38 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
their young a sufficient supply of food; some of pollen and 
honey, others of animal substance. Several kinds of wasps 
provide their nests with living insects, spiders, caterpillars, 
etc., that they have previously paralyzed, but without kill- 
ing them, by piercing them with their stings. 
Ants seem to possess even a greater solicitude. When 
their nests are overthrown, they carry their larve to some 
hidden place out of danger. 
We have exhibited the use of the organs of bees as a 
race. We will now examine the character of each of the 
three kinds of inhabitants of the bee-hive. 
Tue QUEEN. 
93. Although honey-bees have attracted the attention 
of naturalists for ages, the sex 
of the inmates of the bee-hive 
was, for a long time, a mystery. 
The Ancient authors, having no- 
ticed in the hive, a bee, larger 
than the others, and differently 
shaped, had called it the ‘‘ King 
Fig. 19. Bee.”’ 
94. To our knowledge, it was an English bee-keeper, 
Butler, who, first among bee-writers, affirmed in 1609, that 
the King Bee was really a queen, and that he had seen her 
deposit eggs. (‘‘ Feminine Monarchy.’’) 
95. This discovery seems to have passed unnoticed, for 
Swammerdam, who ascertained the sex of bees by dissec- 
tion, is held as having been the first to proclaim the sex of 
the Queen bee. (Leyde, 1737.) A brief extract from the 
celebrated Dr. Boerhaave’s Memoir of Swammerdam, show- 
ing the ardor of this naturalist, in his study of bees, should 
put to blush the arrogance of those superficial observers, 
