terrace. They are elegant in form, being made gradually narrower towards the middle, and widening at each end, in order, no doubt, to render their hold the stronger.

The terrace itself is circular, and composed of an immense number of cells. formed of the paper already described, and of almost the same size and form as those of a honey-comb, each being a perfect hexagon, mathematically exact, and every hair's breadth of the space completely filled. These cells, however, are never used as honey-pots by wasps, as they are by bees; for wasps make no honey, and the cells are wholly appropriated to the rearing of their young. Like other hymenopterous insects, the grubs are placed with their heads downwards; and openings of the cells are also downwards; while their united bottoms form a nearly uniform level upon which the inhabitants of the nest may walk.

When the foundress wasp has completed a certain number of cells, and deposited eggs in them, she soon intermits her building operations, in order to procure food for the young grubs, which now require all her care. In a few weeks these become perfect wasps, and lend their assistance in the extension of the edifice; enlarging the original coping of the foundress by side walls, and forming another platform of cells suspended to the first by columns, as that had been suspended to the ceiling.'— pp. 71-78.

Thus, as the same author well observes, the wasp is a papermaker, and a most perfect and intelligent one. While mankind were arriving, by slow degrees, at the art of fabricating this valuable substance, the wasp was making it before their eyes, by very much the same process as that by which human hands now manufacture it, with the best aid of chemistry and machinery.' Indeed the whole passage is worth extracting :

'While some nations carved their records on wood, and stone, and brass, and leaden tablets; others, more advanced, wrote with a style on wax; others employed the inner bark of trees, and others the skins of animals rudely prepared, the wasp was manufacturing a firm and durable paper. Even when the papyrus was rendered more fit, by a process of art, for the transmission of ideas in writing, the wasp was a better artisan than the Egyptians; for the early attempts at paper-making were so rude, that the substance produced was almost useless, from being extremely friable. The paper of the papyrus was formed of the leaves of the plant, dried, pressed, and polished; the wasp alone knew how to reduce vegetable fibres to a pulp, and then unite them by a size or glue, spreading the substance out into a smooth and delicate leaf. This is exactly the process of paper-making. It would seem that the wasp knows, as the modern paper-makers now know, that the fibres of rags, whether linen or cotton, are not the only materials that can be used in the formation of paper; she employs other vegetable matters, converting them into a proper consistency by her assiduous exertions. In some respects she is more skilful even than our paper-makers, for she takes care to retain her fibres of sufficient length, by which she renders her paper as strong as she requires. Many manufacturers of the present day cut their material into small bits, and thus produce a rotten article. One great distinction between good and bad paper is its toughness; and this difference is inva

riably produced by the fibre of which it is composed being long, and therefore tough; or short, and therefore friable.

The wasp has been labouring at her manufacture of paper, from her first creation, with precisely the same instruments and the same materials; and her success has been unvarying. Her machinery is very simple, and therefore it is never out of order. She learns nothing, and she forgets nothing. Men, from time to time, lose their excellence in particular arts, and they are slow in finding out real improvements. Such improvements are often the effect of accident. Paper is now manufactured very extensively by machinery, in all its stages; and thus, instead of a single sheet being made by hand, a stream of paper is poured out, which would form a roll large enough to extend round the globe, if such a length were desirable. The inventors of this machinery, Messrs. Fourdrinier, it is said, spent the enormous sum of 40,0007. in vain attempts to render the machine capable of determining with precision the width of the foll; and, at last, accomplished their object, at the suggestion of a by-stander, by a strap revolving upon an axis, at a cost of three shillings and sixpence. Such is the difference between the workings of human knowledge and experience, and those of animal instinct. We proceed slowly and in the dark; but our course is not bounded by a narrow line, for it seems difficult to say what is the perfection of any art; animals go clearly to a given point, but they can go no further. We may, however, learn something from their perfect knowledge of what is within their range. It is not improbable that if man had attended, in an earlier state of society, to the labours of wasps, he would have sooner known how to make paper. We are still behind in our arts and sciences, because we have not always been observers. If we had watched the operations of insects, and the structure of animals in general, with more care, we might have been far advanced in the knowledge of many arts, which are yet in their infancy, for nature has given us abundance of patterns. We have learnt to perfect some instruments of sound, by examining the structure of the human ear; and the mechanism of an eye has suggested some valuable improvements in achromatic glasses.'-pp. 85-87.

