162 
ANNIVEESAEY ADDEESS. 
These and a hundred lessons more may be taught hy the ant. I 
turn to the hee. My studies in natural history have, as I have 
told you, been few and desultory. But of the few hooks which I 
have come across upon the subject, there is one of absorbing 
interest. I mean Huber ‘ On Bees.’ I have a great fancy for this 
book; perhaps, because it is one of the first I read of the kind. 
It is rather an old book, and I have no doubt that its information 
would be very stale to most of my present audience, and that a 
great deal has been discovered since. But I am sure no hook that 
has been written upon the subject carries the reader along in the 
same manner. Every detail is confirmed by experiment, and every 
experiment is related in the minutest and most circumstantial 
manner; hut you often feel as if you were reading, not an account 
of the habits of insects, but a chapter from a history of the middle 
ages, or a poem, or a romance. There is a description of a fight 
between two queens in a hive, with all the other bees standing 
round in a circle, which is as spirited as the fight between Hermi- 
nius and Mamilius in Macaulay’s 1 Lays,’ or as the tournament in 
‘ Ivanhoe.’ The account of the reception of a new queen and her 
passage through her dominions, with her subjects drawing them¬ 
selves obsequiously on one side, or presenting their tribute of royal 
honey, is like a scene from ‘ Kenilworth.’ The behaviour of the 
bees when they find it necessary on certain occasions to oppose 
the destructive instinct of their monarch, the respectful but firm 
manner in which they restrain her movements, never using their 
stings, and preserving as far as possible the outward forms of 
respect, remind us of some of the noblest and most patriotic of our 
ancestors. Then there is a most graphic picture by an eye-witness 
of a massacre of the drones, such as yearly takes place in every 
hive — the gradually-increasing commotion among the working 
bees; the insults offered to the drones in numerous individual 
instances; the growing alarm of the poor drones, who gradually 
collect together at the bottom of the hive ; the entry of the working 
bees among the unarmed crowd; the rapid and indiscriminate 
slaughter ; the ghastly calm which succeeds; and the subsequent 
removal of the dead bodies. One fancies oneself reading of the 
Sicilian Vespers or St. Bartholomew’s Day. I will not detain you 
by an account of the emigration of the surplus population or the 
founding of new colonies, for these are familiar incidents. I will 
only say that I wish all our own emigrations were conducted in the 
same orderly manner, and that it was as easy to remedy overcrowd¬ 
ing among men as among bees. 
Well, ladies and gentlemen, these experiments and observations 
