NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
53 
prompted by a true philosophy. Neither our ignorance 
of all the facts necessary to their full elucidation, nor our 
inability to harmonize these facts in their mutual relations 
and dependencies, will justify us in rejecting any truth 
which God has seen fit to )-eveal, either in the book of 
nature, or in Ilis holy word. The man who would.substi- 
tute his own speculations for the divine teachings, has 
embarked without rudder or chart, pilot or compass, on 
an uncertain ocean of theory and conjecture; unless he 
turns his prow from its fiital course, storms and whirlwinds 
will thicken in gloom on his “ voyage of lifeno “ Sun 
of Righteousness ” will ever brighten for him the expanse 
of dreary waters; no favoring gales will waft his shattered 
bark to a peaceful haven. 
The thoughtful reader will require no apology for this 
moralizing strain, nor blame a clergyman, if sometimes 
forgetting to speak as the mere naturalist, he endeavors 
to find 
“ Tongues in trees, booUs in running brooks, 
Sermons in ‘ bees’ and ‘God’ in every thing.” 
To return to the attempt to account for the existence 
of so many drones. If a farmer persists in what is called 
“ breeding in and in,” tliat is, without changing the blood, 
the ultimate degeneracy of his stock is the consequence. 
This law extends, as far as we know, to all animal life, man 
himself not being exempt from its influence. Have we 
any reason to suppose that the bee is an e.xception ? or 
that degeneracy would not ensue, unless some provision 
were made to counteract the tendency to “ in and in 
breeding ?” If fecundation had taken place in the hive, 
the queen would have been impregnated by drones from 
a common parent; and the same result must have taken 
place in each successive generation, until the whole species 
