immediately begin to lay the foundations of their combs. This is an operation, which they execute with surprising quickness and alacrity. Soon after they have begun to construct one comb, they divide into two or three companies, each of which, in different parts of the hive, is occupied in similar operations. By this division of labor, a great number of Bees have an opportunity of being employed at the same time, and consequently, the common work is sooner finished. The combs are generally arranged in a direction parallel to each other. An interval or street between them is always left, that the Bees may have a free passage, and an easy communication with the different combs in the hive. These streets are just wide enough to allow two Bees to pass one another. Besides these parallel streets, the Bees to shorten their journey when working, leave several cross passages, which are always covered.

They are extremely solicitous to prevent insects of any kind from getting admittance into their hives. To accomplish this purpose, and to shut out the cold, they carefully examine every part of their hive; and if they discover any holes or chinks, they immediately paste them firmly up with a resinous substance, which differs considerably from wax. This substance was known to the ancients by the name of propolis, or bee-glue. Bees use the propolis for rendering their hives more close and perfect, in preference to wax, because it is more dur able, and because it more powerfully resists the vicissitudes of weather than that. This glue is not, like the wax, formed by an animal process. The Bees collect it from different trees, such as the poplar, birch, and willow. It is a complete production of nature, and requires no additional manufacture from the animals by which it is employed. After a Bee has procured a quantity sufficient to fill the cavities of its two hind legs, it repairs to the hive. Two of its companions instantly draw out the propolis, and apply it to fill up such chinks, holes, or other deficiencies, as they find in their habitation. But this is not the only use to which Bees apply the propolis. They are extremely solicitous to remove such insects or foreign bodies, as happen to get admission into the hive. When these are so light as not to exceed their powers, they first kill the insect with their stings, and then drag it out with their teeth. But it sometimes happens, that an ill-fated snail creeps into the hive. This is no sooner perceived, than it is attacked on all sides, and stung to death. But how are the Bees to carry out so heavy a burden? Such a labor would be in vain. To prevent the noxious odors consequent on its putrefaction, they imme diately embalm it, by covering every part of its body with propolis, through which no effluvia can escape.

But propolis, and the materials for making wax, are not the only substances, which these industrious animals have to collect. As, during the whole winter, and even during many days in summer, the Bees are prevented by the weather from going abroad in quest of provisions, they are under the necessity of collecting and amassing, in cells destined for the purpose, large quantities of honey. This, by means of their trunk, they extract from the nectariferous glands of flowers. The trunk of the Bee is a kind of rough, cartilaginous tongue.

After collecting a few small drops of honey with this, the animal carries them to its mouth, and swallows them. From the gullet they pass into the first stomach. This when filled with honey, assumes the figure of an oblong bladder, the membrane of which is so thin and transparent, that it allows the color of the liquid it contains to be distinctly seen. As soon as their stomach is full, the Bees return directly to the hive, and disgorge into a cell the whole of the honey they have collected. It, however, not unfrequently happens, that on its way to the hive the Bee is accosted by a hungry companion. How the one manages to communicate its wants to the other, is not known. But the fact is certain, that when two Bees meet in this situation, they mutually stop, and the one whose stomach is full of honey, extends its trunk, opens its month, and like a ruminating animal, forces up the honey. The hungry Bee, with the point of its trunk, sucks the honey from the other's mouth. When not odab stopped on the road, the Bee, as before stated, proceeds to the hive, and in the same manner to offers its honey to those who are at work, as if fo it meant to prevent the necessity of their quit-25 ting their labor in order to go in quest of food. In bad weather, the Bees feed on the honey laid up in open cells; but they never touch their reservoirs, while their companions are enabled to supply them with fresh honey from the fields. The mouths of those cells, which are destined for preserving honey during the winter, they always cover with a lid or thin plate of wax.

THE QUEEN BEZ.

How numerous soever the Bees in one swarm may appear to be they all originate

from a single parent. It is indeed

surprising, that one in small insect should,

in a few months, po give birth to som

many young-ones; momen

but, on opening her body at a certain season of the year, eggs to the

.

number of many thousands may be found contained in it.

The queen is easily distinguished from the rest by the size and shape of her body. On her depends the welfare of the whole community: and, by the attention that is paid to all her movements, it is evident how much they depend on her security. At times, attended by a numerous retinue she is seen in the act of marching from cell to cell, plunging the extremity of her body into each of them, and leaving in each an egg.

A day or two after this egg is deposited, the grub is excluded from

the shell, having the shape of a maggot rolled up in a ring, and lying softly on a bed of a whitish-colored jelly, on which it begins to feed.

The common Bees then attend with astonishing tenderness and anxiety: they furnish it with food, and watch over it with unremitting assiduity. In about six days the grub attains its full growth, when its affectionate attendants shut up the mouth of its apartment with wax, in order to secure it from injury. Thus enclosed, it soon begins to line the walls of its cell with a silken tapestry, in which it undergoes its last transforma. tion.