Bees have, in all ages of the world, excited the attention of mankind, as well for the honey which they produce in such marvellous abundance, as for the indefatigable industry by which they uniformly appear to be animated in their excursions beyond the place of their habitation. The philosopher Hyliscus, as we are informed by Cicero and Pliny, appears to have been one of the first who made the habits of that insect an object of study, for which purpose he retired into the desert. The ancients had a popular notion, that bees were endowed with moral qualities, and never would tolerate the presence of a thief or an adulterer. It is certain that some persons cannot approach a hive without being stung, while others may often loiter near them with impunity. Whether this arises from accident, or from the discrimination of the insect, excited by personal physiognomy or effluvia, is a question which we cannot undertake to settle. Aristotle paid great attention to bees, and so, also, we know, did Virgil. But it may be justly said, that nothing was known of their domestic economy until Réaumur

and Huber rendered it the object of their study. The latter could not be said to have made it the object of his contemplation, for, strange to say, he was blind when he took to this pursuit, and only saw through the eyes of an affectionate wife, who attended on all his labours, and participated in his enthusiasm.

We do not wish to underrate the account of these interesting societies, which is contained in the volume on Insect Architecture. But as it is confined chiefly to the mode of constructing their habitations, as the title of the work, indeed, indicates, we shall prefer the well-digested analysis of Réaumur's and Huber's observations, contained in the work that stands second on our list.

Every body knows, (yet, perhaps, even this may be doubted,) that a community of bees consists, first, of workers, who are of no sex, who amount generally to many thousands in number, and are easily recognised by their industry and the smallness of their size; secondly, of males, of whom there are only some hundreds attached to each swarm; these are larger than the operatives, and live in indolence; the third, and most important member of the little republic, is her Majesty the Queen, for the bees act upon the very reverse of the Salic Law. She is not merely like the mother-wasp, the mere source of progeny,-she is a Queen to all intents and purposes, and Réaumur has ascertained that she is treated with the homage which a subject pays to his sovereign. In all ber movements through the hive, beyond the precincts of which she very rarely stirs, unless when a colony sets out upon a tour of emigration, she is followed by her court, some of whom lick her with their trunks, being, of course, her favourites; while others extend to her that organ filled with honey for her to sip, being, as it were, her providers. Without a queen, a community of bees will make no provision for the future; they seem to lose all their usual instincts, and numbers of them die daily in despair, until the whole become extinct. What must be thought very singular is, that when bees are deprived of their queen, they have the means, at one season of the year, to repair the loss. They select from the common cells, a worker grub, and transfer it to one of the royal cells, the distinctions between which are very strongly marked; they supply the meaner insect with royal food, which is more pungent than that destined for the other worms; and thus, instead of a worker, which besides being originally a plebeian, was of no sex, they obtain a female and a sovereign. This fact, astonishing as it is, has been placed beyond doubt by the discoveries of Schirach and Huber. The progress of the bee, from the egg to its perfect state, is pregnant with interest.

As soon as the queen bee has laid her eggs in the various cells, the nurses are incessantly occupied in watching over the brood. For this purpose, they now forego every other employment. There is usually but one egg deposited in each cell; but when the fecundity of the queen happens to exceed the number of cells already prepared, three or four eggs

may be found crowded together in the same repository. But this is an inconvenience which the working bees will not permit to continue; they seem to be aware that two young ones placed in the same cell, when they grow larger, would first embarrass, and then destroy each other. Hence they take care that no cell shall contain more than one egg; all the rest they remove or destroy.

The single egg which is left remaining, is glued by its smaller end to the bottom of the cell, which it touches only in a single point. A day or two after the egg has been thus deposited, the worm is excluded from the shell; presenting the appearance of a maggot rolled up in a ring, and reposing softly in a bed of whitish-coloured jelly, upon which the little animal soon begins to feed. The instant the little worm appears, the working bees attend it with the most anxious tenderness; watching the cell with unremitting care, they furnish the infant insect with a constant supply of the whitish substance, on which it both feeds and lies. These nurses evince for the offspring of another, greater affection than many parents shew towards their own children. They regularly visit each cell at very short intervals, in order to see that nothing be wanting; and they are constantly engaged in preparing the white mixture on which the insect feeds.

