162 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



insects a habitation into which the air cannot easily pene- 

 trate, 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 incom- 

 moding them. An unhappy snail, that had travelled up the 

 sides of a glazed hive, 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. 1 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. 2 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 

 exuviae 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 confinement. 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. 3 



Having now described to you the usual employments of 



1 Reaum. v. 442. 2 Bonner On Bees, 102. 



3 Reaum. ubi supr. 580—600. 



