PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. L3t 
when, as before described, the workers shut up its cradle 
with an appopriate covering?. 
When you have read this account, I fear, with the 
celebrated John Hunter, you will not be very ready to 
believe it, at least you will call upon me to bring forth 
my ‘* strong reasons” in support of it. What !—you will 
exclaim—can a larger and warmer house (for the royal 
cells are affirmed to enjoy a higher temperature than 
those of the other bees”), a different and more pungent 
kind of food, and a vertical instead of a horizontal pos- 
ture, in the first place, give a bee a differently shaped 
tongue and mandibles ; render the surface of its posterior 
tibiee flat instead of concave; deprive them of the fringe 
of hairs that forms the basket for carrying the masses of 
pollen; of the auricle and pecten which enable the work- 
ers to use these tibiee as pincers*®; of the brush that lines 
the inside of their plantee? Can they lengthen its abdo- 
men; alter its colour and clothing; give a curve to its 
sting; deprive it of its wax-pockets, and of the vessels for 
secreting that substance; and render its ovaries more con- 
spicuous, and capable of yielding female as well as male 
eggs? Can, in the next place, the seemingly trivial cir- 
cumstances just enumerated altogether alter the istinct of 
these creatures? Can they give to one description of ani- 
mals address and industry; and to the other astonishing 
fecundity ? Can we conceive them to change the very pas- 
sions, tempers, and manners? That the very same foetus, 
if fed with more pungent food, in a higher temperature 
and in a vertical position, shali become a female destined 
to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be in- 
2 Compare Bonnet, x. 156, with Huber, i. 134— ° Schirach, 69. 
© Huber, t. 4, f. 4—6. 
K2 
