posterity the battles and triumphs of these conflicting tribes, which are not content with throwing up their earth-works for civil purposes, but often take the field to massacre each other. They are susceptible of the emotions of anger; and when they are menaced or attacked, no insects shew a greater degree of it. Providence, moreover, has furnished them with weapons and faculties which render it extremely formidable to their insect enemies, and sometimes a great annoyance to man himself. Two strong mandibles arm their mouth, with which they sometimes fix themselves so obstinately to the objects of their attack, that they will sooner be torn limb from limb than let go their hold;-and after their battles, the head of a conquered enemy may often be seen suspended to the antennæ or legs of the victor,-a trophy of his valour, which, however troublesome, he will be compelled to carry about him to the day of his death. Their abdomen is also furnished with a poison bag (Ioterium) in which is secreted a powerful and venomous fluid, long celebrated in chemical researches, and once called formic acid, though now considered a modification of the acetic and malic. ... But weapons without valour are of but little use; and this is one distinguishing feature of our pigmy race. Their courage and pertinacity are unconquerable, and often sublimed into the most inconceivable rage and fury..... Point your finger towards any individual of Formica rufa [the hill ant],--instead of running away, it instantly faces about, and, that it may make the most of itself, stiffening its legs into a nearly straight line, it gives its body the utmost elevation it is capable of; and thus Collecting all its might dilated stands,' prepared to repel your attack. Put your finger a little nearer, it immediately opens its jaws to bite you, and rearing upon its hindlegs bends its abdomen between them, to ejaculate its venom into the wound. This angry people, so well armed and so courageous, we may well imagine are not always at peace with their neighbours; causes of dissention may arise to light the flame of war between the inhabitants of nests not far distant from each other. To these little bustling creatures a square foot of earth is a territory worth contending for; their droves of Aphides equally valuable with the flocks and herds that cover our plains; and the body of a fly or a beetle, or a cargo of straws and bits of stick, an acquisition as important as the acquisition of a Lima fleet to our seamen. Their wars are usually between nests of different species..... With respect to ants of one species, Myrmica rubra, combats occasionally take place, contrary to the general habits of the tribe of ants, between those of the same nest. The wars of ants that are not of the same species take place usually between those that differ in size; and the great endeavouring to oppress the small are nevertheless often outnumbered by them, and defeated. Æneas Sylvius, after giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear-tree, gravely states, "This action was fought "in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Ni cholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity!" A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones being victorious are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.' pp. 67—71. Leaving the turmoils of ants, we shall now make a more peaceful excursion with a different genus-the Hive Bee, an insect domesticated in our rural retreats. The hum of this little busy animal, though a sound by no means musical, and a tone without modulation, is delightful to the ear, and tranquillizes the mind, being powerfully associated with the ideas of rural peace, and of happy labour, and vividly recals to memory some of the earliest scenes, and most innocent pursuits of childhood. 'Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum To him who muses through the woods at noon, Insensible, indeed, to the surrounding objects of nature must be the heart of that man, who, in his rambles through the fields, has not stooped to watch this little reveller, while lurking in the bell of the Campanula, or probing the receses of the Honeysuckle; and who has not derived many a moral lesson from the unceasing activity of the busy insect which attracted his gaze. It is not every one, however, who has an accurate notion of the employment of the bee, and of the actual substances of which it is in search. The principal object of the bees, is, to furnish themselves with three different materials :-the nectar of flowers, from which they elaborate honey and wax; the pollen or fertilizing dust of the anthers, of which they make what is called bee-bread, serving as food both to old and young; and the resinous substance called by the ancients Propolis and Pissoceros, &c. used in various ways in rendering the hive secure and giving the finish to the combs. The first of these substances is the pure fluid secreted in the nectaries of flowers, which the length of their tongue enables them to reach in most blossoms. The tongue of a bee, you are to observe, though so long and sometimes so inflated, is not a tube through which the honey passes, nor a pump acting by suction, but a real tongue which laps or licks the honey, and passes it down on its upper surface, as we do, to the mouth, which is at its base concealed by the mandibles. It is conveyed by this orifice through the œsophagus into the first stomach, which we call the honey bag, of which, from being very small, is swelled when full of it to a considerable size. Honey is never found in the second stomach, (which is surrounded with muscular rings, and resembles a cask covered with hoops from the one end to the other,) but only in the first in the latter and in the intestines the bee-bread only is discovered. How the wax is secreted, or what vessels are appropriated to that purpose, is not yet ascertained. Huber suspects that a cellular substance, composed of hexagons, which lines the membrane of the wax-pockets, may be concerned in this operation..... Observe a bee that has alighted on an open flower. The hum produced by the motion of her wings ceases, and her employment begins. In an instant she unfolds her tongue, which before was rolled up under her head. With what rapidity does she dart this organ between the petals and the stamina! At one time she extends it to its full length, then she contracts it; she moves it about in all directions, so that it may be applied both to the concave and convex surface of a petal, and wipe them both; and thus by a virtuous theft robs it of all its nectar. All the while this is going on, she keeps herself in a constant vibratory motion. The object of this industrious animal is not, like the more selfish butterfly, to appropriate this treasure to herself. It goes into the honey bag as into a laboratory, where it is transformed into pure honey; and when she returns to the hive, she regurgitates it in this form into one of the cells appropriated to that purpose.' pp. 176-179. This botanical plunderer is not satisfied with robbing the nectaries of their saccharine juices, to be elaborated into honey and wax; it next visits the anthers, to pilfer the pollen, from which the bee-bread is made. If the integument, which holds this fertilizing dust, be already burst, it is immediately brushed off by the first pair of legs, transferred to the middle pair, and then to the hinder, where it is deposited in the shape of a small pellet in baskets formed by the hairs with