NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 
5'f 
into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the 
other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper 
and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with 
their barbed hooks, and then follows the sheath, conveying 
the poison into the wound. ‘The action of the sting,’ 
says Paley, ‘ affords an example of the union of chemistry 
and mechanism; of chemistry, in respect to the venom 
which can produce such powerful effects; of mechanism, 
as the sting is a compound instrument. The machinery 
would have been comparatively useless, had it not been 
for the chemical process by which, in the insect’s body, 
honey is converted into poison j and on the other hand, 
the poison would have been ineffectual, without an instru¬ 
ment to wound, and a syringe to inject it.’ 
“Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the 
microscope, it appears as broad as the back of a pretty 
thick knife, rough, uneven, and full of notches and fur¬ 
rows, and so far from anything like sharpness, that an 
instrument as blunt as this seemed to be, would not serve 
even to cleave wood. An exceedingly small needle being 
also examined, it resembled a rough iron bar out of a 
smith’s forge. The sting of a bee, viewed through the 
same instrument, showed everywhere a polish amazingly 
beautiful, without the least flaw, blemish, or inequality, 
and ended in a point too fine to be discerned.” 
As the extremity of the sting is barbed like an arrow, 
the bee can seldom withdraw it, if the substance into 
which she darts it is at all tenacious. In losing her sting 
she parts with a portion of her intestines, and of necessity 
soon perishes. 
Although they pay so dearly for the exercise of their 
patriotic instincts, still, in defence of home and its sacred 
treasures, they 
