PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 361 
round its body. The animal, which can only move in a spiral direction, 
keeps incessantly turning to take the jelly deposited before it ; and thus 
slowly working downwards, arrives insensibly near the orifice of the cell, 
just at the time that it is ready to assume the pupa; when, as before de- 
scribed, the workers shut up its cradle with an appropriate covering.* 
When you have read this account, I fear, with the celebrated John 
Hunter, you will not be very ready to believe it; at least you will call 
upon me to bring forth my “strong reasons” in support of it. What! — 
you will exclaim — can a larger and warmer house (for the royal cells are 
affirmed to enjoy a higher temperature than those of the other bees”), 
a different and more pungent kind of food, and a vertical instead of a 
horizontal posture, in che first place, give a bee a differently shaped tongue 
and mandibles; render the surface of its posterior tibiz flat instead of 
concave; deprive them of the fringe of hairs that forms the basket for 
carrying the masses of pollen ; of the auricle and pecten which enable the 
workers to use these tibize as pincers *; of the brush that lines the inside 
of their plantee ? Can they lengthen its abdomen; alter its colour and 
clothing ; give a curve to its sting; deprive it of its wax-pockets, and of 
the vessels for secreting that substance; and render its ovaries more con- 
spicuous, and capable of yielding female as well as male eggs? Can, in 
the next place, the seemingly trivial circumstances just enumerated alto- 
gether alter the instinct of these creatures? Can they give to one de- 
scription of animals address and industry ; and to the other astonishing 
fecundity ? Can we conceive them to change the very passions, tempers, 
and manners? ‘That the very same feetus, if fed with more pungent food, 
ina higher temperature and in a vertical position, shall become a female, 
destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be incited to 
vengeance, and to pass her time without labour —that this very same 
fetus, if fed with more simple food, in a lower temperature, in a more 
confined and horizontal habitation, shall come forth a worker zealous for 
the good of the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an 
immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition 
—laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful — incessantly engaged 
in the nurture of the young ; in collecting honey and pollen ; in elaborat- 
ing wax ; in constructing cells, and the like !—paying the most respectful 
and assiduous attention to objects which, had its ovaries been developed, 
it would have hated, and pursued with the most vindictive fury till it had 
destroyed them! Further, that these factitious queens (I mean those that 
the bees elect from amongst worker brood, and educate to supply the 
place of a lost one in the manner just described) shall differ remarkably 
from the natural queens (or those that have been wholly educated in a 
royal cell), in being altogether mute. All this, you will think at first 
sight so improbable, and next to impossible, that you will require the 
strongest and most irrefragable evidence before you will believe it. 
_ In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the contrary, this astonish- 
ing and seemingly incredible fact rests upon strong foundations, and is 
established by experiments made at different times, by different persons of 
the highest credit, in different parts of Europe. The first who brought 
\t before the public (as I lately observed) was M. Schirach, secretary 
7 Compare Bonnet, x. 156. with Huber, i. 134. 2 Schirach, 69. 
Tuber, ¢ 4, f. 4—6, * Huber, i. 292. 
