178 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
lular substance, consisting of hexagons, which lines the 
membrane of the wax-pockets, may be concerned in this 
operation. This substance he also discovered in humble- 
bees (which though they make wax have no wax-pockets), 
occupying all the anterior part or base of the segments*. 
If you wish to see the wax-pockets in the hive-bee, you 
must press the abdomen so as to cause it to extend it- 
self; you will then find on each of the four intermediate 
yentral segments, separated by the carina or elevated 
central part, two trapeziform whitish pockets, of a soft 
membranaceous texture: on these the laminze of wax 
are formed, and they are found upon them in different 
states, so as to be more or less perceptible. I must here 
observe that, besides Thorley, who seems to have been 
the first apiarist that observed these laminz, Wildman 
was not ignorant of them, nor of the wax being formed 
from honey>: we must not therefore permit foreigners 
to appropriate to themselves the whole credit of disco- 
veries that have been made, or at least partially made, 
by our own countrymen. 
Long before Linné had discovered the nectary of 
flowers, our industrious creatures had made themselves 
intimate with every form and variety of them; and no 
botanist, even in this enlightened era of botanical sci- 
ence, can compare with a bee in this respect. The 
station of these reservoirs, even where the armed sight 
of science cannot discover it, is in a moment detected 
by the microscopic eye of this animal. 
She has to attend to a double task—to collect mate- 
rials for bee-bread as weil as for honey and wax. Ob- 
2 Huber, ii.5—. ¢. uf. 8. *b Wildman, 43. 