which they are furnished; but if the anther be not already burst, the animal opens the cell with her mandibles, and extracts the farina. It is a disputed point, whether each individual of the hive confines itself, in its excursion, to a given species of flower, or visits every blossom indiscriminately. Aristotle (as our Authors inform us) maintained the first position; Dobbs, and after him Butler, have stated, in the Philosophical Transactions, that they often followed a bee from flower to flower, which was always of the species first selected, even though among the scarcest in the field; while Reaumur has remarked that Bees return to the hive each laden with pellets of pollen of uniform colours, yellow, red, white, and even green, which would appear to imply that the masses have been gathered from the anthers of some determinate species. It not unfrequently happens, that the animal itself is powdered with the dust which it has been collecting, so as to assume an artificial hue of the most vivid colour, by which it might be mistaken for an insect of a perfectly different kind. Messrs, Kirby and Spence think it probable, that a given species is selected by the Bees, because the particles of pollen cohere more closely when precisely of the same form, than when taken from different plants. If the fact be certain, we should rather incline to the e idea which they throw out, that Bees have been gifted by Providence with an instinct to select a particular species of flower in each excursion, both to aid the fertilizing of that species, and to prevent the production of hybrids by the indiscriminate dispersion of various kinds of farina. The following hint, in continuation of the same subject, is rather ingenious than probab le. A botanist, practised in the figure of the pollen of the different species of common plants, might easily ascertain, by such an examination, whether a bee had collected its ambrosia from one or more, and also from what species of flower.' p. 183. Propolis is a soft, red, aromatic gum-resin, which will pull out into a viscid thread, and imparts a gold colour to white polished metals. It is used as a varnish for the combs and hives, and also in stopping chinks or orifices. Huber conceives, from experiments, that it is obtained from the swelling leaf buds of certain plants; Mr. Kirby has seen bees very busy collecting it from the gems of Populus balsamifera (the Tacamahaca); Mouffet instances the Poplar and Birch; and Riem, the Pine and Fir. Bees, in their excursions, do not confine themselves to the spot immediately contiguous to their dwelling, but, when led by the scent of honey, will go a mile from it. Huber even assigns to them a radius of half a league round their hive for their ordinary excursions; yet, from this distance, they will discover honey with as much certainty as if it was within their sight. These insects, especially when laden and returning to their nest, fly in a direct line, which saves both time and labour. How they are enabled to do this with such certainty as to make for their own abode, without deviation, I must leave to others to explain. Connected with this circumstance, and the acuteness of their smell, is the following curious account, given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1721, of the method practised in New England for discovering where the wild bees live inthe woods, in order to get their honey. The honey-hunters set a plate containing honey or sugar, upon the ground, in a clear day. The bees soon discover and attack it; having secured two or three that have filled themselves, the hunter lets one go, which, rising into the air, flies straight to the nest: he then strikes off at right angles with its course a few hundred yards, and letting a second fly, observes its course by his pocket-compass, and the point where the two courses intersect is that where the nest is situated.' pp. 187, 188. In a subsequent part of the work, the faculty of finding the hive is referred, by our Authors, to a distinct instinct.' When bees have found the direction in which their hive lies, Huber says they fly to it with an extreme rapidity, and as straight as a ball from a musket: and if their hives were always in open situations, one might suppose, as Huber seems inclined to think, that it is by their sight they are conducted to them. But hives are frequently found in small gardens embowered in wood, and in the midst of villages surrounded and interspersed with trees and buildings, so as te make it impossible that they can be seen from a distance. If you had been with me in 1815, in the famous Pays de Waes in Flanders,where the country is a perfect flat, and the inhabitants so enamoured either of the beauty or profit of trees, that their fields, which are rarely above three acres in extent, are constantly surrounded with a double row, making the whole district one vast wood-you would have pitied the poor bees, if reduced to depend on their own eye-sight for retracing their road homeward. I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis [St. Nicholas], after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicular over it. The bees, therefore, of the Pays de Waes, and consequently all other bees, must be led to their abodes by intinct, as certainly as it is instinct that directs the migrations of birds or of fishes, or domestic quadrupeds to find out their homes from inconceivable distances.' pp. 501, 502. A very amusing account (taken from Maillet) will be found in this volume, of the transportation of Bees from Upper to Lower Egypt, in order to prolong the season of honey-gathering, and consequently to increase the produce of the lives. Saintfoin is one of the earliest crops which is seen at the close of the Autumn, immediately after the inundations of the Nile have ceased. The blossom first unfolds itself in Upper Egypt, the climate being there of a higher temperature. The hives, piled on each other in pyramids, move down the Nile in boats appropriated to the purpose; the rate of transportation Northwards keeping pace with the gradual unfolding of the blossom in the cooler climate. There is one advantage to be derived from an Apiary, to which few persons, we conceive, have hitherto turned their attention; we shall notice it as giving us an opportunity of bringing forward one of those instances of pleasantry in which our Authors indulge too freely, we think, for good taste, though not unsuccessfully as respects the light-reading humour of the present day. Many means have been had recourse to for the dispersion of mobs and the allaying of popular tumults. In St. Petersburgh (so travellers tell us a fire-engine playing upon them does not always cool their choler; but were a few hives of bees thus employed, their discomfiture would be certain. The experiment has been tried. Lesser tells us, that, in 1525, during the confusion occasioned by a time of war, a mob of peasants assembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to pillage the house of the minister of Elende; who having in vain employed all his eloquence to dissuade them from their design, ordered his domestics to fetch his bee-hives, and throw them in the middle of this furious mob. The effect was what might be expected; they were immediately put to flight, and happy if they escaped unstung. pp. 204, 205. It is a curious proof of the zeal which naturalists are apt to display even in the remotest and most insignificant details of the science to which they are devoted, that Entomologists have |