EXAMINATION OF HUBER S HYPOTHESIS. 403 



polis and wax. So far from propolis, however, having any 

 homogeneity with wax, Mr. Huber has decided the point to 

 the entire satisfaction of Kirby, Rennie, and a few others, 

 that the former is a positive genuine production of nature, 

 and not made, but collected by the bees from the leaves and 

 branches of certain shrubs and trees, the principal one of 

 which Kirby and Spence consider to be the tacamahac. Ac- 

 cording to Huber, the bees have been observed to draw out 

 long threads of this viscous substance, and to lodge them in 

 the cavities of their legs, and as soon as one bee had com- 

 pleted his load, another bee was very conveniently at hand 

 to continue the loading system, until a sufficient quantity 

 had been obtained. They then began to knead and work it 

 like an Irish labourer does a heap of mortar, and when in a 

 proper state of attenuation, they proceeded to line and solder 

 their cells. It is really lamentable, that an assertion like the 

 latter, which can be immediately refuted by the inspection 

 of a piece of honey-comb, should have received the sanction 

 of any of the naturalists of this country, and have been ac- 

 tually disseminated as belonging to the physiology of the bee. 

 Did ever Kirby or Rennie impose upon themselves the task 

 of verifying the assertion of Huber by a close and rigid ex- 

 amination of a piece of comb in any given stage of its age or 

 growth ? and can either of them present himself before the 

 public, or before the Committee of the Society for the Dif- 

 fusion of Useful Knowledge, with the vouchers in his hands, 

 that from his own experience, the hypothesis of Huber has 

 been reduced to truth, and that this lining and soldering of the 

 cells with propolis constitutes an established and invariable 

 principle of action of the working bee in the construction of 

 its cell ? It is scarcely possible to fix upon an elaborated 

 substance more finely or beautifully attenuated than the 

 sides of the cell of a bee ; in its thickness it is not the hun- 

 dredth part of a line, and is composed simply of wax in its 

 uttermost tenuity. Were, however, the sides of the cells to 

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