50 SENSE OF TOUCH. 



the wax, nor can it be considered as very acute, as it is 

 simply employed on one substance, without perhaps any 

 great diversity in its constituent principles. 



The sense of feeling or touch has been very erroneously 

 supposed to exist in the antennae, and in order to confirm 

 that hypothesis, Hubert instituted an experiment, in which 

 he confined a queen, so that her subjects could not 

 recognize her immediate presence, which occasioned so great 

 a despondency at the supposed loss of their monarch, that, 

 by the aid of a little royal jelly which happened to be very 

 conveniently at hand, they began to manufacture another 

 queen. On a sudden, however, the wire grating, which had 

 hitherto concealed her majesty, was so far withdrawn, as to 

 allow her to project her antennae, and the bees immediately 

 recognized their former monarch and the affairs of the 

 monarchy went on as usual. Now, we are at a loss to 

 conjecture on what grounds Mr. Huber can from the 

 foregoing experiment draw the inference, that the antennae 

 are the organ of feeling; for it is but a confirmation of the 

 hypothesis, that the antennae are the organ of smell, but that 

 they have no relation with either the sense of feeling or 

 touch. Indeed the locality of those senses may be con- 

 sidered as general, like the majority of all other animal 

 bodies, and not confined to any particular organ. 



In the earlier period of the history of the bee, Swammer- 

 dam, Maraldi, Reaumur, Bonner, and Shirach certainly 

 divested it of much that was marvellous, ridiculous, and 

 incongruous, and they rendered the study of it more easy 

 and interesting, by the establishment of many truths, and 

 the promulgation of new and various phenomena which 

 came under their immediate observation. In the vast 

 field, however, which they traversed, notwithstanding the 

 abundance and richness of their harvest, there yet remained 

 much to glean. Since their time, science has been gradually 

 unlocking her stores, and the mists of prejudice have been 



