PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



101 



of some hive-bees paying a visit to a nest of humble-bees 

 placed under a box not far from their hive, in order to steal 

 or beg their honey, which places in a strong light the good 

 temper of the latter. This happened in a time of scarcity. 

 The hive-bees, after pillaging, had taken almost entire pos- 

 session of the nest. Some humble-bees, which remained in 

 spite of this disaster, went out to collect provisions ; and 

 bringing home the surplus after they had supplied their own 

 immediate wants, the hive-bees followed them, and did not 

 quit them until they had obtained the fruit of their labours. 

 They licked them, presented to them their proboscis, sur- 

 rounded them, and thus at last persuaded them to part with 

 the contents of their honey-bags. The humble-bees after this 

 flew away to collect a fresh supply. The hive-bees did them 

 no harm, and never once showed their stings ; — so that it 

 seems to have been persuasion rather than force that produced 

 this singular instance of self-denial. This remarkable ma- 

 noeuvre was practised for more than three weeks ; when the 



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 universal genius adorns every subject, in the description 

 of it, which he has put into the mouth of the " Shepherd," in one of the Nodes, 

 and which well deserves transcription here from the pages of the voluminous pe- 

 riodical 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 

 o' 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 o' 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 to- 

 gether in amity, like imagination's thochts, — why, amid this ' general dance of 

 minstrelsy,' in comes a 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 o' 

 your head, bizzin' against the drum o' 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 o' 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' you 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 bulk, is stronger far than the 

 dragon o' the desert." (Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag. Oct. 1826.) 



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