CONTRADICTIONS OF HUBER. 387 



thesis, he invests the bees with a singular appendage, which 

 he calls wax-pockets, from which they take, already made to 

 their hands, as from a purse, just as much wax as they re- 

 quire for their immediate use; and, for our further edification, 

 we are told, that these scales of wax are larger in some bees 

 than in others ; and under the supposition that he had not 

 taxed our credulity sufficiently, he instructs us, that he 

 further observed, on the membrane of these wax-pockets, 

 a slight liquid medium, which lubricates the joinings of the 

 rings, and renders the extraction of the scales more easy. 



Here then we arrive at another of the gross contradictions 

 of Huber. In the first place we are told, that wax is pro- 

 duced from honey, or from any other saccharine matter, 

 mingled with a little water. Subsequently, however, we are 

 informed, that it is found in scales already made, but at the 

 same time it is accompanied by the admission, that if the 

 substance found so lying under the rings of the abdomen be 

 in reality wax, or even the element of wax, it still undergoes 

 some subsequent preparation by elaboration after it is de- 

 tached ; in short, that the bees possess the power of im- 

 pregnating it with some matter in order to impart to it 

 ductility and whiteness ; but what that matter is, or from 

 what quarter it is obtained, whether natural or artificial, 

 Huber has omitted to inform us. Nevertheless, he finds it 

 convenient to admit of wax being a crude production of 

 nature, and collected by the bees from certain flowers ; an 

 hypothesis strenuously upheld by Mr. Knight, the President 

 of the Horticultural Society ; nor would he consent to its 

 being an elaboration in the stomach of the bee, taking 

 honey as the constituent principle, for he therein saw that 

 he was involving himself in a dilemma, the tendency of 

 which would be to overthrow his system altogether. He 

 therefore fell upon the extraordinary expedient of forming 

 his wax by exudation, that is, that the bee shall swallow a 

 certain quantity of honey and water, or sugar and water; 



