130 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
at which, according to Schirach, (the first apiarist who 
called the public attention to this miracle of nature,) the 
bees usually elect the larve to be royally educated ; though 
it appears from Huber’s observations, that a larva two 
days or even twenty-four hours old will do?.._Having 
chosen a grub, they remove the inhabitants and their 
food from two of the cells which join that in which it re- 
sides; they next take down the partitions which separate 
these three cells; and, leaving the bottoms untouched, 
raise round the selected worm acylindrical tube, which fol- 
lows the horizontal direction of the other cells : but since at 
the close of the third day of its life its habitation must as- 
sume a different form and direction, they gnaw away the 
cells below it, and sacrifice without pity the grubs they con- 
tain, using the wax of which they were formed to con- 
struct a new pyramidal tube, which they join at right 
angles to the horizontal one, the diameter of the former 
diminishing insensibly from its base to its mouth, Du- 
ring the two days which the grub inhabits this cell, like 
the common royal cells now become vertical®, a bee may 
always be observed with its head plunged into it; and 
when one quits it another takes its place. These bees 
keep lengthening the cell as the worm grows older, and 
duly supply it with food, which they place before its 
mouth, and round its body. The animal, which can only 
move it a spiral direction, keeps incessantly turning to 
take the jelly deposited before it; and thus slowly work- 
ing downwards, arrives insensibly near the orifice of the 
cell, just at the time that it is ready to assume the pupa; 
@ Huber, 1. 137. 
» Reaumur, who was however unacquainted with this extraordinary 
fact, has figured one of these cells, v. t. 32.0 3. A. 
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