420 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



man ; and that found at Trebisond on the Euxine coast, as I have formerly 

 noticed, threatened fatal effects to such of the Greek army, in the cele- 

 brated retreat after the death of the younger Cyrus, as partook of it. 

 Pliny, who mentions this honey, calls it Mccnomenon, and observes that it 

 is said to be collected from a kind of Rhododendron, of which Tourne- 

 fort noticed two species there.^ 



When the stomach of a bee Is filled with nectar, it next, by means of 

 the feathered hairs- with which its body is covered, pilfers from the flowers 

 the fertilizing dust of the anthers, ihe pollen ; whicli is equally necessary 

 to the society with the honey, and may be named the ambrosia of the 

 hive, since from it the bee-bread is made. Sometimes a bee is so discol- 

 ored with this powder as to look like a different insect, becoming white, 

 yellow, or orange, according to the flowers in which it has been busy. 

 Reaumur was urged to visit the hives of a gentleman, who on this account 

 thought his bees were different from the common kind.^ He suspected, 

 and it proved, that the circumstance just mentioned occasioned the mis- 

 taken notion. When the body of the bee is covered with farina, with the 

 brushes of its legs, especially of the hind ones, it wipes it off: not, as we 

 do with our dusty clothes, to dissipate and disperse it in the air, but to 

 collect every particle of it, and then to knead it and form it into two little 

 masses, which she places, one in each, in the baskets formed by hairs'* 

 on her hind legs. 



Aristotle says that in each journey from the hive, bees attend only one 

 species of flower^ ; Reaumur, however, seems to think that they fly indis- 

 criminately from one to another : but Mr. Dobbs, in the Philosophical 

 Transactions^, and Butler before him, asserts that he has frequently fol- 

 lowed a bee engaged in collecting pollen, &c., and invariably observed 

 that it continued collecting from the same kind of flowers with which it 

 first began ; passing over every other species, however numerous, even 

 though the flower it first selected was scarcer than others. His observa- 

 tions, he thinks, are confirmed, and the idea seems not unreasonable, by 

 the uniform color of the pellets of pollen, and their different size. Reau- 

 mur himself tells us that the bees enter the hive, some with yellow pellets, 

 others with red ones, others again with whitish ones, and that sometimes 

 they are even green : upon which he observes, that this arises from their 

 being collected from particular flowers, the pollen of whose anthers is of 

 those colors.^ Sprengel, as before intimated, has made an observation 

 similar to that of Dobbs. It seems not improbable that the reason why 

 the bee visits the same species of plants during one excursion may be 

 this : — her instinct teaches her that the grains of pollen which enter into 

 the same mass should be homogeneous, in order perhaps for their more 

 efTectual cohesion ; and thus Providence also secures two important ends, 

 — the impregnation of those flowers that require such aid, by the bees 

 passing from one to another ; and the avoiding the production of hybrid 

 plants, from the application of the pollen of one kind of plant to the 

 stigma of another. When the anthers are not yet burst, the bee opens 

 them with her mandibles ; takes a parcel of pollen, which one of the first 



• Xcnoph. Annabas. 1. iv. Plia. Hist. Nat. I. xxL. c. 13. 



• Reaum. v. t. xxvi. f. 1. 3 Reaum. 295. 



* Kirby, Monoffr. Ap. Angl. i. t. 12. **. e. 1. ncut. f. 19. a. b. 



* Jlist. Anim. \. ix. c. 40. « xlvi. 53G. ' Vbi supra, 301. 



