ARGUMENTS OF KIRBY AND SPENCE. 139 



is, however, the fact ; for the formation of the drone cells is a 

 necessary and indispensable condition of a hive, and we 

 never saw a hive without one, except a poor second or third 

 swarm, in which the breeding of the queen appears to be 

 altogether suspended. 



We will now briefly allude to the arguments adduced by 

 Kirby and Spence to account for the difference which is 

 created in the common egg by the administration of a certain 

 modicum of royal jelly ; for they also avow themselves to be 

 believers in the potency of that most extraordinary aliment. 

 We doubt not that the following most delectable specimen 

 of analogical reasoning by Kirby, in order to account for 

 what has hitherto been deemed unaccountable, will meet 

 with all the respect which it deserves. The difference in 

 man, says Mr. Kirby, may be caused by a particular diet 

 in childhood ; and this we know to have been also the 

 opinion of the late Sir Samuel Romilly, who, when he 

 placed his children at a seminary at Chelsea, issued his most 

 positive injunction that they should not be allowed to eat 

 pudding, particularly if made with suet, as it had a direct 

 tendency to make all those who partook of it, the most 

 finished blockheads. Thus it may be argued, that if diet 

 possesses such a positively injurious effect upon the intel- 

 lectual faculties of man, Huber and Kirby are certainly 

 warranted by analogy in supposing that royal jelly may have 

 a wonderful effect upon the faculties of the worm of a bee. 

 A difference in man, says Mr. Kirby, is also occasioned by a 

 warmer or a colder, a looser or a tighter dress ; therefore 

 he considers himself warranted in asserting, that a similar 

 effect may be produced by giving to the nymph of the bee 

 a warmer or a colder, a tighter or a looser dress; and by way 

 of satisfactorily elucidating this principle, Kirby informs 

 us, that the Egyptians, who went bare-headed, had their skulls 

 remarkably thick, while the Persians who covered their head 

 g6 



