APIS. 
361 
the eight scales of it upon the ventral plates, for they 
cannot convey more up when they hang themselves in 
the festoons to secern it. But it is impossible to know 
what addition this liquid from their mouths makes to it 
when they manipulate it into its plastic state, other bees 
often undertaking this task, which may apply themselves 
to it with a larger stock than the wax-secreters possess, 
they being perhaps already exhausted by their labours. 
It is a singular fact that wax is more rapidly and largely 
made by feeding the bees with dissolved sugar than from 
the honey they collect themselves, the sugar thus evi¬ 
dently containing more of its productive elements. 
Some of the labours within the hive are apparently 
continued at night, or the bees may be then revelling, 
after the day’s toils, in social enjoyment, or otherwise 
more worthily employed ; for, to use the words of the 
benevolent apiarian, the Bev. Wm. Chas. Cotton, “If 
you listen by a hive about nine o’clock, you will hear 
an oratorio sweeter than any at Exeter Hall. Treble, 
tenor, and bass are blended in the richest harmony. 
Sometimes the sound is like the distant hum of a great 
city, and sometimes it is like a peal of hallelujahs.” 
This is the history of the hive and its inhabitants. 
Modifications may occasionally occur, but nothing of 
sufficient consequence seriously to affect or neutralize this 
ordinary routine. It would occupy space already too 
largely encroached upon to go into these minute parti¬ 
culars, which, although parts of their general history, 
where treated of in special detail, are not necessarily the 
province of a work which speaks of them as but one 
member of the family of which it collectively discourses. 
As the space occupied by what was really essential to be 
known about them, has exceeded the due dimensions of 
