A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 149 



reality in such an examination of the common 

 worker-bee. The unaided eye sees a creature, 

 fashioned simply enough to all appearances — a 

 brown, attenuated body, two pairs of wings, the 

 usual six legs common to all insects, and a couple 

 of bent horns, like threshels, that continuously 

 waver to and fro. But under the glass this sim- 

 plicity at once vanishes. From the tip of her 

 antennae to the barbed end of her sting, there is 

 nothing about the honey-bee that is not made on 

 the most bewilderingly, complicated plan. 



Watching a hive at work on a busy day in 

 summer, the attention is first drawn to the pollen- 

 gatherers, labouring in by the thousand with the 

 big, oval, brightly-coloured masses fixed to their 

 hindmost legs ; and it is first to the pollen- 

 carrying organism that the glass is now naturally 

 directed. The six legs, which looked all very much 

 alike to the naked eye, are seen to be in three 

 pairs, and the construction of each pair differs very 

 markedly from that of its fellows. So far from 

 their being simple legs, each has no fewer than 

 nine jointed parts, and nearly every part carries a 

 special piece of mechanism necessary and vital in 

 the daily work of the bee. Whole treatises might 

 be written on the functions of the human hand, yet 

 the hand is a very simple contrivance compared 

 with the legs of the honey-bee. The pollen- 

 carrying device is on the thigh of the hind leg. 

 The thigh is broadened out and hollowed, and 