Thus attended and plentifully fed, the worm, in less than ten days' time, acquires its full growth, and ceases to take its usual food. Perceiving that it has no occasion for a further supply, they perform the last office of tenderness, and shut the little animal up in its cell; they close the mouth of the aperture with a waxen lid; and the worm, thus effectually secured against every external injury, is left to itself.

The worm is no sooner shut up, than it throws off its inactivity and begins to labour; alternately elongating and contracting its body, it contrives to line the sides of its apartments with a soft material, which it spins after the manner of other caterpillars, before they undergo their last transformation. The cell having been thus prepared, the animal passes into the aurelia state; when, although in a state of perfect inactivity, it exhibits not only the legs but the wings of the future bee. Thus, in about twenty or one-and-twenty days, the bee acquires its perfect form, and becomes in every respect fitted for its future labours. When all its parts have acquired their proper strength and consistence, the young insect pierces with its teeth the waxen door of the prison in which it is confined.

When quite freed from its cell, it is as yet moist and encumbered with the spoils of its former situation, but the officious bees soon come to its relief; one party is seen to flock around it, and lick it clean on all sides with their trunks, while another band may be observed equally assiduous in feeding it with honey: others immediately begin to cleanse the cell which the young insect has just quitted, and fit it for the accommodation of a new inhabitant. The young bee soon repays their care by its industry; for the moment its external parts become dry, it discovers its natural appetites for labour. Freed from the cell, and properly equipped for duty, it at once issues from the hive, and, instructed only by its natural instinct, proceeds in quest of flowers, selects only those which contain a supply of honey; rejects such as are barren, or have been already drained. by other adventurers; and when loaded, is never at a loss for its way back to the common habitation. After this first sally, it unremittingly pursues

throughout the whole course of its future existence, the task which its instinct thus impe's it to begin.'-pp. 40-43.

When the bee lights upon a flower, it extends its trunk into the nectarium, and, with its tongue, licks from the surrounding glands the sweet fluid which it contains. In these glands nature secretes honey; to the bee they have been always known, although they have been but recently discovered by florists. From the tongue, the honey, thus collected, passes into what children well know by the name of the honey-bag, which they are often too expert at plundering. When this bag is filled, away goes the little insect, rejoicing, homeward, and, entering the hive, disgorges into one of the cells the whole treasure, except a drop or two which he reserves for his own use, and as the reward of his labours; sometimes he is met near the door of the hive by a fellow-workman, to whom he delivers his precious burthen, in order that, as he is then in a particularly industrious mood and flushed with success, he may scamper off to the fields for a further supply.

Besides honey, there are two other substances which bees collect, -the yellow dust which loosely adheres to the central parts of flowers, called pollen, and a resinous gum, differing from wax, technically named propolis. How does the busy little workman gather the pollen, and what does he want it for? He gathers it in this way. Nature has covered him with a fine down, and, when he seeks for pollen, he rushes boldly into the cup of the flower, rolls himself around, and then moves out backward, completely powdered with the farina. He then rests upon the edge, and the last point but one of each of his legs being a capital brush, he passes them, one after another, over the various parts of his body, and thus collects the pollen into two little heaps; these he stuffs into two little cavities, or baskets, with which the thighs of his last pair of legs are furnished, and thus, when he has robbed a thousand flowers, and fully laden his panniers, he makes the best of his way to the hive. There he discharges his load, which, being mingled by the proper bakers with a little honey, forms the essential food of the whole community, and is called bee-bread, for which the art of men has as yet discovered no substitute.

The Propolis is used for several purposes. It serves to strengthen the cells destined for the young, to repair defects in the combs, where an expenditure of wax would be deemed extravagant, to stop up the crannies and chinks of the hive, through which an enemy might find his way, and to embalm the dead which cannot be removed. A snail, for instance, by some chance gains an entrance into the hive; he is slain upon the spot with a thousand poniards, but what with his shell and his slimy carcass, he is too heavy to be shoved out. His putrid remains might soon breed a plague in the city which he has infested, and, in order to avoid such a danger, the inhabitants fill the mouth of his shell with propolis, and there he sleeps, hermetically sealed, to all eternity. Might