44 The Honey-Makers 



up from the meadow to the fragrant cedar chest, fed him 

 with food of tender flowers, because the Muse still dropped 

 sweet nectar on his lips." 



Thus sang Lycidas concerning the shepherd Comatas, 

 who in his zeal to serve the Muses sacrificed to them his 

 master's goats, and was therefore put in a cedar chest and 

 shut up, but, as the song relates, kept alive for the space of 

 a year, and until his release, by the ministrations of the 

 Blunt-faced-Bees. 



Wise indeed have these insects been accounted from all 

 time, and wonderful is the organization which enables them 

 to accomplish their manifold and clever tasks. 



Whether they fed Comatas in his cedar chest some may 

 question ; but this cannot be questioned, that if they did 

 feed him, they found him there not by the sense of sight 

 or by means of any organ such as we possess, but because 

 they were endowed with the most mysterious and remark- 

 able of organs, the antennas or feelers. 



Between the eyes of the " Blunt-faced-Bees " reach out 

 the feelers, and these several-jointed organs, as has been 

 intimated, are matters of importance. 

 With them the bee hears. With them it 

 smells, and by means of them it con- 

 verses. Deprived of them, it becomes a 

 stricken thing, helpless, deaf, dumb, and 

 despairing. 



Huber experimented by cutting off 

 the antennae. The removal of one 

 antenna produced no observable effect. Not so the re- 

 moval of both, for then the bee became little more than an 

 idiot or lunatic and, unable to perform the necessary duties 

 of the hive, soon perished. 



The queen-bee, when deprived of her antennas entirely 

 lost her maternal instinct, moved aimlessly about, avoided 



