VENTILATION. 
91 
combs against the danger of being dissolved. At such 
times, they are particularly careful not to cluster on new 
combs containing sealed honey, which, from not being lined 
with cocoons, and from the extra amount of wax used for 
their covers, melt more readily than the breeding-cells. 
Apiarians have noticed that bees often leave their 
honey-cells almost bare, as soon as they are sealed ; but it 
seems to have escaped their observation, that this is abso- 
lutely necessary in very hot weather. In cool weather, 
they may frequently be found clustered among the sealed 
honey-combs, because there is then no danger of their 
melting. 
Few things are so well fitted to impress the mind with 
their admirable sagacity, as the truly scientific device by 
which they ventilate their dwellings. In this important 
matter, the bee is immensely in advance of the great mass 
of those who are called rational beings. It has, to be 
sure, no ability to decide, from an elaborate analysis of the 
chemical constituents of the atmosphere, how large a pro- 
portion of oxygen is essential to the support of life, and 
how rapidly the process of breathing converts it into a 
deadly poison: it cannot, like Liebig, demonstrate that 
God, by setting the animal and the vegetable world, the 
one over against the other, has provided that the atmos- 
phere shall, through all ages, be as pure as when it first 
came from His creating hand. But shame upon us ! that 
with all our boasted intelligence, most of us live as though 
pure air was of little or no importance; while the bee 
ventilates with a philosophical precision that should put to 
the blush our criminal neglect. 
Is it said that ventilation, in our ease, cannot be had 
without effort? can it then be had for nothing, by the 
industrious bees? Those ranks of bees, so indefatigably 
plying their busy wings, are not engaged in idle amuse- 
