armed; and are always killed by the neuters about the month of September.

Heat is the life of these insects. The least degree of cold benumbs them; and in winter, unless they are all crowded together, they perish. Their enemies are the wasp and the hornet, who with their teeth rip them open to suck out the honey contained in their bladder. Sparrows have also been seen with one in their bill, and another in each claw.

There is so great a degree of attachment subsisting between the working Bees and their queen, that if, by any accident, she is destroyed, the labours of the community are at an end, and the rest of the animals leave the hive and disperse. If, however, another queen be given them, joy springs up, and they crowd around her, and soon again apply to their operations. Even the prospect of seeing a queen will support them: this has been proved by giving to a hive that had lost its own queen the crysalis of another. If a queen be taken from a hive and kept apart from the working Bees, she will refuse to eat, and in the course of four or five days will die of hunger.

H

Mr. Wildman, whose remarks on the management of Bees are well known, possessed a secret by which he could at any time cause a hive of Bees to swarm upon his head, shoulders, or body, in a most surprising

manner.

He has been seen to drink a glass of wine with the Bees all over his head and face more than an inch deep; several fell into the glass, but they knew him too well to sting him. He could even act the part of a general with them, by marshalling them in battle array upon a large table. There he divided them into regiments, battalions, and compa nies, according to military discipline, waiting only for his word of command. The moment he uttered the word, march! they began to march in a very regular manner in rank and file, in the manner of soldiers. To these, his Lilliputians, he also taught so much politeness, that they never attempted to sting any of the numerous company, which at different times resorted to admire this singular spectacle.

STEDMAN relates in his travels, that, during his stay in Surinam, he had built himself

a light wooden house, such as are usual in that country. Once a stranger called upon him, who had no sooner entered the house than he immediately ran out again, as if distracted, and plunged into a neighbouring stream. The man had a multitude of Bees upon his head, which were stinging him. Stedman's negro went to his assistance, and extricated him. Stedman wondered both at his having had this swarm of Bees in his house without knowing it, and also that they had conducted themselves so peaceably towards him. The negro gave him the following explanation of the matter, according to his own ideas. He told him they would never do him any injury, because they knew that they were upon his premises; and in fact they never made any attempt to attack him, even though he ventured to shake their nest. The negro told him also that there was in that country an old decayed tree, in which Bees and birds lived in perfect harmony together. If a strange bird came and wanted to catch Bees, the birds that dwelt in the tree immediately drove them away; and the Bees in like manner would suffer no strange

Bees to come into the tree. Thus they seemed to have concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with each other. That almost all the negroes considered this tree as sacred, is not to be wondered at the same would probably have been the case in many parts of Europe.

Affection of Bees,

AN elderly lady at Nantes, who had an estate in the neighbourhood of that town, where she used generally to pass the summer, had a remarkable partiality for Bees, and kept a great number of them upon her estate. She took great pleasure in attending these little insects. Towards the end of May, 1777, this lady, having been taken ill, was conveyed to Nantes, where she died a few days after. On the day when she was to be interred, an enormous number of Bees made their appearance in the house where the body lay, and settling upon the coffin, would not be driven away. A friend of the deceased, wishing to ascertain whether these were the same Bees that she had taken such tender

care of when living, repaired immediately to the estate, where he found all the hives emptied of their inhabitants.

In the spring before the flowers are blown, or in autumn when they are all gone off, the Bees being at a loss for honey, endeavour to steal from other stocks, and on these occasions such fierce wars often ensue between the contending parties, that the ground before the hive is found strewed with thousands of dead Bees.

Ingenuity of Bees in getting rid of the carcass of a Snail, which had intruded itself into their Hive, from that instructive and pleasing work, SPECTACLE DE LA NATURE.

A FEW days since (observes the author) a snail took it into its head to steal into the glass hive in my window. There was no entrance to pass through but the proper one, and in the animal went. The porters received him very rudely at the gate; and the first attack they made upon him with their