PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 139 
remains perfectly still for two days and sixteen hours; 
and then assumes the pupa, in which state she remains 
exactly four days and eight hours—making in all the 
period I have just named. A longer time, by four days, 
is required to bring the workers to perfection; their pre- 
paratory states occupying twenty days, and those of the 
male even twenty-four. The former consumes half a day 
more than the queen in spinning its cocoon,—a circum- 
stance most probably occasioned by a singular difference 
in the structure and dimensions of this envelope, which 
I shall explain to you presently. Thus you see that the 
peculiar circumstances which change the form and func- 
tions of a bee, accelerate its appearance as a perfect in- 
sect; and that by choosing a grub three days old, when 
the bees want a queen, they actually gain six days; for 
in this case she is ready to come forth in ten days, in- 
stead of sixteen, which would be required, was a re- 
cently laid egg fixed upon?. 
The larvee of bees, though without feet, are not al- 
together without motion. They advance from their first 
station at the bottom of the cell, as I before hinted, in a 
spiral direction. ‘This movement, for the first three 
days, is so slow as to be scarcely perceptible; but after 
this it is more easily discerned. ‘The animal now makes 
two entire revolutions in about an hour and three quar- 
ters; and when the period of its metamorphosis arrives, it 
is scarcely more than two lines from the mouth of the 
cell. Its attitude, which is always the same, is a strong 
@ Huber, i..215—. Schirach asserts, that in cold weather the dis- 
closure of the imago takes place two days Jater than in warm: and 
Riem, that in a bad season the eggs will remain in the cells many 
months without hatching. Schirach, 79. 241. 
