scientific Shakespeare printed for the use of schools, with Ariel's song altered into

"Where the bee licks, there lurk I,"1

and "the singing masons building roofs of gold," explained to be merely automatic arrangements of lively viscera.

13. Shaking myself at last together again, I refer to a really valuable book-Dr. Latham Ormerod's History of Wasps:3-of which, if I could cancel all the parts that interest the Doctor himself, and keep only those which interest Agnes and me, and the pictures of wasps at the end, I would make it a standard book in St. George's Library, even placing it in some proper subordinate relation to the Fourth Georgic: but as it is, I open in every other page on something about "organs," a word with which I do not care for Agnes's associating any ideas, at present, but those of a Savoyard and his monkey.

However, I find here, indeed, a diagram of a wasp's mouth; but as it only looks like what remains of a spider after being trodden on, and, as I find that this "mandibulate form of mouth" consists of

"a, the labium, with the two labial palpi;

b, the maxilla, whose basilar portions bear at one end the cardo, at the other the hairy galea and the maxillary palpas;

c, the labrum, and d, the mandible,"

Agnes and I perceive that for the present there is an end of the matter for us; and retreat to our Bingley, there to console ourselves with hearing how Mr. Wildman, whose

1 [The Tempest, Act v. sc. 1 ("Where the bee sucks, there suck I"). It is only in the modern settings of this song to music that lurk is substituted for suck).]

2 [King Henry V., i. 2, 198. Compare Cestus of Aglaia, § 24 (Vol. XIX. p. 76).]

3 [For this book, see above, p. 277 n. The passage here quoted is at p. 76.] A Treatise on the Management of Bees, by Thomas Wildman, 1768. Bingley cites no authority for the powers with which he credits Wildman, who does not tell the stories in his own book. He was a professional bee-keeper.]

remarks on the management of bees are well known, possessed a secret by which

"he could at any time cause a hive of bees to swarm upon his head, shoulders, or body, in a most surprising manner. He has been seen to drink a glass of wine, having at the same time the bees all over his head and face more than an inch deep: several fell into the glass, but they did not sting him. He could even act the part of a general with them, by marshalling them in battle array upon a large table. There he divided them into regiments, battalions, and companies, according to military discipline, waiting only for his word of command. The moment he uttered the word March!' they began to march in a regular manner, like soldiers. To these insects he also taught so much politeness, that they never attempted to sting any of the numerous company." 1

14. Agnes, on reading this, is sure to ask me "how he taught them?" Which is just what, as a student of new methods of education, I should like to know myself; and not a word is said on the matter: and we are presently pushed on into the history of the larger animal which I call a humble, but Agnes, a bumble, bee. Not, however, clearly knowing myself either what the ways of this kind are, or why they should be called humble, when I always find them at the top of a thistle rather than the bottom, I spend half my morning in hunting through my scientific books for information on this matter, and find whole pages of discussion whether the orange-tailed bee is the same as the white-tailed bee, but nothing about why either should be called humble or bumble: at last I bethink me of the great despiser of natural history; and find that stout Samuel, with his good editor Mr. Todd, have given me all I want; but there is far more and better authority for "bumble" than I thought. However; this first guess of Johnson's own assuredly touches one popular, though it appears mistaken, reason for the Shakespearian form. "The humble bee is known to have no sting. The Scotch call a cow without horns a 'humble

1 [Bingley's Animal Biography, 1804, vol. iii. pp. 397-398.]

2 [For a letter from a correspondent on this subject, see Letter 52, § 28 (p. 314).]

cow.' But truly, I have never myself yet had clear faith enough in that absence of sting to catch a humble bee in my fingers; * only I suppose Bottom would have warned Cobweb against that danger, if there had been such, as well as against being overflown with the honey bag.† Redhipped, Bottom calls them; and yet I find nothing about their red hips anywhere in my books.

2

15. We have not done with the name yet, however. It is from the Teutonic "hommolen," bombum edere3 (in good time, some years hence, Agnes shall know what Teutons are,-what bombs are,-shall read my great passage in Unto this Last about bombshells and peaches; and shall know how distinct the Latin root of Edition and Editor is from that of Edification).

4

Next, Chaucer, however, uses "humbling" in the sense of humming or muttering: "like to the humblinge after the clap of a thunderinge."" So that one might classically say-a busy bee hums and a lazy bee humbles; only we can't quite rest even in this; for under Bumble-bee in Johnson, I find a quantity of other quotations and branched

* Alas, that incredulity, the least amiable of the virtues, should often be the most serviceable! Here is a pleasant little passage to fall in with, after Dr. Johnson's "it is well known"! I find it in Ormerod, discussing the relative tenability of insects between the fingers for the study of their voices. "Wasps are obviously ill fitted for this purpose, and humble bees are no better; they are so strong and so slippery that they need all our attention to prevent their putting their long stings through our gloves while we are examining them.” 6

1

† Foolish of me; a cobweb may be overflown, but cannot be stung.

