200 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
slugs or snails will creep into a hive, which with all 
their address they cannot readily expel or carry out. 
But here their instinct is at no loss; for they kill them, 
and afterwards embalm them with propolis, so as to pre- 
vent any offensive odours from incommoding them. An 
unhappy snail, that had travelled up the sides of a glazed 
hive, and which they could not come at with their stings, 
they fixed, a monument of their vengeance and dexte- 
rity, by laying this substance all around the mouth of its 
shell?. When they expel their excrements, they go 
apart that they may not defile their companions: and in 
winter, when prevented by extreme cold, or the injudi- 
cious practice of wholly closing the door of the hive, from 
going out for this purpose, their bodies sometimes be- 
come so swelled from the accumulation of feces in the 
intestines, that when at last able to get out they can no 
longer fly, so that falling to the ground in the attempt, 
they perish with cold, the sacrifice of personal neatness®. 
When a bee is disclosed from the pupa and has left its 
cell, a worker comes, and taking out its envelope carries 
it from the hive; another removes the exuviee of the lar- 
va, and a third any filth or ordure that may remain, or 
any pieces of wax that may have fallen in when the na- 
scent imago broke from its confinement.. But they never 
attempt to remove the internal lining of silk that covers 
the walls, spun by the larva previous to its metamorpho- 
sis, because, instead of being a nuisance, it renders the 
cell more solid °. 
Having now described to you the usual employments 
of my little favourites both within doors and without, I 
* Reaum. v. 442. > Bonner On Bees, 102. 
* Reaum. ubi supr. 580-600. 
