382 ANALYTICAL EXAMINATION OF WAX. 



being obliged to undergo any elaboratory process, nor re- 

 quiring any other care nor skill from the bees, than the 

 simple act of kneading it into the required form. Had he, 

 however, gone a little further, and informed us, that the 

 pollen of the flower is collected as the material for the form- 

 ation of the cells, and that it is converted into wax by an 

 elaboration in the stomach of the bee, he would have im- 

 parted to us the truth itself. The opinion of the late John 

 Hunter, that pollen could not possibly be the constituent 

 principle of wax, merely because the pellets of farina 

 attached to the legs of the bees are of various shades 

 and colours, was wholly unworthy of so great a mind ; in 

 fact, we will presume to assert, that John Hunter is not 

 an authority to be consulted on the physiology of the bee. 

 His objection to farina being the constituent of wax, on 

 account of the diversity of shade which it exhibits, could 

 only have been rendered valid by his fixing a limit to the 

 elaboratory power of the bee, and obliging it to return the 

 elaborated substance of the same shade and colour, as it 

 was when imbibed. The silk-worm nourishes itself on a 

 substance which is green ; that same substance, however, in 

 an elaborated state, is either white or yellow, and therefore 

 by analogy we are authorized to conclude, that although the 

 farina imbibed by the bee may be of different shades, it still 

 may, by the process of elaboration, of the active principle 

 of which we are ignorant, be converted into one uniform 

 colour, which is white. Hunter, however indebted as we 

 are to him for his minute researches into the anatomy of the 

 bee, knew very little of the internal economy of the hive ; 

 for, as we have already observed, he considers bee bread to 

 be the excrement of the bee, although in a few sentences 

 afterwards he speaks of it as a substance of which he can- 

 not discern the actual use, although he had previously 

 denied it to have any co-operation in the formation of wax. 

 The adherents of Huber have attempted to overthrow our 



