1020 Marvels of the Universe 
but situated at the junction of the two larger divisions of the body, and it is this organ which emits 
the principal light when the beetle is in flight. The emission of light appears to be quite under the 
control of the beetle, for when the latter is either feeding or at rest the light is suppressed ; but when 
in flight for courtship the light is produced strongly. The Indians of Vera Cruz make a business of 
catching and selling them. They are caught by guile. The Indian attaches a glowing piece of 
charcoal to a stick, and whirls this around in the air to make it glow, when, being mistaken for a 
Fire-fly of extra brilliance, the real beetles are attracted to it and caught. They are stored in wire 
cages, fed with crushed sugar-cane, and kept 
clean until purchased by ladies for personal 
adornment. These fasten them to their hair 
and attach them as jewels to their dresses. 
USD IMD Oy Weld Velie 
BY TICKNER EDWARDES. 
THROUGHOUT all ages, as far back as records 
exist, mankind has been extolling the ingenious 
works and ordered communal life of the honey- 
bee ; but perhaps the most wonderful thing in 
a bee-hive, to-day as ever, is the bee itself. 
At the very threshold of investigation we 
are brought face to face with a seeming im- 
possibility concerning her—an impossibility, 
however, which is nevertheless an uncontro- 
vertible fact. Of the tens of thousands of 
worker-bees in a hive not one exists to-day as 
nature fashioned her. But for the deliberate 
artifice of her nurses when she lay in her 
cradle-cell, each worker-bee could and would 
have become a_ fully-developed queen, a 
creature differing from her present self in a 
dozen distinct and fundamental ways. 
Of this fact, that she originates from an 
egg which is identical with that producing the 
widely dissimilar queen, there is no doubt. 
Over and over again the experiment has been 
made of transposing the eggs, or even the 
PRE EY young larvee, deposited in worker- and queen- 
A beetle of tropical America with luminous patches on : = 
both upper and under sides. It is here shown twice the actual cells ; and the queen-egs put into a worker- 
length. cell develops into a common _ worker-bee, 
just as surely as the egg taken from the worker-cell and placed in a queen-cell will hatch out 
eventually as a fully-equipped queen. 
And the more we compare the two creatures, the less credible becomes this truth of their 
identical origin. The worker is by nature a devotee of the open air and sunshine ; after the first 
fortnight of her life, nothing but the most intemperate weather, or fall of night, will keep her in 
the hive. But all the queen’s instincts seem to be directly contrary to this. Except for the 
one hour when she goes on her mating-flight, and again when she accompanies the swarm, nothing 
will tempt her abroad. Again, the worker-bees are sociable, peace-loving, their every act infused 
