words splendid enough to express them, but the names of an emerald and a ruby joined together.

"That pretty fly—that living jewel—is the 'Chrysis.' I scarcely dare breathe, for fear of making it fly away. I should like to take it in my hands, that I might have sufficient time to examine it more closely. This likewise is the mother of a family; she also has an egg to lay, from which will issue a fly like herself, but which she will never see. She also knows how much nourishment her offspring will require; but, more richly clothed than the bee, she does not, like her, know how to gather the pollen from flowers or to make a paste of it with honey.

"She has but one resource, and that resource she is determined to employ; she will recoil neither from roguery nor theft to secure the subsistence of her offspring; she has recognized the solitary bee, and she is going to lay her egg in her nest. It will hatch sooner than that of the true proprietor; then the intruder will eat the provisions so painfully collected for the legitimate child, who, when it is hatched in its turn, will have nothing to do but to die of hunger.

"There she is at the edge of the hole,—she hesitates,—she decides,—she enters.

"This insect interests me, she is so beautiful. The other likewise interests me, she is so industrious. But here she comes back through the air: one would think her a warrior covered with chased armor and a golden cuirass; she buzzes as she comes along. The Chrysis has heard the buzzing, which is for her the terrible sound of a war-trumpet. She wishes to fly; she comes out; but the other, justly irritated, pounces upon the daring intruder, beating it with her head. She bruises and tears the brilliant gauze of her wings, and beats her down to the dust, where she falls stupefied and inanimate.

"The bee then enters into her nest, and deposits and prepares her provisions; but still agitated with her combat and her victory, she sets out again through the air. I follow her with my eyes for a long time, and at last she disappears.

"The poor Chrysis is not, however, dead: she gets up again, shakes herself, flutters, and attempts to fly; but her lacerated wings will no longer support her. What can she do to escape the fury of her enemy? It is not her business to fly away; her business is to deposit her egg in the bee's nest, and to secure future provision for her offspring,—but the bee came back too soon. She ascends, climbing painfully: at times her strength seems to fail her; she is forced to stop, but at last she arrives,—she enters,—she is in! This time the interest is for her. Then she was only beautiful, now she is very unfortunate. I am aware that a long plea might be made for the other. I should not like to be appointed judge between them. Ah! she is out again,—she flies away! But, oh, how happy she is to have succeeded! Now I begin to feel for the bee. The poor bee continues to bring provisions for its young, which, nevertheless, will die of hunger."

Nor is the Chrysis her only tormentor, it may be remarked; there are some frivolous little vagabonds of her own kind that never think of building for themselves, but always appropriate the homes of others in this style, and they are known as cuckoo-bees.

It is no wonder that the happy bee of the community, escaping all such trial, makes blithe murmur to itself over its luscious labor. Perhaps all artisans would sing as cheerfully, were their task as sweet; it can be no such severe duty to fill one's basket with the bountiful store at hand, when one has just banqueted on the very dew of the morning. There are a few secondary products of Nature on which words cannot be wasted. It is pleasant to recall the poetical charms of wine, its tints, its aromas, and its sparkles; yet, with all that fire and fragrance, it seems but poor, thin stuff, when poured out beside the heavy flow of honey with sunbeams dissolved in every plash. The Hungarian huntsman may praise his ropy Cotnar, fine ladies sip cordial Rosolio and Levantine sirups, the fancy warm over African Constantia; but every peasant has honey in his garden, and they buy it of him to enrich their best Muscats. The great globes of the grape on which the wind and weather have breathed a bloom, pulped with rain, and sweetened with sun, the dew-drops slipping down among them as they stir beneath the weight of some bird that springs from the stem into the sky,—these lend their beauty and innocence as a kind of chrism to cover the profanities of wine, which, before it can be used at all, undergoes a kind of decomposition; but the wild wine of the bramble-rose has no need of its youth in apology for its age. It is stainless honey still; the sweet earth-juices stole up the tiny ducts of the flower to secrete it; showers and odors, warmth and balm, distilled together into the nectary to give it wealth and savor; it yet preserves the essence of long summer days, of serene nights, of wandering winds, of mingled blossoms; it is the link between vegetable and animal productions; it has undergone the processes of a higher organization than that of the plant; it is, in fact, the bee himself, and not all the art of all the laboratories can reproduce it. Into all these other secondary products some stain of humanity enters; but little sinless sprites of greenwood and glen alone share the occult science of this with the blossoms. As light and heat are the generative forces of the world, honey seems to be their first result; it is lapped, indeed, in flowers, but it looks like candied sunshine. From the beginning, it has been regarded as a sacred substance; some have supposed it the earliest element of vegetation. The ancients made offering of it to the souls of the departed; they preserved their dead in its incorruptible medium; they sacrificed it to the gods. "With honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee," said the Psalmist, as if earth had nothing more to give. Nor has it to our bee. Let him fill his honey-vesicle, he will regurgitate the deposit into a cell that he closes with a thin waxen pellicle, or into another already partially occupied by the farina of flowers, which he knows to be perishable, and therefore secludes from the air in the same fashion that the Romans used to seal their flasks of Falernian,—with a few drops of honey at the mouth. Give him a grain of pollen, a taste of stagnant water, a drop of honey, and kings could not enrich him. The honey is his food, in the stagnant water he finds salts requisite as remedies; but what the bee wants with the grain of pollen is still a doubtful matter among apiarists. He makes of it a confection for the brood, it is also an ingredient of the royal jelly, he eats it himself, and he elaborates it in scales of wax upon his body, say those who follow Huber; on the other hand, the brood receive no confection or food whatever, there is no such thing as royal jelly, the insect will die sooner than partake of pollen, and there is no wax elaborated in scales upon the body of any bee, say those who oppose Huber. But if the brood are not fed, one may ask, why does the wild bee, the tapestry, or the carder bee, take such pains, before closing the nest where her egg is hidden, to store there the little drop of honey? and what is it that occasions the greater consumption of honey during the brooding period than during any other portion of the year? It is really a pity, when Huber has given us so many interesting relations, that people must needs go prying into their truth. How is it possible that Nature could improve upon them? Kirby, indeed, accepts them all, and hands them down to us; subsequent encyclopedists have profited by his example; and Michelet, who between a true story and a picturesque one never hesitates a moment,—who tells us that the down on the butterfly's wing is a collection of exquisitely minute balloons, and that the silkworm files its way out of the cocoon with its eyes,—leading us to think, that,