PHYSIOLOGY. 73 



of comb, the means of deliverance. Suppose a large build- 

 ing filled with thousands of persons, tearing their hair, beat- 

 ing their breasts, and by piteous cries, as well as frantic ges- 

 tures, giving vent to their despair ; if now some one should 

 enter this house of mourning, and by a single word, cause 

 all these demonstrations of agony to give place to smiles 

 and congratulations, the change could not be more wonder- 

 ful and instantaneous, than that produced when the bees 

 received the brood comb ! 



The Orientals call the honey bee, Deburrah, " She that 

 speaketh." Would that this little insect might speak, and 

 in words more eloquent than those of man's device, to the 

 multitudes who- allow themselves to reject the doctrines of 

 revealed religion, because, as they assert, they are, on their 

 face so utterly improbable, that they labor under an a priori 

 objection strong enough to be fatal to their credibility. Do 

 not nearly all the steps in the development of a queen from 

 a worker-egg, labor under precisely the same objection .' 

 and have they not, for this very reason, always been re- 

 garded by great numbers of bee keepers, as unworthy of 

 credence ? If the favorite argument of infidels and error- 

 ists will not stand the test when applied to the wonders of 

 the bee-hive, can it be regarded as entitled to any serious 

 weight, when employed in framing objections against relig- 

 ious truths, and arrogantly taking to task the infinite Jeho- 

 vah, for what He has been pleased to do or to teach ? Give 

 me the same latitude claimed by such objectors, and I can 

 easily prove that a man is under no obligation to receive 

 any of the wonders in the economy of the bee-hive, al- 

 though he is himself an intelligent eye-witness that they are 

 all substantial verities. 



I shall quote, in this connection, from Huish, an English 

 Apiarian of vvhom I have already spoken, because his ob- 

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