8 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



him ; he sought to verify them, and soon becoming passionately 

 absorbed in these researches, he eventually, with the assistance 

 of an intelligent and faithful servant, Fran9ois Burnens, devoted 

 his entire life to the study of the bee. In the annals of human 

 suffering and human triumph there is nothing more touching, 

 no lesson more admirable, than the story of this patient colla- 

 boration, wherein the one who saw only with immaterial 

 light guided with his spirit the eyes and hands of the other'^ 

 who had the real earthly vision ; where he, who, as we are 

 assured, had never himself beheld a comb of honey, was yet 

 able, notwithstanding the veil on his dead eyes that rendered 

 double the veil in which nature enwraps all things, to penetrate 

 the profound secrets of the genius that had made this invisible 

 comb — as though to teach us that no condition in life can 

 warrant our abandoning our desire and search for the truth. 

 I will not enumerate all that apiarian science owes to Huber ; 

 to state what it does not owe were the briefer task. His 

 " New Observations on Bees," of which the first volume was 

 written in 1789, in the form of letters to Charles Bonnet, the 

 second not appearing till twenty years later, have remained the 

 unfailing, abundant treasure-house into which every subsequent 

 writer has dipped. And though a few mistakes may be found 

 therein, a few incomplete truths ; though since his time con- 

 siderable additions have been made to the micrography and 

 practical culture of bees, the handling of queens, &c., there 

 is not a single one of his principal statements that has been 

 disproved or discovered in error ; and in our actual experience 

 they stand untouched and, indeed, at its very foundation. 



