THE HONEY-BEE. 
81 
of bees to which it has been the birth-place.* The 
Bee, thus stripped of its silken envelope, and having 
all its parts unfolded by degrees, and changed through 
a succession of colours, from a dull white to black, 
arrives at the state of a perfect insect on the 20tli 
day, counting from the moment the egg is laid. She 
then eagerly commences the operation of cutting 
through, with her mandibles, the cover of her cell, 
and in half an hour succeeds in escaping from her 
prison. On quitting her cradle she appears, for a 
few seconds, drowsy and listless, but soon assumes 
the agility natural to the race — and on the same day 
on which she has emerged from her prison, sets out 
with her seniors to engage in the labours of the field. 
Some of the ancient Bee-masters enlarge on the 
attention paid by the seniors to the young worker on 
emerging from her prison, describing them as licking 
her body, supplying her with food, and seeming to 
instruct her in what is necessary to render her a use- 
ful member of the community. These descriptions 
have been repeated by succeeding writers on the sub- 
ject ; and the existence of these amiable traits in the 
kind nurses of the young, is taken for granted as an 
indubitable fact in their natural history. We have 
reason, in consequence of repeated observations, to 
* The late Dr. Barclay of Edinburgh, imagined he had 
discovered that the partitions of the bee-cells are double, and 
regarded this circumstance as an additional instance of the 
wonderful architectural powers of the Bee. It is not impro- 
bable that what he considered to be separate laminae of wax, 
are but the silken linings of the cells. 
F 
