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 
antenne 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 
