EXAMINATION OF HUBER S STATEMENTS. 91 



lost ; and we should not have been inclined to molest him 

 in his dilemma, had he not so well succeeded in dragging a 

 number of adherents after him into the same predicament, 

 in which they obstinately close their eyes to the true effects 

 of experience, and prefer to grope about in the chilling gloom 

 of error and prejudice, rather than recreate themselves in 

 the beneficial and glorious light of truth. We will, however, 

 enter into a brief analysis of the foregoing statements of 

 Huber ; and, in the first place, we find it asserted, that the 

 queen lays the eggs of workers in forty-six hours after her 

 union with the male, and continues to lay them for the sub- 

 sequent eleven months. Now that same act of union with 

 the male takes place, according to Huber, in the open air, 

 the period of which can never be ascertained ; for although 

 Huber pretends in one instance to have witnessed the 

 queen on her return from her amours, yet he confesses, 

 shortly afterwards, that what he did witness was a direct 

 illusion. Huber is, however, able to determine the precise 

 period, namely, forty-six hours, when the queen commences 

 the laying of her eggs after the union ; but as the precise 

 moment of that union never has been observed, nor ever can 

 be observed, the calculation of any event depending upon it 

 must be a mere matter of speculation, and totally bereft of 

 any value as an accredited fact. In the second place, the 

 queen continues to lay the eggs of workers only for eleven 

 consecutive months, and then commences the laying of the 

 drone eggs. A more erroneous statement than the foregoing 

 never was hazarded. We cannot suppose for a moment 

 that either Huber or any of his commentators ever under- 

 took the examination of the ovarium of a queen bee who 

 had just departed with a swarm, or they would not have 

 compromised their character as apiarians by the promulga- 

 tion of such manifest errors. When, in the first place, was 

 it ever known, that the queen bee laid her eggs for eleven 

 consecutive months ? The earliest period for the laying of 

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