AN ARISTOCRACY OF ARTISTS. 
357 
their nests so many hamlets, but that we find a pleasure, even after having 
visited great capitals, in resting our eyes on the simplicity of villages and 
villagers. (Reaumur, Memoires , vol. vi., p. iii. preface, and p. 4 text.) Not¬ 
withstanding their simplicity, the drones are industrious, and have their cha¬ 
racteristic manners and virtues. The poor males, so despised elsewhere, are 
more happily employed here in a society where the lofty speciality of art, not 
being so strikingly developed in the females, proves less humiliating; they are 
almost the equals of their spouses, who do not massacre them, as the wasps 
and bees do their destined husbands. 
NOTE 16.—Book iii., Chap. viii. 
The Wax-making Bees. An Aristocracy of Artists. —I here follow, in the 
main, the authority of M. Debeauvoys, in his Guide de VApiculteur (“ The 
Bee-keeper’s Manual”), ed. 1853. In this little but important book he has 
made the all-important distinction which escaped Huber’s notice, and separated 
the great wax-making architects from the little gleaners and nurses. But I 
ask his permission to trust rather to M. Dujardin on the general character of 
the bees. They are, undoubtedly, choleric, and of a very dry temperament; 
the liqueurs and perfumes of the flowers excite them, and compel them 
frequently to quench their thirst. But in themselves they are sufficiently 
gentle, and can even be tamed. M. Dujardin, having renewed every day 
the provisions of a poor hive, was readily recognized by the bees, who flew 
towards him, and ran over his hands without stinging him. The annual de¬ 
struction which they consummate of their males is a common law with them ; 
the wasps, and other necessitous tribes, living in dread of famine at the epoch 
when the flowers disappear. In America they are looked upon as the sign of 
civilization. The Indians see in the bee the type of the white race, and in the 
buffalo the precursor of the red. (Washington Irving, “ Tour in the Prairies. 
The bees, as sisters and aunts, remind one of the Germany of Tacitus :— 
lC The aunt is there held in higher esteem than the mother.” It must have 
resembled a country of bees. 
