322 
THE BEE, AND ITS ORGANISATION. 
whiteness and great delicacy, through which you can discern a minia¬ 
ture of mouth, eyes, wings, and feet. Twenty-one days suffice for her 
development. Then she scratches an opening in the little dome, and 
thrusts through it her head; next, with her fore-feet resting on the 
rim, she strenuously endeavours to disengage her whole body. It is a 
great effort; but the honey is close at hand to recruit her energies. 
At the first cell she falls in with she plunges into it her proboscis, 
and initiates herself into life. 
She is still humid, gray, and very weak. So she hastens to get dry 
in the sun, to harden her soft and rumpled wings. There she is wel¬ 
comed by her numerous kinswomen, who stroke and lick her amorously, 
and bestow on her a maternal kiss. 
No creature is more richly endowed with implements, or more 
obviously intended for an industrial speciality. Each organ reads her 
its lesson, and informs her what she has to do. Lighted by five eyes 
and guided by a couple of antennae, she carries in front, projecting 
beyond her mouth, an unique and marvellous instrument of taste,—the 
proboscis, or long external tongue,—which is of peculiar delicacy, and 
partly hairy that it may the more readily absorb and imbibe. Pro¬ 
tected, when at rest, by a beautiful scaly sheath, the proboscis puts 
forth its fine point to touch a liquid; and this point wetted, draws it 
back into its mouth, where lies the internal tongue, a subtle judge of 
sensation, and the final authority. 
To this delicate apparatus add some coarser attributes which indi¬ 
cate their own uses: hairs on every side to catch up the dust of the 
flowers, brushes on the thighs to sweep together the scattered harvest, 
and panniers to compress it into pellets of many colours. All these 
conjoined form the insignia of her trade.—Go, my daughter, and become 
a reaper! 
Thou wilt desire nothing else, and thou wilt be fit for nothing else. 
The fairy virgins who prepared thy cradle, and feed thee daily, will 
bring thee up to be what they have been. Sober, laborious, and sterile, 
they practise a rigid economy; in them and in thee they maintain 
the pure flame of virginity by fasting, or at least by very scanty 
nourishment, while they banquet splendidly the future mother, though 
