RAISING AND INTRODUCTION OF QUEENS. 317 
grow by transfusion of material in their living bodies, 
and the more solidity their tissues have, the more slowly 
does this transfusion occur. Some flesh-flies, in the 
earlier part of their larval state, will increase in weight 
two or three hundred times in twenty-four hours — a rate 
of development absolutely forbidden, by physiological 
and chemical laws, to creatures of larger proportions ; 
for, other things being equal, as the size increases the 
rate of development must decrease. The inconceivably 
minute monad, weighing a fraction of a billionth 
of a grain, by absorbing nutrition doubles its weight 
and divides every four minutes. If food abound, and 
the fluid surrounding the creature be free of enemies, 
and not circumscribed, it, in the course of three or 
four hours, may produce in its descendants an amount 
of living, moving material exceeding the weight of the 
largest' elephant ; while the latter animal, with its 
digestive and assimilative powers stimulated to the 
uttermost, could only, in the same time, add a few 
ounces to the weight of its body. 
The economics of the question must not be over- 
looked. In gathering from clover, it has been shown 
that about 3-5-oth grain is secured at each visit. Let 
us imagine that our bee is enlarged twice, by which 
its weight has grown eight-fold. As it flies, carrying its 
large body from clover-bloom to clover-bloom, an amount 
of wear and tear is involved which is eight times as 
great as that accompanying similar movements in the 
normal bee. This wear and tear is replaced by food 
— of course, proportionately augmented, and which has 
to be deducted from the -g-iT^th grain secured. The net 
increase to the stock is, therefore, less at each visit, in 
