392 DANGEROUS TENDENCY OF HUBER'S STATEMENTS. 



an inch thick ; and yet the architecture of the bees is always 

 concealed from our view ! ! The wax-workers having got 

 the stock of materials ready, an architect or nurse bee quitted 

 the cluster, examined both sides of the block, felt about 

 with its antenna? or horns, and then like a skilful mason 

 began to scoop out exactly in the centre as much of the 

 block as equalled the size of a common cell, and after knead- 

 ing what it had removed, placed it carefully at the sides of 

 the opening. Having done this, it was succeeded by another 

 bee, and in this manner twenty other workers followed in 

 regular order, apparently well marshalled and disciplined, 

 each taking proper care, as it became him, to push forward 

 the material so as to extend the walls of the cell. 



Reprehensible as Huber must appear in the eyes of every 

 rational man, and of every true lover of science, in attempt- 

 ing to impose upon the public such false and incongruous 

 statements, yet still more reprehensible must appear in the 

 eyes of every one, a Society professing to be founded for the 

 Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (?) which can propagate the 

 absurdities of Huber as the results of positive experience, and 

 call upon enlightened England to give credence to a series of 

 romantic fictions, which mislead the ignorant and disgust the 

 wise. The individual, who is bold enough to declare, that he 

 has seen a bee lay the foundation of a cell, and build it, as 

 the masons would say, to the coping stone, may with the 

 greatest propriety boast of having seen that, which no one 

 ever saw before him, and which we will venture to affirm 

 no one will ever see again. We unhesitatingly declare, 

 that we never did, nor do we ever expect to succeed in 

 witnessing a bee complete the structure of a cell, much 

 less then all those minutiae, which are incorporated in the 

 descriptions of Huber, and which have the injurious ten- 

 dency to impress on the mind of his readers an extraordinary 

 belief in the truth of his pretended discoveries, and to estab- 

 lish him as an authority in the history of the bee, from which 