[A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson, edited by Rev. H. J. Todd, 3 vols., 1827, vol. ii., s. "Humble-bee."]

[A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act iv. sc. 1: "Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur, get you your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle; and, good mounsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much in the action, mounsieur; and, good mounsieur, have a care the honey-bag break not: I would be loath to have you overflown with a honey-bag, signior."]

[So Todd's edition of Johnson, 1827, as cited above: "hommolen," to hum, to give forth a buzzing.]

[Unto this Last, § 76 (Vol. XVII. p. 103).]

House of Fame, ii. 531.]

• British Social Wasps, p. 138.]

words, going off into silk and bombazine;1-of which I shall only ask Agnes to remember—

"The Bittern, with his bump,

The crane, with his trump,' "2

and Chaucer's single line,

"And as a bytorne bumblith in the mire."3

16. This, however, she should write out carefully, letter by letter, as soon as she had learned to write; and know at least that the image was used of a wife telling her husband's faults-and, in good time, the whole story of Midas. Meanwhile, we remain satisfied to teach her to call her large brown friends, humble bees, because Shakespeare does, which is reason enough: and then the next thing I want to know, and tell her, is, why they are so fond of thistles. Before she can know this, I must be able to draw a thistle-blossom rightly for her; and as my botany has stood fast for some years at the point where I broke down in trying to draw the separate tubes of thistle-blossom, I can't say any more on that point to-day: but, going on with my Bingley, I find four more species of bees named, which I should like to tell Agnes all I could about: namely, the Mason Bee; the Wood-piercing Bee; the one which Bingley calls the Garden Bee, but which, as most bees are to be found in gardens, I shall myself call the Wool-gathering Bee; and the Leaf-cutting Bee."

17. (1.) The mason bee, it appears, builds her nest of sand, which she chooses carefully grain by grain; then sticks, with bee-glue, as many grains together as she can carry (like the blocks of brick we see our builders prepare for circular drains)—and builds her nest like a swallow's,

1 [See Todd's Johnson, s. "Bumbast": "falsely written for bombast; bombast and bombasine, being mentioned, with great probability, by Junius, as coming from boom, a tree, and sein, silk."]

2 [Quoted in Todd's Johnson, s. "Bump," from Skelton's Poems, p. 227.] 3 Wife of Bath's Tale, 116, in which the story of Midas is referred to.]

[See now in Proserpina Plate XXVII. (Vol. XXV.).]

[See, for these names and for the quotations in §§ 17, 18, Bingley's Animal Biography, vol. iii. pp. 382 seq., 386 seq., 380 seq., and 377 seq.]

in any angle on the south side of a wall; only with a number of cells inside, like-a monastery, shall we say ?each cell being about the size of a thimble. But these cells are not, like hive bees', regularly placed, but anyhow -the holes between filled up with solid block building;and this disorder in the architecture of mason bees seems to be connected with moral disorder in their life; for, instead of being "so eager to afford mutual assistance"1 that one can't see what each is doing, these mason bees, if they can, steal each other's nests, just like human beings, and fight, positively, like Christians. "Sometimes the two bees fly with such rapidity and force against each other that both fall to the ground;" and the way their cells are built -back of one to side of the other, and so on, is just like what a friend was telling me only the day before yesterday of the new cottages built by a speculative builder, who failed just afterwards, on some lots of land which a Lord of the Manor, near my friend, had just stolen from the public common and sold.2

18. (2.) The wood-piercing bee cuts out her nest in decayed wood; the nest being a hollow pipe like a chimney, or a group of such pipes, each divided by regular floors, into cells for the children; one egg is put in each cell, and the cell filled with a paste made of the farina of flowers mixed with honey, for the young bee to eat when it is hatched. Now this carpentering work, I find, is done wholly by the wood-piercing bee's strong jaws; but here again is no picture of her jaws, or the teeth in them; though the little heaps of sawdust outside where she is working "are of grains nearly as large as those produced by a handsaw"; and she has to make her floors of these grains, by gluing them in successive rings from the outside of her cell to the centre. Yes; that's all very well; but then I want to know if she cuts the bits of any particular shape, as, suppose, in flattish pieces like tiles, and if then she glues these sideways or edgeways in their successive rings.

1 [See above, p. 278.]

[Compare Letter 52, § 13 (p. 302).]