354 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
in aday. In collecting honey, humble-bees, if they cannot get at that con. 
tained in any flower by its natural opening, will often make an aperture at 
the base of the corolla, or even in the calyx, that they may insert their 
proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her nectar.‘ M, 
1 Hub. Nouv. Observ. ii. 875. Of the especial love of humble-bees for the nectar 
of the Passion-flower (Passiflora cerulea), and the effeet which it has on them, the 
following paragraph gives a graphie description. 
“We regret extremely to announce that some honest humble-bees of our ac- 
quaintance have taken to drinking, and to such excess that they are daily found 
reeling and tumbling about the door of their houses of call— the blossoms of the 
Passion-flower, which flow over with intoxicating beverage ; and there, not con- 
tent with drinking like decent bees, they plunge their great hairy heads into the 
beautiful goblet that nature has formed in such plants, thrusting each other aside, 
or climbing over each other’s shoulders, till the flowers bend beneath their weight. 
After a time they become so stupid that if is in vain to pull them by the skirts, and 
advise them to go home, instead of wasting their time in tippling : they are how- 
ever, good-natured in their cups, and show no resentment at being disturbed ; on 
the contrary, they cling to their wine goblet, and crawl hack to it as fast as they 
are pulled away, unless, indeed, they fairly lose their legs and tumble down, in 
which case they lie sprawling on the ground, quite unable to get up again.” 
(Gardener’s Chronicle, 1841, p. 519.) If this account be not overcoloured. these 
jovial, reckless proceedings of Hur blesbies are in strong contrast with the temperate 
habits of hive-bees, which, to judge from the interesting account Mr. Wailes has 
given us of their visits to his Passion-flowers (nt. Mag. i. 525.), hurried back to 
the hive as soon as they had imbibed their supply of nectar ; and certainly the 
anecdote given below, from Huber, of the way in which humble-bees suffered them- 
selves to be cajoled out of their honey by hive-bees indicates such a good-natured 
weakness of disposition as may easily be supposed to be combined with a propensity 
to carousing when the opportunity presents itself. To speak seriously, however, it 
would be well worth ascertaining, by exact observations, whether as great a 
contrast between the temperance of humble-bees and hive-bees in feeding really 
exists, as between their easiness of temper. There can be no doubt that some races 
of insects vary as much in this last respect as some races of men. ‘The difference as 
to irritability between the temper of wasps and that of bees is known to every one, 
but has never been so happily hit off as by Christopher North, whose universil 
genius adorns every subject, in the description of it which he has put into the 
mouth of the “Shepherd,” in one of the Noctes, and which well deserves tran- 
scription here from the pages of the voluminous periodical in which it has lain 
entombed these sixteen years, 
“ Shepherd. — O’ a? God’s creturs the wasp is the only ane that’s eternally out 0 
temper. There’s nae sic thing as pleasin’ him. In the gracious sunshine, ... « 
when the bees are at work murmurin’ in their gauzy flight, although no gauze 
indeed be comparable to the filaments 0’ their woven wings, or, clinging silently 
to the flowers, sook, sookin’ out the hiney-dew, till their verra doups dirl wi’ delight, 
—when a’ the flees that are ephemeral, and weel contented wi’ the licht and the 
heat o’ ae single sun, keep dancin’ in their burnished beauty, up and down, to and 
fro, and backwards and forwards, and sideways, in millions upon millions, and yet 
are never joistling anither, but a’ harmoniously blended together in amity, like ima- 
gination’s thochts, —why, amid this ‘ general dance of minstrelsy,’ in comes @ 
shower o’ infuriated wasps, red het, as if let out o’ a fiery furnace, pickin’ quarrels 
wi’ their ain shadows — then roun’ and roun’ the hair 0’ your head, bizzin’ against 
the druin 0’ your ear till you think they are in at the ae hole and out at the ither— 
back again after makin’ a circuit, as if they had repentit 0’ lettin’ you be unharmed, 
dashin’ against the face o’ you who are wishin’ ill to nae livin’ thing, and although 
you are engaged out to dinner, stickin’ a lang poishoned stang in just below your 
ee, that afore you can rin hame frae the garden swells up to a fearsome hicht, 
makin’ “ie on that side look like a blackamoor, and on the opposite white as death, 
sae intolerable is the agony frae the tail o’ the yellow imp that, according to his 
are Be) far than the dragon o’ the desert.” (Blackwood’s Zdinburgh. Mag. 
ct. A 
