62 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY BEE. 



root are situated two glands by which the poison is secreted : 

 these glands uniting in one duct, eject the venomous liquid 

 along the groove, formed by the junction of the two piercers. 

 There are four barbs on the outside of each piercer : when 

 the insect is prepared to sting, one of these piercers, having 

 its point a little longer than the other, first darts into the 

 flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the other strikes 

 in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, 

 till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their barbed 

 hooks, and then follows the sheath, conveying the poison into 

 the wound. The action of the sting, says Paley, affords an 

 example of the union of chemistry and mechanism ; of chem- 

 istry in respect to the venom, which can produce such pow- 

 erful effects ; of mechanism as the sting is a compound in- 

 strument. The machinery would have been comparatively 

 useles had it not been for the chemical process, by which in 

 the insect's body honey is converted into poison ; and on the 

 other hand, the poison would have been ineffectual, without 

 an instrument to wound, and a syringe to inject it." 



" Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the 

 microscope, it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick 

 knife, rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows, and 

 so far from anything like sharpness, that an instrument, as 

 blunt as this seemed to be, would not serve even to cleave 

 wood. An exceedingly small needle being also examined, 

 it resembled a rough iron bar out of a smith's forge. The 

 sting of a bee viewed through the same instrument, showed 

 everywhere a polish amazingly beautiful, without the least 

 flaw, blemish, or inequality, and ended in a point too fine to 

 be discerned." 



As the extremity of the sting is barbed like an arrow, the 

 bee can seldom withdraw it, if the substance into which she 

 darts it, is at all tenacious. In losing her sting she parts 



