180 THE BEE-HIVES. 



their admirable sagacity, as the truly scientific device by 

 which they ventilate their dwellings. In this important mat- 

 ter, the bee is immensely in advance of the great mass of 

 those who are called rational beings. It has, to be sure, 

 no ability to decide, from an elaborate analysis of the chem- 

 ical constituents of the atmosphere, how large a proportion 

 of oxygen is essential to the support of life, and how rapidly 

 the process of breathing converts it into a deadly poison. 

 It cannot, like Liebig, demonstrate that God, by setting the 

 animal and the vegetable world, the one over against the 

 other, has provided that the atmosphere shall, through all 

 ages, be as pure as when it first came from His creating 

 hand. But shame upon us ! that with all our boasted intel- 

 ligence, most of us live as though pure air was of little or 

 no importance ; while the bee ventilates with a philosophical 

 precision that should put to the blush our criminal neglect. 

 373. It is said that ventilation Cannot, in one case, be had 

 without cost. Can it then be had for nothing, by the indus- 

 trious bees? Those ranks of bees, so indefatigably plying 

 their busy wings, are not engaged in idle amusement ; nor 

 might they, as some shallow utilitarian may imagine, be 

 better employed in gathering honey, or superintending some 

 other department in the economy of the hive. At groat ex- 

 pense of time and labor, they are supplying the rest of the 

 colony with the pure air so conducive to their health and 

 prosperity. What a difference between them and some 

 human beings, who, " if they lived in a glass bottle, would 

 insist on keeping the cork in! " 



Impure air, one would think, is bad enough ; but all its 

 inherent vileness is stimulated to still greater activity by air- 

 tight, or rather lung-tight stoves, which can economize fuel 

 only by squandering health and endangering life. Not only 

 our private houses, bat all our places of public assemblage, 

 are either unimproved with any means of ventilation, or to 



