ue populous than on the preceding day. I might be deceived 
76 
day. I tasted the liquid, and remarked the same li 
bitterness as the night before. It was not yet honey 
The bees did not begin to collect till eleven 0” 
A. M.; but they then arrived from all quarters. T . 
certainly came from different families, and even differ 
villages. Notwithstanding, they plundered in the greatest — 
harmony; and as soon as each had gotten its load, it 
out, and directed its course towards the hive. ‘The arrival 
others was continued. It was like the successive and con- 
tinued arrival and departure of a considerable population, 
at a great country fair. The paths through the air we 
covered with bees, and I could easily perceive, on each of 
the routes, two lines, going and coming, formed by two © 
files of these insects. sd Dt 4 
The pucerons did not appear to me to be much deranged _ 
from the station in which I left them the night before. 
However, I thought I could remark a small change « 
place, scarcely sensible, and the group appeared mol 
5 
in this article; but I obtained the certainty of the existence 
of the dark brown pucerons, of which M. Boissier de Sat 
vages had (first of our naturalists) given us a knowledg 
T also ascertained satisfactorily the utility of these insects 
to the bees, in their art of expressing the juice and sap of _ 
the oak, from the shoots of the preceding year. I con- 
tinued my assiduities near this and some other oaks, where _ 
I had the same good fortune, until I could no longer find 
any bees upon them. It appeared to me that the pucerons — 
became a prey to the little birds of the hedges, and that — 
the bees, no longer finding an interest there, abandon them _ 
of their own accord, towards the end of August, in northern — 
climates. ee! 
it remained for me to gain a knowledge of the other | 
trees and shrubs, of which M. Boissier had spoken, to sa- 
_ tisfy myself also of their relative properties, for the birth 
_and subsistence of pucerons. I have made it my continued “ 
study, from that epoch; and have not only confirmed my- 
self in the high opinion which I had conceived of the ex- 
actitude and truth of the discovery of M. Boissier, but I 
also found many other trees and shrubs, which that natu- — 
ralist had not noticed, from which the pucerons also obtained 
products, of which the bees profited as well as the ants, — 
and an infinity of other insects. 2 ee 
_ The brownish pucerons appear to me to furnish the most 
