is
fond of his home_," is an axiom of irrefragable truth, and one which
ought to kindle in every one's breast, a favorable regard for a pursuit
which has the power to produce so happy an influence. The love of home
is the companion of many other virtues, which, if not yet developed into
actual exercise, are still only dormant, and may be roused into wakeful
energy at any moment."

The fertility of the queen bee has been much under-estimated by most
writers. It is truly astonishing. During the height of the breeding
season, she will often, under favorable circumstances, lay from two to
three thousand eggs, a day! In my observing hives, I have seen her lay,
at the rate of six eggs a minute! The fecundity of the female of the
white ant, is much greater than this, as she will lay as many as sixty
eggs a minute! but then her eggs are simply extruded from her body, to
be carried by the workers into suitable nurseries, while the queen bee
herself deposits her eggs in their appropriate cells.

ON THE WAY IN WHICH THE EGGS OF THE QUEEN BEE ARE FECUNDATED.

I come now to a subject of great practical importance, and one which,
until quite recently, has been _attended_ with apparently insuperable
difficulties.

It has been noticed that the queen bee commences laying in the latter
part of winter, or early in spring, and long before there are any
drones or males in the hive. (See remarks on Drones.) In what way are
these eggs impregnated? Huber, by a long course of the most
indefatigable observations, threw much light upon this subject. Before
stating his discoveries, I must pay my humble tribute of gratitude and
admiration, to this wonderful man. It is mortifying to every scientific
naturalist, and I might add, to every honest man acquainted with the
facts, to hear such a man as Huber abused by the veriest quacks and
imposters; while others who have appropriated from his labors, nearly
all that is of any value in their works, to use the words of Pope,

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."

Huber, in early manhood, lost the use of his eyes. His opponents imagine
that in stating this fact, they have thrown merited discredit on all his
pretended discoveries. But to make their case still stronger, they
delight to assert that he saw every thing through the medium of his
servant Francis Burnens, an ignorant peasant. Now this ignorant peasant
was a man of strong n