126 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
There are two descriptions of males—one not bigger 
than the workers, supposed to be produced from a male 
but it will not apply to all generally (unless, as I suspect may be the 
case, by the term body he means the abdomen), for, in all that I have 
had an opportunity of examining, the prevailing colour, as I have 
stated it, is the same. 
The head is not larger than that of the workers; but the tongue is 
shorter and more slender, with straighter mavrilla. The mandibles 
are forficate, and do not jut out like theirs into a prominent angle ; 
they are of the colour of pitch with a red tinge, and terminate 
in two teeth, the exterior being acute, and the interior blunt or 
truncated. The labrum or upper-lip is fulvous ; and the antenne are 
piceous. : . 
In the trunk, the tegule or scales that defend the base of the wings 
are rufo-piceous. The wings reach only to the tip of the third abdo- 
minal segment. The tarsi and the apex of the tidie are rufo-fulvous. 
The posterior tibie are plane above and covered with short adpressed 
hairs, having neither the corbicula (or marginal fringe of hairs for 
carrying the masses of pollen) nor the pecten; and the posterior 
plante have neither the brush formed of hairs set in strize, nor the 
auricle at the base. 
The abdomen is considerably longer than the head and trunk taken 
together, receding from the trunk, elongato-conical, and rather sharp 
at the anus. The dorsal segments are fulvous at the tip; covered 
with very short, pallid, and, in certain lights, shining adpressed hairs ; 
the first segment being very short, and covered with longer hairs. The 
ventral segments, except the anal, which is black, are fulvescent or 
rufo-fulvous, and covered with soft longer hairs. The vagina of the 
spicula (commonly called the sting) is curved. 
ii. The Male bee, or drone, is quite the reverse of his royal para- 
mour ; his body being thick, short, and clumsy, and very obtuse at 
each extremity *. It is covered also, as to the head and trunk, with 
dense hairs. 
The head is depressed and orbicular. The tongue is shorter and 
more slender than that of the female; and the mandibles, though 
* Virgil seems to have regarded the drone as one of the sorts of 
kings or leaders of the bees, when he says, speaking of the latter, 
eae a ecu nronetia te Tile horridus alter 
Desidia, latamque trahens inglorius alvum.” 
Georgie. iy. 1. 93. 
