PERFECT SCCIETIES OF INSECTS. 129 
nuated insects the hair is often rubbed off the body, which 
gives them a darker hue than that of more recent indi- 
viduals of the same species. Should this conjecture turn 
out true, their banishment and destruction of the seniors 
of the hive would certainly not show our little creatures 
in a very amiable point of view. Yet it seems the law 
of their nature to rid their community of all supernu- 
merary and useless members, as is evident from their de- 
struction of the drones after their work is done. 
It is not often that insects have been weighed; but 
Reaumur’s curiosity was excited to know the weight 
of bees; and he found that 336 weighed an ounce, and 
5376 a pound. According to John Hunter, an ale-house 
pint contains 2160 workers. 
I have described to you the persons of the different in- 
dividuals that compose the society of the bee-hive more 
in detail than I should otherwise have done, in order that 
you may be the better able to form a judgement upon a 
most extraordinary circumstance in their history, which 
is supported by evidence that seems almost incontroverti- 
ble. The fact to which I allude is this—that if the bees 
are deprived of their queen, and are supplied with comb 
containing young worker brood only, they will select one - 
or more to be educated as queens; which, by having a 
royal cell erected for their habitation, and being fed with 
royal jelly for not more than two days, when they emerge 
from the pupa state (though, if they had remained in the 
cells which they originally inhabited, they would have 
turned out workers) will come forth complete queens, 
with their form, instincts, and powers of generation en- 
tirely different. In order to produce this effect, the grub 
must not be more than three days old ; and this is the age 
VOL. Il. K 
