128 
FARINA. 
all tlie food which a cow eats contributes to the pro- 
duction of milk, or, to adopt a nearer simile from the 
insect tribe, as all the food which a spider takes con- 
tributes not only to the nourishment of the animal, hut 
to the production of the substance of the cob-web from 
its body. Numberless other analogies in nature might 
be adduced in favour of the probability of this theory. 
The silk, for instance, produced from the body of the 
silk-worm, is a substance as different from that of the 
animal itself, or of the mulberry leaf it feeds on, as 
wax is from that of the body of the bee, or of the 
honey or flower she siyks. And the excrescence pro- 
duced in the human ear, vrnicli also goes by the name 
of wax, is certainly a substance as different from that 
of the body which produces it ns either the one or the 
other. Upon the whole, until 1 meet with a more 
probable theory, supported by facts, I must give it as 
my humble opinion that the wax is produced from the 
body of the bee alone, or rather, that the bees can 
speedily convert into wax what they bring from the 
flowers, and therewith build their combs and seal up 
both their young and their honey."* 
Farina, or Pollen. — Farina, or Pollen, is the ferti- 
lizing dust of flowers and forms a very important ingre- 
dient in the nourishment of the young bees. Before 
the discovery of the true origin of wax, it was supposed 
to constitute the rude material of that substance, being 
taken into the stomach and converted by some pecu- 
liar action of that organ, into real wax ; and hence, 
among French naturalists, it had obtained the name 
* Bonner on Bees, p. 195. 
