PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



145 



to a considerable size. Honey is never found in the second 

 stomach (which is surrounded with muscular rings, and re- 

 sembles a cask covered with hoops from one end to the other), 

 but only in the first : in the latter and the intestines the bee- 

 bread only is discovered. How the wax is secreted, or what 

 vessels are appropriated to that purpose, is not yet ascertained. 

 Huber suspects that a cellular substance, consisting of hex- 

 agons, which lines the membrane of the wax-pockets, may be 

 concerned in this operation. This substance he also discovered 

 in humble-bees (which, though they make wax, have no wax- 

 pockets), occupying all the anterior part or base of the seg- 

 ments. 1 If you wish to see the wax-pockets in the hive-bee, 

 you must press the abdomen so as to cause it to extend itself ; 

 you will then find on each of the four intermediate ventral 

 segments, separated by the carina or elevated central part, two 

 trapeziform whitish pockets, of a soft membranaceous texture: 

 on these the lamina? of wax are formed, and they are found 

 upon them in different states, so as to be more or less per- 

 ceptible. I must here observe that, besides Thorley, who 

 seems to have been the first apiarist that observed these la- 

 mina?, Wildman was not ignorant of them, nor of the wax 

 being formed from honey 2 : we must not, therefore, permit 

 foreigners to appropriate to themselves the whole credit of dis- 

 coveries that have been made, or at least partially made, by 

 our own countrymen. 



Long before Linne had discovered the nectary of flowers, 

 our industrious creatures had made themselves intimate with 

 every form and variety of them ; and no botanist, even in 

 this enlightened era of botanical science, can compare with a 

 bee in this respect. The station of these reservoirs, even 

 where the armed sight of science cannot discover it, is in a 

 moment detected by the microscopic eye of this animal. 



She has to attend to a double task — to collect materials 

 for bee-bread as well as for honey and wax. Observe a bee 

 that has alighted upon an open flower. The hum produced 

 by the motion of her wings ceases, and her employment 

 begins. In an instant she unfolds her tongue, which before 



1 Huber, ii. 5. t. ii. f. 8. 

 VOL. II. L 



2 Wildman, 43. 



