A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 173 



its destination. The worker-bee has these feelers 

 on either side of her sting, but she has perverted 

 them to a very different office, that of seeking out 

 the vulnerable parts of her enemy. And what a 

 drastic change her will, or that of her foster- 

 mothers, has wrought in the whole contrivance! 

 She has bartered the privilege of motherhood and 

 years of life for a few short months and a share 

 in the communal sovereignty. She must be ready 

 to further the well-being of the hive by the art of 

 war as well as by the arts of peace. Therefore 

 she has deliberately helped in fashioning the 

 ploughshares into cannon. A little change in her 

 food as a nursling, an infinitesimal leaking from 

 a gland that takes the full power of the strongest 

 glass to see, — and, with all the other multitudinous 

 changes of form and character, this last miracle 

 comes quietly into being. The egg-depositing 

 shaft grows short and straight ; its moderate in- 

 dentations become cruel jagged barbs designed to 

 hold as well as to kill ; the harmless, egg-fastening 

 gluten is quickened into a virulent poison ; and 

 the death-dealing thing is ready and ripe for 

 service against all honey-lovers, the hereditary 

 foes of the hive. 



