gons, with every alveole so closely arranged and so symmetrically
shaped as to afford instant testimony to the superiority of the animal
organization. It is by no means the habit of all bees, however, to
dispose their affairs with such precision, though many other methods may
have an equal grace. Don Felix d'Azara tells us of South American bees
which deposit their honey in small waxen cups, and are known as
Angelitos, because never using the sting; while the little black
stingless bee of Guadaloupe, which inhabits the clefts of hollow rocks
by the seaside, stores its honey in cells the size of a pigeon's egg,
each sacklet being filled only so far as it will hold without tearing
from its fellow, and a pretty piece of color being effected by the amber
honey in its receptacles of dark violet-colored wax which never
blanches, as the whole hangs together like a great cluster of grapes.
This is a species of bee not greatly differing from that which makes the
honey of Estabentum, that Clavigero says is taken every two months and
is the finest in the world. The Mexicans are reported to attend with
care to the culture of these bees, not so much for their rich honey as
for the wax, of which large quantities are used in their common church
ceremonials.

There are many singular incidents related by Huber, which, if they are
not true, one may exclaim, "The more's the pity." When he notes, that,
in a time of disorder in the hive, he beheld the queen ascend a royal
cell and seat herself upon it as if it were a throne, and, having
sympathized for a season, suddenly assume the awful attitude and strike
her disloyal people motionless, it interests us like some recital of the
haps and heroics of Boadicea and her Britons. It is remembered that in
the early days of what are known as spiritual manifestations, while one
wit thought our furniture made of Dodonean oak, another regarded the
manifestations as a wise provision, in aid of the customary May ramble
of city families from their respective domiciles. It is from a similarly
provident point of view, with the current price of coal, that we should
look at Huber's statement concerning the heat of a hive, when he tells
us that twenty hives will warm an apartment comfortably, and
twenty-five, occasionally well shaken, will furnish the proper
temperature for a conservatory,--which throws Count Rumford's feat of
boiling water without the aid of fire far into the shade. But when Huber
proceeds t