ted structure, which, when
not in use, is nicely folded under its abdomen; with this, it licks or
brushes up the honey, which is thence conveyed to its honey-bag. This
receptacle is not larger than a very small pea, and is so perfectly
transparent, as to appear when filled, of the same color with its
contents; it is properly the first stomach of the bee, and is surrounded
by muscles which enable the bee to compress it, and empty its contents
through her proboscis into the cells. (See Chapter on Honey.)

The hinder legs of the worker are furnished with a spoon-shaped hollow
or basket, to receive the pollen or bee bread which she gathers from the
flowers. (See Chapter on Pollen.)

Every worker is armed with a formidable sting, and when provoked, makes
instant and effectual use of her natural weapon. The sting, when
subjected to microscopic examination, exhibits a very curious and
complicated mechanism. "It is moved[6] by muscles which, though
invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting, to the
depth of one twelfth of an inch, through the thick skin of a man's hand.
At its root are situated two glands by which the poison is secreted:
these glands uniting in one duct, eject the venemous liquid along the
groove, formed by the junction of the two piercers. There are four barbs
on the outside of each piercer: when the insect is prepared to sting,
one of these piercers, having its point a little longer than the other,
first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the
other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper,
till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their barbed hooks, and
then follows the sheath, conveying the poison into the wound. The action
of the sting, says Paley, affords an example of the union of _chemistry_
and mechanism; of chemistry in respect to the _venom_, which can produce
such powerful effects; of mechanism as the sting is a compound
instrument. The machinery would have been comparatively useless had it
not been for the chemical process, by which in the insect's body _honey_
is converted into _poison_; and on the other hand, the poison would have
been ineffectual, without an instrument to wound, and a syringe to
inject it."

"Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the microscope, it
appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife, rough, uneven, and
full of notches and furrows, and so far from anything like sharpness,
t