A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 171 
fully that nothing will induce her to strike with it 
except when it is to be turned against a royal foe, 
is otherwise little else than a harmless piece of 
domestic furniture. But the sting of the valorous 
worker-bee, seen under a microscope, is a positively 
terrifying engine of destruction. Popular science 
generally describes it as a sheath containing a 
barbed and poisonous dart; and the trite com- 
parison is always made of the bee’s sting with the 
finest sewing-needle, the latter being likened to a 
rough bar of iron. The idea of a sheath is pure 
fiction, as a little painstaking examination will soon 
reveal. 
The bee’s sting is made up of three separate 
lances, each with a barbed edge, and each 
capable of being thrust forward independently of 
the others. The central and broader lance has a 
hollow face, furnished at each side with a rail, or 
beading, which runs its whole length. On the 
back of each of the other two lances there is a 
longitudinal groove, and into these grooves fit the 
raised beadings of the central lancet. Thus the 
sting is like a sword with three blades—united, 
but sliding upon one another—the barbed points 
of which continue to advance alternately into the 
wound, going ever deeper and deeper of their own 
malice aforethought after the initial thrust is made. 
It is a device of war, compared to which the 
explosive bullet is but a clumsy brutality. Yet 
this is not all. To make its death-dealing powers 
