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honey for winter's use, are carefully covered with a lid or thin plate of wax.

The honey bees not only labour in common with astonishing assiduity and art, but their whole attention and affections seem to centre in the person of THE QUEEN OF SOVEREIGN of the hive. She is the basis of their association, and of all their operations. When she dies by any accident, disorder ensues throughout the community: all labour ceases; there is an end to the construction of new cells, as well as to the collection of either honey or wax. In this state of anarchy the bees remain, until a new queen or female is obtained, to effect which they have the power of selecting one or two grubs of workers, and converting them into queens. This they accomplish by greatly enlarging the cells of the selected larvas, by supplying them more copiously with food, and that of a more pungent kind than is given to the common larvas.

The government or society of bees is therefore more of a monarchial than of a republican nature. All the members of the state seem to respect and be directed by a single female. This fact affords a strong instance of the force and wisdom of nature. The female is the mother of the whole hive, however numerous; and without her the species could not be continued. Nature has therefore endowed the rest of the hive with a wonderful affection to their common parent. For the reception of her eggs nature impels them to construct cells, and to lay up stores of provisions for winter subsistence. These operations proceed from pure instinctive impulses it is true, but every instinct necessarily supposes a degree of intellect, a principle to be acted upon, otherwise not any impulsion could be felt, nor could either action or mark of intelligence possibly be produced.

On the subject of SWARMS, the following are the conclusions drawn by M. Huber, who has paid particular attention to the economy and habits of bees. First: a swarm is always led off by a single queen, either the sovereign of a parent hive, or one recently brought into existence. If, at the return of spring, a well-peopled hive, under the government of a fertile queen, be examined, she will be seen to lay a prodigious number of male eggs in the course of the month of May, and the workers will choose that moment

for constructing several royal cells. Secondly: when the larvas hatched from the eggs, laid by the queen in the royal cells, are ready for a transformation into nymphs, this queen leaves the hive, conducting a swarm along with her; and the first swarm that leaves the hive is uniformly conducted by the old queen. Lastly: after the old queen has conducted the first swarm from the hive, the remaining bees take particular care of the royal cells, and prevent the young queens successively hatched, from leaving them, unless at an interval of several days between each.

TRANSFORMATION OF INSECTS.

Nature's smallest products please the eye,
While greater births pass unregarded by,
Her monsters seem a violence to sight:
They're form'd for terror, insects to delight.
Thus, when she nicely frames a piece of art,
Fine are her strokes, and small in every part.
No labour can she boast more wonderful
Than to inform an atom with a soul;
To animate her little beauteous fly,
And clothe it in her gaudiest drapery.

- YALDEN..

ALL winged insects, without exception, and many of those which are destitute of wings, have to pass through several changes before they arrive at the perfection of their natures. The appearance, the structure, and the organs of a caterpillar, a crysalis, and a fly, are so different, that, to a person unacquainted with their transformations, an identical animal would be considered as three distinct species. Without the aid of experience, who could believe that a butterfly, adorned with four beautiful wings, furnished with a long spiral proboscis, instead of a mouth, and with six legs, proceeded from a disgusting caterpillar, provided with jaws and teeth, and fourteen feet? Without experi ence, who could imagine that a long, white, smooth, soft worm, hid under the earth, should be transformed into a black crustaceous beetle, having wings covered with horny

cases?

Besides their final metamorphosis into flies, caterpillars undergo several intermediate changes. All caterpillars cast or change their skins more or less frequently according to the

species. The silkworm, previous to its chrysalis state casts its skin four times. The first skin is cast on the 10th, 11th, or 12th day, according to the nature of the season; the second in five or six days after; the third in five or six days more: and the fourth and last in six or seven days after the third. This changing of skin is not only common to all caterpillars, but to every insect whatever. Not one of them arrives at perfection without casting its skin at least once or twice. The skin, after it is cast, preserves so entirely the figure of the caterpillar in its head, teeth, legs, colour, hair, &c. that it is often mistaken for the animal itself. A day or two before this change happens, caterpillars take no food; they lose their former activity, attach themselves to a particular place, and bend their bodies in various directions, till, at last, they escape from the old skin, and leave it behind them. The intestinal canal of caterpillars is composed of two principal tubes, the one inserted in the other: the external tube is compact and fleshy; but the internal one is thin and transparent. Some days before caterpillars change into the chrysalis state, they void, along with their excrement, the inner tube which lined their stomach and intestines. When about to pass over into the chrysalis state, which is a state of imbecility, they select the most proper places and modes of concealing themselves from their enemies. Some, as the silkworm and many others, spin silken webs or cords round their bodies, which com pletely disguise the animal form. Others leave the plants upon which they formerly fed, and hide themselves in little cells which they make in the earth. The rat-tailed worm abandons the water upon the approach of its metamorphosis, retires under the earth, where it is changed into a chry salis, and, after a certain time, bursts from it seemingly inanimate condition, and appears in the form of a winged insect. Thus the same animals pass the first and longest period of their existence in the water, another under the earth, and the third and last in the air. Some caterpillars, when about to change into a chrysalis state, cover their bodies with a mixture of earth and of silk, and conceal themselves in the loose soil. Others incrust themselves with a silky or glutinous matter, which they push out from their mouths, without spinning it into threads. Others retire into the holes of walls or decayed trees. Others suspend them

