cells exert 
‘upon the shape of the insects which proceed from them,—he related 
the manner by which the larve spin the silk of their cocoons; he 
proved demonstratively that the queen is oviparous ; he studied the 
origin of swarms, and was the first who gave a rational and accurate 
history of those flying colonies. He proved that the use of the an- 
tennz is to allow the bees to distinguish each other, and from the in- 
timate knowledge he had acquired of their policy, he prescribed ex- 
cellent rules for their economical administration. ‘The greater num- 
ber of these delicate observations, and which had escaped his pre- 
decessors, were due to his invention of various forms of glass hives. 
One of these, which he called the oe or leaf hive, and another 
Vou. XXIN.—No. 1 
