BREEDING. 
71 
tlie figures with the royal insect match ; recollect six- 
teen days are all she has allowed ; then, of the different 
stages, “three days in the egg, is five a worm, when 
the bees close its cell, and it immediately begins its 
cocoon, which is finished in twenty-four hours. Dur- 
ing eleven days, and even sixteen hours of the twelfth, 
it remains in a state of complete repose. Its trans- 
formation into a nymph then takes place, in which 
state four days and part of the fifth are passed.” Now 
let us add the items : 
The egg, 3 days. 
A worm, 5 “ 
Spinning a cocoon, (24 hours), .... 1 “ 
Reposes eleven days and 16 hours, . . 11| “ 
A nymph four days, and part of the fifth, 4 a “ 
25 days. 
Now, reader, what do you make of such palpable 
blundering guess-work? A difference of nine days — 
the merest school-boy ought to know better! Can we 
rely on such history? Docs it not prove the necessity 
of going over the whole ground, applying a test to 
every assertion, and a revision of the whole matter 
throughout? My object is not to find fault, but to 
get at facts. When 1 see such guess-work as the above 
published to the world, in this enlightened age, 
gravely told to the rising generation, as a portion of 
natural history, I feel it a duty not to resist the incli- 
nation to expose the absurdity. 
THE NUMBER OF EGGS DEPOSITED BY THE QUEEN GUESSED AT. 
The number of eggs that a queen will deposit is often 
