Life and Writings of Francis Huher. 121 



blanks in their history; but this kind of observation, required not 

 only the use of such an instrument as the optician must furnish, 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 practised 

 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. lam much more cer- 

 tain, said he one day to me, smiling, of what I state, than you are, 

 for you puhlish 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 account of the 

 consequences of the early and the late periods of this aerial hymen. 

 He confirmed, by multiplied observations, the discovery of Schirach, 

 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 certain 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 queen 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 larv^ 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- 

 tennae 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 book or leaf hive, and another 

 Vol. XXIIL— No. 1. 16 