selves to the twigs of trees, or to other elevated bodies, with their heads undermost. Some attach themselves to walls, with their heads higher than their bodies, but in various inclinations and others choose a horizontal position. Some fix themselves by a gluten, and spin a rope round their middle to prevent them from falling. Those which feed upon trees attach themselves to the branches, instead of the leaves, which are less durable, and subject to a variety of accidents. The colours of the caterpillar give no idea of those of the future flies.

The metamorphosis of insects has been regarded as a sudden operation, because they often burst their shell or silky covering quickly, and immediately appear furnished with wings. But by more attentive observation, it has been discovered, that the transformation of caterpillars is a gradual process from the moment the animals are hatched till they arrive at a state of perfection. Why, it may be asked, do caterpillars so frequently cast their skins? The new skin, and other organs, were lodged under their old ones, as, in many tubes or cases, and the animal retires from these cases, because they have become too strait. The reality of these encasements has been demonstrated by a simple experiment. When about to molt or cast its skin, if the foremost legs of a caterpillar are cut off, the animal comes out of the old skin deprived of these legs. From this fact, Reaumur conjectured, that the chrysalis might be thus encased, and concealed under the last skin of the caterpillar. He discovered that the chrysalis, or rather the butterfly itself, was inclosed in the body of the caterpillar. The proboscis, the antennæ, the limbs, and the wings of the fly, are so nicely folded up, that they occupy a small space only under the first two rings of the caterpillar. In the first six limbs of the caterpillar, are encased the six limbs of the butterfly. Even the eggs of the butterfly have been discovered in the caterpillar long before its transformation.

From these facts it appears, that the transformation of insects is only the throwing off external and temporary coverings, and not an alteration of the original form. Caterpillars may be considered as analogous to the fetuses of men and of quadrupeds. They live and receive nourishment in envelopes till they acquire such a degree of perfection as enables them to support the situation to which they are ultimately destined by Nature.

ZOOPHITES, OR PLANT-ANIMALS.

THESE Wonderful productions are so denominated on account of their existing in the shape of plants. They are very numerous, and the greater part of them have so great a resemblance to vegetables, that they have generally been considered as such, although the horny and stony appearance of several of the tribe declares them at first view, to be of a widely different nature from the generality of plants. In others, however, the softness of their substance, and the ramified mode of their growth, would lead any one not acquainted with their real nature, to suppose them vegetables. The hard, horny, or stony zoophites are in general known by the name of corals; and of these several distinctions are formed, either from the structure and appearance of the coral or hard part, or from the affinity which the softer, or animal part, bears to some other genus among soft-bodied animals, or mollusca. The zoophites may be therefore said to unite the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so as to fill up the intermediate space.

Belonging to the class of zoophitic-worms, the fresh-water polypes are infinitely curious. These animals may be found in small streams, and in stagnant waters, adhering to the stems of aquatic plants, or to the under surface of the leaves, and other objects. If a polype be cut in two parts, the superior part will produce a new tail, and the inferior part. a new head and arms; and this, in warm weather, in the course of a very few days. If cut into three pieces, the middle portion will produce both the head and tail; and in short, polypes may be cut in all directions, and will still reproduce the deficient organs. The natural mode of propagation in this animal, is by shoots or offsets, in the manner of a plant: one or more branches or shoots proceed from the parent stem, dropping off when complete; and it often happens that these young branches produce others before they themselves drop off from the parent; so that a polype may be found with several of its descendants still adhering to its stem, thus constituting a real genealogical tree. The polype likewise, during the autumnal season, deposits eggs, which evolve themselves afterwards into distinct animals;

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