322 BRITISH BEES. 



of its ingenuity and skill, its significant name being 

 everywhere analogous. 



The habits and economy of these industrious little 

 creatures have been a source of greater wonder and 

 admiration the more closely and accurately they have 

 been observed. They have attracted the thoughtful spe- 

 culation of minds of the largest compass throughout 

 all ages, which, reasoning upon the modus operandi of 

 these insects, have endeavoured to define, and determine 

 the differences between instinct and reason, with their 

 precise limitations. But baffled in their attempt to 

 settle whether these be affinities or analogies, it should 

 rather have persuaded them to adopt the motto of 

 Montaigne, and exclaim. Que sais-je ? Into these meta- 

 physical discussions it is not necessary to enter, and I 

 confine myself to the natural history of the insect. 



Although the description of the three sexes which 

 comprise the population of the hive are technically given 

 above with scientific precision, it will be as well, perhaps, 

 to recapitulate them briefly, with their distinctive attri- 

 butes, in a more popular form. 



They consist of a queen, or productive female, whose 

 function is thought to be exclusively to lay eggs, but who 

 may perhaps have some hitherto undiscovered control 

 over the executive of the hive, to be implied by the cofi- 

 fusion invariably following her death or her removal 

 from the community, and which becomes totally destruc- 

 tive to its organic constituency unless stayed by another 

 monarch being improvised, or by one extraneously sup- 

 plied ; one monarch alone rules without a coadjutor, 

 and without any equal being tolerated, for the presence 

 of a second queen, or the immature larva of one, even of 

 her own progeny, maddens her to murderous aggression, 