THE DRONE BEE

When it first crawls forth a winged insect, it is very weak and inactive; but in the course of a few hours, it acquires strength enough to fly off to its labor. On its emerging from the cell, the officious Bees flock round it, and lick up its moisture with their tongues. One party brings honey for it to feed upon; and another is employed in cleansing the cell, and carrying out the filth, for the purpose of preparing it for a new inhabitant.

The neuter Bees in a hive amount to the number of sixteen or eighteen thousand. These are all armed with stings. The males are called Drones: they are unarmed, and are always killed by the neuters, about the month of September.

This Bee is yellow, with the hair of the thorax somewhat fawncolored.

THE CARDING BEE.

Nearly all the Carding Bees perish in the winter: a few of the females only survive. These usually make their appearance early in the spring, as soon as the catkins of the willows are in blossom; upon which, at this time, they may be seen collecting honey from the female, and pollen from the male catkins.

When these animals, of any sex, are walking on the ground, if a finger be moved to them, they lift up three legs on one side, by way of defence; which gives them a very grotesque appearance.

Their nests are usually formed in meadows and pastures, sometimes in groves and hedge-rows, where the soil is entangled with roots; but now and then these are found in heaps of stones. When they do not meet with an accidental cavity ready made, the Carding Bees, with great labor, excavate one. This they cover with a thick convex vault of moss, sometimes casing the interior with a kind of coarse wax, to keep out the wet. At the lower part of the nest there is an opening for the inhabitants to go in and out at. This entrance is often through a long gallery, or covered way, a foot or upwards in length, by which the nest is concealed from observation.

The mode in which they transport the moss employed in the for

THE HORSE EMMET, OR GREAT HILL-ANT.

975

mation of their nest, is singular. When they have discovered a parcel fitted to their purpose, and conveniently situated, they place themselves in a line, with their backs turned towards the nest. The foremost lays hold of some with her jaws, and clears it, bit by bit, with her fore-feet. When this is sufficiently disentangled, she drives it with her feet under her body, and as far as possible beyond, to the second Bee. The second pushes it on to the third and so on. Thus small heaps of prepared moss are conveyed, by a file of four or five insects, to the nest, where they are wrought and interwoven with the greatest dexterity by those that remain within.

OF THE ANTS IN GENERAL.

ALL the species of Ants known in this country are gregarious; and, like the bees, consist of males, females, and neuters; the latter alone are the laborers. These build in the ground an oblong nest, in which there are various passages and apartments. In the formation of the nest every individual is occupied: some are employed in securing a firm and durable groundwork, by mixing the earth with a sort of glue produced in their bodies, others colleet little bits of twigs to serve as rafters, placing them over their passages to support the cov ering; others again lay pieces across these, and place on them rushes, weeds and dried grass. The latter they secure so firmly, as completely to turn off the water from their magazines.

From the eggs of these insects proceed the larvæ, a small kind of maggots without legs, which soon transform into white chrysalids. The latter are generally called Ants' eggs, and are frequently used for the feeding of young Pheasants, Partridges, and Nightingales.

The males are much smaller than the females, and seldom frequent the common habitation. All the labor which the females undergo, is the laying of eggs; and the cold weather of winter always destroys them. The neuters, or laboring Ants, which alone are able to struggle through the winter, pass this season in a torpid state. The females and neuters are each armed with stings.

It is said that the Ants of tropical climates are never torpid; that tney build their nests with a dexterity, lay up provisions, and submit to regulations, that are entirely unknown among those of Europe. They are, in every respect, a more formidable race. Their stings produce insupportable pain, and their depredations do infinite mischief. Sheep, hens, and even rats, by loitering too near their habita. tions, are often destroyed by them.

THE HORSE EMMET, OR GREAT HILL-ANT.

It is chiefly near the old and decayed trunks of trees that the Hillants form their settlements. Their nest consists of a great number of apartments. In these they have their magazines, and bring forth and rear their offspring.

It is the peculiar habit of the Hill-ants to collect a vast quantity of pieces of dry sticks, chips, bits of straw, and other rubbish, which they carry to the surface of their colonies, and there place together in heaps, which sometimes become immensely large. This employment they renew every spring, and continue through the whole summer. It is not a little curious to observe from what distances they will bring, and with what dexterity they manage, sticks an inch or two in length.

THE RED ANT.

The lodgments of this species are often found under flat stones and rubbish; and not unfrequently in the forsaken habitations of Moles. In the latter of these situations, the process of forming their nest is curious. They cut the earth into small parcels, and incrust these with the blades of grass. As the blades, towards the month of June (when this work is in progress) grow every day, so the Ants advance their labors in proportion, By this contrivance, in somewhat more than a month they have a number of little mounts, each about six inches high. The architecture of these is slight, and the demolition easy; but, without any serious accident, they last long enough to answer every purpose for which they were formed. The nests of such Red Ants as reside under stones or pavements, in old walls, or under rubbish, do not require out-works, and consequently the insects do not here form them, but are content with the covering they find.

In collecting their stores, these creatures may often be observed in full employment; one of them loaded with a grain of wheat, another with a dead fly, and several together hauling along the body of some larger insect. Whenever they meet with any food too large to admit of being dragged away, they devour so much of it upon the spot, as to reduce it to a bulk sufficiently small for them to carry.