The Wings 67 



line to a given point, is in reality the most eccentric of 

 courses ; and it is the swift curving from side to side that 

 makes the flight of the bee so difficult for the eye to follow. 

 Not improbably, bee-eating birds and insects experience an 

 equal difficulty in following the course of the swift-darting 

 morsel, that is seldom captured while thus describing its 

 "bee-line." 



Nor does the bee dart in a straight line up into the air ; 

 but when about to take its bearings for distant flight, it 

 ascends to the regions above in a spiral course. 



Necessity has led the bee to put its wings to another 

 use than that of flight. Following an instinct which may 

 have developed as a result of communal life, it purifies 

 the air of the hive by means of its wings, as Huber first 

 demonstrated. 



The bee is much more dependent upon fresh air than 

 we are. It is soon suffocated by foul air, and will not allow 

 a degree of impurity within its hive which would be quite 

 unnoticed by our senses. It lives in close quarters with 

 many thousands of its kind, — in the ordinary hive from 

 twenty to fifty thousand, — with only a small opening at 

 the bottom of the hive. 



The conditions for ventilation seem to us, therefore, the 

 worst that could be devised. But such as they are, they 

 must be accepted ; for an opening at the top permitting a 

 draught of air would oftentimes chill and prove fatal to the 

 developing young. The hive must be warm within, and 

 is kept so by the palpitating bodies of the countless 

 inhabitants. 



But bees also breathe and. exhale from their bodies 

 poisonous vapors as we ourselves do. Unlike the air in 

 our habitations, however, that within the hive is always as 

 pure, or very nearly so, as the air out of doors. 



