160 THE UNIVERSE. 



we should be far from expecting in such Mttle animals; 

 there are leaders, videttes, and reconnoitrers. 



But no act of inteUigence in insects is equal to that by 

 which the bees create themselves a queen when their own 

 is lost to them. By a singular anomaly in insects it is the 

 females Avhich, though more delicate, take charge of the 

 Avork ; the males do absolutely nothing. But these females 

 have none of the attributes of their sex ; they are genuine 

 neuters, in which the nurses have contrived scientifically 

 to make every princij)le of fecundity abort. These work- 

 women, when young, have their bee-bread doled out to 

 them with a very sparing hand ; in vain do they cry and 

 struggle at the bottom of their cells; the mother-in-law 

 remains inflexil:)le, and when the nurse thinks the proper 

 moment has arrived, she inexorably incloses the larva, say- 

 ing, "Thou shaft go no further." And thus the organic 

 development is paralyzed. 



But if any accident carry off the queen from a republic 

 of bees, they miraculously know enough of the springs of 

 life to create themselves another. The nurses are aware 

 that the abortion of their fellow-beings is due to their sel- 

 fishness, and they now make prodigious efforts to procure 

 themselves a new sovereign. At the edge of one of the 

 combs we see them accumulate ample materials, and con- 

 struct a vast royal cell forty or fifty times as large and 

 weighty as the others. After that they bear away a simple 

 workwoman from her narrow cell, and place her in this 

 palace. So soon as ever she is installed in her sumptuous 

 abode, the nurses, now full of tenderness, load her with 

 more agreeable and sweeter scented bee-bread, and imder 

 the influence of this ambrosia the larva, which was only 

 called to the most liumble condition, sees its organs of 

 fecundation appear; henceforth she is a queen ! 



