die a violent death! Their way of living is also peculiar to themselves: for excepting the moments they are employed in paying their court to their sovereign mistress, they are quite idle, enjoying a most luxurious table; eating only the finest honey; whereas the common people live in a great measure on the wax. These rise early, go abroad, and do not think of returning home till they are loaded with wax or honey, for the good of the community. drones, on the contrary, do not stir abroad till the hour of eleven, when they take the air, and amuse themselves till near six in the evening. They have no stings, nor those long elastic teeth with which the other Bees work up the honey; nor have they those kind of hollows, which serve them for baskets to bring it to their respective habitations.

The

The commonalty have an infinite number of surprising particularities, a few of which are, that their head seems to be triangular, and the point of the triangle is formed by the meeting of two long elastic teeth, which are concave on the inside. In the second and third pair of their legs, is a part called the brush, of a square figure, with its outward

surface polished and sleek, and its inward hairy, like a common brush. With these two instruments they prepare their wax and honey. The materials of their wax lie in the form of dust upon the amina of flowers. When the Bee would gather this dust, she enters the flower, and takes it up by means of her brush, to which it easily adheres. She comes out all covered with it, sometimes yellow, sometimes red, or according to its native colour. If those particles be inclosed in the capsule of a flower, she pierces it with her long moveable teeth, and then gathers them at her leisure. When this little animal is thus loaded, she rubs herself to collect her materials, and rolls them up in a little mass. Sometimes she performs this part of her business by the way; sometimes she stays till she comes back to her habitation. As soon as they are formed into a ball about the size of a grain of pepper, she lodges it in her little basket, and returns with a joy proportionable to the quantity she brings. The honey of the Bees is found in the same place with the wax; and it is lodged in little reservoirs, placed at the bottom of the flowers.

MARALDI, and DE REAUMER.

Poetical description of the BEE HIVE.

WHAT Various wonders may observers see
In a small insect-the sagacious Bee?
Mark how the little untaught builders square
Their rooms, and in the dark their lodgings rear!
Nature's mechanics, they unwearied strive,
And fill with curious labyrinths the hive.
See what bright strokes of architecture shine
Thro' the whole frame-what beauty, what design!
Each odoriferous cell and waxen tow'r,

The yellow pillage of the rifl'd flow'r,

Has twice three sides, the only figure fit,
To which the lab'rers may their stores commit,
Without the loss of matter, or of room,

In all the wondrous structure of the comb.
Next view, spectator, with admiring eyes,
In what just order all th' apartments rise!
So regular their equal sides cohere,
Th' adapted angles so each other bear;
That by mechanic rules refin'd and bold,
They are at once upheld, at once uphold.
Does not this skill ev'n vie with reason's reach?
Can Euclid more, can more Palladio teach?
Each verdant hill th' industrious chymists climb,
Extract the riches of the blooming thyme;
And provident of winter long before,

They stock their caves, and hoard their flow'ry

store.

In peace they rule their state with prudent care, Wisely defend, or wage offensive war.

WEEKLY AMUSEMENT.

The excursion of a Bee to the blossoms of an Almond Tree: by SIR JOHN HILL.

THE little creature first settled on the top of one of the branches, and, for a moment, seemed to enjoy the scene as I did: she just gave me time to admire her sleek silky coat, and glossy wings, before she plunged into a full-blown blossom, and buried herself among the thready honours of the centre. She wantoned and rolled herself about, as if in ecstacy, a considerable time there, and in her motions greatly disconcerted the apparatus of the flower; the ripe heads of the thready filaments all burst, and shed a subtile yellow powder over the whole surface of the leaves; nor did the creature stop its gambols, while one of them remained whole, or with any appearance of dust in its cavity.

Tired with enjoyment, as it might naturally have seemed, she now walked out, and appeared to have paid for the mischief she

had done, at the expense of strangely defiling her own downy coat Though some of the dust from the little capsules had been spread over the surface of the flower, the far greater part of it had evidently fallen upon her own back, and been retained there among the shag of its covering.

She once more placed herself on the summit of a little twig, and soon began to clear her body of this new gathered dust. It was with great admiration that I observed the readiness with which she executed this; it was not half a minute before her whole coat was as clean and glossy as at first: and what appeared more singular was, that not a particle of the dust had fallen upon any of the flowers about her, where it must have been visible as easily as on the surface of that it was taken from.

A very laboured motion of the fore legs of the Bee soon directed my eye thither, and the whole business was then immediately explained: I found she had carefully brought together every particle that she had wiped off from her body, and formed it into a mass, which she was now moulding into a firmer tex