vi INTRODUCTION. 



awarded him, and which has placed him on the pinnacle 

 of apiarian science, an eminence on which he has 

 been undeservedly elevated by a host of commentators, 

 encyclopedists, editors, and compilers, who have been 

 led away by the apparent originality of his pretended 

 discoveries ; but who never deemed it necessary to de- 

 vote any portion of their time or ability in the investi- 

 gation of the principles of that theory, of the truth of 

 which they expressed their unqualified assent. If, in the 

 course of the ensuing work, we may have laid ourselves 

 open to the charge of having applied the lash of ridicule 

 too severely upon this falsely celebrated naturalist, we 

 can only answer, in extenuation of that transgression, 

 that we have been encouraged to the commission of 

 it by the thorough conviction, arising from an ex- 

 perience of above forty years, that the majority of the 

 vaunted discoveries of Huber are the result of fiction 

 and delusion, founded on obsolete theories and anti- 

 quated prejudices. The man who will assert, that 

 from his own evidence he has heard the queen bee 

 speak the French language, — that he has seen the queen 

 bee place herself in such an attitude as to strike the bees 

 motionless, — that he has seen the queen bees for six 

 consecutive nights engaged in a duel, — that he has seen 

 fortifications erected by the bees ; we affirm, that the 

 man who will tell us, and call upon us in a dogmatical 

 tone to believe him, that ten hives will warm an apart- 

 ment, and twelve a green-house if the bees be well 

 shaken, — that the queen bee is sometimes afflicted with 

 the ague, — that he has seen a bee construct a cell from 

 the foundation to the coping, with numerous other similar 



