394 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
part which feels the heat of the sun, The same cause produces a similar 
effect upon humble-bees, wasps, and hornets, 
Amongst the bees, however, it is remarkable that ventilation goes on 
even in the depth of winter, when it cannot be occasioned by excess of 
heat. This, therefore, can only be regarded as a secondary cause of the 
phenomenon. From other experiments, which, haying already detained 
you too long, I shall not here detail, it appears that penetrating and 
disagreeable odours produce the same effect.!_ Perhaps, though Huber does 
not say this, the odour produced by the congregated myriads of the hive 
may be amongst the principal motives that impel its inhabitants to this 
necessary action. 
Whatever be the proximate cause, it is, I trust, now evident to you that 
the Author of nature, having assigned to these insects a habitation into 
which the air cannot easily penetrate, has gifted them with the means of 
preventing the fatal effects which would result from corrupted air. An 
indirect effect of ventilation is the elevated temperature which these animals 
maintain, without any effort, in their hive: —but upon this I shall enlarge 
hereafter. 
Bees are extremely neat in their persons and habitations, and remove all 
nuisances with great assiduity, at least as far as their powers enable them, 
Sometimes slugs or snails will creep into a hive, which with all their 
address they cannot readily expel or carry out. But here their instinct is 
at no loss ; for they kill them, and afterwards embalm them with propolis, 
so as to prevent any offensive odours from incommoding them. An un- 
happy snail, that had travelled up the sides of a glazed hiye, and which 
they could not come at with their stings, they fixed, a monument of their 
vengeance and dexterity, by laying this substance all around the mouth of 
its shell.” When they expel their excrements they go apart, that. they 
may not defile their companions; and in winter, when prevented by 
extreme cold, or the injudicious practice of wholly closing the door of the 
hive, from going out for this purpose, their bodies sometimes become so 
swelled from the accumulation of faeces in the intestines, that when at last 
able to get out they can no longer fly, so that falling to the ground in the 
attempt, they perish with cold, the sacrifice of personal neatness.? When 
a bee is disclosed from the pupa and has left its cell, a worker comes, and 
taking out its envelop carries it from the hive ; another removes the exuvie 
of the larva; and a third any filth or ordure that may remain, or any pieces 
of wax that may have fallen in when the nascent imago broke from its con- 
finement. But they never attempt to remove the internal lining of silk 
that covers the walls, spun by the larva previous to its metamorphosis; 
because, instead of being a nuisance, it renders the cell more solid. 
Having now described to you the usual employments of my little fa- 
vourites both within doors and without, I shall next enlarge a little upon 
spats language, memory, tempers, manners, and some other parts. of their 
story. 
“Brutes” (it is the remark of Mr. Knight) “ have language to express 
sentiments of love, of fear, of anger; but they seem unable to transmit 
any impression they haye received from external objects. But the language 
1 Huber, ii. 359. 2 Reaum. v. 442. 
5 Bonner On Bees, 102, 4 Reaum. ubi supra, 580—600. 
