PHYSIOLOGY. 86 



remarks on Drones.) In what way are these eggs impreg- 

 nated ? Huber, by a long course of the most indefatigable 

 observations, threw much light upon this subject. Before 

 stating his discoveries, I must pay my humble tribute of 

 gratitude and admiration, to this wonderful man. It is mor- 

 tifying to every scientific naturalist, and I might add, to 

 every honest man acqliainted with the facts, to hear such a 

 man as Huber abused by the veriest quacks and iniposters ; 

 while others who have appropriated from his liibors, nearly 

 all that is of any value in their works, to use the words of 

 Pope, 



"Damn with faint praise, assenl with civil leer, 

 And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." 



Huber, in early manhood, lost the use of his eyes. Flis 

 opponents imagine that in stating this fact, they have thrown 

 merited discredit on all his pretended discoveries. But to 

 make their case still stronger, they delight to assert that he 

 saw every thing through the medium of his servant Francis 

 Burnens, an ignorant peasant. Now this ignorant peasant 

 was a man of strong native intellect, possessing that inde- 

 fatigable energy and enthusiasm which are so indispensable 

 to make a good observer. He was a noble* specimen of a 

 self-made man, and afterwards rose to be the chief magis- 

 trate in the village where he resided. Huber has paid the 

 most admirable tribute, to his intelligence, fidelity and in- 

 domitable patience, energy and skill. 



It would be difficult to find, in any language, a better 

 specimen of the true Baconian or inductive system of reas- 

 oning, than Huber's work upon bees, and it might be stud- 

 ied as a model of the only true way of investigating nature, 

 so as to arrive at reliable results. 



Huber was assisted in his investigations, not only by Bur- 

 nens, but by his own wife, to whom he was engaged before the 



