, by stinging that portion left exposed. On
the contrary, we are informed by his refuters, that, even were the body
destitute of this covering, which is not the case, it would present a
horny, scaly surface, from which there would be infinitely greater
difficulty in extracting the sting than from the silken meshes of any
cocoon,--and that, as no sting could pierce the waxen wall of the cell,
and as the royal cell is vertical, and the nymph lies with its head
towards the orifice of it, unless the queen, with her sting of the
eighth of an inch in length, had the power of darting it through the
orifice to the distance of three fourths of an inch, the act would be
otherwise an impossibility,--and that, to finish the affair, these
infant princesses are destroyed by the bees themselves, who, finding
them unnecessary for further swarming, tear them from their cells, and
despatch them, not by dart or venom, but, when they are in a
sufficiently advanced stage, by an attack of the teeth at the root of
the wings, in the same way that they despatch the drone, disabling and
dragging them out of the hive, after they have become supernumeraries,
where they drop to the ground, and, powerless to fly and escape, perish
with cold, or become the prey of bird, mouse, and reptile. It is
possible that none of the various tribes of all the tiny arm-bearing
people make use of the _coup de grace_ in their power, except as a last
resort. Still, when the bees find it necessary, they use it with Spartan
cunning. Bruin can testify to that in his sensitive muzzle; and thus,
when he takes a fancy to their conserve of blossoms, he carries off the
hive in his hug, and plunges it into the nearest brook or pool till the
bees are drowned, and all their riches made his undisturbed possession.
The bee that is not irascible betrays a dismal home and a miserable
mother; he has nothing worth fighting for. But far from him be malice;
unmolested, he does not molest. For one who has lived in an old mansion,
with bats' nests under the eaves and wasps' nests everywhere, waking in
autumn mornings to count the customary inhabitants of the latter
clustered on the cornices by threescores, while observing that they
always made themselves sufficiently at home, not only to claim a place
at table, but to walk across the cloth and help themselves, pausing
sometimes midway to flirt out the purple enamel of a wing for
admiration, and never giving offence to one of the house,--fo