110 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



bees keep lengthening the cell as the worm grows older, and 

 duly supply it with food, which they place before its mouth, 

 and round its body. The animal, which can only move in a 

 spiral direction, keeps incessantly turning to take the jelly de- 

 posited 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 described, the 

 workers shut up its cradle with an appropriate covering. 1 



When you have read this account, I fear, with the cele- 

 brated John Hunter, you will not be very ready to believe it ; 

 at least you will call upon me to bring forth my u 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 2 ), 

 a different and more pungent kind of food, and a vertical 

 instead of a horizontal posture, in the first place, give a bee a 

 differently shaped tongue and mandibles ; render the surface 

 of its posterior tibia? 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 tibias as pincers 3 ; of the brush that lines 

 the inside of their plantse ? 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 conspicuous, and ca- 

 pable of yielding female as well as male eggs ? Can, in the 

 next place, the seemingly trivial circumstances just enume- 

 rated altogether alter the instinct of these creatures ? Can they 

 give to one description 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 foetus if fed with more pungent food, in a 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 foetus, if fed with more simple food, in a 



i Compare Bonnet, x. 156. with Huber, 1. 134. 2 Schiracb, 69. 



3 Huber, t. 4. /. 4—6. 



