NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 35 



" Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 

 And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer." 



Huber, in early manhood, lost the use of his eyes. His 

 opponents imagine that in stating this fact, they have thrown 

 merited discredit on all his observations. But to make their 

 case still stronger, they delight to assert that his servant, 

 Francis Burnens, by whose aid he conducted his experi- 

 ments, was only an ignorant peasant. Now this, so-called, 

 ignorant peasant, was a man of strong native intellect, pos- 

 sessing the indefatigable energy and enthusiasm so indispen- 

 sable to a good observer. He was a noble specimen of a 

 self-made man, and afterwards rose to be the chief magistrate 

 in the village where he resided. Huber has paid the most 

 admirable tribute to his intelligence, fidelity and indomitable 

 patience, energy and skill.* 



It would be difficult to find, in any language, a better 

 specimen of the inductive system of reasoning, than Huber's 

 work upon bees, and it might be studied as a model of the 

 only true way of investigating nature, so as to arrive at 

 reliable results. 



Huber was assisted in his researches, not only by Burnens, 

 but by his own wife, to whom he was engaged before the 

 loss of his sight, and who nobly persisted in marrying him, 

 notwithstanding his misfortune, and the strenuous dissua- 

 sions of her friends. They lived for more than the ordinary 

 term of human life, in the enjoyment of uninterrupted 

 domestic happiness, and the amiable naturalist, in her assid- 

 uous attentions, scarcely felt the loss of his sight. 



* A single fact will show the character of the man. It became 

 necessary, in a certain experiment, to examine separately all the bees 

 in two hives. "Burnens spent eleven days in performing this work, 

 and during the whole time he scarcely allowed himself any relaxation, 

 but what the relief of his eyes required." 



