308 FORTIFICATIONS OF THE BEES. 



insect is so extraordinary, that the Vaubans of the present 

 age might take their models from them. When they see, 

 says Mr. Lombard, one of these sphinxes approaching, they 

 immediately retire to the very extremity of the hive, as if 

 to hold a consultation on the most prompt measures to be 

 adopted in order to repel the threatened attack of so formidable 

 an enemy. It is determined nem. con. that a line of fortifica- 

 tions shall be immediately drawn out ; and accordingly, in 

 the first place, they so contract the entrance with a lump 

 of wax and propolis, that the dreaded foe cannot possibly 

 thrust his body through. Not satisfied, however, with this 

 means of defence, they proceed to erect in the interior of 

 the hive, a double wall ; then a covered way, then a secret 

 gate, and then battlements, bastions, glacis and counter- 

 scarp ! ! 



Now Mr. Lombard does not go so far as to say that he 

 has actually witnessed these fortifications, and therefore we 

 will lay his account of them to the charge of a wild and 

 incoherent fancy, and to an uncontrollable disposition, 

 rather than not impart to us something that was new and 

 original, to tell us something which he must have known to 

 be decidedly false. If, however, Mr. Lombard stands charged 

 with the crime of grossly imposing upon our reason and 

 common sense with his account of these fortifications, to 

 what bar ought we to arraign Mr. Huber, who, not only in 

 the 27th volume of the Bibliotheque Britannique, but also 

 in his History of the Bee, has actually given us a drawing of 

 these fortifications ; and, further, in what light ought we to 

 view a professor of Natural History of the King's College of 

 London, who, under a slavish subjection to an authority, 

 the authenticity of which he never attempted to confirm by his 

 own experience, has, in his Insect Architecture, declared the 

 representations of Huber to be correct, and that the bees do 

 actually construct such fortifications as are represented in 

 the drawings of Huber, and which his blindness enabled 



