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instinct and teasou, Gen. H. K. Oliver of Salem, said he had 

 often wondered where instinct left off and reason began ; and 

 related some facts coiniected with the Natural Jlistory of 

 the honey l^ee, whose habits he had closely watched for six- 

 teen years in hives, in his own garden. He also related 

 some interesting details recorded by English and French 

 Apiarians, showing a manifest deviation from the proaiptings 

 of mere instinct. In one case, when a snail had obtruded his 

 presence into a hive, the bees had, with a gummy substance 

 covered over the orifice, and thus sealed the animal within 

 his shell. When a common slug made a similar intrusion, he 

 being a soft animal, was sealed up by being covered over 

 completely. The question occurred to him why should not 

 the bees, in the first instances, have covered shell and all ? 

 How should they know that that coarse would not be neces- 

 sary to protect themselves from the disagreeable odor of a 

 dead animal ? Gen. 0. likewise told a curious story (and a 

 true one,) which was related to him by the late Rev. Dr. 

 Flint of Salem, who was a personal witness of the proceed- 

 ing, and vouched for its correctness. It is a well known 

 fact that in early fall, the working bees clear all the drones 

 entirely out of the hive, drag them away and kill them. 

 They more frequehtly worry them to death, than kill them 

 by stinging. Dr. Flint, on an occasion of this " slaughter 

 'of the innocents," in his own hives, one day sat down by a 

 hive to watch the process, and assist, perhaps, in this big job 

 of extermination by despatching the drones as they were 

 brought out. This he did with a spear, or needle inserted 

 in the end of a stick. As the bees came struggling out with 

 a drone, the Doctor would despatch the victim at once. 

 Having followed this up some time he waited to observe 

 what effect his proceeding would have ; and he found that 

 the bees, instead of proceeding with their work of worrying 



