132 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
cited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour— 
that this very same foetus, if fed with more simple food, in 
a lower temperature, in a more confined and horizontal 
habitation, shall come forth a worker zealous for the good 
of the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoy- 
ing an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite 
and the pains of parturition—laborious, industrious, pa- 
tient, ingenious, skilful—incessantly engaged in the nur- 
ture of the young; in collecting honey and pollen; in 
elaborating wax; in constructing cells, and the like !— 
paying the most respectful and assiduous attention to ob- 
jects which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have 
hated, and pursued with the most vindictive fury till it 
had destroyed them! Further, that these factitious queens 
(I mean those that the bees elect from amongst worker 
brood, and educate to supply the place of a lost one in 
the manner just described) shall differ remarkably from 
the natural queens, (or those that have been wholly edu- 
cated in a royal cell,) in being altogether mute*—All this, 
you will think, at first sight, so improbable, and next to 
impossible, that you will require the strongest and most 
irrefragable evidence before you will believe it. 
In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the con- 
trary, this astonishing and seemingly incredible fact rests 
upon strong foundations, and is established by experi- 
ments made at different times, by different persons of the 
highest credit, in different parts of Europe. The first who 
brought it before the public (as I lately observed) was 
M. Schirach, secretaryofan Apiarian Society established at 
Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia. He observed, that bees 
4 Huber, 1.292. 
